The Day Everything Went Wrong (But Everyone Laughed)

The Day Everything Went Wrong (But Everyone Laughed)

Martin Clay was an ordinary man with one extraordinary talent: attracting disasters. Not serious ones — not fires or earthquakes — just small, humiliating accidents that stacked together until they formed a comedy routine no one had asked for.

On Tuesday morning, Martin overslept. His alarm hadn’t gone off because he had set it to PM instead of AM. By the time he woke up, he had exactly fifteen minutes to get ready for an important work presentation.

He leapt out of bed, pulled on the first shirt he saw, and realized too late that it was inside-out. He didn’t have time to fix it, so he shrugged and ran to the bathroom.

Toothpaste. Razor. Coffee mug.

Yes, coffee mug. In his sleep-deprived state, Martin brushed his teeth with coffee.

He sprinted to the bus stop, tie flapping like a flag of surrender. The bus was already pulling away. Martin shouted, sprinted, and somehow made it aboard — only to discover that his briefcase had popped open during the chase. Papers fluttered out like confetti. One landed squarely on a woman’s face.

“Your pie chart just assaulted me,” she said flatly.

Martin tried to apologize, but the driver shouted, “Hold on!” The bus jerked, and Martin fell into the lap of an elderly man who looked like he hadn’t smiled since 1972.

“Good morning,” Martin wheezed, attempting dignity.

The man scowled. “Not anymore.”

By the time Martin arrived at the office, he looked like he’d survived a tornado. His boss, Ms. Fairchild, raised one elegant eyebrow.

“You’re late.”

Martin opened his mouth to explain, but at that exact moment, his phone alarm — the one he had mistakenly set to 7:00 PM — went off loudly in his pocket, blaring circus music.

The entire office turned to stare.

Ms. Fairchild sighed. “Presentation. Now.”

Martin set up his laptop in the conference room. Colleagues gathered. The screen lit up, not with his slides, but with his browser, where the last thing he had searched was: “Can too much coffee make you die instantly?”

A silence fell.

He scrambled, clicking frantically to open the correct file. Instead, a video began playing — a cat wearing sunglasses, dancing to disco music.

The room erupted in laughter. Ms. Fairchild rubbed her temples. “Martin, I sincerely hope this is a metaphor.”

Finally, after what felt like decades, Martin found his slides. He began to speak, but noticed something odd. His coworkers were stifling giggles.

“Is there a… problem?” he asked.

His friend Peter whispered, “Your shirt. It’s inside-out. And also backwards.”

Martin looked down. The label was sticking out of his chest like a badge of shame.

By lunchtime, Martin thought his humiliation was complete. But no — fate wasn’t finished.

At the cafeteria, he spilled soup on his pants. When he tried to dab it off, the napkin disintegrated, leaving white paper fuzz all over his trousers. He looked like he had wrestled a snowman.

On his way back to his desk, he tripped over the office dog’s chew toy and landed sprawled on the carpet. The dog licked his ear. His coworkers applauded.

“Performance of the year,” someone shouted.

By 5 p.m., Martin was a wreck. His presentation had been a disaster, his dignity was gone, and he was fairly sure he smelled like minestrone soup.

But then something strange happened.

As he left the building, coworkers patted his back. Strangers smiled at him. Even the bus driver gave him a sympathetic nod. People weren’t mocking him — they were genuinely amused, lightened, even grateful.

“Martin,” Peter said, catching up to him, “you made today bearable. Honestly, this office hasn’t laughed that hard in years. You’re like… a walking comedy show.”

For the first time that day, Martin laughed too. It was contagious.

That night, lying in bed, he replayed the disasters in his head. The flying toast of papers. The disco cat video. The soup pants.

And he realized something: maybe being the unluckiest man in town wasn’t a curse. Maybe, just maybe, it was a gift.

As long as everyone kept laughing — including him.