50 Introverts Reveal The Incredible Lengths They've Gone To Avoid People

I was invited to a low key dinner thing at the local Chili’s with a group of people I tangentially knew. Like 20ish people I guess. Ended up sitting at a booth by myself across the way from the main table because I didn’t know anyone enough to really put up the effort into sit next to them. That, and searing social anxiety. So I ended up being the odd man out (very self fulfilling in retrospect). I ordered an iced tea, got super anxious and self-hating about the situation and worked myself up pretty good. Had a bit of an agoraphobic, world-closing-in-on-me moment. Made the split second and irreversible decision to bail out and I left the only bill I had in my wallet on the table because I didn’t want to have to wait another f*cking second for the waitress to show up and pay for my ~$1.50 drink. That waitress got a $99.50 tip.

I called off my last day of work so I didn't have to say goodbye to people

Friends husband pulled a 'Homer disappearing backwards into the hedge gif' move when he was trimming the hedge and people came to visit. Doubly awkward cause they saw him do it and he just stayed in the hedge.

This was back in high school.
I woke up at 7AM on the day we had poetry recitation for Literature. I used to have extreme stage fright and didn't know how to act accordingly in front of an audience. So I came up with a game plan.
After getting showered and dressed for school, I purposefully threw myself down the flight of stairs, and pretended to get badly hurt, in order to avoid having to go to class. Ended up stayed in the hospital for a day.
3.5/10 would not recommend

All last fall, I took camping trips with my dog only. Just wanted to enjoy the quiet, meditate, hike, and read. If you've never done it, I really recommend it.

Put duct tape around the top and bottom of my dorm room door and taped over the peephole so no one could tell if my lights were on from inside the dorm

I was about fourteen, at my most awkward and gangly and antisocial.
It was fairly early in the morning, and I was in my room getting dressed. Suddenly I hear voices down the hallway. My dad had organized some guys to come in and install an air con system, and was showing them round before he left for work.
I was half dressed, in my underwear, and panicked.
A normal person would have, I don't know, called out that I was getting changed and asked them to wait?
I jumped, half naked, into my closet.
You can guess what happened next.
It happened to be that they needed to run pipes above the closet. My dad opened up the door and there they were, him and the three middle aged install guys all peering in at me cowering in horror in the corner.
I'm not sure if it was more mortifying for dad or me, though. He apologized and shut the door and just carried on like nothing had happened, as if his daughter usually hung out half-naked in closets.
The worst part was they were working in the house for about another three days. I literally climbed out my window each day after that to avoid seeing them.

Learned german. Don't wanna talk to that random stranger who trying to sell you something? Say a few lines of german and they'll go away.

Shit, I've dumped my half full basket on the floor and left for another store after seeing people I knew. It's one thing going through the initial small talk, but to keep bumping into them every aisle, that's too f*cking much.

Pretended to have a second job in the evenings so I could avoid parties to stay home and play World of Warcraft.

We had a lot of cats in one of the houses I lived in when I was a kid. I think I was around 10. This was out in the country, with a single narrow road dividing a row of houses and a vast cornfield. We would get the very occasional solicitor. One particular time I do recall is when a couple modestly dressed older ladies with pamphlets were making their way down the row of houses, knocking on each door. Our door was an old wooden one with a rectangular window cut out at the top. I had seen them waddling across our yard, so I prepared myself. I grabbed the nearest cat and lifted it up to where its head was poking out the window. knock knock knock Held that cat up in the window as steadily as I could. Cat became wiggly, looking down at me and meowing while putting paws up on the glass and protesting whatever confusing thing was happening. knock knock knock Put cat 1 down and reloaded with cat 2. More wiggles, sniffs, confused paws, and meows. Knocking stopped. My reasoning was to make the ladies think we had some mutant cats with super long necks but regular sized cat heads and paws. Maybe they would picture a tiny cat head attached to a serpentine body with pairs of paws all down their neck. Maybe they thought it was a large octopus or squid-like creature whose great body filled the entire house and on the end of each tentacle was a cat head and a couple paws. Perhaps the creature was created by a mad scientist whose lab was in the crawlspace, and the only thing the creature could eat was old ladies and then used their pamphlets to pick their teeth afterward. So, instead of just avoiding the door, I guess I was weird enough to think I could scare them off so they wouldn’t come back. I have no idea what happened on the other side of the door. I wonder what their perspective looked like. How convincing it was.

