"There’s a large butcher’s knife next to the sink and there is a puddle of what I can only assume to be urine surrounding his tub drain."

"I show up, and she’s there with a five-year-old kid. She says, 'Oh, I’m actually nannying right now, but my boss is paying me $25 an hour, so I figured I’d multitask.' Ten minutes in, she asks me to watch him so she can 'take a quick phone call in her car.' She drove to the petrol station and left me alone with a stranger’s child for 40 minutes. I basically got tricked into doing free freelance childcare."

"We’re heading out and I go to call an Uber, but I suddenly had to pee really badly. The bar was closing, so they wouldn’t let me back inside. The guy invited me to use the bathroom at his apartment, which was a block away. We quickly shuffle over to his place and, when he opens the door, there are hundreds of lit candles everywhere. I ask if his roommate is home, but he’s out of town. 

So this guy lit all these candles in anticipation of me coming over and left them unattended for hours. He points me towards the bathroom and I go use it. While washing my hands, I notice two things. There’s a large butcher’s knife next to the sink and there is a puddle of what I can only assume to be urine surrounding his tub drain. 

I finish what I’m doing and go to head out. The bathroom door is wedged shut. I spend about 10 minutes knocking, trying to get the guy’s attention. Eventually he hears me and says, 'Oh yeah, I should have warned you not to close the door.' After what felt like forever, we were able to get the door unwedged. I tell him I have to get home and make my exit. 

While I’m outside waiting for my Uber, this guy creeps up behind me and just stands there. I have no idea how long he was standing there. But as the Uber pulls up, he pulls me backwards and attempts to kiss me, but he was much taller than me, so I only got smothered by his insane beard. I pull away and get in the Uber. My poor driver was like, 'Girl, you’re safe with me. Tell me everything.' She was horrified, lol. Needless to say, there was no second date."

"I was a little annoyed and told her she could go ahead and respond since it sounded like an emergency. She then told me it wasn’t an emergency and that it was 'just her boyfriend'.

This took me by surprise since I thought she was single, and when I told her I didn’t want to get caught up in whatever drama she had going on, she told me that she had been meaning to break up with him for a while now, so she was practically single. It was just that he didn’t know it yet. So, yeah, I noped right out of that red flag."

"We were set up by my ex-wife, small-town stuff, and when we first met, it was mutual rejection immediately. No attraction, nothing in common except an agreement that my ex really was terrible at truly knowing me, and she wanted a ride home.

I told her I didn’t have a car, but if she wanted, I lived a few blocks away from the restaurant we met at, and I had a few beers and some weed there. I also lived across the street from an old graveyard we could drink and smoke in while we just shoot the shit until her friend picked her up. She agreed, so we sat in the dark for a few minutes getting high and talking about the most banal things. Even the conversation was lacking from both sides. Finally, her friend showed up. Her friend and I hit it off immediately, and we’ve been married for 15 years now."

"I show up and her brother is there with his wife. I thought it was pretty odd, but maybe they were there for her safety and would leave eventually. Nope. We bar-hopped to three different bars and they were there the entire time at each place. 

Later in the night, she told me her eighteen-year-old son convinced her to get on the dating app because he thought she should put herself out there. Oh, and she also mentioned that the dad had seven DWIs. When I left to go home, I went over to her brother to say goodbye and he was like, 'There’s plenty of other women here if you want to stick around.' Worst first date ever."

"We started chatting and I asked him what he did for work. He told me that it was easier to show me what he did for work and proceeded to pull out a backpack and start setting up a laptop. He started showing me a slideshow presentation for a Multi-level marketing firm called Juice Plus. He tried to tell me Juice Plus cured his mum’s diabetes. I told him how ridiculous that claim was. We got into an argument about MLMs being pyramid schemes. At least I never ended up in an MLM."

"I really only accepted because she was the only person I’d matched with in about three months. She spent the entire date on her phone and wouldn’t say anything more than 'yeah', 'no', or some kind of noise to that effect. 

Eventually, I got sick of it and told her that if she couldn’t at least have a conversation, then I was done. She freaked out, stood up, and started screaming about how I was lucky she even wasted the time of day to go out with a loser like me and that she could have anybody she wanted. Then she walked out. I did not take it well. It really messed me up and I didn’t go on another date for six years. But I did get to eat her food because she only took photos of it and had like two bites." 

About twenty minutes in, she brought up that she was once saved from being assaulted by 'a gang of Mexicans' by angels. Yes, these were literal winged angels that supposedly saved her. Seraphim. At that point, the date was effectively over, but I needed to see how deep this went.

She told me that hurricanes and earthquakes were caused by legal abortion in the US and that there has never been a truly Christian president of the United States. It was bizarre, but I was fascinated, so I kept saying things like, 'Wow, I was not aware of that.' It was only when she started insulting my parenting that I decided I had had enough. I thanked her for a very pleasant evening and walked out."

"Within five minutes, this man was telling me a story about how he stole a cupcake from a child’s birthday at a bowling alley. I was like, 'That’s incredibly rude,' and he tried to cover it with, 'Well, I offered the mum I would pay for it!' And I’m like, 'That’s still terrible.' Then he tells me that’s not even that bad and that he’s done worse. I’m like, 'You’ve got worse than stealing a kid’s cake on his birthday?'

He then tells a story about how he had a crush on a girl working at Tropical Trends at the mall, but she didn’t like him. As 'revenge,' he pulled an elaborate lie about having cancer and she agreed to go on a pity date. He chewed her out for only wanting to date him if he had cancer. 

At this point, we went inside and I ordered a beer because, well, why not? He started talking about his terrible relationship with his stepdad while I waited for a good point to exit. I ended up, due to a dairy allergy, poisoning myself with a cream puff, so I had a very legit excuse to go home. There was no second date."

"The moment she sat down, she was texting on her phone and didn’t want to talk to me. Then we placed our order, and after the waitress left, she picked up her phone and talked to someone. 'No, I can’t go to the swinger’s club with you this weekend. I promised Brian I’d go with him. I can take you next weekend.' 

The waitress witnessed everything. I saw her mouth from a distance, 'I’m sorry.' I got up, walked over to the waitress, paid for my meal, and left. I never saw or heard from the date again."

"She went into one of the shops and asked me if I’d buy her one of those expensive make up brands, I said no (it would’ve been all my pocket money at the time) so she invited another boy to buy it for her, he came and bought it and then she said 'you might as well come to the movie with us now', so he bought a seat next to us on the back row. About 15 minutes into the film I can hear her breathing quite heavily and can see his hand moving under her jeans, my date was being fingered by someone else on my first ever date."

Additional thumbnail credits: Universal Pictures, NBC, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures