People Blab Their Amusing Revenge Stories
20. Use My Parking Space? You'll Be Using It Forever
“So I’m living in Japan now and here, people ride bicycles a lot. You can’t leave your bike anywhere and you have to pay for parking, between 1 and 2 dollars per day. There are very few free parking areas for bicycles. Most people leave their bikes at the same place so they pay monthly because it’s cheaper and you have your own space.
This started a couple of weeks ago.
Someone in my building started having a guest who decided to steal my bicycle parking space whenever they came to visit. Sometimes they stayed the whole night so I had to go to the station, pay one dollar and come all the way home walking, which meant I would need to walk to the station the next day (getting up earlier, walking like 20 minutes to the station while carrying my heavy bag).
All the bicycle spaces have a number, which means they are reserved for someone. Mine is the 105 but this jerk decided to take mine whenever they came to visit.
The second time this happened, I told the building manager but they didn’t do anything. The third time I saw the bicycle there (it was the same red expensive bicycle) I left a note in Japanese saying, ‘Please don’t leave your bicycle here, this is my space and I am using it every day.’
I found the note taped (with the tape I used to tape it on their bike) to my parking space and it had a couple of bad words in Japanese at the end.
Basically, he was not only stealing my space but making fun of me by insulting me. Fine, it’s just fine…
I probably wouldn’t have done anything about it if he hadn’t written those words, but this triggered me and got the worst out of me. This person did it again a couple of times, so I knew this would continue. I was thinking about buying another bicycle, a better, more expensive one I could use to go on cycling trips so a good chain and lock were needed anyway.
I bought one of the thickest they had at the store and decided to try its efficiency. I locked his bicycle the next time I saw it there. It hasn’t moved for the last 7 days.
There were two notes, the first one was a very aggressive one, with more bad words and threats about going to the police (which I don’t care, let’s go that way buddy), second note days later was an apology and they begged for me to unlock the bike because they tried to break it but they couldn’t.
I guess he has learned his lesson. I’m pretty sure he won’t do it again but I just want to enjoy this feeling of victory a couple of days more. I will free it in 2-3 days I guess.”
19. Won't Give Me My PC Back? You Can Have All Your Clothes—Muddy
“I had a breakup about 2 and a half years ago that got messy for absolutely no reason, other than my ex was a selfish sociopath. One day we were still chatting as friends, the next day I was the scum of the earth and she hated me.
Anyway, during our relationship, she wanted to get a gaming PC so we could play together (she was PS4 and I was PC so cross-platform was hard).
I bought myself a shiny new one and offered my old one to her at a very cheap price for its specs. It was a little too expensive to just give away to her as we’d only been seeing each other for about 8 months or so but I didn’t want to charge her full price. I could have easily got £1000 for it, but we agreed to just £500.
We agreed that she’d pay me for it over time as and when she had some spare funds. I figured she wasn’t going anywhere and I’d still get paid.
2 years later, we both agree that it’s not working and mutually decide to stay friends but end the relationship. I brought up that she hadn’t paid me for the PC and she said she didn’t actually want it anymore so I can have it back.
I was a little bit annoyed seeing as it’s now only worth about £350-400 as 2 years of depreciation had taken its toll but I agreed to take it back to avoid an argument and I knew somebody who wanted an entry-level PC for their son.
Weeks go by, I mention the PC a few times asking if she needs me to come pick it up but she kept making generic excuses that she was busy, not at home that evening, etc.
Eventually, she just snapped and wrote several paragraphs about how I was the worst thing in the world, berated my family for being as close as we were (honestly just jealousy because she was isolated from hers), and told me, ‘Stay away from me, I never want you anywhere near me.’
Now I know she still had more than half of her clothes at my place, which I kept saying I could drop off when I get my PC but never managed to do seeing as she wouldn’t let me.
Now I’m under strict instructions NOT to go anywhere near her. How am I going to get her stuff back to her?
I decided to wait until next week when her parents went on holiday for 2 weeks and we had a particularly bad week of storms. I took all of her clothes (3 bin bags full) and brought them round her parents’ house, emptied the bags onto the already muddy, rain-sodden grass, and left.
I let a couple of days go by before dropping her a message saying ‘Oh, by the way, I dropped your stuff off at your parents’ place a few days ago.’
When she started yelling that they were on holiday I just said, ‘Oops, sorry I forgot!’
I got some very angry texts later such as ‘ARE YOU KIDDING ME’ and ‘YOU’RE PATHETIC, YOU KNOW THAT?’
I simply replied with the winking and kissing emoji and blocked her.
She also wore a lot of white and probably now wears a lot of brown.”
18. My Coworker Was A Karen, So I Orchestrated A Conspiracy To Get Her Fired
“I used to work at a hospital data center in the network operations group. We physically sat in a room 24/7 next to the servers to make sure things didn’t catch on fire, monitored for alerts, and did routine things like swapping out tape backups, but it was pretty simple work.
This was ostensibly a tech job, but there were people who had been there for many years back when you had to change out printer paper and run a command from an IBM mainframe.
It was on really specialized hardware and software that was difficult to apply elsewhere, so it had become a dead-end job. And because there were people who weren’t tech-savvy at all really, we weren’t given much responsibility. You can’t tell some people they can log into a server and others not, so we were reduced to the lowest common denominator. We were a network operations center where nobody was allowed to interact with any network equipment.
Lowest common denominator, you say. Meet my new supervisor, Karen (not her real name but definitely her real spirit), who had been there for over 20 years and got the job solely based on seniority. She was a sociopathic narcissist and one of the most unpleasant people I’ve ever encountered.
Shortly after I was hired, we were bought by another hospital and combined data centers. Karen was demoted to shift lead and had to work with us in the 24/7 rotation.
She was very bad at her job and our responsibilities diminished to very little. We had no agency to fix any problems of our own because it had to be a problem that Karen could solve, and Karen was both lazy and stupid. After a couple of years, I was promoted. On my first day after they announced the promotion, she said ‘you will fail.’ Just straight to my face.
But she had a powerful tool at her disposal: the hospital bureaucracy. Since the place was unionized, the hospital had a just cause firing policy instead of an at-will policy, even for non-unionized employees. This is I think generally a good thing. But on the edges, it set up ridiculous situations where it was impossible to lose your job unless you were really egregious about it with repeated violations or you showed up intoxicated.
We had someone steal computer equipment and they kept their job. It was nuts. And Karen had been there for nearly 30 years. So she wasn’t getting fired without a lot of work.
That’s okay. She was terrible at her job. One of the most important things about the job was monitoring for an alert that would pop up and there was a procedure we had to go through in order for some data to go through.
If we didn’t do this, then a nurse wouldn’t get their lab results back. So in one case, an alert came in, Karen saw it, then decided to keep browsing the web. Because of this, a patient from the cardiac ICU was going into surgery and the doctors and nurses operating on the patient couldn’t get a white blood cell count I think? (I’m not a doctor, I just…
work in a building with a lot of them.) Something very dangerous for this patient, and the patient died.
THIS STILL DID NOT GET KAREN FIRED.
(The reasoning from HR: well, it didn’t directly lead to harm…)
She didn’t even feel bad about it. Just a complete soulless sociopath. I’m real pro-worker in general, but some jobs you just absolutely have to do. I was so mad. She had to go.
I kept a paper trail of everything she messed up. It wasn’t nitpicky. Literal life and death stuff here. Verbal warning, first written warning, second written warning, final written warning, termination. A slog and I’d rather spend my time doing anything else, but that’s the way it went.
Then she figured out she could work the system. As she approached work Armageddon (termination), she would tell HR she was being harassed (the person harassing her was different every time) which would trigger a mandatory investigation.
This investigation took about six months, they wouldn’t find anything, and we would carry on. Except these warnings? They had a six-month expiration. So she could always reset the clock when it got close.
Everyone was helpless. Even the CIO couldn’t do anything about it because of the bureaucracy. Karen was a menace and the entire IT department had to interact with the data center staff, and that meant interacting with her, and she was universally disliked.
And she had 20 years until retirement and she would outlast the heat death of the universe.
Then I had an idea: what if, under the guise of developing skills relevant to the 21st century, required everyone working in the network operations center to pass the Net+ exam? It’s not a difficult exam, but it’s not trivially easy. I felt pretty sure that everyone on the team fell above the line between ‘able to pass’ and ‘not able to pass’ except Karen.
We would give everyone better titles, a significant pay raise, and entrusted to do more with the equipment, which is something everyone desperately wanted. Then people could actually leave the hospital with transferable skills and do something else if they wanted and not feel trapped.
I spent THREE YEARS in meetings with HR. With my director. With the CIO. With HR again. Job description meetings that took six hours to tweak small wording.
