People Let Us Know Their "But They Deserved It" Revenge Story
14. Can't Fire Someone Who Isn't Working For You
“I had taken over running a small development team of 9 for a relatively big company. We were there for basic, quick little bits of software that wouldn’t make sense to outsource (web apps that quiz employees on policy, fancy interactive projects to show off at conferences or just an extra pretty powerpoint, etc).
The guy I took over from ran the team like we lived in the 1980s, so I brought us into the modern age and surprise surprise, within a few weeks our team was finishing projects left, right and center. Everything was going great, my coworkers could take breaks and listen to music, our internal clients were kept up to date with their projects and my boss thought I was some kind of software prodigy as productivity had gone through the roof.
Honestly, this was more indicative of how bad it was before rather than anything I did.
Then comes Richard. Now you know Richard, you probably have a Richard at your office.
They’ve been there too long to fire and delight in slapping people in the face with their seniority, regardless of whether or not they have anything to do with you.
First, he sends us a project and marks it Critical, as in ‘Everyone stop what you’re doing know this needs to be done yesterday.’ I politely send him a message and ask him if I can move it down to medium priority as there was little to no time limit and we had other projects to deal with.
He replies, ‘No, it needs to be done now. Get to it.’ I’d like to remind everyone that he is not my boss and has no authority over me or my team.
So I CC my boss and the other department heads who we had projects for at the time.
‘Hi all, hope you’re enjoying your day. Richard has asked me to work on this project for his department, however, he wants it to be done now which would delay your projects. Would that be ok with everyone?’ Turns out that’s a no and I downgrade his project.
A week or two later I check our task management software system and notice Shia (fantastic programmer, great person) was falling a bit behind. I go to ask her what’s up and she looks like she’s about to have a panic attack.
I ask her what’s wrong and it turns out Richard had threatened TO FIRE HER if she didn’t start working on his project immediately.
I calm her down, let her take a break, tell her to start working on her regular projects and to send Richard to me if he gets uppity. I then fire off an email to Richard and my boss reminding him that:
1. Any threats of termination need to go through me and HR first
2.
Who works on what projects and when is determined by our schedule and myself
3. If a project’s deadline is moved up I should be informed directly not via my team
Turns out Richard is infamous for making threats like this but because nobody took them seriously, I was the first to remind him he had no authority over other departments.
I didn’t find out until later, but apparently, he had a meltdown at the boss about how incredibly disrespectful I was. He tried to file a formal complaint but it was rejected because doing my job properly isn’t actually a problem. Who knew?
Around this time, I accepted a better job and was going to put in my notice.
But I wanted to wait until after our latest project (let’s call it the Ninja Report) was done as it was a big deal for my team. This Ninja report was part of a presentation by a company big wig (boss’ boss’ boss) and was marked critical so all of us were working hard to make sure we did a good job and got it in on time.
Now finally we get to the revenge part.
I’m plugging in a switch under the desk when someone taps me hard on the shoulder, ‘Just a minute mate,’ I say. I stand up and stare directly into the red face of Richard, erect with fury and ready to expel his rage all over the office.
‘I’M NOT YOUR MATE, YOU NEED TO LEARN YOUR PLACE IN THIS COMPANY BLAH BLAH BLAH.’ As this grown man is screaming at me in full view of my team it suddenly dawns on me that I get severance, have another job lined up and really have no reason to deal with this.
‘I WANT MY PROJECT DONE NOW!!!!!’ he continues to yell. Now I could’ve told him about the Ninja Report, I could’ve said a lot of things but I just smiled, looked him in the eyes and said, ‘As long as I’m working here the schedule isn’t changing.’ Predictably Richard responds, ‘THEN YOU’RE FIRED.’ I grab my things and leave.
As I’m leaving, one of my team comes up looking like a deer in the headlights and asks what they should do. Easy, ‘First I want everyone except you to stop working on the Ninja Report, second; at the end of the day send an email to the boss and the bigwig, let them know what happened, and explain that the Ninja Report is going to be a week late.
See you all for drinks on Friday!’
I wake up bleary-eyed the next day to a call.
Me: ‘Hello?’
Boss: ‘Hi look I’m sorry about what Richard said. He doesn’t actually have the authority to fire you and the Ninja Report can’t be late, we need to fix this!’
Me: ‘Ohh I’m sorry I’ve actually accepted another job, but don’t worry I figured this would happen.
I asked one of my team to work on it privately. If they start working on the Ninja Report again should be able to get it done on time.’
My boss tries to get me to come back but I made it clear that wasn’t going to happen.
Recommended one of my team take my job and thank him for the opportunity. He’s pretty cool about it, confirms I’ll be getting severance and tells me I can use him as a reference.
Friday drinks roll around and we have a lot to celebrate. The Ninja Report was done on time and given everything that happened, it made my team look great.
I got a new job, my teammate got a promotion and the big wig was really eager to learn why his subordinate’s subordinate’s subordinate fired the lead of the team he picked himself and nearly tanked the project. I’m proud to report that the office is now 100% Richard free.”
Another User Comments:
“Getting fired with severance and a good reference, moving into a better job, and making the old one a better place on the way out. Pro indeed!” bilged
13. Lie About Your Substance Use? Get Sued Big Time
Honesty is the best policy.
“Not me but my mom. For some backstory, my mom was a PA in neurosurgery and her second husband was an anesthesiologist in his residence, so illicit substances were a HUGE no-no.
Anyway, he choked her out because she was pretty much done with his bullcrap.
She had severe tendinitis in her wrists/hands and feet and she was barely able to walk and eat, and he wouldn’t help out around the house. They lived on 2 acres in the countryside with 6 chickens, 3 digs, a pot-bellied pig, and 4 ducks.
She managed the entire place and 3 kids all by herself and he wouldn’t lift a finger. He would just come home from clinical rotations and do all kinds of substances. Whatever he could get his hands on. Soon his antics became so heavy and frequent that it actually began to affect the animals (mostly the smoke) and the animals would become unsober and do stupid crap that would get them really sick.
So my mom confronted him about it. Their somewhat civilized ‘raised voice’ arguments turned into full-blown screaming matches that resulted in a busted open window and doors when my mom found out he was in excess around me.
I can’t handle smoke very well. At all.
He would smoke it on the front porch with the window open while I was playing video games inside, and he smoked to the point where I would faint while playing. My brother told me this, and he knew it was that because I would be playing dark souls or some crap and I would just flat out pass out and hit my head on the table in front of me.
This would be a nightly occurrence and my mom didn’t see it as a problem until I was passed out for 12 hours, which is when my brother told her. I ended up leaving (this will be important later) to live with my grandma because fainting instead of actually falling asleep was really painful and the screaming matches between my mom and stepdad only got worse.
Fast forward a few months, when my mom came down for Christmas, and I kid you not, she looked terrible. She shaved her head before she came, she looked really pale, and she was thin to the point of fitting in my clothes (I’m really short and petite; 5’ 3’’ and pretty muscle-y, compared to my mother being 5’ 11 and ripped from the heavy lifting around the home).
Her carpal tunnel and tendinitis had gotten better, so she could eat, walk and do stuff, but she was clearly in pain.
On New Years, I ended up pouring her a shot of vodka (she usually had one right when the ball dropped), but this time she immediately swigged it down and took me into the bathroom where she just unloaded.
She told me that his antics only got worse and worse and he ended up snapping at the kids really bad, bringing his friends over and almost lighting the barn on fire WITH THE PIG INSIDE. He sold her chickens while he was intoxicated (we REALLY loved those chickens), and that he’d spend most of his paychecks on illegal substances.
Eventually, she rambled on saying that she was just tired of being treated like a slave, tired of fighting, and she just wanted to go back to the way things were while he was in med school. I told her straight up to get a divorce if she wasn’t happy and to move back to the country but she told me that the kids should have their dad and they didn’t want them to end up like me: emotionally scarred from custody transfers and separation.
My biological dad was a convicted predator — we don’t know if he actually did that to someone — who had a substance lab in his basement, would physically and emotionally hurt me, and would suck my mom’s income dry for substances.
My mom knew that my dad was beyond saving, but she truly cared about my stepdad and wanted to rebuild their relationship.
Fast forward a few weeks and I had found out that my stepdad was stealing pain medication, local anesthesia, and NARCOTICS from the hospital and getting intoxicated off them. She threatened to report him to his residency program and he reacted by getting physical with my mom.
My brother called 9-1-1.
She immediately needed surgery, and after that, she filed a restraining order and left to the previous house they still owned.
Soon, each of them found a lawyer, and my stepdad (with some help from his wealthy family) was planning on taking my two younger siblings from my mom.
She found out when she was inebriated and scrolling through his phone and that was the last straw before she filed for divorce.
