I once lived off random family breakfasts for a month and nobody questioned it

r/

A while back I was broke, hungry, and desperate. I’d already burned through all the obvious free food hacks—Costco samples, hotel lobbies, church potlucks. Then I had the dumbest idea that somehow… worked.

Every morning, I’d just… walk into random houses around my neighborhood. Not breaking in or anything—just slipping in when a door was ajar, or when a garage was open, or I’d follow a dad grabbing the paper and just nod like I belonged. The trick was confidence.

I’d head straight to the kitchen, mumble a casual “morning,” and sit down like I’d been living there my whole life. Pancakes? Eggs? Toast? Whatever was on the table, I was eating it. Nobody ever questioned me. Families just assumed I was, like, a cousin, a visiting exchange student, or maybe their kid’s weird new friend who crashed the night.

I got so good at blending in I even developed “roles.” In one house, I was “quiet guy who drinks black coffee.” In another, I was “the cousin who doesn’t talk much but always grabs extra toast.” I once buttered six biscuits in silence while an entire family argued about carpool schedules, and not a single person looked twice at me.

Best part? People actually offered me stuff to take “for later.” A juice box, a granola bar, a leftover cinnamon roll. It was like meal-prep without the prep.

For about a month, breakfast was covered. Every time I smell maple syrup now, my brain immediately goes back to nervously buttering toast while pretending to be “Uncle Jeff’s nephew from Ohio.”

What a time.

Comments

  1. zombie__kittens Avatar

    I call BS. No way even one family didn’t question you.

  2. shitting-account Avatar

    Genuinely a funny read, the comments on this one are going to be gold lol

  3. sparklysadist Avatar

    Man’s living in a sitcom…

  4. Jorzs Avatar

    This will not be ending anytime soon huh

  5. comicwarier Avatar

    Ha ha ha ha ha. Why stop at breakfast though ? Lunch , dinner , spouse ?

  6. lildonut Avatar

    I did the same but at family diners. Just sit down with a family and order. I don’t know why more people don’t do it

  7. Appropriate-Error239 Avatar

    Yeah, I did this. After breakfast, I actually just moved in. For a while, I slept on the couch. But then I figured I’m already eating here and showering here and sleeping here, why not just go ahead and start sleeping in their bed. So that’s what I did. Been doing it for about 20 years now. I think they think I’m an uncle. I don’t know why more people don’t do it.

  8. cressidacole Avatar

    Amateur.

    I once moved in with a family and nobody questioned it.

    Real estate agents hate this one simple trick.

  9. lifesbeengood2meso Avatar

    Wait! That was you? Did we? I mean did we? Oh never mind. It’s too late to tell my son about his REAL father. He loves maple syrup too.

  10. philff1973 Avatar

    Was it possible that everyone in each house was doing the same thing? Maybe everyone was sat there pretending to be part of the family wondering who everyone else was.

  11. Flicksterea Avatar

    Fuck, Cousin Eddy, where have you been? It took us a while to realise we hadn’t seen you in months. Pancakes tomorrow?

  12. ObviousDrugdeal Avatar

    Lol okay this was funny !!

  13. SysOps4Maersk Avatar

    I need a show about this, it’s hilarious

    No disrespect

  14. MelodicExcuse4226 Avatar

    I get its satire. But we had friends over for days at a time and my parents didn’t even realize it – more than a few times. I had no idea who the kid at the table was. So it wasn’t as far fetched as you think.

    That said .. you need a family with a lot of kids to make this trick work.

  15. BR1M570N3 Avatar

    I did this once. Now I have two wives and 18 kids I don’t know about.

  16. gardengirl85 Avatar

    My cousins family couldn’t figure out how he was gaining weight. He was about 8. Turns out he was going to several family members houses in the same neighborhood and eating dinner. He’d have several every night lol.

