‘What weird skill did you accidentally become good at because of a bad situation?’ – 23 abilities forged during times of adversity

There’s an old saying about it being the grit in an oyster that produces the pearl, and that’s a lesson that can also be applied to life: sometimes the hardest times produce the most valuable outcomes.

They’ve been discussing this phenomenon on the AskReddit page after foreversophia posed this question:

What weird skill did you accidentally become good at because of a bad job, hobby, or situation?

And lots of people shared the difficult scenarios that helped them develop the most unlikely skills, like these…

1.

‘Worked at a chaotic coffee shop for three years. Now I can basically hear exactly when a liquid is about to boil or overflow from a different room. It’s a gift and a curse.’
–pallsx

2.

‘When I was training to be a chef, we interned at various restaurants. The job itself involved peeling and chopping vegetables on an industrial scale. I’m talking about three twenty-litre buckets of carrots, grated by hand. The pay was 0, the work just six hours a week, but they fed us good.

As a result, I can peel and chop vegetables with incredible speed. I’m a human vegetable slicer. I can shred a whole cabbage in four minutes.’
–Yan_Vorona

3.

‘I can perfectly wrap a box in wrapping paper with only one hand. I have two working hands, but one of my old jobs involved wrapping Christmas presents for four hours a day and I just got really good at doing it one handed for some reason.’
–LadySandry88

4.

‘Working graveyard shift at a sketchy 24-hour gas station in a rough area. Constant shoplifters, drunks, and fights. Accidentally got insanely good at ‘de-escalation speed reading’, like, I can spot in two seconds if someone’s about to swing, steal, or just ranting harmlessly.

Body language, eye flicks, hand twitches, the works. Now in normal life I read strangers like open books and predict arguments before they start. Super useful for avoiding drama, but makes dating awkward bc I clock red flags instantly.’
–waddad27

5.

‘I worked at a clothing store and can almost perfectly fold shirts without a table… because I HATED running the register so much that I would find any excuse to do something else while at work. So I went from department to department folding everything on the display tables. For hours.

It got to the point where they would call me BY NAME to the messiest department (women’s) and give me an hour to fold everything on one of those huge display tables with like 500 shirts on it, and I would. Favourite day working there was the day before an audit. Got paid overtime to stay until 1 am folding the ENTIRE men’s department by myself.’
–LadySandry88

6.

‘I was a theatre kid in high school and a very mediocre stage manger. It turns out that those skills translate into being an above average organiser of political rallies.’
–Dependent_Concert165

7.

‘I am very good at understanding things with a lot of missing context because I have ADHD and tend to miss a lot of context.’
–AwesomeHorses

8.

‘I did a job that had me sorting bolts by size, thread and such, just to get it organised. After that I could spot four leaf clovers with ease. Just kinda scan patches as I was weed eating or scan a patch while outside smoking. I found lots of them. It’s worn off now.’
–ilikegrinchfeet

9.

‘Spending too long in pubs and became a very skilled beer mat flipper in the UK. Won many bets. Became an alcoholic, recovery, sobriety, skill atrophied.’
–educationacademic

10.

‘I can get a refreshing and full night of sleep in a car.’
–feedthem0nkey

11.

‘Getting tiny cracks clean. Was a car detailer and I can get shit clean as new, no matter how awkward and tiny the corners and cracks.’
–Yoyoyoyoyomayng

12.

‘I can eyeball a length of fabric and tell you about how many yards it is because I worked at a fabric store for three years.’
–Secure_Course_3879