By Anonymous - 22/09/2012 06:24 - United States

Today, my boss told me his cancer test results came back positive. I congratulated him and asked how he planned to celebrate. It turns out a positive cancer test result is a bad thing. FML
I agree, your life sucks 8 763
You deserved it 62 638
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Top comments

clueless05 12

How could you not know that a positive result to a cancer test is bad?

377 14
CeCe184 17

F*** your life? F*** his life, now he sadly has cancer.

218 6

Comments

crackh3ad 2

p.s I'm just laughing at the awkwardness of that situation !!

6 39
TellMeWhatsDeath 14

14-p.s I'm just laughing at the stupidity of your commment.

17 3
cosmosis 12

14- you really are a crackhead... Shut the hell up man. When talking about stupidity, people in glass houses should not throw stones champ!

14 1
walmartpaysme 15

58, they said awkwardness not stupidity. However, 14 I don't think this is one of those times that OP will ever learn to laugh at. It really wasn't funny. OP knows that and so should you.

1 0
Kn0wledge123 21

How the hell can you NOT know that?...

16 7
stormchaser24 24

Positive is yes he has it, negative means no. For most results that is what you want.

20 2
gardenwhipped3 14

Okay boys and girls... repeat after me..... "Is that good or bad?" No one can fault you for asking what that means. If you don't ask and you say congrats, then you deserve the initial fallout for giving feedback based on something you don't understand.

13 2
AholeCop 11

This happened to Kevin on the office. "My results are negative!" "Im so sorry to hear that."

4 0
perdix 29

And George Costanza on "Seinfeld."

3 0
DocBastard 38

I think everyone needs to calm down. OP wasn't trying to be mean here. He just sounds terribly naive. If you've never been exposed to cancer before, you'd have no way of knowing about this. Usually negative is a bad thing, so it's a fairly logical assumption. Am I sure he didn't mean anything negative? Yes. In fact, I'm positive.

63 13
Dracoboxer357 35

21- Agreed, Op sounds uninformed, not deliberately malicious. He misunderstood the meaning, but meant well. I'm quite sure Op had someone correct him pretty quickly, and probably already feels like an ass. :p

16 1
SinghIt 1

Sorry but I totally disagree. If any person thinks about it even just for a second longer before replying they could put 2 and 2 together and realise that's not a good thing. If you don't think before replying you would only hear the words positive results and then reply with 'that's great news!'

14 33
DocBastard 38

Singhit - Sorry, but I respectfully disagree with every word you said. If you went to a job interview and told someone the news was positive, that's a good thing, right? If you had a review of your performance and were told it was a positive review, that's a good thing, right? Of course right. It's only in medicine where a "positive" result can be bad. Maybe YOU should have thought about that before replying.

29 4
SinghIt 1

Exactly everyone does know what the word positive means and you don't have to be in the medical field to understand that positive test results for cancer are bad. You just need to think about it first. So yes I did think before writing my reply :)

4 28
kamikrazy 6

Couldn't you just think about it like cancer positive and cancer negative? Positive means yes negative means no.

5 2
sereyna 1

Give this guy a break; words can get lost in translation

6 3
Shrike 23

SinghIT: So you're saying OP was being malicious, the boss reacted accordingly, so the OP came here really guilty that his boss called him on being a dick? No. Actual situation: the OP's really naive like Doc says and spoke before thinking. No dick move here.

4 0
tisvana20 6

Singhlt. English might not be the OP's first language. That could be a source of confusion, which is reasonable for getting positive as "good thing" confused with positive meaning "you've got " If you tried to speak another language, you'd probably come upon quite a few of those misunderstandings. I know that I do.

1 1
walmartpaysme 15

If the boss said, " My cancer results came back positive." I could see very clearly how OP could have gotten confused. Also, if OP had worked a long day at work or been unusually tired for any reason, it could have been an easily confusing statement. We are human and we make mistakes. It happens. No one is perfect.

3 0
Sheh_fml 25

Yeah, it might be common knowledge, but common knowledge will never truly be common. Perhaps OP have just lived a healthy and lucky life and never stumbled upon the phrase before. "Positive resoults" do, after all, sound like it would be something positive.

26 3
Kallian_fml 21

I wanted to thumb this comment up, but "Positive resoults" just put me off...

4 7
StanSmith2013 26

Just explain to your boss that you thought that his positive was a good thing. It isn't like you meant to sound like an evil careless dictator, we all make mistakes in life especially when people confide in us about such sensitive issues. People need to stop calling you names and be supportive towards you as 1/3 in us will be affected by Cancer one way or another in our lifetime.

13 3
outoftown 26

#23, You may be right. Now we know breaking our bad news may get unexpected reactions.

1 0
DrippingSarcasm 20

FYL! Negative is a bad thing (as Doc said) as well as if you've never known anyone with cancer. If you don't know the difference, I don't blame you.

8 10