Because of his wealthy and pathological lying family, the case looked like my mother’s loss. They denied all of her claims, saying that my mom was crazy and bipolar (she is mentally ill, having anxiety and depression, but she is by no means insane.
She was just explosive when angry, mostly because her parents were).
They also claimed she didn’t take her meds (not true), and that she was neglectful to her children, which is why I left (also not true. I left because she and my stepdad were constantly fighting to the point where windows and doors were broken down and I couldn’t take it).
And they claimed that she was a lazy, jobless slob (also not true. Like I said she was a neurosurgery PA. They earn a 95k salary. She had to quit her job because they were cutting her hours and in the state they moved to, PA’s couldn’t prescribe medication, so basically she could only work in the OR, but they have 12-hour shifts and my mom has 2 kids who need to be taken care of).
But what my stepdad neglected to mention was that he DID steal those narcotics from the hospital; in fact he actually DENIED IT. And when he was on the phone with the attorney, he accidentally let it slip out that he met with the narcotics police (basically he got busted), and her reaction was, ‘wow…so she wasn’t lying.’
And that basically unfolded into finding the original documents to the ones edited by my stepdad’s family and it became an open and shut case.
My mom had full custody, and 60% of the assets as well as the antique BMW from the 60s (she was very adamant about that one).
My mom is the kind of person who will put white vinegar in your wine for fun, so she decided to report his RESIDENCY.
At first, they said that they’d look into it, but they ended up not getting back to her. She ends up talking to an advisor and LO AND BEHOLD, not 1, not 2, but 5 people actually got kicked out for illegal substances and if another one got kicked out, they’d be forced to shut it down.
So then my mom decides to get the divorce and restraining order into the mix, and the whole slew of things that came with it, and since it basically violated the Hippocratic Oath and well – the LAW – he wasn’t really that trustworthy of a doctor anymore and they kicked him out in the interest of patients and subsequently shut the ENTIRE program down.
On top of that, she made sure that it stayed on his permanent record, completely disabling him from ever reapplying to a new residency program. She then went the extra mile to get the dog to pee in his house while he was on vacation in Las Vegas, charge his credit card to pay the mortgage until she found a new job in neonatology, get the kids to completely ghost him, and she did a break and entry (the door was unlocked) and took the ps4, Nintendo switch, the Wi-Fi and some furniture (she also sold his Gucci clothes on E-bay!).
Later on, about a year later, my mom finds out that the family is trying to file a lawsuit and sue her for $50,000. They take the claims to court, but then my mom busts out the case from way back then (along with some medical documents pertaining to said case, like her carpal tunnel and tendinitis) and she turns up the dial to the maximum amount a doctor (my stepdad’s father was a plastic surgeon) can be sued for in that particular state – which is $200,000.
The lawsuit goes on for about 6 months and then my mom one day hits me up and says that she got 200k in her pocket and she ended up putting that into a bank account and is beginning to help me pay for college and if she has enough, med school.
I’ve always loved medicine and this whole thing has never changed my view of it. Personally, I’d like to do college by myself, but I’m gonna need help in med school because by my second year I’ll be 100k in debt!
My mom is now a happy and single lady, still rocking short hair, and is extremely successful.
She cut off contact with my stepdad, so I don’t know how he’s doing, and frankly, I don’t really care. So yeah, don’t get with substance addicts, especially if they’re in the medical field. My mom is a vengeful witch and I love her.”
12. Attempt To Take A Shortcut? You Don't Have Me Fooled
“So, I am a cancer researcher and a guest professor at a university’s school of medicine, teaching my specialty: Imaging. Besides the usual acquisitions of medical images using MRI, CT, etc… Imaging has a lot to do with image processing. Some days, I am just a glorified programmer/IT guy.
And as anyone who has ever programmed anything will tell you, coding is a very personal activity. With enough experience, you can tell who wrote what just by looking at the lines.
I am also in my late 20s, and I am not native to this country, and it’s my first year as a guest professor.
So, some students look at me as this inexperienced, gullible, foreign guy.
As part of my module’s grading, the students have to submit 2 reports that weigh 10% each of their final grade. These reports are about image processing, and they have to code a fair bit.
As usual, there are students who make an effort, some do minimal work, and then some copy or plagiarize.
As I was grading the reports, I notice a small group of students who found reports from previous years online and literally copy and pasted those reports, changing only their name. It was a facepalm moment because those reports were not even good and had a lot of errors.
(You see, in order to establish a baseline for my grading, I browsed previous years’ reports, so I knew what to expect from the students in this module.) Naturally, I graded them all with 0 and kept working my way through grading the reports I had left.
Meanwhile, the students “casually” asked me in the halls how were the reports.
Of course, I can’t comment on that until I release the grades. One time, this dude who copied from another report (98% match on plagiarism checker) asks me when will I release the grades and comes up with this story that he worked really hard on his reports.
That his exam hadn’t gone so well, and he is hoping that the grade on his reports is enough to get a pass.
I mean, submitting another person’s work as your own is very wrong, but it was an online submission and impersonal. Right now, he was just lying through his teeth and to my FACE.
I could feel my blood boiling, but I didn’t lose my composure and decide to come up with a plan:
I knew that my exam was the last exam of the semester, and after that, the students usually go home or on family vacations while they wait for their grades to be posted online.
So I graded the exams and input their grades into my Excel sheet with their report grades. 4 students had zero due to plagiarizing their reports, and if I graded their reports with 50% of the max grade, they would BARELY FAIL the module. But they would fail nonetheless.
So… It. Was. On!
(In order to be fair, I bumped everyone else’s grades. A bunch of people with miserable reports ended up barely passing because of my grade bump. But, even though their reports were bad, it was their own work and not copied from anywhere.)
You see, students are entitled to make an appointment to review their grades after publishing and before the grades are locked for the year.
Basically, they sit with me, we go through their exam and reports, and their goal is to convince me to “give” them extra points in hopes that they pass the module.
I knew the sneaky students would come. After all, they think they fooled me once already, and they still have half the report’s points to bargain for.
So I just waited for their emails.
Lo and behold, they write me the same day the grades go online, saying how hard they have worked on their reports and that they don’t understand how they only got 50%. And that they wanted an appointment. I was ecstatic! Sure, let’s review your grades!!
Do you remember that my exam was the last one? Well, they were already on vacation, some very far away…
and begged me for an online appointment. No can do… university policy. Moreover, you have 3 days to show for your appointment; otherwise, the grades are locked, also university policy.
So here they come, cutting their vacations short and catching planes, and some spent hours in buses and trains to make it on time.
I know what many of you are thinking: they come, I show them the plagiarism checker results, and reveal that I know that is not their work and send them on their way.
Well, I considered it, but I had something better in mind.
Those appointments usually take 10 minutes. I show them their work with my notes on what’s wrong/right, and they try to find some inconsistencies in my grading and bargain for more points. I ain’t giving you the opportunity.
Muahahaha!
So, one by one, they sit with me individually. And I go through their exam and reports. Remember that they copied the reports? And copied bad ones, with a lot of errors? I ask questions, lots of them: “Why did you do this?” “What is your reasoning for this?” – they don’t know; it’s not their work.
They mumble random stuff because they don’t know what to answer.
Point by point, mistake by mistake, I explain why it was wrong, and how it should be done, and lecturing the same material that they had already been lectured on during class. I make it long, I make it boring.
I make it painful. I spent hours with each one of them throughout those 3 days. They always came with the same, “I worked sooooo hard on this” and a little smirk on their face because they thought that it should be really easy to fool me, the gullible foreign again.
As the hours go by, and I am walking through the errors one by one, I could see their expression change. Little by little, their hopes of passing being slowly crushed and when they realized that I KNEW they were sneaky and I wasn’t going to give up any extra points.
At this point, they tried to cut short their appointment and leave, but I wouldn’t let them. “We need to finish the review of your grades; it’s university policy.” And I just kept going, extending their misery for one more hour or two. It was legal torture, plain and simple!
IT WAS GLORIOUS!
At the end, every single one of them left with a “crushed soul” look in their eyes and a FAIL in my class.
They knew that I caught them, that I baited them, and they fell for it. They ruined their vacations and time with family, spent traveling back and forth, wasted precious summertime, got bored to death, and have nothing to show for it. And… next year, they will have to repeat the module… WITH ME!!
“I hope you enjoy your summer! See you next year!””
11. Tow My Car And Illegally Sell Parking Spots? You'll Have Some Things Coming For You
“About a year or two ago, I lost my government job. I am an audiologist and so I had little doubt I would find work. But I also knew my best bet for top earnings was to work for myself. So I secured my financing, sold a bunch of stocks and mutual funds that had done pretty well, and set about finding a property.
My plan was to open a practice but buy a building that had rentable space to help bring in an additional revenue stream. I eventually came upon this great little building in the heart of downtown with a nice, big parking lot.