Hundreds of hours in meetings. Red tape nightmare. Absolute red tape nightmare. Do you have any idea what it takes to approve a significant raise in a bureaucratic muck-factory like that? But the raises were crucial because it would absolutely not be fair to ask this of them. ‘Pass a test or lose your job’ without a large carrot attached would lead to mutiny.
And then it got approved! I also wrote the exam requirement into my own job description.
It was important to still be able to do the job and not let my skills lapse just because I was promoted, and also this meant I could cover for people when they were on vacation or sick. (Plus, I also got that sweet, sweet pay bump.)
It went over well! I was nervous, but the plan made sense and I was able to communicate that. People would be more marketable.
The job would be more interesting. And most importantly, they would be making 20% more than they were before. And I think it really helped that I also gave myself the same requirement when I absolutely could have chosen not to.
The hospital would pay for offsite training. They would still get paid their full hourly during the training, including shift differential for 2nd and 3rd shifts.
We paid for all the materials. I scheduled 8 hours a week for people to go someplace quiet and study. The job itself had a ton of downtime so people could study, but this was formally carved out time anyway. We paid for the exam. And if they failed, we’d pay for the second attempt. We were given eight months to pass the test, so this is how it was for the eight months.
I did not want Karen to have any excuse whatsoever and somehow convince HR that this process was rushed or unfair.
Everyone passed on the first attempt except Karen. Karen did not pass her second, or her third attempt (a bonus attempt!).
Karen, being the classic narcissist, thought this was somehow all about her. That this was a vast conspiracy engineered over multiple years and hundreds of hours just to get rid of her, and she would tell everyone within earshot that’s what was going on.
Yeah okay, Karen. You realize how insane that sounds, right? Not everything is about you, sheesh. Well, okay in this case it is but still. Only I (and two other people) know that.
I remember the exact time and date we told her. She was in such deep denial that it could ever happen. She thought she was bulletproof. I don’t think I will ever achieve anything more satisfying in my career.
I’m not usually one to take satisfaction in seeing someone’s livelihood go, but she was uniquely awful, she was a patient danger, and it had been nearly a decade of working with her by this point and I was just so sick and tired of her bull crap.
I was a hero the day after she was fired. I went to the main office for a meeting and people were congratulating me like I just had a kid or won a marathon or something.
Even the CIO! They were just happy for me that I didn’t have to supervise Karen anymore. But in my headcanon, they were congratulating me for pulling off this elaborate plan.
Morale back at the data center was also high. We learned interesting things, a couple of my coworkers left for better gigs elsewhere, the ones who were content staying were able to stay, and we all had more money and job security.
And because anything could set off a bull crap Karen harassment complaint, people were stressed out working with her. Her being gone was like a breath of fresh air. Newcomers were told stories of Karen, and they seemed exaggerated. They were not.
In order to solve a very important and extremely difficult problem, I pulled off a vast workplace conspiracy that improved the lives of the people I worked with in addition to keeping our patients safe.
Getting Karen fired is my greatest and most difficult accomplishment and I can’t put it on a CV anywhere.”
17. Concerned About My Shoe Selection? I'll Pick Something Beautiful For Your Wedding
“When my sister got married, many moons ago, she asked if I would be able to come to her wedding (I live on the other side of the country) and if I would be her MOH. I gladly accepted, even though we both knew I wouldn’t be able to be part of many of the events leading up to the big day.
My aunt was making our dresses so she wasn’t worried about that, but almost right away she started going on about how I needed to find ‘nice’ shoes for her wedding.
To the point where every time we talked she would mention them… then she started sending messages via other family members to carefully consider shoe styles and find something nice for her wedding.
Something you should know about me, I LOVE shoes. When my now-husband and I moved in together I got rid of over half of my collection, and I STILL had over 40 pairs. I couldn’t have pulled a suitable dress out of my closet, but man… shoes I’ve got.
A few weeks before the wedding I’m wandering through the Mart of Walls and I notice a pair of flashy Lucite shoes. Not with a huge platform, but 5” heels.
I try them on, and as I started walking, they started flashing like those kids’ shoes!!!
I told my mother and aunt what I was up to, packed my bags, and flew home for the wedding. I arrived early the day before the wedding, just in time for the rehearsal dinner, but not with a lot of time for anything else.
The day of, we went and got our hair and makeup done, then came home to get dressed.
I put on my dress and my flashy shoes and my sister calls from downstairs that we have to go.
So I start down the carpeted stairs. I can tell the second my sister sees the shoes. There was an eye roll and a brief moment of silence. Then I hit the hardwood.
Flash! Flash! Flash! Flash!
And she starts losing her mind! ‘Are you kidding me?!? You had ONE JOB!!!’
Mom and aunt start saying that they’re not that bad… and one of the colors that they flash is her wedding color.
We only let her stew for maybe a minute before the bunch of us couldn’t help but laugh… I told her it was a joke and ran back upstairs to grab the six pairs of shoes I had brought for her to choose from.
She asked me to wear the flashy ones at the reception once the dancing started.”
16. Don't Want To Let Me Tinker? Let's Do Some Business Then
“My grandpa was a successful man and in his mid-60s he decided he wanted to take a step back so he started selling off his businesses. He sold his various businesses and spent the next few years traveling.
As he approached 70… he got bored in addition to a few new grandchildren so he needed a bigger house. He sold the old home that he had bought after he got back from Vietnam and bought this massive house on this large piece of land.
This property also came with a massive steel barn.
Not sure if he had ever told anyone about his plans, but right after he got the property he dumped A TON OF MONEY into tools and equipment and converted his barn into a mechanics’ dream. Some things I remember having:
- He had a professional lift, capable of lifting full-size trucks.
- He had those professional oil catchers you see at quick lubes
- He had a dedicated air compressor system that was designed to power all his power tools
- He had a tire machine, to mount new tires
- He had so much equipment
- His tool corner was a massive corner of this massive barn.
His plan? To fix cars, especially for people in need.
He lived in a rural community, if you didn’t have a car that was a big problem. So he let everyone know at his local church that he was willing to work on their cars if they provided the parts.
He only took a few jobs a week, he was doing this to enjoy himself and help those that needed it. He’d of course change oil, change the transmission fluid, and all kinds of various repairs.
My grandpa was a talented mechanic. However, he kept the amount of work limited. He was also selective, if you were in need he’d want to fix your cars. If you had the means to pay, he’d decline and ask you to go elsewhere.
One day the owner of the local car dealership came by and told my Grandpa he needed to stop fixing other people’s cars cause he wasn’t properly licensed, didn’t have the proper insurance, and was hurting his business.
My Grandpa explained this is just his hobby, he only does a few cars a week. The owner told him he needs to cut it out, or he’s going sue my Grandpa out of business. My Grandpa said he laughed over this, what business was this guy going to sue him out of?
The owner walked out, a little while later my Grandpa got served, he was being sued by the owner of the car dealership.
My grandfather thought he’d take a trip down to the dealership and try and reason with the man. My Grandpa hoped he could come to an understanding.
My Grandpa spoke to the owner and basically explained:
- He only works on people’s cars who are down on their luck, the fact is the people’s cars he fixes probably couldn’t afford to pay a professional dealership to fix their vehicle
- He only does a few cars a week
- He’s not all that interested in getting into a fight over his hobby, but he ain’t going to back down
Well, they ended up in court.
By this point, my Grandpa had hired a lawyer, who was able to get the city to approve a commercial garage on his property. It helped that he lived on the outskirts of town, and had 6 acres of property.
The court told my Grandpa his auto repair shop is operating illegally, if my Grandpa wants to continue he’s going to need to get a business license, get the proper insurance, and if he does that he will be good to go.
Now, what do you think a man who has nothing but time and money in this situation is going to do? He’s going to get his business license and insurance of course. Which he did, and that surprised no one… but he went further.
- Got a dedicated phone line ran into his shop
- Hired a full-time mechanic
- Put up a professional sign
- Set up a little waiting area with a water cooler
What shocked everyone even more:
- He ran a local TV ad, saying he was a pay what you can mechanic shop, reservations only
- Put ads in the local paper, saying the same thing
Yes, folks, that’s right my Grandpa is not only a licensed, legal auto repair business… he has a certified mechanic on his payroll… and he’s running ads.
As for his prices? They were quite simple you either:
- Bring the parts yourself, and pay the mechanic whatever you wanted (mechanic got a separate wage from my Grandpa, so if you couldn’t pay anything that was fine)
- Have my Grandpa source the parts, he’d charge at your parts and you’d pay the mechanic whatever you want
My Grandpa started taking jobs, and boy did that shop get busy.
It was impossible to beat Grandpas’ price. Grandpa was essentially PAYING to fix YOUR CAR for YOU. My Grandpa would spend his days with the mechanic that he had hired working on cars. He loved it.
The owner of the local car dealership was FURIOUS, he sued my Grandpa again. They went to court and the judge basically said my Grandpa owned a licensed, insured, auto repair business, what he charges his customers for his services, is completely up to him.
