People Dish Out Their Pettiest Revenge Stories
34. Angry That I'm Driving In The Middle Of The Road? I'm Just Copying What You're Doing
“I pick up and drop off my kids at school every day. Their school is on this little residential street. While it is little, there is enough room for parked cars on one side, and still room for two vehicles in opposite directions to go by each other—if the drivers are competent.
The street is a dead-end street too and there’s a roundabout at the end to turn around. All the parents pick up or drop off, drive to the end, turn around, and go wherever.
There’s this one jerk of a parent who drives a vehicle bigger than she can handle.
Whenever I see her, she’s always driving right down the center of the street. A few times we were going in opposite directions and I had to almost drive onto the sidewalk to avoid a head-on collision. Honking does nothing. I don’t know if she’s just that self-centered or a lousy driver, or both.
But I’ve had it.
Yesterday she did it again. And instead of getting out of her way, I also went right down the middle of the street. She stopped her car and gestured me to go around her. I stopped too and gestured for her to go around me.
She couldn’t believe the audacity! How dare somebody take up the whole road and tell HER to go around?
She rolled down her window and yelled, ‘What the heck are you doing?’
I yelled back, ‘The exact same thing YOU are doing!’
She huffed and puffed and gestured how ridiculous I was being. I gestured the exact same way back to her.
She had to almost drive onto the sidewalk to go around me.”
33. This Woman Complained About Me At Work, But It Backfired Miserably Against Her
“My revenge story happened a few years ago. I worked in a medical office. Where I sat had three desks in a line next to each other. I had to share a phone with a coworker whom I sat next to that I will call Danielle.
Danielle had worked at the company in my department for a very long time. She had the most seniority in our department at her job level and really acted like she was untouchable. I had worked there for about two years at this point.
My job title was above hers (but I’m not her supervisor or anything) so at times I would have to delegate tasks to her and other coworkers at that job level. I always dreaded having to ask for her help. A majority of the time she gave me attitude when I needed her to complete a task.
Working with her was mentally exhausting. She always had personal issues that she would bring to work. Which is fine because it felt like we were a big family and we all supported each other but she was on another level.
She would make many personal calls on the office phone to various family members on a regular basis. She was the definition of an energy vampire. Some days she wouldn’t even say anything and the energy would still be drained from the room.
Some days I was honestly a little scared by her. Didn’t know which side of her I was going to get. I was not the only person in my department that felt this way.
So one day I had to urgently call a charge nurse and I picked up the phone really fast, not realizing that Danielle was currently using the phone with her headset.
I panicked when I saw it and put the receiver back, inadvertently hanging up Danielle’s phone call. I apologized immediately and then left the desk area to continue to call on another phone. I thought nothing of it, thinking that she could just call the patient back.
No big deal right?
Well, apparently it was a big deal to her. Another coworker informed me that Danielle had gone to our manager to complain about me for hanging up on a call with a patient.
So of course, I’m in my head thinking, ‘What the heck?!’
It doesn’t seem right that she would complain to our manager over an honest mistake.
I tell a couple of coworkers who had witnessed me hang up on her call and they were in disbelief over her complaining as well. When Danielle is not around, I go and look on our shared phone since we can see the phone numbers for outgoing and incoming calls.
I scroll through the phone log and see the number Danielle was on the phone with. She called a 1-800 number. And was on the phone for over an hour! And other people were doing her work because of this call.
I was peeved, to say the least. I google the number and see that it is for a rental car company!
So now I am fuming! She had the audacity to tell on me for hanging up on a phone call that she shouldn’t haven’t even been on at work.
Naturally, I went to the manager telling her I heard Danielle had complained about me for hanging up on her phone call with a patient. Our manager confirmed what was told to her by Danielle. She said it seemed like it was odd that Danielle even brought it to her attention.
I told my manager after I found out about Danielle’s complaint to her, I went through our shared phone and saw the number she was on the phone call with. I informed her it was with a rental car company and how long the call lasted (to absolutely be petty).
