Imagine sitting at a bus stop, minding your own business, when out of nowhere, you’re launched off a bench like a ragdoll. Sounds like the start of a ridiculous viral video, right? Well, for one woman in Rochester, NY, that’s exactly what happened. A garbage truck arm misjudged its swing, flinging her straight onto the pavement. Caught on a Shop Smart store camera, the incident blew up on TikTok with millions of views [embedded below]—because let’s face it, you don’t see this kind of chaos every day.

The woman, Nicola Hustleby, was a regular at this bus stop, minding her business with a coffee and a cigarette when the garbage truck’s arm came in hot. It caught her  bench on the return and tossed her off. 

“Bam! All of a sudden, I was just jolted down and thrown on the street,” she said, recalling the moment she was yeeted from her seat. The kicker? It wasn’t a prank, a setup, or some wild internet stunt—just a freak accident that could’ve come straight out of a slapstick comedy.

Luckily, Nicola wasn’t seriously hurt. She walked away with a nasty cut on her elbow and some lingering pain, but no trip to the hospital. Still, three months later, she wasn’t laughing too hard about the whole thing. The city of Rochester, meanwhile, was in damage control mode. Officials looked into what went wrong and concluded that the garbage truck operator had gotten a little too close for comfort—talk about understatement.

Nicola, though? She had other ideas. “I’ll take the number you give me and I’ll call them and say, ‘I’m perfectly fine, but I want money,’” she joked to reporters. Honestly, can you blame her?

Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt in this freak accident, but the video serves as a jaw-dropping reminder that life can take a crazy turn when you least expect it. And while Nicola may joke about getting paid, let’s hope the city offers more than just a laugh and an apology. It’s going to take more than a shrug to make this bench feel like a safe place again.