Even if that means doing the work for free.
About a year or so later, my Grandpa gets a call from a lawyer who says he’s representing a potential buyer of the local car dealership however the buyer wants to speak to my Grandpa. My Grandpa agreed, he sat down with the new potential buyer who expressed his concerns about buying the dealership. Service is a major profit center for a dealership, and he’s considering buying the local dealership.
However, he doesn’t want to buy the dealership if my Grandpa is going to keep operating the way he is, cause a for-profit business can’t compete against someone selling their services for free.
My Grandpa agrees, that there’s no way someone looking to make a profitable business could ever compete against him. So they came to an agreement. The owner buys the dealership and my Grandpa would:
- Only work on a few cars a week, maybe 5-6.
- Only work on people’s cars who are down on their luck and probably too poor to be able to pay a professional dealership to fix their car.
- Any parts he needs he will buy from the dealership.
- Any work he declined, he’d refer to the dealership.
The new owner of the dealership agreed to:
- The dealership must agree to let my Grandpa be, stay out of his way.
- The dealership must hire his mechanic.
They shook hands, the local dealership was bought out and for the next 9 years, my Grandpa would fix people’s cars who were down on their luck.
If he had to buy parts he’d buy from the dealership, and as for that mechanic, my Grandpa hired? He ended up becoming the service manager and did quite well for himself.
As for my Grandpa when he was 80 he had a heart attack in his shop. Luckily one of his grandkids was there and they got him to the hospital and he made a full recovery. But the doctor told him his body couldn’t handle working in that garage anymore. He ended up shutting down after that, for the next 3 years he looked out his kitchen window staring at his shop remembering all the fun he had in his garage. He passed away at 83 surrounded by friends and family.”
15. I Said What? Just Check My Recording
“Alright, so some years ago, I used to work for a major tech company. I had to move around floors a lot because I was in charge of the tech side of keeping business running smoothly for those that had to communicate with customers, clients, etc.
There was this one lady that was a bit of a problem and had a habit of being involved in a lot of terminations due to supposed harassment claims.
I had to deal with her a few times a week, somewhat regularly.
Now, I have some trust issues, generally view a workplace as a minefield, and tend to have a ‘my colleagues are the enemy’ mentality. I’m paranoid/anxious, so sue me. Because of that, I record every conversation I have and have a recording going at all times, via a recorder pen I keep in my shirt pocket.
It’s got great quality.
I was doing some work, after completely replacing the computers/and many of the tech on her floor, and I had to walk behind her (and several other people) who were at their desks working. One of the several keyboards I was carrying out of the confined space hit the back of her chair while I was walking and talking into my headset to a colleague.
She turned around abruptly and glared at me, but said nothing. I finished my work for the day and went home.
Next day, I get in, am met by security, and taken up to the HR floor. She made a claim against me, saying I made an inappropriate comment and grabbed her butt, I was being terminated. After everything is said and I’m handed the paperwork, I pull out my laptop and quickly pull up the camera feed, which has no sound.
They say, ‘Well there is no audio to cover you, so…’
I say, ‘Well actually, I record everything I say or do while working here.’
I then slowly pull up the recording for that day and have them listen to all of it. The lawyer in the room had the saltiest look I’ve ever seen.
Well. They lost their grounds to term me, and I immediately filed an HR complaint and threatened to get legal involved.
She was terminated a few days later, around a week after that they ended up going after her for embezzlement because they do a basic full investigation into somebody terminated, and found she had been stealing company funds through an expenses card. It was apparently a lot because some time afterward she ended up doing time.
Was a great experience. And it justifies viewing your coworkers as enemies and recording them. Also, never trust HR.”
14. If You're Going To Be A Bad Partner, Prepare For Her Wrath
“This happened about 16 years ago. My friend, let’s call her Maria, had been seeing a guy called Oscar for two and a half years or so when she found out through the grapevine (if you live in a small town, you’ll understand) that Oscar had betrayed her.
He’d been to a party and slept with another girl. News of his actions had spread as gossip does.
The worst part of it was that it seemed that it wasn’t the first time that it had happened by a long shot.
Well, Maria heard and plotted revenge.
She invited him to her flat for a ‘special afternoon of fun’ with her and her friend Vanessa. Oscar could not resist temptation, so he went.
Picture the scene. He goes into the building where she lives and gets into the lift to go up to the tenth floor to get to her apartment.
He rings the bell. He can hear music playing from behind the door. She opens the door and he walks in and sees that both his partner Maria and her friend Vanessa are there. Maria is holding a blindfold and tells him to wear it. He agrees, and she puts it on him and tells him to strip.
While he was busy, Vanessa walked out of the apartment, leaving a doorstop to keep the door open, and called the lift (that’s an elevator to you Americans).
She then walked back in, grabbed Oscar’s clothes, and threw them out the window into the car park below. She then left the apartment and went down the stairs, ringing doorbells as she descended. Maria had been leading Oscar around the apartment disorienting him, and then led him out of the apartment, closed the door behind her, and got in the lift alone, calling him an unfaithful jerk whose clothes are in the car park, before the lift doors closed.
Oscar ripped off the blindfold and must have realized how screwed he was, as he had to walk down 10 flights of stairs, totally exposed, passing laughing neighbors all the way.
He collected his clothes and Maria never saw him again.”
13. Cancel A Land Lease And Hope To Make A Windfall? Hope You Like A Lot Of Dirt
“Let me preface this by noting that this revenge was not my doing. At least… not exactly. It happened back in the 90s when I was in high school, and centered around the type of school I attended.
So, in case you weren’t aware, it’s very common in agricultural communities to have what is known as ‘farmer’s schools’. That’s not a technical term, but more just something easy to define.
The schools are generally organized by the local farmers, and while you still study the various courses needed to get into college, you also study farming technology courses and get credit hours for work-study (i.e working on one or more farms). The area I lived in was surrounded by a number of large farms which grew cotton primarily. So during the year, we’d spend time out in the field both tilling, planting, and harvesting.
One of the farms near the school was this thousand-acre spread that like the others grew mostly cotton, though sometimes they rotated to soybeans or silage. (Basically corn, but you don’t harvest it.) This farm had a long partnership with the school, so the students provided near-free labor for the farmer. The farmer leased this property from some out-of-state owner and paid them a portion of the revenue from the harvest.
Imagine my surprise then, when I and many of my classmates arrived at the farm to do our work-study, and the farmer instructed some to crew the sprayers and start spraying herbicide on the fields, while others (myself included) were to take tractors and discs and plow everything under. The farmer wanted every square inch of the fields returned to just dirt. We were shocked, to say the least, but after some discussion, we set to work.
It took us the better part of a weekend to do so, and when we were done the field was in a beautiful, if barren, state. The farmer thanked each of us personally and paid us about 500 dollars each. (Quite the sum for a 90’s high school senior).
We returned to the school, told our headmaster that the ‘contract’ was completed, and he informed us that the farmer would no longer be working with the school, and we’d be sent to one of the other larger farms for the rest of the year and our work-study.
It was probably two or three months later before word started going around about why we’d been instructed to destroy the crop. Granted, these were just rumors, but based on how things turned out for the farmer, I suspect there’s some truth to it. So, apparently, the landowner had decided that he was not going to renew the lease the farmer had on the land. This lease renewal just so happened to fall a few weeks before harvest season would start.
Given that the average cotton farm earns about 1,500 dollars per acre, a 1000-acre farm would easily net the owner 1.5 million dollars. About 500k of that being pure profit. I don’t know what the farmer’s lease was, but it stands to reason that it wasn’t anywhere near that. So this landowner had figured out a neat little ‘trick’. Let the farmer get a good crop planted, and then refuse to renew the lease.
The farmer would leave the plants in the field, and the landowner would just need to pay some contractors to come harvest them, and they’d earn a profit.
Since at the time the farmer’s lease wasn’t yet up, he decided to prevent that from happening. His act of revenge against the owner was to prevent them from cashing in on their hard work. Sure, it destroyed his farm, and he had to sell off almost everything he owned to buy some property for himself, but he’d proved a point.
The owner did try to sue the farmer, though he (the owner) really didn’t have a leg to stand on, or so I was told. I think the court ruled that since the farmer was still under the lease when he had the land tilled under, then it was his property to do with as he wished, and thus the landowner couldn’t tell him what to do with his property.
I learned a rather valuable lesson from that man, beyond what I learned about farming. That lesson was to never, ever cross someone with nothing to lose.”
12. Narcissistic Boss? You'll Get What You Deserve
“A few years ago, I quit my career in the tech industry. This was after the company I was working for went public and everything went downhill. I was sick of working for the rich and needed some time to live life. I proceeded to spend a few months traveling, working on home projects, and doing whatever I wanted. One day, about 4 months into my freedom, I was having lunch with my best friend and she told me ‘You need to stop being lazy and get a job’.