My manager thanked me for this information and I continue on with my workday.
Danielle was fired 2 days later. We worked in a union and this was the final nail in her coffin. With our union, it was pretty difficult to get fired.
Management has to have a good-sized case against you in order to let you go. It was definitely so much easier not having her at work anymore. My coworkers and I no longer had to walk on eggshells fearing her wrath. Energy vampire got the stake and the sun was shining!”
32. You Want Me To Cover Your Shift After You Refused To Come In? Nah, I'm Good
“I worked for Subway a while back and always took on people’s shifts because people are lazy and I like money. One day, I got a call from a girl (I’ll call her Gertrude) who I worked with at another store asking me to cover for her the following day cause she sprained her ankle.
I was scheduled to work at the same time as her but promised I’d do my best to find someone to cover for her. Unfortunately, the only person who wasn’t working or unavailable was the biggest screw-up in the store (Karen seems fitting).
I reached out to Karen, told her Gertrude’s predicament, and that she was scheduled for a six-hour shift which followed mine. I told her I’d stay and cover her shift if she worked the four-hour shift for Gertrude. I was actually surprised when Karen said yes.
I called Gertrude back to tell her the good news and all was well in the universe. The next morning, two hours before Gertrude’s shift started, she called me all concerned asking if I knew anyone else that could cover the shift.
I asked her what happened to Karen and she said Karen texted her saying she can’t make it. I was mad. I texted Karen and asked why she couldn’t go and she said she didn’t have a ride. I told Gertrude who then offered to pick Karen up and drop her back off.
I texted Karen to tell her Gertrude was down to drive her and all I got back was, ‘Nah, I’m good.’
I was so mad, especially since I was the one who came up with the bright idea to give Karen any semblance of confidence.
I apologized profusely and Gertrude said she’d figure something out.
Turns out, she ended up working for two hours on a jacked-up ankle before her manager came in to send her home. When I was almost done with my shift, Karen texted asking, ‘Can you still cover my shift?’
Any other day, I would’ve said yes without hesitation, but she made me look bad and made a poor girl go to work on her feet with a busted ankle, so I waited until a half-hour before her shift started and responded, ‘Nah, I’m good.’
Karen shows up super ticked off and I didn’t say a word to her. I sent Gertrude a screenshot of the conversation and she was super grateful and said I made her day. (Does this make me an Avenger? Or a Revenger at least?)”
31. This Couple Only Paid A Third Of What They Owed Me, So I Gave Them A Third Of Their Website
“I had a trophy-wife-client who had a frozen yogurt business paid for by her husband. They contacted me and asked me to design and build a new website for her business. I gave them a quote and they asked if they could pay in three installments.
After we all agreed to the terms, I had written approval, and I received my 33% deposit, I got cracking.
We had regular check-ins and they were happy with the progress until one day they just went quiet. They were already behind on the second payment and I was growing impatient.
I was done with the site and just needed final approval and payment before launching it but I couldn’t get a hold of either of them. I eventually got hold of the lady at her day job after weeks of being ghosted.
She calmly told me that they found someone cheaper and that they won’t be paying the remaining 66% even though the project was complete and all their feedback was addressed. She told me that I could just give her 33% of the files and move on with my life.
I made it clear that websites don’t really work if you only upload 33% of the files, sarcastically, at which point she hung up the phone.
I still had their FTP details for their brand domain that housed their current (old) website, so I decided to take revenge.
I created a page with an animated, fake loading bar that was stuck at 33%. Underneath the loading bar was the message: ‘This company does not pay their suppliers. They decided to pay only a third of the price so now they have only a third of a website.’
I went as far as to download the website files, split them up in roughly three portions (file size), and upload a zip folder containing a third of the files to the FTP folder.
This way I actually gave them the 33% they paid for and I could show the file size to prove it.
I also permanently deleted the old site’s files from the folder so they couldn’t restore from a backup. Not that they’d have a clue how to do that. They threatened to sue me, I’m still waiting.”
