35 Times People Just Had To "Take One For The Team", As Shared In This Online Thread

My grandmother was getting older & struggling to get to the bathroom everytime. Well one time she didn't make it & someone had to help her take a bath. I jumped at the opportunity. Got her all cleaned & pretty & smelling great, brushed her hair just before bed too.

Why ?

Because she raised me from 2-5. The learning years, the potty training, the reading/ writing, teaching me to tie my shoes, add & subtract, letters & numbers .... all her. She was patient & kind & understanding & loving & immensely wise. So me giving her a bath ..... s**t, I'd do it again tomorrow. I miss her ....

Kind of a "gotta take one for the team" but it's a pretty s****y one. I was a freshman in high school and it was homecoming. Our class pulled a s****y prank on this girl who had a learning disability and voted for her to be the freshman rep. as a joke and she won. Well the guy that got voted to walk with her backed out the day before and I was 2nd in line. Being a freshman, knowing it was a joke and knowing I'd have to walk her down with everyone watching I was mortified but I did it. I remember my step brother giving me s**t and laughing at me and then my step father found out what I was going to do... He chewed my step brother out and was immensely proud of me. I don't think she ever figured out it was a joke and she was so happy that night. It was probably the highlight of her high school years honestly. Some 25 years later my dad ran into her parents and they still thanked me to him. You just never know whose life you might touch, be kind.

My ex girlfriend and I worked at a bar in Montreal. she was a waitress and I was Bartender. One in a while a bunch of rich dudes from the states would come up and flaunt their money to the girls we worked with. Buying champagne and such.

One night she was serving them and I got cut early and was waiting until she was done and those dude insisted on giving her drinks. She was coming down with a cold and didn’t want to drink so she kept feeding me drinks intended for her.

Long story short there ended being roofies in the drink and I blacked out and I woke up on my apartment floor and my gf on the couch.

I’m glad I took that one for her..

Took a class in college that I didn’t want to take but if I didn’t, the class couldn’t be run and two other people would not be able to graduate.

I work for a small mental health charity when lockdown hit in 2020 I stopped being paid and took on all the administration as we had to make the admin furloughed. Hard times but we managed to continue supporting people for free during the hardest of times

I had a junior developer on my team that made a mistake. He had only been there a few months and although the mistake was easy to make, it would end up costing the company $40k. I was a senior dev and relatively untouchable due to a lot of fixed mistakes that others had made. For two days management was talking about who made the mistake and what they would need to do. As soon as I realized who it was (he was unaware at that point that he had done it wrong) I said I did it. Nobody said another word about it except me who quietly explained the correct way to push code changes to the junior dev.

I was out with a bunch of my friends and the designated driver f****d off and left us about 10 minutes into the party. I did not have my license but I knew the people I was with and I knew they would drive drunk, so I didn't drink and I drove them home.

Got pulled over by the RCMP, he asked for license and registration, I gave him the registration but said I didn't have a license (I had let my beginners lapse and didn't get it because I didn't have regular access to a car). He started in on me asking me why I was driving without a license and I said pointed to each person in the car and said, drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk and I didn't drink. He gave me back the registration and said carry on.

This was 35 years ago. Life was different then.
This was rural Canada, no transit, cabs would not take you from where we were to where we were going, too long a drive to make the trip back empty maybe?
The RCMP officer may have known me or recognized me. I didn't recognize him, but I was being respectful. He pulled me over for a burned out taillight originally, not for my driving skills, I had already gone 20+ miles safely.

The first year of the pandemic, I stayed on as one of the junior doctors on the COVID ward because I'm lucky enough not to have any medical conditions (and I live alone). Some of my colleagues would have had to make drastic life changes. I remember walking into the tea room and a nurse was crying because her son had severe asthma so her family were temporarily living with the neighbours. She hadn't hugged her kids in a month.

Calling this a “take one for the team” moment feels insensitive because I gained a wonderful friendship but… here goes.

I work at a big company and in a local team of about 90. One of my direct reports lost a long battle with cancer. I was close with him and gave a eulogy at his funeral. Horribly sad. He had a wife and two daughters.

He had a friend who I didn’t know beyond her name, but I knew they were tight because they always took breaks together. She happened to be off continent when he died (it was somewhat sudden) and missed his funeral. She wasn’t a particularly warm person and was a bit stand off-ish when I’d see her in communal office spaces. I have a busy life and had trouble with the idea of supporting what might become an obligatory friendship… but she seemed different after his death and so after about a month I sent her an email and said something to the effect of “I know we don’t know each other well but we both knew well. I don’t want to be presumptuous so feel free to ignore me entirely, but if you ever need a friend, I’m here”. She responded and we became casual friends, and she ended up telling me that, in her words, she “reached out to the universe” that week for a reason not to take her own life. I guess my email arriving the next day was the sign. She has never said this but I think she was pretty in love with our mutual friend and he was her main social connection. She is a wonderful person and very kind and very committed to her relationships despite having only a few. She is fiercely loyal and defensive of her friends. I admire her greatly. We’re not a match in terms of our interests or personality, and somehow I feel like a stand in, there to get her through week after week until she decides on her next direction. I am happy to be there for her and she teaches me a lot about myself, and she listens to me when I’m sad too. It’s been a while… I should check in on her.

**Update**

Checked in on my friend. I told her I was cleaning my garage and remembering our snowshoe adventure from a few years ago. She said “thanks for thinking of me” and that she was doing well. I found out while we were all working from home she moved to a place that is a 5 minute walk away from my place. We’re going to go for a stroll and I’ll introduce her to my 1 year old!