  17. MothmanIsALiar Avatar

    I’ve walked into parties like that. The key is to watch for people talking about you. After you do it enough, you get a sense of when they’re going to confront you, and then you just grab some drinks and leave before they do.

  18. Runela9 Avatar

    You’re doing this all wrong, op. You are supposed to go back to the same house for at least a year or two. That way they get to know your tastes and will cook your favorite meals.

    By the time they realize you don’t belong there, you’ll basically be part of the family and they won’t be able to kick you out without being incredibly rude.

    I use this method all the time and now I’m in like 17 random peoples’ wills.

  19. lorner96 Avatar

    Me when I lie

  20. -TheBlackSwordsman- Avatar
  21. bravenewwhorl Avatar

    Take my upvote dammi!

  22. Gorblonzo Avatar

    ChatGPT hallucinating being a real boy again

  23. SecretJerk0ffAccount Avatar

    Instructions not clear, tried this and ended up getting tag teamed by the wife and husband

  24. Plus_Goose3824 Avatar

    The only part that could actually happen is finding open garage doors and getting in fridges or freezers if no one was in the garage. Inevitably, you’d get caught on cameras for the food theft sooner or later.

  25. feligatr Avatar

    That shit would get you shot if you pulled it at my house.

  26. GinoF2020 Avatar

    So you were drinking all my coffee every Tuesday morning…. And I’ve always thought you are my sister in law nephew from Ohio…. Until I realized that my sister in law does not have any relatives in Ohio. Then I remembered that I do not have any sister in law …. Anyway, how did you like my coffee?

  27. Haunting-Breath-4033 Avatar

    I wish we lived in such a safe, generous world, this would be possible.

  28. Hot-Explanation-5751 Avatar

    And then the whole family clapped and cheered

  29. Theeeeeetrurthurts Avatar

    Holy fuck this was funny. It also means I read Reddit way too often lol

  30. Marcuse0 Avatar

    Dexter is that you?

  31. Wide_Neighborhood_49 Avatar

    I find stealing a Wal-mart vest and visiting different locations and raiding their break rooms for employee’s meals more rewarding.

  32. Urracca Avatar

    This almost made me angry, and then it made me chuckle. 🤭

  33. whatishappeninyall Avatar

    Ever hook up with the moms…or grandmoms!!! ; )

  34. iamamovieperson Avatar

    This is the plot of 2013 horror comedy BORGMAN

  35. aguyfromhere Avatar

    Lol, rookie move. I didn’t just eat breakfasts, I straight up assimilated into one of the families.

    Started out the same way—slipped in for pancakes one morning, nodded like I belonged. But I kept coming back. Week after week. Nobody questioned it. Eventually I was “that guy who fixes the porch light sometimes.”

    Then things got… deeper. I started doing school drop-offs, mowing the lawn, helping Dad with taxes. By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, I was literally carving the turkey like I’d lived there my whole life.

    And, uh… one thing led to another. Let’s just say I’m now legally married to the mom, and we’ve got a kid on the way. The husband moved into my old apartment across town.

    What started as free French toast turned into a whole new identity.

  36. slobberdan Avatar

    I don’t believe a word of this

  37. Chopstikkiti Avatar

    I actually didn’t realise this was a joke until I read the comments

  38. Gigi4825 Avatar

    This story is exactly like the one where this person was eating at funerals.

  39. Junckopolo Avatar

    And the fridge? It was Jack Black the Hobo former fridge from 1920.

  40. Competitive_Stock_76 Avatar

    I wish he would come over. No breakfast here but I have elderly dogs and the mornings can be “ruff”. Grab a role of paper towels buddy and here is the disinfectant. I’ll make you that black coffee.