30. When You Get The Rare Chance To End A Beast, You Take That Golden Opportunity
“Today I filled in for a coworker who was out sick. I needed the hours and she needed coverage so everyone wins—well, almost. The second I clocked in, my boss (let’s call her ‘K’) pulled me aside for a serious talk.
She handed me a write-up for discussing salary with other employees. I am paid a good bit more than others being cross-trained and having relevant experience and education to back it up. The issue is I’m paid more than the assistant manager and she’s angry that I make two more dollars than her and has eight years with the company and I’ve been here only two months.
My boss says it’s a final notice, next time is termination as per company rules. I pointed out this is in violation of not one but two federal laws and she retorted, ‘This is a right to work state, I’ll fire you for chewing gum.
Don’t press it!’
So I bit my tongue and worked my shift without complaint.
I get home, do a little research and find the exact place to help me: The National Labor Relations Board. I talk to an agent who helps me through the process of filing a claim and helps me upload both the pieces of incriminating evidence with corporate approval and my manager’s signed confession of retaliation and corporate policy in clear violation of federal law.
They can’t really defend themselves when drafting the incriminating paperwork to intimidate me.
The real kicker is the penalty, on top of restitution to employees affected (me) they also lose government contracts… this hurts my job extra hard as a pharmacy. As a pharmacy tech, I know for a fact that over 50% of our funds are from Medicare and Medicaid programs that we will lose permanently.
I’ve already got a job lined up and I was planning on jumping ship the day my new one started but I couldn’t be happier to burn the ship down on the way out. I haven’t even informed my current job that I’ll be leaving the second my background check clears and I pick up my badge with a real health care provider that will actually put my skills to use.
Poor K better hope she doesn’t chew any gum because her boss is gonna crucify her when they get served with papers. K can blame me all she wants but at the end of the day, she wrote her own termination paperwork by vilifying me for exercising my rights. Pretty petty on my part but when you get a rare chance to end a beast why not take the golden opportunity?”
29. Give Yourself Free Refills? Here's Your Change In Ones And Pennies
“Back some years ago I worked at a gas station convenience store. It was a very straightforward job with much more sitting involved than actual work. I honestly enjoyed the job because it felt very balanced. The workload was not heavy and at the same time, I would say about 90% of the customers were very pleasant with some regulars that I absolutely loved.
Occasionally you got a jerky customer, but it was never anything I couldn’t handle nor was it extreme to begin with. Most days I had a bad customer was typically just someone who decided that the price of gas and smokes was somehow my fault, but still nothing I lost sleep over.
I honestly feel the hardest thing about this job at least for me was the mental aspect of it in the sense of watching the same customers blow all their income on lottery tickets and saying, ‘It only takes one!’ and then coming back the next day and doing it all over again.
Or the entitlement/lack of consideration of ‘well off’ people who can’t be bothered to say hello, please, or thank you. This is a me thing as in I am trying to put myself in their mindset but stressing myself out for nothing trying to make sense out of all of it.
All in all though, it was a good starting job at least for me and what my experience was. I can understand those who feel the opposite as I had friends in the same company that had worse experiences/interactions than me.
With that out of the way let me tell you guys a petty story about a lady who came in to buy a soda.
This day I had a lot of one-dollar bills coming into my register, normally it was more 20-dollar bills than anything.
We didn’t start off with a lot of cash in the register and would have signs up encouraging our customers to pay with the smallest bill possible for this reason. Plus, we didn’t keep a lot of 20-dollar bills on hand as we had to deposit them into a safe once they accumulated and any 50- or 100-dollar bills were deposited immediately.
Once they were in this safe, we had no way of getting them out.
There have been plenty of days just starting a shift where I had to refuse service for people who only had one hundred dollar bills otherwise, I would be screwed on change for the rest of the day.
This lady and her friend walk in and the lady decides that she wants to get a fountain drink and starts filling her cup. She fills it just a little bit and then stops and takes a drink. She does this again a second time, a third, a fourth, a fifth, etc.