She had recently been hired at a company in the construction industry and mentioned there was an opening. The opening was for a job I had zero experience in, but a change of career was appealing. I applied and promptly was given a phone interview. I spent a little time researching everything about this position and after many interviews managed to fake my way in. Turns out this position was wildly different from anything I had done before.
It taxed me in ways I had never experienced. Not only was my job stressful, but my boss also turned into a nightmare. He had worked there since the company was founded. He was a part of the ‘good old boys club’.
Now… for everyone that doesn’t know, the construction industry has basically zero HR. This was close to a billion-dollar company and was still the same way.
My boss was a narcissist, misogynist, liar, and downright jerk. Weirdly, most of that was directed towards others and not me. My best friend was one person that took the brunt of it. It killed me to hear what he would say to her. All of this took its toll on me.
About 3 months into my employment, January 1st hit. I wake up at 2 am with pain in my chest and my head racing a million miles an hour.
Luckily, my roommate was a paramedic and happened to be home. I rush over to her room and yell that I think I’m having a heart attack. She comes out, takes my vitals, asks some questions, and determines I am most likely having a panic attack. Sure enough, I calm down and manage to not die. I had never had a panic attack up until then.
Throughout the following week, I continue to have flare-ups of chest pain and heart palpitations. I figured something could be wrong so I go to my doctor. He does a few tests and determines it’s most likely some acid reflux. He prescribes some meds and the following week is better. Then, one night when heading home from dinner with my sister, BOOM, I get rear-ended at a stoplight by a wasted driver.
No skid marks. Didn’t even attempt to stop.
I felt a bit of tightness in my back so decide to go get checked out at the hospital to be safe. I get there and they take my vitals. My blood pressure was on the moon. Like 180/100. They take it about an hour later and it’s still high. They recommend I go see my doctor again. The next couple of weeks waiting for my doctor’s appointment is brutal.
I am having daily ‘panic’ attacks, chest pain, trouble breathing, and massive fatigue. The whole gambit. Finally, get to the day of my appointment, let my doctor know what’s going on, and he determines I should go see a few different specialists and get all kinds of tests done to be safe. Throughout the next couple of months, I have everything poked and prodded. Because of the number of tests that needed to be done, I missed a good bit of work.
This turned my boss on me. He constantly complained about me being gone. All the while not an ounce of work was dropped. With my tech background, I also took it upon myself to start making reports and collecting data that I would present to him on ways of improving the department and company. I later found out, he would take these reports, which at times could save the company hundreds of thousands to potentially millions of dollars, and present them as his own to the owner.
This made me furious and didn’t help with my physical issues.
However, slowly I made it through all of the prescribed tests and they couldn’t find anything physically wrong with me. Turns out, all of the issues were caused by stress and anxiety. Something I had never had an issue with before. My doctor referred me to an amazing counselor that helped me learn how to manage the problems I was facing and get back to a reasonable state of mind.
Although, this never got to an acceptable level because of my boss. I started to email HR with my issues with him and things I have witnessed with others. Most of this was met with an unwillingness to help in any way.
A dear coworker whom everyone loved and respected decided to quit out of nowhere. She too worked under my boss. In her exit interview, she gave the sole reason for quitting as my boss.
She finally hit her breaking point and enough was enough. However, because she was so well-liked, this prompted some questions from the owner and other senior management. They wanted to know why my boss was the reason for her leaving. They had HR set up a meeting with us in the department and our boss to go over our issues with him. We all were excited to finally, hopefully, get the people that matter to listen.
We have the meeting and we all lay out the issues with our boss and give a multitude of examples. I went a bit overboard and had an entire presentation. Turns out this was all a charade to cover my boss’s mistakes. He was ‘prescribed’ some management counseling which I’m pretty sure he never did and things continued on their merry way.
However, now… with the knowledge my boss had of our issues with him, he turned the volume up to 11.
The constant berating, yelling, and write-ups came flowing out. It got bad enough that I started to secretly record every meeting with him. I saved every single email and documented every interaction with him. I continued to push for help from HR, but again, his status in the company kept him immune from any response. Thankfully, throughout all of this, I managed to keep my mental health in check thanks to my counselor’s tools.
I get sick, but this time it’s with a real cold and lasts a few days. All of which are covered by government-mandated sick time. I come back to work and not even a week goes by and I get called into my boss’s office with other senior management. I knew this wasn’t good. My boss let me know that they are firing me for attendance.
I am gobsmacked. I have never been fired in my life and I know I was an asset to the company’s success. I didn’t slack off, I didn’t miss deadlines, and the attendance excuse appeared to just be what my boss thought would be easiest to get rid of me with. Now… I live in an at-will state. You can be fired for basically any reason except for a bad one.
They presented me with a meager 2-week pay severance. I declined to sign it, packed my stuff up, and left. I knew the whole situation didn’t feel right, especially because I was familiar with the recent state laws that passed about sick time and an employer not being legally allowed to fire you for using it. Because of this, I went to my mom whose been in the law field her entire life, and got a referral for an employment law attorney.
The day of my appointment with the employment law attorney couldn’t come quick enough. I had gathered everything I had collected from my time at the company and presented it to him. The recordings on my phone, the emails, the documented interactions, everything. After showing the attorney, he pushes back from his desk and says ‘Holy mother of God. You have one big case here. They messed up bad’.
A wave of relief flows over my entire body. Me thinking the only blatant violation was firing me for using sick time, I was taken aback when he proceeded to explain that the company made 4 huge violations. The sick time violation is not even being anywhere near the top of the list. Some big things I learned from him:
The meeting I had with my boss, HR, and the rest of the department where we went over all of our issues with him was a key piece of evidence for one of their biggest violations.
I learned this type of meeting is considered protected concerted activity and covered under the National Labor Relations Act. The act protects against retaliation for having this kind of meeting. According to my lawyer, all of my boss’s activities following that meeting can be considered retaliation.
When it comes to health issues and how they affect you at your workplace, make sure you document every interaction with your employer.
It’s important to show that you made an effort to let them know of your complications and how they may affect you at your workplace. I sent countless emails to HR letting them know of my mental health issues and their failure to make accommodations was a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Having recordings and documentation on how your employer interacts differently with females and males is important to prove a violation of the Civil Rights Act.
After all of this, the lawyer stated I had three options. Option one, I could retain him and we could file a lawsuit. He explained that would be expensive and take a lot of time. However, would most likely result in a good sum. Option two, I could file claims with all of the departments that cover the violated Acts. He explained that some of these departments can take years to investigate and process the claims.
However, for some of them, especially the violation of the National Labor and Relations Act, the investigation can be an absolute hassle for the employer. This would probably be the biggest screw you to the employer. Option three, I go back by myself and renegotiate the severance. This being the quickest and easiest option. This option sounded very appealing, I didn’t want to drag this out for multiple years.
I told the lawyer that option three is most likely my choice and he mentioned that I should probably start negotiations at 9 months of severance and full benefits.
After consulting with people close to me, I decided to go with option three. I met with HR and Senior Management, explain that I consulted with an employment law attorney, stated all of the acts that he feels they violated, and ask for 9 months of severance.
After a couple of weeks of negotiating with their attorney, we settled on six months of severance with full benefits. It’s been a few years since this has happened and it still makes me feel overwhelmingly happy thinking about it. In the end, I found an amazing job in the same industry. My ex-boss ended up being moved to a position that wasn’t in management. And hopefully… Nobody will ever have to go through what I and others went through at that company again.”
11. Jealous Of Me And My Partner? Enjoy Those Sticky Shoes
“The story starts almost ten years ago when I was a freshman in college. I had this roommate, who we’ll call Gabriella. Everyone kind of obsessively wanted to be her friend because she was from the Netherlands, she had a cool accent and told some interesting stories about living in Europe. I didn’t get the hype, but we did hang out a lot at first.
Early in my first semester, I started seeing a boy, who I later realized Gabriella definitely had a crush on too.
Even after we were official, she’d flirt in front of me, follow him around like a puppy dog, and do things to get his attention. But once we were officially together, she became pretty passive-aggressive.
She started distancing herself more and more. About halfway through the semester she wound up having a mental health breakdown and was hospitalized for a night. I came into our room to find empty pill packets all over the floor and a torn-up notebook with weird scribbles and nonsensical writing.
The pills were not anything that would end your life. I looked them up at the time, and taking too much would literally just cause some diarrhea, so honestly, the whole thing seemed kind of staged to me. I heard from the dean that she was upset that her parents were getting divorced. There could be more details that I don’t know about, but it seemed like a big overreaction.