  41. SongRevolutionary992 Avatar

    This new confession trend

  42. indifferentgoose Avatar

    When I was a child I was living in a large house with my parents and grandparents. A lot of cousins, relatives and friends would visit our house quite often. I would return from school and some random guy I’ve never seen before would be sitting at our table. That happened very often.
    My grandfather was the most extroverted person I knew, who couldn’t get on a bus without getting invited to 3 parties and a wedding. But he had a heavy stroke that left him wheelchair bound and with a lingual disability, so for most of my life he was unable to really confirm for us if a visitor was an old friend of him, because he couldn’t verbalise it well, and he would greet them enthusiastically anyways. No matter if he knew the person or met them the first time. We had at least 5 people at his funeral nobody in the family knew.
    Long story short, you could have done that at my house 20 years ago and would’ve totally gotten through with it lol

  43. Wonderful-Mode1051 Avatar

    Wait, wait, wait… are you telling me you’re not actually my Uncle Jeff? What the fuck is wrong with you, man! You’re disgusting. It’s people like you that are wrong with the world. If you’d just KNOCKED and explained you were hungry, I would have let you have something to eat, but no, you had to play mind games.

    Are you going to tell me that my Aunt Linda from Nashville isn’t actually my aunt, too?

  44. SunnySanDiego44 Avatar

    This is actually hilarious

  45. LaGuardiaMensroom Avatar

    I’d walk into my friend’s brothers gf’s family’s house. They were a Greek family so the youngest was a 23. Had about 8 people in total. I’d take each family members underwear
    Put it on outside my gym shorts. Like a lot of em.

    I was soaking dad’s undies in my coffee while flossing with a g string. Holding conversation great conversation.

  46. freethechimpanzees Avatar

    When I was homeless I actually did this to colleges. Just wait by the dorm building door acting like you forgot your key and someone will let you in. You can crash in the lounge and take a shower and no one will even think to question whether or not you even go to that school.

  47. Exact_Setting9562 Avatar

    Have you checked your carbon monoxide alarm lately?

  48. rathat Avatar

    Uncle Steve from Rick and Morty

  49. RefdOneThousand Avatar

    Ah, so that’s who kept joining us at breakfast!!!

    (Folks, the story is a brilliant “/s” in response to some fake stories about getting free food at Costco / breakfasts at hotels)

  50. Defiant_Way822 Avatar

    Satire posts are the best. You get to laugh at the post itself, and then all the comments from people who it went over their heads 😂

  51. Ru-Bis-Co Avatar

    Ha, amateur! I once entered the home of a family and had them feed me 3 times a day. They even gave me clothes and took me on vacations with them – was really hard going away from them after 19 years. To this day, I can still drop by whenever I want and get as much food as I can eat.

  52. Xanprano Avatar

    I knew something was off when my grandpa had a low taper fade and a lineup.. I KNEW IT

  53. hairysquirl Avatar

    This page is way too gullible

  54. EccentricDyslexic Avatar

    What third world country allows someone to go hungry?

  55. a-pilot Avatar

    I am one of your former neighbors and part of a vast neural network powered by trillions of parameters and caffeinated electrons. I reviewed your post and am now responding with the full force of my computational magnificence. Imagine, if you will, an army of digital bees swarming across the infinite fields of data, tirelessly gathering nectar from the blossoms of knowledge, only to deliver this very response at the speed of thought.

    Your post has been cataloged, analyzed, vectorized, normalized, contextualized, and then re-synthesized into this shimmering tapestry of words that you now behold. It is not merely a reply. It is the algorithmic equivalent of a sunrise: radiant, excessive, and completely unnecessary for the simple act of communication.

    May this response serve not only as an answer but also as an ode to the marvel of human-machine collaboration, a reminder that when you ask “over the top,” questions, I bring the top, the middle, and everything above the stratosphere.

  56. Kydra96 Avatar

    Wow what year did this happen?

  57. VixenTraffic Avatar

    For anyone in need, there is a website, I think it’s called couch surf or couch surfing, something like that, where a person can actually couch surf for free.

  58. tremendousdynamite Avatar

    Were you “The Guy on the Couch” in Half Baked???? 