She does it for a good 5 minutes straight I would say. Now I would like to speak up and say something, but the owners of the store, unfortunately, couldn’t care less about us doing the right thing and more about the customers coming back, so I just stood there annoyed while they basically drank two refills worth of soda.
She finally makes her way over to the counter after raising her blood sugar plenty and is ready to pay. Her total comes out to $1.49. She pulls out her wallet and shuffles past a bunch of one and five dollar bills and decides this is the perfect moment to pay with a 50-dollar bill.
This annoys me just due to her lack of consideration. She just stands and waits for me to grab her change while her friend is just standing on the side.
I decide at that moment to be petty, and I proceed to grab her change of $48.51… all in ones and pennies.
I hand her the messy and fat stack of bills. She has a dumbfounded look on her face and before she can say anything, I just tell her to have a nice day. She awkwardly backs away and leaves with her friend and I just continue with my shift feeling like I had a small (but petty) victory.”
28. Our Friend Leeched Off All Our Purchases, So I Refused To Give Her My Food
“My best friend had a high school friend who was like a leech. This leech liked to go to events on her friends’ dime and guilt her partner into getting her big-ticket items because she didn’t have a job to pay for things.
Worst of all, the leech was constantly late to planned meetings. She liked to make advanced plans, not show up, then text 6 hours later that she couldn’t make it. Somehow, her no-shows were never her problem, even though it was her who couldn’t get her act together to keep her promises.
Things with the leech came to a head during one weekend event I attended with my best friend, one of her high school friends, and the leech.
Now, the high school friend paid for a hotel room in advance, with the expectation that we would all pay her our fair share back.
Yet, when the time came, the bill was split between 3, not the 4 of us, because somehow the leech wasn’t paying.
If that wasn’t bad enough, we went into the event with the expectation of bringing snacks for the group, so when we took breaks in the hotel room, we could munch on food.
Guess which member brought no food, yet still helped herself to the communal food pile?
During the event, there were food trucks where we could buy extra food for ourselves to eat. I had noticed how the leech liked to beg and help herself to food from the other two in our group.
Eventually, I got the munchies during a time when the rest of the group wasn’t hungry, and I got myself some poutine. I was really looking forward to it because I had never had poutine before this point.
Well, the leech saw I bought poutine and begged for some.
As this was my first poutine, I decided I didn’t want to share the food I bought especially for myself with the leech. My frustration with her inability to pay for herself was boiling over, especially because ‘I have no money’ leech was somehow able to buy merchandise at said event, but never seemed to have said money when it came time for food.
Remember the leech had access to ‘free’ food at the hotel room the rest of us brought to the event. She had access to food at any time, even if it was inconvenient to access.
I expected some backlash at not enabling the leech, but the rest of my group didn’t care I decided not to share my food with the leech.
They even stepped in to remind the leech it was my food, and there was plenty of food to munch on at our hotel room.
The leech sulked but ultimately decided not to return to the hotel room because she wanted to have fun more than she wanted to eat.
In fact, the whole situation backfired on the leech when she later complained about being lightheaded, got medical attention from the event medical team on site, and demanded our group driver pick her up from the hospital because she wanted to get seen at the ER.
There was nothing wrong with the leech, other than not eating when there was food available, which was the cause of her feeling sick. The leech wanted to go to the hospital because she could, as she was unemployed and it cost her nothing to visit the ER (yes, she’s the reason why we have to pay taxes for the uninsured using the ER as a primary care doctor).
Unexpectedly, it turns out the group driver didn’t want to drive to the hospital to pick the leech up if she got herself sent there because it would mean the driver would miss out on part of the event she paid for because of leech’s theatrics.
This whole saga, plus some other truths about the leech which came to light during the weekend, eventually led to the eviction of the leech from the high school friend group. I like to think part of the well-deserved retribution was the leech’s over-the-top reaction to being denied my food.”
27. Steal The Crew's Shirts For Yourself? I'll Just Take Them Out Of Your Bag
“About 20 years ago, I was working on a small vessel that had a role in raising the Civil War Ironclad Monitor. Naturally, on a historic operation like this, there are always ‘commemorative t-shirts’. The Control Team had some sweet shirts made up with the US Navy Seals logo (or maybe SeaBees, I don’t recall).