The building was a former commercial garage.
The giant bay doors where trucks used to come in and out of were replaced by these really nice walls full of windows that still opened like garage doors but formed a covered space in front of the units (this is relevant later). I knew the property just from being around town, and I thought they looked really cool.
They are crisp and modern and, in my opinion, have a cool Scandinavian feel to them. Anyway, I love this building.
As I roll up to take my first tour with the realtor and the owner, I pull into the lot (as instructed), and the second I step out of my car, I see a woman rushing out of the building toward me.
I am wondering, is this the owner? Someone who works for the owner? No, it is a woman with a face full of piercings loudly telling me I need to move my car NOW, or it will be towed.
“I have a meeting here…” I began.
She would have none of it. “MOVE IT NOW, OR I CALL THE POLICE!” she said. I was about to move my car when the realtor and the owner, on the other side of the lot, called over and began walking toward me. She immediately retreated before they got close enough for us to work all of this out.
I clarified that I was OK to park there, and they confirmed it was fine. I asked who that was, and they told me she owns one of the shops in the unit. “Just ignore her,” the owner said. “She thinks SHE runs the place!” and the realtor and owner shared a chuckle.
I walk the property, and we go over some things, and life is good.
I get in my car and leave pretty convinced this is the place I need to buy. Because I also intended to house my practice there, I agreed to lease one of the units and start getting set up while all of the closing stuff that needed to happen could be completed.
So for about two months, I was a tenant just like all of the other tenants.
I never really got into the fact that I was buying the building because my interactions with my neighbors were polite but transactional. Well, mostly polite.
The woman with all of the yelling (let’s call her Megan) was none too pleased with my presence. She owned a store that sold custom-made, well, costumes I suppose? Lots of steampunk outfits and period costumes that she makes herself.
Impressive work though, honestly. I have to imagine she does most of her trade online since I seldom see people in her place.
I was there not more than a week when she barged into my unit and began making sure I “was aware” that the parking lot was not for customers and was for them only.
And I was only allotted one spot. I said “Thanks, but I have parking all worked out with Gus (owner). I appreciate your concern,” and I showed her the door.
The parking lot, which I was purchasing along with the building, has 60 spaces. There are 5 units.
According to her, we are each allowed one parking space, and no customers or visitors are permitted to park there at all. So I know there are either shenanigans afoot, or this woman is speaking out of her behind.
Anyway, I ignore her.
Time passes, I close on the building.
Gus sends out a heartwarming thank you email to all tenants saying he appreciates their years of business together but that the property is now owned by MyCompanyName, LLC of which I am the owner. Pretty clear stuff.
The very first thing I did was I did a reorg on the parking lot.
Each unit gets one regular parking space. Primo spots right next to the building. There are two 15 minute loading spots back there as well. I designated the next 5 closest spaces to handicapped parking. The rest was just parking. My long-term plan is to put in one of those automated parking kiosks so people who are there to patronize the businesses can park for free, but anyone else will have to pay.
But that’s down the road. For now, I just needed to formalize some stuff and just accept that I may have some people parking there illegally, and if it becomes a problem, I’ll just have to hit the security cameras to see who is abusing the system.
Anyway, Megan is furious.
She is furious that there are not enough handicap spots (there were none before). She is angry that she needs more than 15 minutes for a loading zone (who is timing it?). She is mad most of all, however, because she was never consulted.
Flash forward a few days, and I parked on a non-parking spot.
The sidewalk in front of my building is privately owned. Basically, you turn off of the public sidewalk and walk down the private sidewalk to where all of the businesses are. I parked on a paved patch next to my unit (on the far side away from the public sidewalk) accessible only by my parking lot.
I parked there, with every legal right to do so by the way, because I was unloading equipment. Since I own the space I was parked on and everything around it, I didn’t move my car right after.
I walk outside, and my car is gone.
So I immediately assume someone stole my car.
Then there’s Megan standing in her doorway with a big poop-eating grin on her face. I ask her if she knows anything about my missing car. “Oh, was that your car? I saw a car parked illegally, so I had it towed.” I said “Laugh it up.
Any expense is getting added to your rent.”
I went to the tow company that the prior owner hired, and I laid into him for towing ANYTHING from my property without authorization. His argument was that he had a contract “with the property.” He did not.
He had a contract with the company that formerly owned the building that was now null. In the end, I knew arguing would get me nowhere, so I paid him and took my car.
I left with hate in my heart and my mind solely focused on revenge.
I began really scrutinizing my security tapes and discovered that all of these unaccounted for vehicles in the parking lot all had something in common: Megan.
I had a suspicion that she was selling parking in MY lot. So I waited by one of the cars until the guy arrived. I told him, as he walked from an area that was not my building, that he was not authorized to park there.
He looked confused and told me to mind my own business and he pays for parking. I introduced myself as the owner of the lot and asked who he was paying and how much.
The answer was Megan and $125 a month. Suddenly, her business made a lot more sense.
I thought of confronting her. I thought of just straight up evicting her. Instead, I hired a security company. They set up a temporary booth at the entrance of the parking lot and a guard ensured that everyone there was there for one of the businesses.
If someone parked and wandered off somewhere else, they were told they were going to be towed. Anyone who claimed to be paying for parking would just be turned away. What followed was around 2 dozen very angry people in Megan’s store over the course of the week.
They paid well for those spots, and now she was pulling out the carpet? People were livid.
Megan lays pretty low for a while. Then as soon as it was legal, I told the tenants they could open the big garage door and have a covered outdoor space for their trade.
This was a necessary thing to keep them open and was outside the scope of their lease since they were not allowed to put in outdoor seating at the time, etc. Everyone is super happy about this. Except Megan. Megan’s unit is flanked by a coffee shop on one side and a little specialty bakery on the other.
So you now have to walk around an outdoor seating area to get into her store. It’s the same situation for my unit; however, it just isn’t that big of a deal.
Megan is fuming. She starts calling the police multiple times a day every day for supposed violations on my part and the part of the other tenants.
This was after, by the way, I said absolutely nothing about her being in her store and working even when non-essential businesses were supposed to be closed. The cops stopped coming after her third or fourth call.
At this point, I had enough. Her lease was up last May and so I non-renewed it.
She threatened up and down that she was going to sue me, and when she was done, the whole building would be hers. I responded by suing her for the $125 a month she collected from all of those people for parking. Best of all, she just didn’t show up to court and so it resulted in a summary judgment in my favor. I don’t expect I will collect. Though she abandoned at least a few thousand bucks worth of inventory and equipment when she left, so that will help.”
10. Fired? Are You Sure? Fine
“So, my friend’s father (since retired) was a mechanical engineer. He was around 55 when this happened and VERY experienced in his field. In fact, he had some skill sets that were close to unique to the extent that you might be able to replicate them but at extreme costs – we’re talking multiple people from multiple companies from multiple countries taking weeks if not months to get up to speed with specific projects to do the same things.
He was also a no-bullcrap kind of guy who did his job, did it well, but also pointed out problems and expected others to point out problems to him. He was extremely solution-oriented and had no time for office politics or “keeping a positive attitude” at work.
Basically, your everyday grumpy older engineer who really knew his thing and was always ready to help if you asked but not very forthcoming in team-building exercises and so on.
He also ran his own business on the side, doing minor projects and so on. As was required by his employer, he had reported this and was sure to not cause any conflicts of interests, so his employer knew and accepted this.
He was considered a valuable employee and got several awards (that he cared little for) during his many years with this employer.
By all accounts, they paid him well, respected his knowledge, and accommodated his style, and he returned the favor by working very hard and making sure to mentor younger and newly employed engineers to make them effective co-workers.
Then his firm was acquired by a larger firm, and a new management team was installed.
Initially, everyone was promised that things would remain the same, but with the new management came a new office culture. The new management pressured for unpaid overtime for a more “American” corporate culture with cheering and clapping and so on. He considered it extremely cringe and refused to participate.
His status as a long-standing and knowledgeable employee kept him safe for some time before the new management realized that resistance to the new “culture” centered around him and started pressuring him to play along. When he did not, they turned increasingly hostile, realizing that he held a lot of “soft power” in the company, having mentored a large percentage of the engineers and resistance to their leadership centering around him.
They started ordering him to work overtime, he answered that he was on time with his projects and that if they had identified an emergency requiring overtime, they would have to bring it up with the union to negotiate the over-time and make sure it was an actual emergency – the contract with the union said no over-time unless in an emergency.
They tried to force him to participate in the cheering and clapping by making it mandatory for him to attend and yelling at him to participate, and he did but so unenthusiastically that the event turned even more cringe and people started laughing.
The workday turned more and more hostile, and he knew that things would come to head sooner or later.
