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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/hewwocopter on 2026-06-22 11:44:38+00:00.

(I’m on mobile, so sorry if this is formatted weirdly lol)

So I work an office job, and that usually means that I sit in a cubicle inside a metal box for hours upon hours. It’s pretty laid-back, so I don’t move around too much. But I do sit directly under an AC unit, so I can get cold pretty easy. So I keep a floor heater under my desk. (Don’t worry, I always unplug it before I clock out for the day.)

The way my desk is shaped, it helps to capture the heat underneath pretty well, and so it means my legs are always warm. I like to take off my shoes and rest my feet on top of the heater. Very relaxing.

But this past month, I started to notice a strange sort of “bruise” pattern that had appeared on the top of my left foot. Like a sort of reddish-brown patch underneath my skin. At first I thought it was an actual bruise, but it didn’t really hurt when I poked at it.

I didn’t think much of it. Sure, it was weird that it showed up at all, but I decided I would keep an eye on it and make sure it didn’t grow any bigger. If it did, I’d go to the doctor. I’ve been very busy with college and my personal life, so I didn’t really feel like adding something to worry about onto all of that. And as far as I can tell, the “bruise” hasn’t grown any bigger. It only really shifts from a light brown to a darker red from here and there.

I’m not super active. I go to the gym but I haven’t had any incidents that would involve a part of my foot turning such a color, at least not any I know of. Whatever this was, it was happening passively.

So I thought back to anything that I could be doing with my foot that would result in… that. As I thought it over I realized that the only thing that could cause it was when I was sitting at my desk. Like I said, I rest my feet directly on top of my heater, but I keep the temperature relatively low. And I wear socks. So I would know if I was burning my feet, right? Right??

Wrong. Apparently I just don’t pay enough attention to the signs my body tries to give me, because that is exactly what I was doing. Occasionally I’d feel a bit of pain from resting my foot on the vent of the heater, but I would move my foot right away. I thought that when you get burned, it was more of an instantaneous reaction, not a gradual one.

According to Doctor Google, it’s called “toasted skin syndrome”. Basically, it’s a skin condition that can result from chronic, low-level, direct exposure to heat sources (according to Health Harvard at least).

And now I have a mark on my foot for who knows how long. I don’t usually mind marks/scars, but I’ll admit I feel a little ashamed of this one because it was something entirely avoidable. It seems so obvious in hindsight!

But the worst part, aside from the damage to my pride, may be that I can’t rest my feet directly on the heater anymore. :(

TL:DR: don’t rest your foot directly against a heater for hours a day, for months on end. Unless you want toasted skin syndrome.