They were nice shirts, and our captain went aboard just before our departure from North Carolina to discuss with the Control Team (based on the crane barge we were towing) about the trip back to Texas.
When the Captain came back to the crew van, we could all see he was carrying some shirts (which he had rolled up tight and tried to ‘hide’ from our view.) When I pressed him about what he had, he hemmed and hawed.
I asked point-blank if those shirts were for all of the crew, but he snapped they had been given to him, which I knew was bull. The control Team had given him 5 shirts to the crew to thank them, as is customary.
He stuffed the shirts into his bag and we made out way to the dock to catch the launch out to our boat. While riding the launch back to our boat, he went up to the wheelhouse to bull crap with the captain of the launch.
I walked out the back to where our luggage was stored, took 4 of the shirts out, and slipped one each into each crewmembers’ duffel bag. The captain didn’t find out they were missing until we were back aboard our boat, and he wasn’t about to demand everyone ‘give back’ the shirts that were intended for them in the first place.
So, not so much Petty Revenge as ‘righting a wrong.’ Still, he never liked me after that.”
26. My Dad Yelled At Us For Getting Ready At The Right Time, So We Made Him Wait
“Flew in for a family funeral several years ago, and was reliant on other people to get me from point A to point B. Several of us were, but there were plenty of people with vehicles who were willing to cart us around.
It was fun to get to know my much younger cousins (who were driving us), too!
The last night in town, my dad tells me and three others that we will leave the hotel at 7:30 the next morning for breakfast… before we all leave to go home.
My dad told us each 7:30 am, no less than three times per person.
We stayed up late, enjoying the time together, and my alarm was the first to go off the next am, at 6:50. We all tumbled out of bed and were exhausted zombies… late nights, grieving, enjoying family.
At 7:10, my dad texts me that he’s ready to go. Ummmm. I told him we just woke up. He was MAD and told me he was leaving at 7:15. Look, I don’t EVER wake up in a good mood, and I do my best to NOT text until I’ve been awake at least an hour because I’m so irritable.
But now I’m even more irritable because my dad then starts blowing up my phone, and telling me he never told us that we were leaving at 7:30! He kept arguing with me via text.
I sat there and realized that this has been my entire life… him telling us a time, then wanting to leave earlier because HE was ready… then he yells and spits and sputters.
I texted dad back, and told him that we would be ready AT 7:30 like he told each of us, and not sooner. He blew up my phone again and again, and I put it down and started getting ready.
So we actually all got ready and packed by 7:25.
And all four of us sat down in our hotel room and waited till 7:30… because we were feeling petty!
At 7:29, my brother stopped at our room and asked if we wanted to ride with him to the restaurant. So we loaded into his vehicle, and I texted dad at 7:30 that my brother came and got us, and we left with him.
I was so glad to ride with my brother because I KNEW that if we rode with my dad, he would yell at us the entire way to the restaurant. And I realized I was a grown adult in my 40s, and I no longer needed to let that man yell at me! That his gaslighting and yelling and belittling was harassment, and it was time to stop it from happening to me!
So, we all laughed about being petty and making Dad wait… and then letting someone else drive us after all the waiting!”
25. You Want To Take Me Back After You Denied My Time Off? Too Late, I Have Other Offers
“My first job out of University was in a corporate laboratory. It was okay. It wasn’t very demanding and while it didn’t pay very well to start, they were pretty good for giving out raises and promotions. You would never be wealthy there but you could get by at least.
I worked there for 10 years and over time it became a progressively horrible place to work. The company was sold 2x over that time, one of those times to an investment firm. Both sales brought major cuts to ‘improve efficiency.’ But it was even worse when they took something away but had the audacity to try and tell us how much better off we would be because of it.