Being an experienced engineer and knowing how to document things, he already had his ducks in a row.
Then it finally happened – they caught him answering an e-mail for his side business on his work laptop, brought him in, and fired him on the spot for theft of company resources.
He sat at the conference table and looked the three managers in their eyes, one after the other, and asked, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
They all said yes.
“Are you REALLY sure you want to do this?”
He was escorted to his desk by security to leave his phone, his badge, and his computer at the desk and then escorted out.
Once out of the building, he phoned his union representative, who immediately canceled the firing, claiming there was no just cause, which meant that it would go to the labor board for arbitration.
You see, the company had an IT policy that it was ok to use the company laptop for personal business, including a side business, as long as you were on a break and compliant with IT security protocols, and the company was aware of and had approved his side business.
And he was on a break. Of course, he had his declaration of a side business (signed by his former manager) and the IT policy available and sent both to the union representative.
Then he called his lawyer and asked him to send the pre-prepared to cease and desist on two patents he held – patents that were not that significant and nothing he could make any serious moola out of since they were mostly for very specific things used by the solutions he designed and used at his employer’s but still his that he had brought with him into the employment and allowed the employer to use in exchange for slightly higher pay (all duly documented in his contract, of course).
Then he went home for some vacation and tended his side business.
He was always a man to prepare and had enough coin saved up to last him for a good time, to the extent that he considered retiring entirely. My friend said he had two job offers from competitors that had looked to snipe him for some time within the week – basically as soon as they learned he was available.
He was gracious, but declined, but offered them to consult with his side business, now that he had the time, which they eagerly accepted – at twice the hourly rate he had made at his earlier employer’s.
His colleagues started ringing the day after for advice since the projects he had managed could not go on without him, he was perfectly polite, but denied any information and help, saying he had left everything he had with management and to contact them, as he was no longer employed there.
Several clients that phoned his private number were told the same thing. Since his private number was not on a public registry, he suspected that both colleagues and clients spent some time and/or company dollars to find it.
It took two weeks before a manager phoned him and asked things.
He politely declined to answer, got yelled at, and replied with something like, “I am sorry, you must have mistaken me for someone who works for you” and hung up.
This happened a few times, and the next week, HR phoned him and stated the firing had been a mistake, and he was welcome back to his job.
He again politely declined, saying that he awaited the labor board’s decision, but until then, he was happy to consult for them, at six times his hourly pay (after taxes and administrative costs, of course). After a few days of wrangling and trying to negotiate, they had to accept.
And then he sprung the patent issue on them, forcing them to pay for those too. Less than two and a half week after being fired, he was back at his desk.
After roughly three months, the firing came to the labor board. The employer stated that they believed they had handled the issue correctly but were still willing to offer my friend’s father his position back, in the interest of “goodwill” and “reconciliation.” My friend’s father and the union simply stated that he was now employed elsewhere (his own company) and no longer available.
The labor board ruled in my friend’s father’s and the union’s favor, and he got the normal damages – 3 months pay damage and 24 months pay severance package, including pension, and of course, the lawyer costs of the union paid by the employer.
According to my friend, her father continued to work there until he retired, working 20 hours or so per week and 10-15 hours for other companies, making a pretty penny, continuing to charge them three times what he charged their competitors a “jerk tax.”
The managers were not fired, but they have moved into their own group apart from the rest of the department when it came to bonus calculations, and the costs of her father’s consultancy fees, and the costs of the labor board arbitration were budgeted there, meaning they were constantly over budget and thus ineligible for bonuses for several years, which was a decent percentage of the incentives at that company, making at least one of them quit.
My friend also said her father usually met any management complaints with a big poop-eating grin and “What are you going to do? Fire me?” after that.”
9. Too "Rich" For This Job? See Ya
He’ll find out the truth later.
“I work for a construction company, and we do drywall. We have a rule here that we get to keep anything we find hidden behind the walls in the buildings we’re working on (sometimes you’ll find a pack of smokes left by another crew, a pack of gum, etc.).
We hired this guy who was a total butthole from day one. I’ve been working for this company for 5 years, and this guy has only been doing construction for 1 year after he got fired from his accounting job. He would always make fun of my clothes and my accent.
One day, he went too far by telling my boss about my private Instagram account pics. He got on my phone and looked through my Instagram page and showed my boss pictures of me smoking stuff, little did he know that my boss is my friend from way back when we used to smoke together before we both quit.)
I was so mad that he violated my privacy, so I made a plan to screw him over.
He was the kind of guy who would always come in late and complain that trains or traffic are why he was late. One day, I overheard him saying that if he won the lottery he would quit this job for not getting the “respect” he deserves.
(You have to earn your respect here.)
So I bought some fake gold coins online, and I put them in a metal box I found at the antique store, and waited for a chance to hide it in a half-finished wall. Luckily, I did not have to wait long.
The day he found the coins, it seemed like it was his best day ever. The first thing he did when he opened the box… he called my boss a “freaking loser,” and he quit immediately on the spot. He said, “Forget this place. I’m rich.”
Little did he know that that was the best day of my life.
After he quit, my boss told us that he was going to fire him anyways for always showing up late. I wish I could have seen the look on his face when he found out the gold coins were fake. Best $40 I spent in my life.”
8. Try To Bust Me For "Driving Too Fast" When I Wasn't? Cool, Call The Police
“A few weeks ago, I was driving in my neighborhood playing Pokemon Go (not while driving obviously). The end of my neighborhood has a Pokestop that I collect items from every day, as you get bonus items if you collect from stops every day. This particular day was my 7th day, meaning I would get even more items and would start over from day one the next day.
I drove to the stop, got the items, set my phone on my passenger seat and went home.
The road I was driving on was 20 mph, but I was going about 12-13 mph. I drive up a small hill and turn a corner when a wild family appears, including the a-hole dad (AD).
The wife, her friend, and the three kids walking by them stepped off to the side of the road to let me pass, but as I was going by, AD, who had a young boy about 3-4 years old in one arm and holding a Budweiser bottle in the other (important later), actually STEPPED CLOSER TO MY CAR AND YELLED SOMETHING AT ME! Being as I had gotten into an accident recently and was trying to be as safe as possible, I stopped the car, rolled down my window, and asked if he was alright.
The conversation went as followed.
Me: ‘Are you guys alright? Why did you do that?’
AD: ‘You see my family, right?’
Me: ‘Yes, what about them?’
AD: ‘You know you were driving too fast for this neighborhood right?’ (I should point out that I live in Illinois and while my car was being repaired from the accident, I had a loaner car with Wisconsin plates)
Me: ‘Sir I was going only about 12 mph and the limit is 20 here, I wasn’t driving too fast.’
AD: ‘Well, you almost hit me and my son.’
Me: ‘Yeah, cause you stepped close to a moving vehicle! The only one putting you guys in danger was yourself.’
AD (looks at my phone in the passenger seat): ‘I don’t know the laws in Wisconsin, but here in Illinois, you can’t be on your phone while driving.
I’m calling the police.’
Me: ‘I don’t know their laws either, this car is just a loaner, I live here in Illinois.’
AD: ‘Then you should know the laws! I’m calling the cops.’
Me: ‘Have fun with that.’
And with that, I just left. I know I probably should have stayed, but since I didn’t actually do anything wrong, I wasn’t taking his threat seriously.
I went home and made some ramen to eat. As I was sitting in my dining room, I look out the window and nearly choke on my noodles. AD FOLLOWED ME HOME!!! He was on his cellphone with the dispatcher and I thought I was in deep doggy doo.
About 5 minutes later 2 cop cars with 3 police officers, PO1, PO2, and PO3 (who didn’t really talk throughout the whole thing). I stepped outside thinking I was done for. The officers started to question the two of us.
PO1: ‘OP, do you know why we are here?’
Me: ‘I have a pretty good idea what you think you’re doing here, but why don’t you let me know?’
PO1: ‘This gentleman called us saying you attempted to run his family over after you got caught texting while driving and going way over the speed limit.’
My mind went blank for a few seconds.
This jerk actually said that I had attempted vehicular manslaughter.
My mind started working again and I said…
Me: ‘Sir, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I was driving home from playing Pokemon on my phone when this man stepped close to my car while I was driving.
My phone was on the passenger seat the entire ride home.’
AD: ‘He’s lying! He nearly killed my family! Arrest him now!’
PO2: ‘Sir, calm down. We’ll settle this…’
PO1: ‘OP, what was this man doing when the incident occurred?’
Suddenly, an idea popped into my head, and right there, on the fly, the revenge started.
Me: ‘He was walking with his family along the side of the road, carrying a young boy on one arm and holding a beer bottle in the other.’
AD: ‘That’s not true you piece of garbage!’
PO2: ‘Sir, control yourself!’