In retrospect, I realized this was the point where she completely stopped speaking to me directly. After her episode, she was always with another girl on campus—who we’ll call Ashlyn. Ashlyn’s parents apparently had also divorced around that time, so Ashlyn told people she was helping Gabriella through it. But I’d walk into my room to find them talking, and they’d just stop talking and stare at me as if they were waiting for me to leave… so I’d just leave.
After about a week of this, I walked into my room one night to find Ashlyn sleeping in my bed! On my own sheets! I was so mad and I had to sleep on a couch in a common area.
The next day, I planned to make a formal complaint about both Gabriella and Ashlyn. Before I could do that, I came into the dorm to find that Gabriella had commissioned three other girls to take everything I owned out of my room and pack it up for me!
I was livid! Finally, I stood up for myself.
I cussed them out and stormed off to the dean to complain. I don’t know if she got in any real trouble, but she did get yelled at and ordered to stop touching my stuff and let me move it myself. Thankfully there were some other girls who let me stay in their room.
I wish I could say I got serious revenge after this, but I didn’t.
I let it eat away at me and I wound up getting super sick at the end of that semester. I think it was related to that stress. I basically did my best to ignore her from that point on.
Well, fast forward two years and I’m now a junior at this college. Gabriella had left after freshman year to go to what is likely the most prestigious university in Europe.
And many of the girls in my grade (ours was a very small college) were still friends with Gabriella, including Ashlyn, and would Skype often. I’d bite my tongue and silently stew about it.
You can imagine how ticked off I was when I heard she was visiting our campus. Not only that, but she was staying in the same room as Ashlyn. And that semester, Ashlyn’s room was right next to mine!
She showed up and I ignored her and avoided her as best as I could.
But on her last full day there I was walking into a building on our campus. She and several other students were standing in front of the door chatting. Naturally, as I approached everyone else stepped out of the way of the door and continued talking (cause that’s what normal, sane people do). This girl sidestepped in front to block me even more. She made direct eye contact with me the whole time.
I got closer and she still didn’t move, so I just walked through her and bumped her with my shoulder. She jolted back disproportionately and yelled out ‘excuse me!?’
That was the first time she spoke directly to me since her breakdown. And it was the last time she’s ever spoken to me to this day. I just kept walking into the building and said nothing.
At this point, I was so angry that she was here causing me more grief.
I went back into my room to be alone, and I was making myself a big batch of sweet tea for the next couple of days. As I’m brewing it, Gabriella and Ashlyn went back into their room. My door was open a crack and I saw Gabriella leave a very fancy and expensive-looking pair of sneakers outside the door. They go in, and I can hear Gabriella start gossiping about people from home and venting about all her issues.
I was just getting more and more irritated by the second.
As this was going on, I was still making this tea. And since it was a big batch, I would sweeten it with a lot of honey. If you ever use honey, you know it doesn’t mix directly into water that easily. So I’d take a big jug and put a ton of honey in the bottom and mix it with a little bit of hot water until it dissolved into a honey syrup.
Then I’d mix that into the tea to sweeten it.
I’m going through this process with the honey and getting increasingly irritated by Gabriella’s stupid voice and her stupid problems. I’m swirling the jar to dissolve the honey. I hear them leave the room again. I hear Gabriella say she wants to go get lunch and then go play tennis. I peek to see if they’re gone and I see her fancy shoes still outside the door.
By now I’m feeling so angry and so impulsive that I dash over to the door and dump this big batch of honey syrup into her tennis shoes.
I quickly pack up my stuff and hide my honey as if they were going to search my room. Then I ran off to lunch.
I never did see her reaction to her shoes, or hear anything about it. No one ever asked if it was me. But every time I think of her, I chuckle and imagine how irritating it must have been to get her socks all sticky and wet on her way to tennis. Especially on the day before a long flight over the Atlantic.
It’s not much, but it’s enough for me.”
10. Trying To Scam Me? You Won't Get The Receipt On My Watch
“So I am a bartender, and in the town I lived in at the time, the best time to go to the 24-hour Wal-Mart was after my shift was over around 4 am. I could walk in and out and never talk to anyone and get done quickly.
I have my cart with my 4 or 5 items in it and these two guys walk up to me, dressed to the nines, and ask for some help.
Now, I know these two guys. They don’t know me but they are known all over town to be scammers and have been kicked out of almost every bar in town. The one guy asks, ‘Yo bro, can you help me out. I just dropped my partner off from the hospital and we just had a baby. I just need some diapers and I don’t get paid until Friday (it’s Tuesday).
Can you help me out?’
Now again, I have PERSONALLY BANNED these two from the bar I work at for stealing drinks off tables. They are well known. Even though I know the scam they are running, I say, ‘Sure, let’s go!’ and off to the baby section we go.
Now, the scam they are running is, they get the person to buy a semi-expensive box of diapers and, when that person leaves, exchange the diapers for funds.
Now, we get to the baby section and he grabs a mid-range pack of diapers. I had a good night behind the bar so I say, ‘Hey man, go ahead and grab that big pack up top (the $32 box). It’s the least I can do for you. I got two of my own and it’s tough right now.’ His eyes light the heck up! He grabs them and he and his buddy are super excited as we walk toward the tills.
Now, here is where I get the revenge. He starts walking toward the one open lane but I swerve toward the self check out and he doesn’t like that at all. He keeps trying to get me to go to the regular checkout so he can get his receipt (this is key). So I ring in the diapers and he says thanks and, to his dismay, ring in a Blue-Ray into it, and, here is where I get him, I add that stupid 2 dollar protection.
I stop and say, ‘Darn, I forgot to get dog food (which I did actually need) but here you go’ and I pay with a card (you can’t get a cash refund on a credit card receipt). Now he’s screwed. He still asks for the receipt but I say, ‘Aw man, I can’t, I got to keep it for the protection I bought. I need the code’ and say ‘But you guys go ahead.
Good luck with the new little one!’
I walk off, handing them their giant pack of diapers.
I spent the next 30 minutes just walking around and watching them try to beg a couple of cashiers for a refund for the pack of diapers. It’s 430 am, customer service isn’t open. They NEED that receipt and they don’t have it. I see them leave and I check out and the one lady standing by the self check out says ‘You know they were just scamming you.
The minute you left, they tried to get the funds for those. They do that all the time.’
I replied, ‘Oh I know. They are scammers. They are known all over downtown. That is why I added the coverage to the DVD and I paid with a card. I had an out for giving them the receipt and now they have to leave with the diapers.’ She had a good laugh over that.
I am driving out of the parking lot and I see these two dudes walking down the road, at 4:30 in the morning, looking like they just left the club with a giant pack of Huggies. I honked and waved as I went by.
The bonus: because they were a couple of addicts also, they forget stuff real quick. I was in the same Wal-Mart a couple of weeks later and guess who walks up. He says ‘Hey man, can you help me out?’ and I respond with, ‘Oh yeah brother, you need some more diapers?!”
He gets the deer in the headlights look and starts stuttering, ‘Oh no man, uhh, thanks anyway…’ and shuffles off. Well worth it in my opinion.”
9. Wanna Be Inconsiderate Neighbors? Enjoy Your Garden This Year
“My wife and I are renting the top floor of a house and the downstairs neighbors are terrible people. They leave their shoes, garbage, and plants in front of our stairwell and steps. We have asked them several times not to do this because it is very narrow and a trip hazard. They always say sorry and clean it up and then a few days later it is all back.
We share a yard and have to care for it, they have taken all of the gardening areas for themselves and don’t feel the need to share space with us because they were there first. I ended up mowing the yard 80 percent of the time because they are always too wasted or just don’t care. But we use the back stairs a lot due to the fact of the problems with the front entryway with their crap in front of our stairs.
When I first cut the grass, I accidentally ran over some plant that I had no way of knowing was there since the weeds and grass had overgrown the area. This was after I had already asked if there was anything I should be careful of and their answer was no. She had a fit and nagged at me. Also, I have to go around the yard and clean up all the crap they just leave laying around like gardening tools just dropped when they were working or empty containers.
Just so I can mow, it is very aggravating.
They used to be a couple but had a huge fight over Christmas and now she has a new guy and is constantly fighting with the ex still living there. It can become quite noisy with the screaming and yelling both inside and outside of the house. Now that she has this new guy of course she now wants to show off by having a great garden and finally cleaned it out and put in new dirt and weed lining.
Last year they planted stuff and did not really tend to it and it became overgrown and didn’t produce much.
So for the petty revenge, I bought several packets of cheap wildflower seeds and I walk down to the yard with some seeds in my hand every few days and throw them into the freshly set up garden beds and sprinkle them. I go to a different bed each time (they have 4 and won’t share space).
They are getting ready to plant and I will just keep throwing the seeds in a little at a time and also along the back fence area where they finally cleaned up all the junk they had thrown there (They had an inspection so I think this is why they finally cleaned up their stuff) so I can have deniability. I hope they enjoy their garden this year because I am gonna enjoy the flowers.”
8. My Friend Turned Toxic, So I Gave A Recording To The Landlord
“I have this roommate who I’ll call Psycho Witch because she really is and definitely not someone to trust.
Some backstory, I met PW about a year ago after moving out of my toxic parent’s household and into a community apartment. The friendship hit off immediately and I bonded with her. We were like sisters. We always hung out in her room and did whatever. We would do things for each other.
PW would leave the porch light on for me and when I had food delivered she would leave my delivery in the refrigerator so I can enjoy it when I get home (This is important later). I did the same with hers. Since PW was handicapped at the time she was limited so I would go to the nearby market she loves and pick up her favorite ice cream or I would get her soy milk when Walmart was out of stock.
Unfortunately, this friendship ended when we got a new roommate. I’ll call her Lucille.
Lucille is a very nice lady and pleasant to be around (and still is). PW started picking her as a favorite and suddenly turned on me. PW would become toxic. She flat-out ignored me and acted as though I never existed. I was really heartbroken. Truly. Her toxicity was so bad that one night I had a relapse.
Lucille tried to get us both to talk it out, but it didn’t wind up in her favor. PW would say pretty much everything my toxic abusive mother told me. This caused me to spiral downward temporarily. I was 3 years clean of self-harm until that night, but thanks to my supporting friends I wasn’t stuck like I used to be and I didn’t fall completely backward.
I was able to get back on my feet.
First Revenge (the pro revenge). Little did PW know I had recorded the audio of the conversation just so that a couple of my friends could hear it. I told Friend 1 what had transpired and about the relapse. I had her listen to the audio of PW bringing me down. Friend 1 went to Friend 2 and told him about the recording.
Friend 2 decided to contact my Landlord while Friend 1 was comforting me. It was then that we decided to download a copy of my recording into a zip drive and give it to the Landlord. Come Monday after my Landlord listened to the recording he then gives PW a 30 days notice.
Time for Revenge 2. PW tried to get me to apologize and convince the Landlord that we made up and that she can stay.
I said I would, but I didn’t follow through. PW is currently fighting his notice in court, but it’s going to backfire. So PW then started spending time with Lucille and badmouthed me every chance she got. This eventually backfired when Lucille realized who she truly was and backed out on it. Now PW ignores both of us. PW still leaves my food out.
I came home moments ago only to find PW had left my food on the counter.
It was spaghetti. My favorite. I then checked her shelf in the fridge and sure enough, her spaghetti was there untouched. I decided to get petty. I took mine off the counter and swapped it with hers. When I returned to my room to stick it in my mini-fridge I heard PW walk out of her room and head to the kitchen. I heard her take out my spoiled spaghetti and heat it up before taking it to her room to eat.”
7. My Manager Was A Scheming Liar, So I Booked Two Vacation Trips
“I used to work at a company booking travel, among other things. It was a stressful, busy job, compounded by a terrible manager. To this day, I can’t tell what she did except watch over everyone’s shoulder and complain to them about how they were doing their jobs.
When I started, I asked my manager for the login and password for their travel site. She asked me to just use my own, personal travel accounts.
It was concerning to me but there were no laws against it that I knew of, so I used the one travel website I knew had the best deals. My new job was at a small company and I was trying to help them in whatever way I could. I had suggested before this happened that they create a business account at this website as they gave discount points for all travel booked, to be used for future travel.
She declined because she didn’t want to pay the (at the time) roughly $100 annual fee.
Over the 2 years I was there, I discovered that my manager used whatever she could in the company to her own, personal advantage. Whenever there were events in places she wanted to visit, she’d have me book her travel so she could manage the event. Then, when she was there, she’d assign someone else to ‘keep an eye on things’ so that she could go shopping, visit friends or family in the area, etc.
When she traveled, she’d have me book everyone in a basic room and have me book her a suite at 3-4 times the price of a regular room.
She would hold weekly ‘department’ meetings at lunchtime at expensive restaurants, make us pay for our lunches by having us give her cash, then expense the lunch. If we didn’t have cash, she got really irritated. After a few times doing this, I realized what she was doing and told her I was strapped for cash and only had $5, $10, for lunch.
She stopped inviting me every week and would just invite me once a month or so after that, which was great with me and I kept using my excuse. She continued to do things like that throughout my 2 years there.
After I got another job offer at a company offering twice as much and with much more autonomy, I put in my 2-week notice. She asked me for 3-4 weeks and I declined.
What I haven’t mentioned yet is that because I had been concerned about this issue, I had called this travel company at the beginning of my employment to ask them about my points. I already had a lot of personal points when I started at this company. I had been on the losing end of companies I had worked at before with various issues and didn’t want it happening again.
The travel company informed me any points accrued on my personal account were mine alone and there was no way to separate or move points to another account.
A month after I left, I started getting voicemails from my ex-boss and one of her buddies who kissed up to her and adopted many of her behaviors. They told me they needed all the points I accrued over 2 years from my own personal account for a ‘company event.’ When I told them the company wasn’t able to transfer points to their account, they demanded I give them access to my account.
I then scheduled a call with the travel company with both of them on the line with me, already knowing the answer we’d get. The travel rep informed my boss that because I had booked all the travel on my personal account, the points were mine. When they told the rep that they wanted access to my account, the rep declined to do so and told the two ladies that any further attempt would be considered harassment. We all got off the phone and I immediately booked 2 trips, paid in full with my points, one to the Caribbean and one to South America.
What an awesome feeling!”
6. You're Lying To Me? I'll Go Far To Prove That
“I have this friend, we can call her Elly for the sake of this. She and I have been friends for about two years now. At the beginning of our friendship, I noticed nothing wrong. As we got closer, though, the things she would say made less and less sense. Outlandish things, that had no chance of being true. She would swear they were true and I didn’t really have the proof.
I also noticed she had this desperate need for attention. Any time the attention wasn’t on her she would find a way to bring it back to herself. You got 5 hours of sleep? Well, she got four. Your allergies are bad? Hers are worse. You get the point. One time, I went to the doctor. I’m a hard stick so they couldn’t draw blood and had to refer me elsewhere.
Of course, like every teenager, I texted a group chat about it. She immediately started talking about how hard it was to draw her blood.
She also tried constantly to prove what a good social reach she had. Anyone you mentioned, she said she knew (even if she didn’t).
This has gone on for years, finally, I got tired of it. I couldn’t trust a thing she would say and everything felt like a competition.
It was pathetic how she scrambled for an ounce of attention.
One time, she was going on and on about how rich her grandparents were. How they have already given her a luxury car, even before she could drive. (Which she conveniently cannot take to school, of course). She described the mansion they had to all my friends.
So what did I do?
I tracked down her mom’s social media, went through her friend’s list, and found her grandparents’ names.
Through that, I found out about where they lived. I tracked down their exact address using WhitePages and Zillow. I found that the square footage and worth of their house were middle class at best. About the size of mine. No signs of the obscure ‘mafia’ (her words not mine) type wealth.
She also said she’s gotten buzzed before. The way she described it was extremely weird.
She said she took this medicine for anxiety, and that it got her buzzed. I tracked down the exact medication she was speaking of. There was no way she got a kick out of it. It would have about the same effect as lavender oil on her. She was bragging about this experience to all her friends.
So, those were just two of the biggest lies I caught her in. I sent the proof she was lying to mutual friends. Now, everyone has lost their trust in her. I’m trying to pull away from her as much as possible. She’s going to lose all her friends if she continues with this behavior, and I won’t have any remorse.”
5. Ignore Us At Your Front Door? Time To Break Out The Vaseline
“Years ago, l went through a breakup, moved back to my hometown, got a new job and life was great. Through my new job, a guest and I were invited to a local movie premiere sponsored by a booze brand. However, due to relocating, things were tight until my next paycheck. I invited my sister as my plus one. She had started a family and it was rare for her to be able to go out.
While everything was free, I couldn’t possibly go without cash to tip, nor ask that of a guest I invited!
We called our brother, the oldest, and asked if we can borrow funds to attend. He’s 10 years my senior and well-off financially. He said it wasn’t a problem and to come pick it up. I told him we were leaving now to make the 10-minute drive.
We drove straight there to find all his lights out and doors locked. We called, and knocked at both the front and back door—he completely ignored us.
We went up to my dad’s apartment and explained the situation. Dad gave me cash, enough to cover both of us. I asked to use his bathroom before we left.
Not before I grabbed a large jar of Vaseline from a cabinet! My sister and I have always had an unspoken understanding.
We stopped by the garage where my brother’s car was parked. I didn’t say a word, just looked at my sister and handed her the jar with the thick, greasy, goopy petroleum jelly. She took a huge handful and put it under the handles of his car doors.
We had an absolute blast at the event! Cocktails on tap, food, music, and dancing before and after the movie.