My friend once texted she was on her way over with her boyfriend to pick up something they had asked to borrow. I panicked because her boyfriend is sweet but gregarious and intense and I wasn't feeling it. So naturally I moved my car from my driveway to the next street over and then hid in the spare rooms bed under a pile of blankets after texting her I wasn't home but to grab it anyways.

Changed positions at work to a position where i make less money over all to avoid talking to guests

I gave birth to my baby at home, alone, with my toddler watching. I unexpectedly went into labor and even when I could feel the baby’s head, I just thought to call my husband and tell him to “please hurry!” The thought of having to call an ambulance and deal with people was too much.
EDIT: My first labor was induced and I felt no contractions. So with my second, when the pains came on, I swore it felt like I just had to go to the bathroom. I started timing the pain and the first 3 contractions went from 7 min, to 4 min, to 2 min apart. I thought there was no way I could be in active labor. Once I realized I was in labor, I did call my husband and ask him to come home from work, but I thought “Wow this is intense, but people labor like this for hours so I’m okay.” At no point was I ever in crippling pain. I just happened to be sitting on the toilet (again thinking I had to use the bathroom) when my water broke. I called my husband again to tell him he really needed to hurry now. I reached down to wipe my leg and that’s when I felt the baby’s head. I put the phone down, pushed twice, and my son was born. So yeah, I called my husband instead of an ambulance. Even after he was born I told my husband to just “hurry home!” My husband did call and ambulance for me and at that point we were transported to the hospital. The time from my water breaking to my son being born was 5 minutes.
I did not deliberately hurt my child. I would have much preferred to be at a hospital. I am introverted, but it has nothing to do with my ability to effectively parent my children. However, my family does tease me now that it is so like me to not call an ambulance for myself. I completely acknowledge that I should have called for help! But as another person stated, yes I as in pain and irrational.

Erased peoples names from my phone so that when they call all I see is an unknown number and since it's an unknown number I don't have to answer it.

In college, I lived in a single on an all girls floor. The second and third floor were all boys. One morning, our maintenance man was cleaning the first floor girls only bathroom and I really had to poop. I’m an extremely shy pooper and never interacted with boys so there was no way I was going upstairs to either of the boys bathrooms.
I emptied out my garbage can, lined it with two plastic garbage bags and took a shit into the garbage can in the corner of my room.

I’ve scaled wet, steep and slippery rocks when hiking just to avoid small talk with the people on the actual path

* I take all of my breaks at work in my locked car
* I leave work Friday, go to the store for the next week shopping, go home, and stay in my room until Monday (bathroom is attached, will get food from kitchen but only if my roommate is gone)
* sometimes I shop out of town to prevent me from running into anyone I know
* Amazon is amazing
* occasionally uses headphones without music just so people won't talk to me
I'm sure there's more things I've done.. But those are basically daily things.

When I was in my early teens, I was just hanging out with my family in the garden/backyard as it was a nice sunny day. The doorbell rang and my parents went inside to go and answer it, from where we were you could faintly hear the voices of the people at the door. I didn't recognise the voices, so I went and stood in the shed at the back of our garden, out of view. The people at the door who I hadn't met before were friends of my parents. Anyway they all came into the garden and sat down, chatting. Meanwhile I'm still stood in the shed, just waiting for them to leave. I considered coming out of the shed, but the longer I stood there the more I realised how strange it would be if I just appeared randomly from the shed. So I just waited for them to leave. This was before smartphones, which I easily could have killed time on. So instead I just stared at the walls and read the back of paint tins. I think they were there for about an hour and a half, and I didn't leave the shed until they were gone.

I have been driving a mile to other gas stations for about a year now to avoid going to the 7/11 3 minutes away from my house walking distance because I don't want to make small talk with the cashier who works there.