Me: ‘As I drove by them, the rest of his family went to the side of the road, but he actually stepped closer to my car.
I think he got within an inch of me’
AD: ‘This is BS! He’s just trying to protect himself.’
PO1: ‘Sir, if what he is saying is true, you could actually be arrested here, not him.’
PO2: ‘Are you sure that’s what happened?’
Me: ‘Positive. He got way too close to my moving vehicle holding a child and a bottle of Miller Light.’
AD: ‘It wasn’t Miller Light it was Budwei-‘
He cut himself off and tried to backtrack but it was too late.
All the officers looked at him. He tried to defend himself, but then PO3 said something I thought I would never hear a cop say in my life…
PO3: ‘Sir, have you had anything to drink this evening?’
AD, now very less confident: ‘N-n-no..’
They move him to one of the cop cars and gave him a breathalyzer test; .12%, just over the limit.
Gotcha, A-hole. AD ended up confessing to them that I was right and was arrested for public intoxication and child endangerment. He has to go before a judge to determine if he’s a danger to his family. The officers asked if I wanted to press any charges, but I told them no, since he already had enough on his plate to deal with.”
Another User Comments:
“Please watch yourself. This unhinged man now knows where you live. I would highly recommend a protection order if you catch him around your house. Record him and go to the police immediately if you see him doing that, please. For your own safety.” heimbachae
7. Steal From The Company? Lose Your $80K Job
“I worked in an office for a large supermarket. We had a team leader who was a jerk (he’ll be known as ‘Jerk’ from here on). Never in the wrong, always had the “what I say goes” attitude. Useless. One day, he got promoted to the team leader of the team above us.
They were involved in the data side of things, so we thought we had seen the last of him, but he generally messed with his old team, so he was universally despised.
One day, we had an issue with pricing in our stores. The meat was going through the till at twice the normal price.
In our stores, we have a policy if we overcharge you, you get double the overcharge back.
Jerk manager, knowing this, went shopping after work. He put every meat he could think of in his shopping cart. Once he got to the checkout, he acted as if he was a genuine customer.
Now the jerk had always been so self-important, he failed to realize the girl behind the counter used to work in our office.
She saw him with all this meat and spoke to her manager. She basically said to the manager, “This guy’s pulling a fast one.” He agreed.
Manager: I understand you have been overcharged on some meat?
Jerk: Yes, and I want the refund on double the difference!
Manager: Did the lady behind the till tell you about the overcharge before the items start scanning?
Jerk: Yes, she did, and I was told to come here.
Manager: If you were told before the items were scanned that we had this fault, all we can do is give you back what you have been overcharged.
Jerk: This is ridiculous. I know the policy, I manage the store’s policy throughout the country!
Manager: Excuse me, but how do YOU manage the policy?
Jerk: I work in head office.
Manager: Oh, sorry sir, can I take your staff card?
Jerk: Yeah, here it is.
The manager proceeded to phone the head office, and it was Jerk’s old team that picked up the call. The first thing the store manager asked was, did we have a manager there by Jerk’s name and could he speak to jerk’s boss.
Jerk’s boss took the call and said to the manager, “Can you ask Jerk to come into your office? I need to talk to him.”
He was fired on the spot and told he would not get a reference from us, as if he did get one, it would say he was dismissed due to fraud against the company. I heard he was working for Domino’s Pizza. Bit of a comedown from an $80k a year job!”
6. Attempt To Scam Me? You'll Hate The Fact That I Have Computer Skills
“I got our home phone number long before cell phones were a common thing to have. As things have evolved, that phone number is part of my history and is good to use for things I don’t want ringing on my cellphone (like 99% of anything that requires a phone number for no good reason).
So I have kept that phone number alive over the years. Most recently, I moved it a few years back to an online service that charges a tiny amount per month to host it for me. I access it via a SIP client on my computer.
Because of the nature of the phone number, it randomly rings. If I have time, I mess with whoever is calling. Most of the calls are the, “Your car warranty is about to expire” kind. Some of the calls are about non-existent credit cards. My favorite calls are the scammers.
I record all calls that come into this phone number. In my state, only one person needs to know that a call is being recorded, and besides, these scammers are all overseas, so I really do not care about their laws.
Today I set a new record: a total of 1 hour of their time wasted.
The call comes in as normal. I string the guy along, I play dumb, I keep them thinking I am an easy target. After 40 minutes, I tell him I have to hang up and could he call me back in an hour. To my surprise, this idiot calls me back! So I decided to see if I could get him to let me connect to him by continuing to play dumb.
My plan is based on knowing that they have a handful of tools at their disposal, the easiest of which is TeamViewer. So I play along until they get me on a TeamViewer, but I never give them the real information on my end, and I just ask for my partner ID.
The idea is that with TeamViewer you can switch who is showing the screen after you make the initial connection. I know that I have but a precious few seconds of time if I manage to get them to give me their ID and password to make my plan happen.
So I have a dummy terminal set aside for all this. I quickly write out my set of commands, so I can copy them to my clipboard and launch them as soon as I get connected. Sure enough, they give me their ID and password.
I am ready and I strike – paste the commands into a RUN window and let it rip. As I see the window pop up with the command prompt and the deletion of folders starts the guy starts to stutter and asks, “What are you doing, sir?”
I keep playing dumb until my connection is terminated.
All their files have been deleted. The scammer is furious. He starts to curse at me. I eventually start taunting him and cursing back at him. After a while, he hangs up.
Look, I know that they have cloned systems, and they will be back up and running in no time at all. But this wasted an hour of their time, and that is an hour they can’t use to scam someone else.”
5. Mom Gets Catcalled After She Defends Her Son Harassing Women
“A new family moved into a building a few buildings down from ours.
They seemed normal at first. They didn’t interact or socialize with anyone else other than their direct neighbors. Most of the people living in these buildings have been living here for a long time and know each other very well.
The son is a creep. He is about 17-18 years old and harasses women and girls by passing lewd remarks, whistles, and catcalls. He even tries to grope, pushes/elbows, and actually follows girls and women.
He followed and tried to harass a young girl who told her mom.
Her mom talked to other moms before approaching the son’s mom, and all the moms found out that many of the girls had been at the receiving end of his harassment.
Even women older than him and newlyweds! The remarks he passes are very vulgar and crass, to say the least.
The moms visited the son’s mom to talk about it on Sunday. And guess what she said?
‘Tell your daughters to not dress like tarts. What is my son supposed to do? They will get what they deserve. My son is only talking. Keep an eye on your daughters otherwise, other men will do more than just talk.’ YES.
SHE SAID THIS. And it goes on. When they told her he was also harassing married women, she said: ‘Ask these newlyweds to keep their naughty side for their husbands!’
Needless to say, everyone was livid.
All the girls got together and sent messages to the son’s college friends and groups on social media about his behavior.
But it’s the boys and young adult men (specifying because they are all 18-19 years old) who really got involved and upped the ante on this one!
They immediately started buddying up to the son, congratulating him on getting away with being a ‘hero.’ He certainly felt very proud of it and very full of himself.
This is where the revenge party starts.
Some of these guys along with the son are standing near the gate of the son’s building entrance when the son’s mom comes home from work.
As soon as she nears them, all the guys start making remarks about her appearance and her being a woman – her very loudly.
Some of those included-
‘Aunty, keep your naughty side for uncle in your bedroom!’
‘If you walk away, then I’ll have to come with you!’
‘Look back!”
And more.
Most of what they said were words were originally uttered by the son and his mom in the first place. The son was mortified and angry but couldn’t do more than cuss them and leave because they were about 4-5 guys.
This continues in the morning when she leaves for work, in the evening when she returns and whenever someone comes across her when she is out for whatever reason.
She has received comments on the way she dresses, the way she walks, the time she comes home, etc.
All of this is done in front of her son and whenever he objects, he is told to keep his tarty mom in check because the guys are only talking, what else are they supposed to do?
Finally, the son broke down and cried yesterday but didn’t apologize.
He just called the girls and guys names and left. His mom tried to approach the parents of the boys and to her dismay found that most of the boys were brothers or neighbors to the girls whom her son had harassed.
Quite a few moms also told her to not be tarty as it was a bad influence on their sons. One awesome Dad shut the door on her face saying he doesn’t talk to women who cannot parent their children. I live in India. It’s a crime to catcall or harass women even though complaints aren’t made about it all the time.”
4. Don't Mess With Designers Or They Will Design A Mess
“In the early 2000s, I was working at a Graphics and T-Shirt printing shop in a major college town in the Midwest. I was a graphic design major and it just made sense for me to be involved in screen printing and design. The owner of the company was a very socially awkward dude who went to the university and stayed around after graduation to make his business grow.
He had deep roots in the community, was on several alumni boards, etc… as such he had many large contracts with universities in the same athletic conference (one of the largest in the nation) as our college. This meant we spent most of our day rehashing old sports designs to meet new criteria.