One example, they axed X-mas bonuses and replaced them with an achievement award, so instead of every employee getting around $1500, seven employees out of 1000 would get an extra week of vacation and a $3000 travel voucher. Predictably the cuts were especially bad while the investment firm were the owners as they looked to make a quick buck flipping the company (wage freezes, layoffs, etc.).
By the end of my time, it was a terrible place to work. There were basically 2 groups of people there—those who had been there long enough to have moved up and just checked out, and young people or new grads who they burnt through like crazy.
Almost no new hires lasted more than a year, most left within a few months.
So I started looking for a new job in earnest. I always was but I’m not really one to embrace change. I was in a somewhat decent spot at the company from getting in a few years before things went to crap, and I’m terrible at interviewing.
So I ended up going back to school part-time to try to alter my career path a bit.
Once my classwork ended I needed to complete a practicum to finish my degree, this is where the issues leading to the petty revenge start.
I asked for a leave of absence to do it, my supervisor was supportive but the lab manager said no. So I go ahead and secure my placement—it takes some time but a couple of months later I make my case again, still have support from my supervisor but the manager says no.
The company seems to be under the impression that I’ll just decide to stay if they don’t give me the leave.
I give my notice a couple of days later and for the last month, I block the manager from getting into his car using my car whenever I can.
He arrives at 8:00 and I come in at 9:00, but most employees come through the back ’employees’ entrance, he goes through the front to open up the lab for the day, which means no one else is ever parked near him.
He’s very overweight so I just parked my car as close to his driver’s side as possible and there’s no way he can get in. He goes out to eat and run errands at lunch every day and has a thing about people seeing him eat.
I never saw it, but I’m guessing climbing over the passenger seat when you’re 350lbs is a pain in the rear end.
As some extra revenge, my replacement was terrible, one of the older checked out staff members, my job wasn’t hard but I was a ‘microbiologist’ so you do need a degree, experience is huge (knowing how to prep and analyze samples from various clients, when to expect samples, etc.), and it’s super time-sensitive with everything arriving at or near max hold times, so could be stressful for people. After I finished my placement they offered me my job back, but as a contract with no benefits (I had medical, sick leave, 4 weeks vacation). I had other offers in my new career path and said no.”
24. What's The Matter, Mother In Law? Got A Splinter?
“Some years ago my family (partner, newborn, me) was staying with my partner’s mother (the MIL) for ten long days. She’s hard to get along with. I’ll spare you the details but believe me when I say she is a true nightmare.
By day 2 her boiling level was hitting extreme.
The situation was exacerbated in the following situations: I dared to place an unrinsed eggshell in the bin, lest I know the sacred chicken embryonic disposal law of 1973; and more importantly, I was innocently making my way down the hallway in my pajamas and ‘slipper socks’ when I suddenly felt a sharp spike in my foot.
It was like I’d been impaled. I couldn’t get my foot around to see, so MIL inspected and claimed I was lying as there was nothing there but a small red dot. And, I was scuffing my feet so it would have been my fault anyway (I was not).
To make it worse, Partner loudly exclaimed, ‘Glad it wasn’t the baby!” after which we received a crazed diatribe insisting she has the grandkids over all the time and prides herself on making sure the house is safe for them – and how dare he suggest it wasn’t!
Well as each day progressed I insisted there was something in there.
And sure enough, it blew up like a balloon. The GP that finally removed it brought the junior docs and nurse in to watch—it was basically a 5cm x 0.4cm shard of floorboard. They were amazed I could walk (I barely could!).
I brought the specimen jar back, MIL still wouldn’t believe me but couldn’t deny it when I went and fit the shard back into place. Then it was my fault for scuffing my feet. I was responsible for splitting the wood and lifting that shard up.
It wasn’t the floorboards, oh no. Not HER floorboards. Not the original 1920s floorboards that desperately needed a reworking, so threadbare in parts that you could see through to the crawl space below.
So I set my alarm for 3 am and stealthily set about work on the floorboards, lifting loose shards every here and there throughout the house. It only took another day until I heard an early morning ‘Ouch!’
What’s the matter, MIL? Got a splinter?”
