Not everyone is good at giving gifts. Obviously, for some people out there, it's their bread and butter. Their love language, if you will. If that's you, congratulations. However, the rest of us (myself included) were not born with the “good gift-giver” gene. As someone who was once gifted a dictionary and a pencil case holder for my 15th birthday, not to mention a DVD of Inside Out for my 21st birthday, I was not raised to be good at this. That's why when this time of year rolls around, I get…

There is no such thing as Thanksgiving without a little family drama. It's part of what makes this Holiday so memorable. I'll always remember the year a family member wasn't allowed to leave the hotel room because they were under the weather. Then, there's that time someone spilled a side dish all over my hair. And who could forget the time no one wanted to ask the old lady in the room if she had changed out of her onesie at all the whole weekend? This kind of family tension is perhaps the most…

Sometimes you go to work with your brain still in sleep mode.

We all had a teacher back in the day who claimed something was true that occasionally made you suspicious. As you have gotten older, you have learned that your skepticism was not unwarranted and that you were absolutely right to question some of the nonsense this so-called educator was spewing. Over the years, we have all collected these bizarre “facts” that we have since disproven. They're often fun anecdotes to share at a party. For instance, did you know I was taught that I was taught that I…

Getting even with a landlord is the kind of rare occurrence one can only dream of in this life. If I had the opportunity to get back at some of my landlords knowing with certainty that the odds were in my favor and that I wouldn't be negatively affected in any way, you bet I would enact my own form of petty revenge. For me, the most egregious case of prior shady landlords would be the manager of my first New York apartment. This dude refused to acknowledge our leaking problem and insisted the r…

We all remember that moment sitting in front of a final exam (usually it was math), and you're just completely stumped. You have absolutely no idea what to do or how to even pretend like you know what you're doing. You either didn't study enough and you start to regret it, or your teacher is being ridiculously unfair by putting this question on the exam and you start to resent them. Still, there's nothing you can do about it at this point. You know you're going to at least get points off on thi…

There is a definitive moment in everyone's adult lives when all of a sudden, you don't have the bandwidth to do what you used to do. This could be something as literal and physical as needing to hire movers the next time you're changing apartment because you just don't have the strength and energy to carry everything yourself and potentially create even worse back problems than you already have. This could also be something as seemingly minor as putting a hard stop to your “going out” plans so…

Everyone has those unfortunate moments during childhood when you learn something isn't true. For many kids, it's the discovery that a heavy bearded fellow in a red suit doesn't dive down everyone's chimneys annually to give gifts. It's one of those fantasies that you wonder in hindsight how you believed that nonsense in the first place. Well, while we speak a lot about kids becoming disillusioned, no one ever really talks about the upsetting discoveries you have during adulthood. We're talking…

There are many ways to get even with your boss after you were unjustly fired, but revealing company secrets has got to be the most high-stakes option. Now, as someone who does not have the guts to pull this kind of petty revenge off, I have to step back and marvel at some of these folks for speaking their truth. That being said, they did do it behind the anonymous safety net of this r/AskReddit thread, but still, I guess we should give credit where credit is due. As for my company secrets, that…

Teachers better be careful when enforcing silly rules. As the son of a former teacher, I am sympathetic to the fear that students will just be playing games if laptops are allowed in class. That being said, wouldn't that be their loss when it's time to test them? In my experience, people will always find an excuse to zone out and not pay attention. So even if laptops are forbidden in the classroom, they will always find a way. Now, in defense of students, it is simply far easier to keep up with…

Being late occasionally is an inevitable part of life; that being said, testing your school's lateness policy can be a tricky tightrope walk. On the one hand, school administrators who are obsessed with enforcing lateness policies should have far more important things to worry about. On the other hand, students should have far more to be concerned with than finding loopholes so they can miss three hours of class each day.

Servers have to deal with a ton of unwanted nonsense on the job, but one perk of the job is that they get a front row seat to a wide variety of date nights gone wrong. From awkward first dates that turn out to be full of red flags to full-on marriage proposals that turn out to be complete failures, it seems like servers have seen the full range of possibilities that can occur on a date. Not to persuade people not to go out to dinner, but when someone says, “Just go out with them! What's the wor…

Halloween is a holiday where you dress up in a costume and have some fun . That's really it. You can go into the history of it and the different types of cultures it was influenced by, but currently, it really isn't that complicated. You put on a costume, and do something fun with your friends. Or if you're a kid, you put on a costume and go trick-or-treating and then try not to OD on candy. And there you have it—Halloween. Unfortunately, some people can make this holiday a little messy. Teenag…

Whether it's taking up two parking spots with one car or interrupting conversations incessantly, there are both written and unwritten rules about how people should behave in public. But of course, not everyone follows said rules. In fact, the audacious folks among us actively do the socially unacceptable thing in public, sometimes because these rules are ludicrous and sometimes because they have no level of self-awareness. Before we reveal the various “uncool” things people do in public all the…

Bad breakups may come with the territory when we're talking about dating, but no one could have been prepared for this dude's reaction. He really goes through the full range of human emotion, calling himself a loser one second and then calling himself a lion and a king the next. First of all, a lion and a king? Who is he, Simba?! It's hard to read this cringe exchange without thinking of your own similar experience because everyone has had one. Heck, I've been on both sides of a breakup, but I'…

At the very least, life's many inconveniences can provide fodder for second-hand entertainment. Obviously, when you are being confronted with something mildly infuriating, as many folks expressed via this Reddit thread , you don't feel entertained in the moment. You probably feel enraged, cheated, and ready to spontaneously combust. However, after taking a moment to breathe, you just might realize that the best thing you can do in this situation is to life at the whole thing. Otherwise, it migh…