A lot of it was event-based, meaning if a certain team won a certain game and there needed to be a shirt made to commemorate it, I was on call to do that design.
Now Ron wasn’t a cheery guy. In fact, I don’t think I’d ever seen him smile.
But as of late, he had been getting bolder with his three designers (myself, Tim, and Carla, who was the art director). He would venture up into the art room and hover while we worked. He evidently didn’t like what he saw because he made me take my inspiration board down because it was “clutter.” The hovering and critiquing didn’t sit well with us, but whatever, it’s his business.
Then, he hires his Dad. To do what, I’m not really sure. But whatever it was that was peeving Ron off about his designers became his Dad’s obsession. He started hanging out in the design room and literally real-time critiquing the designs and the amount of time it took us to do them.
Needless to say, we weren’t happy.
So, one day Tim and I come back from lunch and Ron is upstairs in the design room lighting Carla up. He’s yelling that she was costing him because designs were sent back for revisions or took too long or just plain weren’t good.
As we were all very competent designers and worked under ridiculous deadlines all the time, it kinda confused us. Regardless, Tim and I both liked Carla as a boss and didn’t appreciate Ron yelling at her like he did. She came out of the room crying and pushed past us on the way down the stairs and went home.
She had been getting recruited by another screen printing place in town anyway, so she took that opportunity to jump ship. Good for her we thought.
Fast forward about a month. Tim and I were even more unhappy than before because now, not only were Ron and his dad constantly breathing down our necks, but we had a three-person workload with two people.
He became even more pushy and rude and started to come unhinged. I almost hit him once, that’s how he would talk to us. Tim and I hatched a plan.
The CWS (College World Series) is in Omaha every year. The CWS was Ron’s second-biggest business opportunity next to the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament in March.
Every year, he rented an 18-wheeler with a 4-color process press in the back of it to take to Omaha. The deposit was $10k and like another $10k for the full rental. We’d watch the games and start getting the designs ready as soon as it was apparent a team was going to win.
We printed the shirts right there on the spot and had them hot off the presses for people to buy. It was a great system that worked, as long as he had people who knew how to design and print the film.
So the day before the CWS starts rolls around and everyone is getting ready to go to Omaha.
Ron was riding in the truck, his assistant and several other office staff were pooling in a van, and Tim and I were driving separately in my truck. It was to be a convoy. The truck took off, the van fell in behind it, and we fell in behind the van.
They turned off on the highway toward Omaha and Tim and I went to the bar.
They didn’t notice until they got to Omaha. I saved the voicemails just in case I disappear someday.
He shuttered four months later and rebranded as a design-only firm.
Gotcha bee with an itch.”
3. Be The Witch Of The House? It'll Cost You $300,000
“Dealt with my crappy manipulative abusive aunt all my life, finally got revenge.
Players:
Myself (M/late 30s)
Sister (3 years younger)
Aunt (older “sister” to my mother)
Mother (single mom, adopted, no blood relation to my aunt).
Cousins (3 total: 1M, 2F.I have good relationships with them now, mostly.)
My estranged father who had been living several counties over is pretty much out of the picture by the time my parents got their divorce when I was 9.
Due to financial hardship, we were forced to live with my aunt and the nightmare of a household we would soon find ourselves in. My aunt married into Georgia “wealth,” and you can figure out what that means on your own. She had 3 kids and eventually caught her husband having an affair.
It’s a huge scandal, she gets the house, the kids and a fat payout from the family attorney. This is important because my aunt didn’t do a darn thing in her life to earn her wealth, her house, her lifestyle, or basically anything.
She was born poor along with my mom.
Under her household, she was obsessed with power. Years of therapy have allowed me to recognize that certain people, when in a position of power, get a perverse pleasure in ordering others to do their bidding. She was the strictest of authoritarians in every possible way you could imagine.
Chores had to be completed by an exact specific time: vacuuming by 3:45 pm, dishes by 3:55 pm, laundry days for my mother and us kids were Tuesday/Thursday 5:35 pm to 7:55 pm. If it was still running, she would shut the power off for the two units.
As we grew older, her own kids opted to stay with their father for full-time custody, and she had them on weekends.
Even they couldn’t stand her when she was in charge and in the house. As time passed, she got them less and less, opting for alternating weekends as high school activities took precedence over time with mother.
For my sister and I, the large 6 bedroom house was not ours for the taking. My mom had to pay rent as well as rent for 1 bedroom as that was all she could afford on her salary. We had to share a bedroom until my second year of high school.
All the while, there was 1 spare unused bedroom available at all times. My aunt needed this for “guests” when they stayed over. Not one guest stayed there in the 10 years I was under that roof.
Finally, the church we attended told my aunt to give up the spare bedroom, so my sister can have her own room as it was “unhealthy” for two teenagers sharing a room together like that.
That infuriated my aunt because someone told her what to do in her own household. My sister and I got the brunt of her wrath. As my mom’s salary was tapped out, my sister and I had to do extra chores like mowing the lawn, trimming the shrubs, and cleaning the pool, which we could no longer use without her being outside watching us.
My aunt’s behavior was becoming more and more outrageous and disconnected from society. For example, she had always snapped her fingers when she wanted to get someone’s attention, but it was getting far more frequent, and she would blow up into a tirade if either my sister and I didn’t obey.
Her own kids tried repeatedly to tell her that the crap she was doing was wrong but she wouldn’t listen. Eventually, they wanted nothing to do with her outside of the home. She was a tyrant there and repeated intervention to get her to see the folly of her ways would fall on deaf ears.
I snapped:
All through high school, I had no confidence as a person. I was weak-willed and growing ever distant from friends and society. I say this in all truthfulness and fear, that had circumstances continued the way they had been going, I could very well have hurt myself, or worse, others around me.
I was that bad off.
I had just graduated high school and started my first semester of community college.
I’m 2 weeks into my classes attending from home when my aunt drops a bomb on me. “You owe me for this month’s rent, the same amount for next month’s rent as well.
It is the 27th after all. You’re an adult now. You’re out of high school and working now, so you need to pay rent.” The crap? I blew a freaking gasket as I yelled back. “You can’t just suddenly decide to charge me rent just because you feel like it.
I need 30 days’ notice, I have rights.”
My aunt yelled at me about some bullcrap excuse that she had discussed this with my mother, and it was decided that I needed to pay my own rent now. In some miraculous backbone move, of which I still have no idea how I stood up to her, I yelled right back at her, “If I’m an adult, then treat me like one and talk to me about rental agreements.
I’ll start paying you rent in 30 days starting the 1st.”
I turned my back to her and walked away with my fists balled tight. I was furious with anger but I walked away. My aunt saw my fists from behind and screamed bloody murder that I was going to attack her.
No, I wasn’t. She snapped her fingers at me repeatedly on my tail to get my attention, but I didn’t turn around. I needed to cool off and clear my head. As I turned the corner, she grabbed my wrist hard yelling, “I’m not finished talking to you.” I threw my still balled-up fist forward keeping with my stride to break her grip as I hadn’t stopped my momentum.
This caused her grabbing arm to slam hard into the corner of the wall that I had just turned into.
She screamed in pain, but I left the house and took off.
The aftermath of that incident was that my aunt called the cops on me in an attempt to press charges.
She was taken to the hospital and suffered a fractured wrist, and she was put in a cast/sling (don’t know as I never saw it and never inquired further). Her story changed every time she told the cops what happened while my story was spot on every time.
I can still recall that moment down to the smell in the house, where I was facing, the working and non-working lightbulbs, etc., forever ingrained in me.
I was kicked out of the house, and I couldn’t visit my sister or my mom there at the house again.
Fine by me as I didn’t want to see my witch aunt ever again. I was happy to meet my mother and sister at the local diner or outlet. We could be ourselves there and not hostages in our own home.
Years Later:
My mom wised up and got out of that abusive relationship with her sister and moved out on her own.
She got a temporary nice place, invested wisely, and with help from the church, was able to get a place of her own. In 2009 after the housing crisis, she bought her own place that she could never have afforded on her own prior to the market crash.
But some good came out of it. She wept knowing my sister (and her family) and I could come to visit any time and stay.
Over the years, I’ve been able to forgive my aunt, not forget, forgive. I’ve let go of a lot of my anger and hatred toward her that she put me through.
When she has no leverage or control over us, she’s a somewhat decent person for being a total witch of a person. My cousins have calmed down, heard my side of what happened those years ago, and know what kind of person I am compared to what kind of person their mother is.
They chose to believe me and know I didn’t hit her or strike her or beat her across the face like she continues to claim.
The Revenge:
While I have been able to forgive my aunt for what she has done to me, I cannot forgive her for what she did to my mother.