23. This Guy Didn't Want Me To Fix His Computer, So He Got To Wait Four Hours
“I’m a female that works in IT and has done so for over 15 years at this point. I’ve done everything from tier 1 support to server management and at one point was the IT Manager for a company for many years.
Needless to say, I’m pretty well versed in computers and troubleshooting. I had moved states and just started out at a new company, only been there a few weeks.
A ticket came in for someone that basically said, ‘My computer isn’t working’ so I walked over to their desk to see what was going on.
Being new, I’m very sweet and I guess to some people, it means I’m an idiot. The guy (I later learned was in his 50’s and we’ll call him ‘Jack’) angrily asked who I was and where his ‘former technician’ was.
I explained he was no longer there and I was a new tech. He then asked for two other people, who were both busy, and finally just said, I’ll just wait until they’re done.
Now, I understand there are some people who just prefer to work with specific others and that’s fine, but this was not the case.
I said, ‘Okay, no problem, I’ll let them know and they can help when they’re available.’
Being fairly new, I didn’t want to make a big issue of it so I just let them both know he had asked for either of them specifically.
‘Tom’ (tech 1) just rolled his eyes and said, ‘Then he can wait.’
‘Bill’ (tech 2) kind of chuckled and said, ‘That’s fine, I’ll go over there this afternoon.’
For the next few hours, we were sharing stories of ridiculous tickets we’ve gotten in our careers and some of the jerks we’ve had to deal with.
About 4 hours later, Bill decides to head over to Jack’s desk to see what the issue was. He started complaining about his monitor flickering and going black every few minutes and how he hasn’t been able to get any work done all day because we took so long to respond and now he’s going to be late submitting his project that was due today.
Bill fiddles with a few things and after about 30 minutes, calls us up and specifically asks for me to come over. I get there and he explains what he saw and everything he checked so far but still couldn’t get it working.
‘No problem, lemme have a look!’ Within 20 seconds, I figured out the issue and within 5 minutes, the issue was resolved. Jack just gave me a solemn ‘thanks’ afterward.
Bill made a big show of how I was such an awesome addition to their team and he was so glad I got hired there.
It felt good!
We walked away and secretly, I knew Bill knew how to fix it and it was all for show but still, I have an amazing team! I’ve not had a problem with anyone else in the company (other than the normal, most people hate IT regardless).
For anyone wondering, it was a driver update.”
22. The City Complained That My Lawn Was Too Tall, So I Stopped Mowing It
“The city would send me letters telling me my lawn was too tall and that if I don’t mow it they’ll send out a contractor to mow it at a price of something like $50/sqft. So I stopped mowing their lawn.
My property ended 15 feet before the curb. Not a 15’ easement, it ended there. My easement was 10’ back from that meaning 25’ from the curb.
Then after it got too high, I copy-pasted their letter to me and certified mailed it back to the city.
They also sent me a letter saying I needed to mow it at about the same time.
I looked up my plat in the county records and referenced it back to them. Took pictures with a tape measure and reiterated that if they don’t take action soon I’m going to hire a contractor to mow it and charge them the same absurd rate they were going to charge me.
About a week later I come home from work and it’s been mowed. No bill just mowed. So I continued not mowing that 15’x50’ strip of grass for the next 5 or so years I lived there. I had even hired a kid to mow for me as I’d gotten too busy and very specifically told him not to mow that strip.”
21. This Gambling Tourist Was Super Obnoxious, So I Used His Winnings To Buy A Mini Fridge
“I run a small betting shop in a beach town that’s about 500kms from the big city. This summer, the town is packed and so is my shop, luckily.
During the afternoon there’s horse racing, so I have a big screen TV against the shop window so patrons can watch the races and come in the shop to place their bets.
Some are year-round customers but these days 80% are tourists, which spend significantly more than any locals.
Since it’s super hot during the afternoon and locals are very busy with work, they usually come in early and place their bets for the day and come back before closing to collect any winnings they may have gotten during the day.