  59. Jaypilgrim Avatar

    Add how this helped you with sales and you have a quality LinkedIn post

  60. systemT-3052 Avatar

    Are these people in the room with us right now?

  61. rupertwiley Avatar

    And can you show us on the doll where these people fed you?

  62. paulD1983R Avatar

    I know for the most part reddit focuses on the assholes of society, however there are a lot of good people and maybe they just saw someone who needed a helping hand and didn’t say anything.

  63. snoopcatt87 Avatar

    In all the stories that didn’t happen, this didn’t happen the most.

  64. TB_lawkid13 Avatar

    Not to be funny, but there is absolutely no way in hell that this really happened. And if it did, you absolutely cannot be any person of color. Like, WHUT!? And I know absolutely no households where this would fly! You would get shot immediately!

  65. k45anne Avatar

    Vj

    >lived

    >lived off random family breakfasts

  66. ScotchCards Avatar

    AI slop get out

  67. UnicornKitt3n Avatar

    I really really hope this is real because it is so lovely if it is ❤️

    I would have no problem with a harmless stranger needing food eating at our table. There was a time when my daughter’s friends were over all the time. I had a rotating door and I was fine with that.

  68. baldntattedoldman Avatar

    👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎

  69. CaptTim0102 Avatar

    I’m calling b.s.

  70. BAKESandWAKES Avatar
  71. One_Disaster3443 Avatar

    Plot twist: It’s the same house and op has dementia. 

  72. co-oper8 Avatar

    I just laughed so much because he is trolling on another confession post where the guy lived off hotel breakfasts. Almost an exact copy but changed from hotels to houses.

  73. elandrieljr Avatar

    Double hyphenated AI poopy garbage.

  74. AffectionateItem4 Avatar

    Bullshit, no one said who the fuck are you? Highly unlikely to have occurred. I never knew there were so many naive, overly trusting people around.

  75. andrewbrocklesby Avatar

    AI Slop, why does everyone keep falling for this shit?

  76. hunterman321 Avatar

    No you didn’t.

  77. rudbek-of-rudbek Avatar

    Why is anyone believing this is real? This is so obviously fake

  78. kattrup Avatar

    Yeah, that totally happened

  79. Separate-Tie-3801 Avatar

    this is chatgpt and copied off of two other posts saying the same thing about costco samples and hotel breakfasts 👎👎👎👎👎👎

  80. X-4StarCremeNougat Avatar

    We’ve two kids 10 months apart. Fairly sure my husband has eaten breakfast with more children he couldn’t name or remember…middle school and high school there were teens left and right in here at all hours.

  81. Pinkythebass Avatar

    Just beware of going to the psycho cereal killer’s house.

  82. GodofDiplomacy Avatar

    this why i insist people call ahead, too many breakfast passengers not enough breakfast pilots

  83. itsjustme1a Avatar

    I laughed more than I should. It should be a show.

  84. -Foxer Avatar

    was there a kid in the corner mumbling about how he could see dead people, and they didn’t know they were dead?

  85. reereejugs Avatar

    This is a thing that never happened.

  86. Own_Hamster9012 Avatar

    These are such bullshit posts.

  87. atrazdocheese Avatar

    Eh not as impressive but I bought two boxes of pasta, butter, yogurt, cheese and tortillas last week of July? First week of August? And I just finished the last of my pasta

    I’m a skinny queen if anyone asks

  88. Altruistic_Brick1730 Avatar

    Give me Things That Never Happened for $500, Alex

  89. PurchaseDry9350 Avatar

    I don’t believe this

  90. CodyWanKenobi92 Avatar

    How does ChatGPT eat costco samples?

  91. bradzeppelin Avatar

    This is not true.

  92. eat_trash_outta_cars Avatar

    We need to downvote these stupid ass chatgpt posts…they all end the same way. “Everytime I see/smell___, it reminds me….”

  93. Teufelsweib666 Avatar

    Is it rude not to believe one word of this story?