She kept her in financial hardship for a decade while she sat on a bank account full of and assets. Or what she did to my sister: she forced her to pay for damages because the water heater burst while my aunt and mother were away one weekend, leaving my sister at home.
She didn’t discover the flooded rooms for hours. My aunt’s reasoning, “It was her responsibility to watch the house,” not the responsibility of the homeowner to maintain/replace the water heater before it goes. Let’s leave that upfront $5,000 financial burden before the flood insurance kicks in on a 16-year-old girl.
I’ve had little to no contact with my aunt since I was kicked out of the house nearly 2 decades ago.
But I do keep in constant contact with my cousins. While I’m not going to divulge what I do for a living, I can say that I work with and for the Government.
I’ve worked my butt off getting to where I’m at today. I’m known for being truthful, wise, and giving good advice when asked. Because of this, I often talk financially with my cousins, all of whom are smart with their finances and are doing well for themselves.
They often then relay this information to their scheming mother who has no mind for business and investments. All that moola she got from her house sale, her divorce settlement, her previous investments is pretty much gone. I spent YEARS planning on the perfect trap, and it took a long time to prepare everything to make sure everything appeared right.
I am not a lawyer, and I don’t pretend to know the law, but I do know the regulations and laws pertaining to insider information. This is not that. 100% certain of it, and if I ever go to court, I know my lawyer has a solid case in my defense.
But is this a grey area? Most definitely. I let slip to my cousins about some future real estate plans near my aunt’s new area of living. It “may” be worth a lot more because of future development taking place in the area. All of that was true and backed up by what was in the newspaper and new construction signs that newly appeared on Google Maps (at the time).
The rest was fabricated by myself backed up by actual information I looked up on real estate websites and on projects I was working on through my work.
The telephone game takes place, and a few weeks later, I presume, my aunt starts making phone calls to real estate agents trying to buy lots of land in the undeveloped crappy area of her new house.
Over the course of a few months to a half a year, she spends $300,000 of her last remaining savings on land hoping it will pay out when the area around it gets developed in the upcoming years.
Only, HUD/Government/City doesn’t have any plans to develop in those immediate areas.
In fact, the analysis showed that building in those areas was poor planning and would cost the taxpayers twice to three times as much as the land was not environmentally sound.
It was best to build 6 miles away.
This post was long overdue because it’s been over 2 years since my aunt purchased land that is basically worthless.
See, she won’t sell the land unless she gets at least the same price she paid for it because she’s the OWNER of that land. I can’t tell her what to do on her own land. Sweet karma strikes in a way I couldn’t possibly have foreseen.
My cousin informed me that the value of the land has decreased significantly because it’s not environmentally sound to build anything commercial there. But it’s zoned for commercial use. Currently, 3 of the 4 blocks of land she purchased are just farms next to eyesore abandoned buildings or industrial complexes.
Nobody can build on it and nor does anyone want to buy it. Sucks to be her!
The best part is, my cousins have absolutely no idea that I set them up for their mother to take the fall. These environmental results are relatively new and the perfect cover to say why the Project changed locations 6 miles away.”
Another User Comments:
“I would have found a way to get her own property that her house is on to be rezoned to be an industrial or commercial property and make her lose her house.
Maybe she could live in one of the abandoned buildings on her “up and coming” properties.
Or better yet, fine her for the eyesore buildings on the properties and make her spend more dough to demolish them and clean up the land. That’ll be just enough to possibly make her file for bankruptcy and then she would be absolutely down in the dumps!!!” Paradigmfusion
2. Fine, Here's My Recipe, If You Dare
This workplace was all kinds of crazy.
“I’m a professional baker and have worked for various companies developing recipes and the like. I found a job at a local grocery store, working super early mornings on their pastries for the day. There were usually a few other people there, one of whom was a mixer.
Mixers typically follow a spec sheet with the weights of all the ingredients they need to batch mix. It’s kind of mindless work and doesn’t require much thought. He was a young guy, fresh out of his teens. We became fast coworker friends and enjoyed chatting it up about baking, and I’d help him put our supply order away.
Good times.
One day, a woman with a thick Russian accent came in and handed us business cards. She told us whatever we’re getting paid, her company would double it if we came to work for them. I scheduled an interview, thinking this would be a great opportunity for me.
It was a “new” grocery store concept, like a glitzy-glammy European-style Costco, whatever that means. When I went in for the interview, the place was literally still under construction. I met their lead baker, and we hit it off right away. He warned me that the big boss had “interesting tastes,” and we’d need to work with that.
No biggie. Better salary, let’s go.
They hired us both, and over the next several months, it was a really interesting and fun experience. The big boss (thick, burly Russian man, to the point and perpetually angry) wanted this place to be like Costco — mass production of quality pastries.
They were bringing in crazy amounts of new equipment, including folders, shapers, and injectors that were easily worth millions. We didn’t have much equipment to start, and we were doing a lot of mixing in trash cans. Remember my mixer buddy? Well, he was working on the bread dough, using spec sheets provided by our lead baker.
Over time, they were bringing on more staff, and it was a lot of fun developing new recipes, experimenting with ratios, and figuring out how to get over constraints for the types of products that Boss wanted.
Did I mention he was a jerk? Oh yeah. When he was reviewing some cheesecake I had made, he said, “Good job, sweetie.” I came back with, “Miss, ma’am, or my name is fine.” He scowled at me, and from that point on, he treated me like garbage.
We brought other women on staff. I watched him hit on them. Some of the others were cool with being harassed, I guess. This place was paying top dollar and had to get in good with the big boss, right?
So, the stage is set here.
Boss quickly turned his business into a game of Survivor. He’d fire people on the spot for whatever reason. One day, one of the people he sacked was our lead baker. It came as a surprise since he was developing all the recipes we’d be using.
I inherited a lot of his notes, and his development work was divided between me and the mixer. So, this whole time, mixer was kissing Big Boss’s butt pretty hard. He was seeing an open position with the lead baker gone and quickly became invested in the idea of him running the bakery show and making some serious coin.
At the same time, my relationship with Big Boss was quickly declining. For example, I had him sample some cinnamon rolls I had made, and he came back with, “I hate these; they’re terrible.” “What do you not like? We can change anything about them.
The dough? The filling? The icing?” “I don’t know. I just don’t like them.” On a hunch, I gave some cinnamon rolls from the same batch to another lady there he had eyes for and asked her if she’d present them to him as her own.
She offered him the same product I had given him minutes before, and he loved it. Huh.
Anyway, I noticed that my notes were out of place one day, and a coworker informed me that my mixer buddy was stealing my work and presenting it as his own.
He was also approaching me and asking a lot of baking questions, which was fine, but I knew that his knowledge of industrial ratio baking was mediocre at best. He was a mixer. Following a recipe is all he knew how to do. Knowing this, I made a decoy copy of my notes, but this time, I put really, really awful recipes, with huge amounts of salt or yeast.
Anyone who knew how to build a recipe could probably look at it and go, “Whoa, that’s a lot.” Not Mixer buddy.
My original plan was to leave this in an obvious spot as bait and let him steal the awful recipes, but Big Boss had other plans.
We sat down for a pre-launch meeting and he informed me I wasn’t going to be working in the Bakery anymore and being relegated to store setup. The mixer was going to be taking over as the Lead Baker (guess all that butt-kissing really paid off), and I was to give him all my notes so far.
NO PROBLEM BOSS.
A day later was when the fun really began.
Mixer mixed up a huge batch of super salty cake batter, and I heard Big Boss screaming at him about “way too much salt.” That’s not even where the fun begins. As we were setting up an industrial quantity baking equipment, we had to test the larger quantity mixing machines and did a test run for some bread dough…
with my decoy recipe that had triple the yeast and sugar. As it didn’t come out right, Mixer had to throw it away. His choice? The dumpster out back in the dead heat of summer. Hundreds of pounds of dough. The fun thing about massive amounts of bread dough is that it doesn’t magically stop rising if you throw it away, especially in a hot dumpster.
A few hours later, I spied out back to see Mixer buddy shoveling this massive blob of dough into trash bags that had exploded from the dumpster like an uncovered blender spewing out a yeast-laden smoothie.
Sweet revenge. Now, about the Mafia thing… this store was really strange. They had been ordering doubles of all the crazy industrial baking equipment and storing them in the back. We had nowhere to put any of this. I also looked up the company they were subcontracted under, and it was to a dead address in Russia.
Big Boss also had armed security guards everywhere. This was a grocery store, mind you. I had a feeling that this company was more of a front for laundering a bunch of cash. I eventually was fired by Big Boss, which was great because I had been job hunting, full-well knowing this business was a sinking ship. I had a new job lined up already. They had their grand opening, did business for three months, then closed. RIP Mixer.”
1. You'll Wish You Were Never Unfaithful To Me
“Figured I’d share it here for anyone who’s been two-timed on recently and needs some catharsis as this is pretty fresh.
I met “Jane” after amicably ending a long-term relationship. I didn’t think I’d want to be with anyone again, but Jane and I really clicked, and it was such a nice escape.
We hung out as friends before moving on to seeing each other, and within 6 months, we had moved in together. I had long since gotten over my ex, and Jane and I were doing great and regularly talking about the future. I was fairly socially awkward and only had a few good friends before meeting her, whereas she had a large circle of acquaintances and friends she introduced me to who became good friends of mine as well.
About a year into our relationship, Jane informs me that she had a one-night stand with someone she had met at the bar. She begs for forgiveness, says she’s so sorry, that she wasn’t used to booze, all the usual excuses. Me not wanting to lose this relationship too and having invested so much time thinking about my future with this girl, I believe her.
It wasn’t easy, and I ended up in therapy for my anxiety, but we worked through it after a lot of talks and crying and long nights, gradually rebuilding trust after she reassured me regularly that I was the one for her, and she was still committed to our relationship.
I confided in a few close mutual friends, who kept it to themselves.
Everything seemed back on track, and I thought we healed.
Another year passes when I notice Jane seems off. She’s gone more often, more secretive of her phone, I’ll wake up to find her on the computer instead of in bed.
Red flags flying. One weekend, she tells me she’s going to her mother’s to help her with “spring cleaning.” I don’t really get along with or speak to her mother. Her mother is an incredibly religious woman who was already upset with Jane for living with me before marriage and a few other personal decisions on her end and feels as if she has control over her life due to financially supporting her, which is why I assume she figured it’d be a safe bet I wouldn’t talk to her mom.
A few hours after she left, I called her a few times, and it went right to voicemail, meaning her phone was off. So, I called her mother knowing she wouldn’t answer me and left a voicemail asking if Jane had made it to her house safely and that it had been hours, and I hadn’t heard from her.
A few minutes pass, and she calls me back and tells me that she called Jane and couldn’t get an answer as I knew she wouldn’t. She started asking when she left, etc., etc. I told her she left that morning to help her with spring cleaning.
This was news to her mother, who never spoke to her about that. Her worrying about Jane had her talking.
I sit there thinking about what I’ll tell Jane when she speaks to her mom and how I have time to think of an excuse. She gets home later that night and seems totally nonchalant.
Turns out her phone is still off, so she hasn’t even gotten the calls from me or her mom yet. Perfect. I ask her how her day went, she tells me how much she hates dusting (“There was so much on the top of the cabinets!”) and how they had to carry stuff down to the basement (“An elevator would have been nice!”), all that good stuff.
I then decide to let her know I was aware she hadn’t been to her mom’s. Long story short, she admits to going behind my back again and had been doing so since I had forgiven her for the first time.
While I was dealing with the anxiety and insecurity, while she was reassuring me it would never happen again and I was the only one for her, while we talked about buying a place and all our goals, she was messing around with the same dude, mostly online but, had met up with him every so often.
I basically shut down entirely and went to stay with a friend and told Jane it was over. The more I thought about it, the more my sadness turned to anger, and the stupider I felt for giving her a second chance. I had wasted two years of my life and made myself vulnerable to someone I fell in love with who I thought loved me and made a fool of me.
Jane was inconsolable, calling me and my friend who I was staying with, texting, and threatening to show up in hopes of “fixing it.” She was on the verge of a breakdown, claiming she’d do anything, talk to therapists, give me total access to her accounts, anything she could do to make it right to take back the past, which is when I saw the opportunity to get back at her.
I told her I wanted to be able to forgive her, but big changes needed to happen in order for me to do that. She jumped at the opportunity. I told her I needed to be sure she was serious about our future. First, I wanted to look at renting a bigger place, somewhere without “bad memories.” We were month to month, so I gave my landlord notice and asked her to go through the process of securing us a new lease elsewhere as I “couldn’t handle it” right then.
I then told her that if we’re going to learn to trust again, I want to start taking steps towards an engagement. (“I don’t want to focus on the past. If I do, I’ll want to leave. I just want to focus on the future.”) And the first step should be a joint account and that I still trust her with finances, to which she agreed.
I deposited a few hundred into the account, told her I had spent the rest of my savings on paying 2 months advance rent to my buddy I was staying with, and he’d give it back to me in installments since I’d be moving out sooner than planned.
Now that this was set up. I figured I wanted to ruin her social life, but I knew it would take some more plotting to do that.
So, I told her to come back to our apartment. And we stayed there waiting out the end of the month.
We cried together, she was overwhelmingly affectionate, let me watch her delete her social media pages, made me breakfast most days. She was just “so sorry.” I wanted to scream at her so badly, but instead, I’d ask for comfort and reassurance and play the wounded animal.
We had plenty of makeup love too (which is the only thing I feel slightly guilty about). She was sure to be extra adventurous for my sake, so when I asked if I could take some photos, she was all for it.
During this time, I had been distant from our mutual friends, turning down invites and saying things like, “Jane wouldn’t want me to go” or asking a few one on one for advice for how do they handle it when their partner gets mad.
“Does your partner ever break stuff or slap you? No, no, Jane would never do that! I was just wondering.”
Then, shortly before we planned to move into the new place, I had cold feet. I told her I didn’t think I could do it and that I just didn’t trust her.
She was frantic, pleading with me not to leave again, and begging for something she could do to fix it. So, I told her I believed our social circle put her up to it. She swore up and down that no one had any idea.
But I asked how could I believe her? She lied to me twice before; I don’t trust her around them and that a fresh start means new people in our lives too and that I’d never feel comfortable again as these people that I don’t know if I can trust were still around.
I wore her down until she agreed to ghost them all. But that wasn’t enough for me. I told her that I needed the bridge to be burnt because I don’t trust them. So, I had her re-join and send a message to the group chat complaining about “fake friends, backstabbers” and how she was better without them, then block them all.
She cried for a long time over that, but if it was what I needed to stay, she’d get over it. I had a bunch of messages from mutual friends asking “What the heck? to which I told them it was complicated, and I’d talk soon.
A few more days pass, and it’s time to move into the new place.
We spend the day moving some things in, and Jane is practically giddy talking about our future plans. I tell her to pick up anything she needs from her mom’s, and I’m going to get some stuff from my parents’ place, and we’ll meet back at the apartment that night.
As soon as she leaves, I call my friend, and we pack up everything I had brought over and take it back to his place. Then I message my friends, telling them Jane had been abusive the last few months (lie), which is why I didn’t go out and that the reason she had blocked them is because she thought I told them and that they were telling me to leave her.
I then went to the bank and drained our joint account, which had about $400 from me and about $3,700 and some change from her.
Then I sent an email to Jane’s mother claiming to be an angry ex who had access to my phone, including all those naughty photos I took with Jane.
“Just thought you should know what your inappropriate daughter and that piece of garbage get up to.” And lastly, I had my friend hit me in the eye twice, swelling it up, then blocked Jane and asked two of our mutual friends to meet up with me.
And just like that, it was over. I told them how Jane had become mentally and physically abusive over the past few months after I caught her going behind my back.
I showed them the screenshots of her chats with this guy. I told them I had kept quiet to keep the peace, how she lashed out at all of them when she thought they had been helping me behind her back, how it was so out of character, how she threw a remote at me and swelled my eye when we were moving, and that’s when I knew I needed to leave and why I needed to take the to get to safety.
Jane showed up to my friend’s house looking for me while he told her I had moved and would call the cops if she showed up again while I hid upstairs. I heard how she frantically tried to find me to figure out what was happening and reached out to our mutual friends to make amends and tell them it was all my idea, only to discover the ones I had been talking to and subtly alluding to being physically hurt for weeks as well as the ones who remembered me coming to them after the first time she went behind my back and the ones who had seen my eye, had passed along the information to her entire social circle, and she was met with threats, insults and being ghosted by everyone she knew.
How she told the last mutual friend she spoke to before he ghosted her that her mother had said she’d “pray for her” and cut her off financially for living “an unhealthy lifestyle” until she can “smarten up” after seeing the photos, which she can’t prove I’ve ever sent as her mother certainly wouldn’t have kept them, and that she’s severely depressed.
She’s trapped in a 6-month lease with zero cashflow, no friends to rely on, and no one to help her stay afloat aside from maybe her former fling should she run to him. I’ll be using her moola to cover rent on a new apartment for myself and bought my friend a nice gift for being my accomplice in this.
I plan to stay in therapy, both to get over this and to work through my feelings and how low I stooped to get revenge, as I don’t want to carry this negativity with me in the future. After that, I plan to re-learn how to be single and enjoy life on my own, with the friends I inherited to keep me company.”
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