The next day I got an email to check the brand’s website—it opened to a picture of me holding a pillow with the brand’s logo on it.
I emailed my brother the link to the website. My sister and I each got a phone call right after with my brother screaming accusations. I said, ‘I would never do such a thing!’
My sister said, ‘I could never come up with such an idea!’
My 35-year-old brother called our dad to tattle! Instead, he was told he was a jerk and he’s lucky we didn’t let the air out of his tires too!”
4. Want To Be Obnoxious Toward Staff Members? They Won't Be Rushing To Help You
“Partner and I just got back from a lovely trip to Italy. This isn’t my revenge, but it was a pleasure to witness.
Flying back to the US (and probably some other countries) still requires a negative test due to a certain worldwide illness. Partner is good about thinking through details and she pointed out we can get our test the day before the flight and avoid stress the morning of.
I scout out the airport in Rome at about 3 in the afternoon and the on-site testing is pretty empty, so I grab her from the hotel and we go over.
Unfortunately, when we get there, it’s no longer quite so empty. There is a large group of very loud men, like 10-15 of them, all in line ahead of us. The check-in staff is doing fine… but you can just feel the waves of tension roiling through the air.
My partner and I are fine. I mean, it’s Italy and we’ve appreciated the laid-back (but very competent!) vibe of the country. We aren’t flying out until the next day, so we aren’t in any rush. But we can just tell that these guys are raising the blood pressure of the staff. Shouting. Taking their masks down to shout. Not wearing their masks properly, and just generally being difficult where if they had settled down I think things would have moved along faster.
It was clear they had left their testing to the last minute and were in danger of missing their flight, but… hey, your lack of planning doesn’t constitute a crisis for the staff, now, does it.
It’s kind of difficult to put in words what these guys were doing. They weren’t speaking English, but they weren’t speaking Italian to each other. I’m not totally sure where they were from, but they were just exuding loud obnoxious demanding self-important masculinity to a mostly female staff.
So, they finally check in and take their tickets and they move en-masse to the testing area. And are loud and obnoxious and demanding there, too.
Here’s where the petty revenge came in. The doctor running the facility was doing intake. Maybe they were all doctors, I don’t know, but she was, which I found out at the end because she signed the form which required a doctor’s signature.
Anyway, she made sure this gang of 15 guys got trickled in through testing two at a time.
My partner and I made sure to be polite and I speak a tiny bit of Italian so I made sure to greet the staff and ask sympathetically how it was going, and lo and behold we get seen right away. And got our test results right away, as this group of loud obnoxious guys had to wait.
There was nothing outright rude about the way the staff handled it, but I could tell the vibe was very much ‘You are making our lives harder with your attitude, fine, we will not be rushing to help you make your flight.’
I almost lost it when my ticket (385) was called and one of the guys came up and tried to claim my results with ticket 382.
I could see 3 tests completed at the station so I’m positive the doctor could have helped him if he and his group had been pleasant (and I wouldn’t have minded, we had explained our flight was the next day during check-in). But that doctor explained firmly that he had the wrong ticket number and sent him back to wait. Then gave me my results. Then my partner’s results (we had checked in together).
She had ticket 384.
We thanked her and moseyed back to the hotel for some drinks as some of the group that had come in front of us was still there waiting to be served. I don’t know if they made their flight or not, and I won’t claim the medical staff wanted them to miss their flight. But they didn’t not want them to miss their flight either.
And it was all done so smoothly I’m not sure the guys even realized the staff had taken their petty revenge on them. But if any of you dottori in the Roma aeroporto read this, well done. I hope the rest of your day went better.”
3. Call Me Stupid? Hope You Like Everyone Laughing At You
“So, this is a story from my first job. After I finished my study, I took a year off before I started working. In that year I also applied for a scholarship to a grad school, basically just testing the waters. But one day my high school friend ‘Linda’ contacted me and asked if I wanted to work back office 9 to 6 in a branch of a bar she’s working at because someone just resigned and they needed a replacement quick.
I said yes, went for an interview with one of the three owners ‘Mike’, and got hired immediately. The office was full of friends of a friend so everybody seemed to know everyone despite it being only a small office, and the best thing about working here is that everybody is nice and fun, except for one person.
Within the first couple of months, I got a call and turned out my scholarship was granted.
I got the evening class for employees so I could keep my job with very little adjustment. Everything went well in my first year, I did my best at work and made some improvements on the job even though sometimes I would need to finish my essays during my lunch break.
One day, as I was having lunch while finishing my essay, owner 2 ‘Greg’ came in and asked what I was doing.
I was focused on my essay so I replied simply: ‘homework’. He knows I was Linda’s classmate in high school but didn’t know I was attending grad school. He asked for what, and I replied with a simple ‘school’. I needed to submit it before my break was over otherwise I wouldn’t have any more time before class, so I typed as fast as I could and focused as much as I could.
Until I heard him laugh.
I glanced at him, not knowing what was so funny, and continued with my essay.
Greg: ‘Weren’t you in Linda’s class?’
Me: ‘Yes.’
Focus focus focus.
Greg: ‘Oh my God, then you must be really stupid that you haven’t finished college!’
Me: ‘Okay.’
Focus focus foc… Wait, what?’
Greg: ‘You know you actually need a bachelor’s degree to work back office in here.’
Me: ‘Uh-huh.’
Did he just say I haven’t finished college?
Saved by the bell, he got a call from a vendor that he had an appointment with that they arrived.
I continued with my essay, and work, and left for my class so we didn’t meet again that day. But the next afternoon he showed up in the office which was unusual because that branch didn’t open until 4 pm, and when he met me he shouted, ‘Hey, there’s the stupid girl! Done your homework, stupid?’
Before I could answer, he left for the bar.
I wasn’t sure at first what he was talking about but when I was reminded of yesterday’s conversation I got annoyed.
I may be an idiot but I did have my bachelor’s degree. Mike and Linda even had my transcript. But this man didn’t know about that, and I intended to keep it that way and secretly wished that I would be there when other people told him that I had actually already graduated when he didn’t even go to college at all. So I bear with him calling me stupid here and there for the whole week until that fateful afternoon when everybody gathered for the weekly meeting.
When it was my turn to give my update, he interrupted me so much that the other owner who was my direct boss, Sam, told him to shut up. Greg, OF COURSE, used this opportunity to tell everyone that I was stupid because I haven’t graduated. He told Sam to stop defending me and that I am stupid for still being in college. Sam was confused because he knew the truth.
In fact, he was the one who approved and rescheduled my shift so I can go to class, but since they’re friends he gave him the benefit of the doubt and asked him.
Sam: ‘So you called her stupid because you think she hasn’t graduated from college?’
Greg: ‘Yes! And I don’t know why Linda recommended her but she should’ve checked her background first! We shouldn’t hire a stupid girl who couldn’t even finish college in time..’
Linda: ‘I DID! And SHE HAS a degree!’
Greg: ‘No way! She told me she was doing homework for her class later that day! This stupid girl is clearly in college!’
Me: (staying silent wondering what was his problem with me and why they’re talking about me as if I wasn’t there).
The other 4 people in the office are secretly enjoying the drama but they know what’s going to happen.
Sam: ‘Well, she IS still studying, but…’
Greg: ‘THERE YOU GO! You are her boss you should know that she hasn’t graduated and it’s against company policy! We need to fire her!’
Linda: ‘So you called her stupid because YOU THINK she hasn’t graduated?’
Mike: ‘Okay, enough. It’s not what you think, Greg.
She’s not in college, she’s in grad school, I have her transcript from her if you wanted to see and if anyone should complain about her degree it’s obviously not coming from someone who didn’t even go to college like you.’
Greg: ‘BUT SHE TOLD ME!’
ME: ‘I told you it’s for school, I just didn’t tell you WHICH school.’
He was made to apologize to me but for the next month he became the laughing stock for what he said in the meeting.”
2. Harass People At Work? I'll Make Sure You Get Fired
“I had recently partnered with a small production facility in my area. Our contract was based on capital investment along with designing and implementing new automation processes (2-year outlook finished in 8 months). Was a typical small production facility comprised of 50 production workers through 2 shifts of 12 hours that ran 2 days on then 3 days off. Also had 2 production supervisors for each shift and 1 maintenance supervisor for each shift.
The people and their attitude are ultimately what led to my decision to be more than an outside contractor for this company until I worked the night shift for a week due to shutdowns that needed to occur to implement certain line upgrades. This is where I met him. We will call him Richard Head.
Richard seemed like a nice guy in our first few encounters, and then I heard him in his element directing his maintenance crew at night over the radio.
He would belittle this group of guys who were there to do a set task list every night for whatever machinery they were doing preventative maintenance on. Unless something broke on the line which would require attention first obviously. I have never heard grown men spoken to like this and never heard any nasty remarks back or defending themselves. He would call them stupid on the radio if they were having trouble troubleshooting a problem, call some fat and lazy, called one black guy a racial slur.