I taught at an elementary school in my early 20's. At the end of the year, we would always put on a dance for 5th graders as like a last hurrah before moving on to middle school.

One year, we hired a DJ and it was really great. The kids and families were having a great time. Out of nowhere the DJ announces a "Father/Daughter" dance. Most of the girls pulled their Dad's out to the floor and started dancing, but not all of them. A couple of co-workers and I noticed the girls who didn't have Dads kind of cowering in a corner of the dance floor. We walked over and started dancing with them.

This wasn't a big deal at all, and honestly was pretty forgettable, but cut to a few years later... I was attending a college graduation for a family friend. One of those girls was graduating that day as well. She comes up to me and tells me how that meant a lot to her and that it's one of her favorite memories from school.

My friend picked out terrible bridesmaid dresses. If you can picture it: Structured goldenrod cheap transparent chiffon with a body clinging tank top slip the size of a napkin underneath. Sort of that twee shabby chic prairie style that was en vogue a decade ago. My husband called me an, and I quote, "Amish s**t".

All the bridesmaids hated them but bride friend was type A and no one wanted to complain. I fell on my sword and begged her to let me pick something different because of my weight, as I was the chonkiest one in the party. I absolutely refused to stand in front of people in that handkerchief.

She wanted everyone to match so she switched to a much more flattering one. I got a group hug from all the bridesmaids in secret. It's been a decade and she still brings it up occasionally that the first dress was fine and everyone else liked it

We were 15 hours in our 2-event shift. Lots of clients, set up, moving around, etc, my watch recorded 14 miles of walking. It was also snowing.

My 7 team members were barely walking straight and had knee pain, had to lie on the floor, by the end.

Anyway, both events were over and it's time for cleanup. The leader says "only one person needs to stay to sweep, so the rest can go home".

I'm in the military so I volunteered. My joints hurt but not as bad. They all hugged me on their way out and I stayed an extra 90 minutes to clean up.

Was in a car ride with my GF and some family, my GF lets out a nasty fart, and my uncle starts complaining about the smell.

It was the first time my GF met these people, and I figured it would be super awkward if they figured it was her, so I took responsibility for the fart. Besides some more complaints directed at me, nothing else happened.

The fart was hella stinky so I don’t blame them for complaining at all

I was an early employee at a game studio and we had fallen on hard times. Myself and the other founders all went to 25% salary for a few months to keep from letting people go. It was VERY hard as I didn't have much slack in my budget. We made it through. Some of the best times of my life.

I was 16 and working my first job at Wendy's. One of the older guys there was Native American, had been in the Vietnam War and knew a lot of martial arts. We were friends, but horsed around a lot at work.
One day, knowing full well this dude could fight, I lurked around a corner, and when he walked by, I faked a jab at his head with a mop handle.
He had me on the ground bleeding in under a second, I didn't even see what he did! He immediately started apologizing, the manager ran back to the dish room to see what happened.
I flat out lied to the manager. Told him I slipped on the wet floor. My friend was trying to explain, and I just kept telling him to shut up every time he opened his mouth. Totally wasn't his fault, I caused it, and he had a family to support.
The manager kept trying to get him to admit what happened, but I would not let him speak. I didn't give a c**p about that job, they could fire me and it was no big deal.
We ended up going out for beers after work and laughing about it, but he had busted my nose and given me 2 black eyes so fast I never saw it coming.

When my loving and dear mother went to the hospital last month due to terminal brain cancer. Only two people could visit for her entire stay due to covid security. My father was one of the two and the last spot was between my sister and me. I let my sister have the last spot without debating or arguing. After two days of not being able to visit, they were able to convince the hospital management to make an amendment and let me in. Unfortunately I missed out on two of the last five days she had left..

my best friend conviced me have a "couple of drinks" together, next thing you know im carrying him on my back at 1 am to his house,( we were 16 at the time), police came and arested us,( it was when quarantine first started in greece, nothing really happened with the cops, they just phoned our parents and waited, both our parents came to the police station, they asked whose idea was it, i knew that if i told it was my friends idea he would be f****d, so i just told them that it was mine, i got grounded for 2 weeks and he got for 1, i actualy told my father a while ago that it was his idea and i took the blame for him, he laughed and said "my son is a loyal friend".

I was at Universal in FL with my best friend and our two boyfriends, waiting in the line for the hulk roller coaster. It was 97 degrees Fahrenheit and the air was like soup, and we had already waited in line for an hour.

I was feeling a little overheated but was ready to wait it out when I took a look at my best friend who looked white as a sheet, like she was about to faint. I finally called it and said “hey guys I’m not feeling it, Steph do you want to go grab food and shop in that store with the good HP stuff?” I could sense the immediate relief from her as we walked out of the line. Her bf is a Florida native and she was trying to put on a brave face, but I knew two more minutes and that chick would have passed the heck out.

We ate ice cream and shopped while we waited ANOTHER HOUR for the guys to get through the line to ride the 2 minute roller coaster. Totally worth it to take the “weak” title for myself to bail.

In 2018nafter Chiefs lost in the AFC championship game, I said I'd give my R nut for them to win the Superbowl.

In 2020 they won.
In 2020 I got testicular cancer.

Lambardi's: 1
Balls: 1

I was on a cruise, and they were doing auditions for the “end of trip” show where you’re impersonating a well known performer/song. We were over an hour into the karaoke time and no one had auditioned yet. I’d had a few drinks and figured “what’s the worst that could happen?”

That’s how I found myself performing on stage as Ricky Martin with backup dancers