The guy had been there since they opened the doors and to be honest made me want to rescind any commitment I have ever made to this company. When I escalated this up to the plant manager he assured me that it was friendly banter and they rarely had complaints against him. True because anyone who did so in the confidence of anonymity was always outed and then singled out until they were terminated by him.
Since no one was going to listen to me I decided to do my due diligence and started to document everything I heard on the radio with a date and time, witnesses to the treatment, and what rights the individual was having violated due to our state and federal outlines. I made this spreadsheet my entire time in the shift documenting every personal account I witnessed as well.
Harassment is a major problem in industry work, but the one that I have learned is the company killer is retaliation. If you can prove that then they stand no chance.
I saw him one night tearing down this 50-year-old man who requested 2 days off to the point I wanted to lose my cool but knew it would ruin all the information I was gathering. Days off were because his nephew was just in a car accident 2 days prior and had to have multiple reconstructive surgeries scheduled.
I knew that now was the time to move. I rounded up all the maintenance guys and shared all my documentation with them. They didn’t realize the importance of this information like I had. They just said nothing will change. Nothing changed because no one treats an issue as an issue if you come with incorrect non-detailed information. The fact that he used the radio so much was a godsend that they didn’t see as well.
When he spoke this way to people he must not have ever realized that there are other supervisors on shift and that they in fact unintentionally became the strongest witness in the cases especially when you have some audio recordings verifying the accounts. They have no choice but to acknowledge what they have heard. Each worker took their logs and even though I have a capital and time investment in this facility I urged them at a minimum to petition to have this man removed or to threaten legal action.
Once they coordinated a day to expose all this it was like watching a sports movie when the underdogs take the championship and get the girl at the same time. Not only did the man finally get fired but the entire atmosphere around the place changed more than I could imagine. Older machines ran the best they have ever run in my time there, and people loved coming to work again. They also put a placard on my door for when I came in about a week later. It said ‘#1 Boss’ but the boss was crossed out and engraved under it was the word ‘REBEL’. I obviously removed it from my door but I put it in my home office and is probably the best thing I have EVER received from a facility.”
1. Don't Want Me To Fuss Over Details? Okay, You'll Lose Your Bonus
“I work with a federal contractor responsible to buy or bundle hardware and software any govt organization needs and review the contract in terms of financial viability and legal clauses. In other words, ensure we make money and we are legally covered. The contracts range from $5k to $40M.
Our company went through a re-organization (i.e. fire people and give more work to people still left with the company while paying us peanuts).
We are a small company with less than 200 employees and trying to retain our government customers while big companies like Amazon cloud will replace us in less than 10 years. The government customers love working with us because this is the only thing we do and treat the customers better than big contractors who don’t care.
They laid off 30 people from my team of 50.
So now 20 people do the work for 50 people at the same salary. We are paid by the month and not work hours and we don’t get sales bonuses (important in the story).
I have a habit of reviewing everything carefully and spending hours on each contract even one that just makes us a few thousand dollars. Govt vendor selection process is slow and they are VERY risk-averse so a lot of customers start at a few thousand dollars and end up in an 8 or 9-figure contract if everything goes well.
Since people were laid off I was struggling with the work volume and as a result, contracts were piling up. The sales director i.e. different team did not like me as I was slow and also catching any tricks the sales team tried to play by over-promising the customer or something shady. Government clients/customers loved working with me, the support I provided and was truthful regarding our capability and our drawbacks.
This was something else the director hated me for since he thought I am tanking sales. However, almost all my clients were repeat customers for over a decade.
For example, Sales wanted a school district to buy outdated dell windows laptops while the entire state was moving towards new cheaper Chromebooks. Schools don’t have the budget and whatever they buy stays for 5+ years. Sales were offloading expensive useless stuff to get better bonuses and also charging customers nearly a million dollars to provide ‘IT support’ for faults arising from ancient hardware.
During my conversation with the school district, I shared examples of state governments in the northeast buying Chromebooks and saving funds while future-proofing the hardware. It was my job to get the best quote for customers and develop trust to sign a 5 or 10-year contract. So, this school district bought Chromebooks which were 40% cheaper and had less than 20% of the previously quoted IT support cost.
As a result, the sales team lost a few thousand $ in bonus but we brought this customer with us for a 5-year contract.
The sales director got annoyed as I was working on small contracts at a slow pace and reprimanded me in front of our manager. The manager did not care and did not defend me and asked: ‘Why don’t you follow what the sales director says and stop fussing over small contracts.’
I said small contracts turn into big ones hence I should pay attention to them as well.
Mistakes in small contracts could harm us if the contract becomes big. I am struggling at work because you gave me the job of 3 or 4 people. At this point he was shouting at me that I don’t understand contracts, he has been doing this stuff for 5 years and he makes more in a month than I do in a year so I should listen to him and not question him.
This was a bit insulting as I live in a shared apartment and am struggling to make ends meet while he drives an expensive luxury car and just goes out on fancy lunches with government employees.
I asked the sales director to send an email with a list of ‘suggestions’ to improve my work. He rudely complied and said ‘Can you not even remember what I just said in the meeting?’
His email said ‘Do not review contracts less than $100K and ‘trust’ sales team that due diligence has been done’.
I replied by copying my manager in the email that this could create liability in the future and want him to confirm again that the sales team will do financial and legal compliance themselves for the small contracts and I need to stop revising small government contracts below $100k with no exceptions unless told otherwise. This was gold.
Instead of 2 hours, I spent 10 minutes on small contracts, and voila backlog cleared and I am home by 6-30 PM.
Now, a contract worth 10K comes through. I found some issues with this contract since it said that we offer 30% rebates to our software providers. This was something we stopped doing 5 years ago and now we just offer software providers a 5 to 10% rebate on contracts. Also, I knew the government client recently got a massive budget and was on a spending spree (part of my job).
There is a high chance that this $10k customer will become a $100M and the 30% rebate means we have to give $30M on top of the usual cost.
But I remembered what the sales director said ‘Why don’t you follow what the sales director says and stop fussing over small contracts’.
So 10 minutes later I email ‘No issues detected based on compliance check by the sales team’.
As I mentioned government contracts are slow, no one cared/raised the 30% rebate issue since it was just a $10k customer. 10 months later the state government customer said they want to work with us and get at least the same terms or better terms for a new $50M contract.
This was the largest contract in our company’s history.
The sales director happily gave him a handshake deal that we will offer the same or better terms.
Government can legally just buy more on their current contract so the Sales director had no issues promising the same terms.
Given contract size, everyone from legal, IT, and finance gets involved to work on just one contract. For 3 months everyone worked on one contract.
The sales team was giddy that they will get million-dollar bonuses. I don’t get a sales bonus to ensure I protect customers and the company.
The finance team finishes their review and said the company is going to lose $8M and not make anything. Everyone is shocked, the sales director gave a deal without checking with us and we cannot go back on something we offer. Changing contract terms is frowned upon by the government and they have legal contracts stating ‘NOTHING WILL CHANGE’. We are legally obligated to offer the government the same terms for 3 years.
The legal team says we need to take a hit on our balance sheet and swallow the losses.
The CEO called a big meeting in a fancy conference room with big TV screens and everyone had to find a scapegoat to take the blame. Every department lead, manager, and person involved in this contract were summoned.
The sales leader had to explain to his team why they won’t get bonuses on this big contract they spent over 3 months.
Finally legal and finance meet and share their findings. We lost funds due to the 30% rebate clause. The sales director goes crazy and blames me in front of everyone and asks me to pack my stuff in front of 30 people. Follows by saying I am terrible at my job despite 100% customer satisfaction.
I calmly opened my laptop and connected the display cable and opened Outlook while displaying his email on 3 big TV screens stating that I should stop reviewing small contracts.
While all 30 people read the email with a faint smile I await the sales director’s reaction. He goes into rage mode claiming I misunderstood his email and am terrible at my job. Then I scroll down where he ignored my warning regarding potential liability to the company and his response explicitly asked me to ignore that. His face turned white when he realized he messed up.
He then blabbered trying to find some other scapegoat making racist tirades against our IT consultants in Vietnam and just lost it.
I was told to spend 2-3 hours on each contract and the company eventually figured out that it is cheaper for them to hire 20 people like me and pay us $70K every year than to take big losses on their contracts. Our team has 40 members now, still less than 50 but enough to offset the contract volume.
Because of the losses sales director had to pay back his previous year’s bonus as he had a clawback clause with the company i.e. if you screw up you need to pay us. The sales director had to pay nearly $300K and was fired from his job.
He then sued our company for wrongful termination and we just heard today that he lost the case and now owes us another 200k legal fee. Now he owes over half a million to our company.”
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