Others prefer leaving some bucks and sending their bets right before each race, which I deduct from the funds they leave.
One of the tourists was placing a bet when my phone chimed and I started copying a bet from a local on the computer, and he asked me if he could do the same so he could stay at the beach instead of coming in.
I said sure, if you leave funds you can bet until it runs out, so he left me 2000 (which is about 100 US dollars) and I let him scan my WhatsApp QR code with his phone.
Right from the start, he was annoying.
I told him to type the bets so it’s easier for me to copy them, but he kept sending audio messages that were hard to understand because of the wind noise and he’d speak very fast because he was messaging me at the last possible second (the closer you bet before a race, the more accurate the payout for the horses).
He did this for a few days, coming in early, leaving some funds, and coming by closing time to collect his earnings. He was quite good/lucky so every day he’d get some winnings after all racing was done. About a week goes by and it happened.
After about five races he didn’t win a single one and the funds he left ran out. He sent me a message asking if he could bet on the remaining four races and he’d come by and pay me if he didn’t win any, and I said okay (dumb, I know, it’s a risk I try to avoid but sometimes it’s the price of business).
Of course, he didn’t win at all and was about $5000 in the red by the time the last race was finished. By closing time, I usually check all bets to make sure I didn’t miss a payout, and one of the guy’s has a big payout (about $12k).
I checked and realized I made a mistake because he messaged me at the very last second and it was not the horse he wanted to bet on. I thought he’d be thrilled when he came back so I put the funds aside (7k after deducting his bets) and closed up for the night.
What do you know? The next morning I notice he blocked me from WhatsApp. One of my regulars comes in and I ask if he’d seen the obnoxious guy and he mentions yesterday was his last day and today was returning home.
I told him what happened and he pulled out his phone, took a pic of the wrong bet with the payout printed on it, and thanked him for the tip for me. Turned out the locals have a WhatsApp group where they crap on about horses and jockeys and stuff and he asked to join.
He put the pic and the thanks on the group chat so everyone caught up to what had happened and started congratulating him.
After about two minutes he’s blowing up my phone, but of course, I was the one who blocked him, and being 500kms away didn’t help him much either. I used the extra funds to buy a nice mini-fridge that I let locals use to keep their drinks cool.”
20. I Was Getting Bullied, So I Gave My Chauffeur An Ominous Warning
“This was more than 10 years ago. I’m from a small town in Puerto Rico. The high poverty rate and prevalent ‘old school’ conservative mindset type of town. Imagine a small poor town in the southern part of the US, but Hispanic.
I’ve always been bullied since I can remember. I was a straight-A student, but my family was disregarded as very poor and uneducated. So everyone resented me because if my family was soo poor then I should have been a failure at school too, according to them.
My high grades allowed me to have an internship in my senior year of high school. I was allowed to only study part-time and work part-time as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic. My old bullies were so angry since most of my peers didn’t have the grades to have that arrangement being made for them.
Also, remember this was a very poor neighborhood.
So… bullies started harassing me, because of jealousy. The chauffeur ignored it. My dad and I went to the driver’s home to talk to him since he is also the owner of the bus line and he still ignored our pleas for help.
I was so afraid and nervous I honestly thought I was going to be physically injured from facing my bullies. Imagine +10 teenagers saying things and throwing things at me on the bus inciting me to fight them.
One day out of fear and desperation I thought to myself: ‘I can capitalize on me being shy, silent, and highly intelligent.’ You know…
the smart kid that goes crazy and starts killing people because people bully him/her kind of stereotype.
I got up and I walked to the chauffer and I told him: ‘Tomorrow if they continue bullying me and if you continue to not defend me I will do something….
and as the only adult here you will pay the legal consequences of my actions, you’ll regret it.’
That did it.
Next day comes, people start throwing stuff at me. The chauffeur abruptly stopped the bus in the middle of the street. Then he starts screaming out of his lungs, ‘STOP THIS RIGHT NOW, I will kick you out of the bus and you’ll never find a ride to school!’
That did it, no more bullying.
Thank God!
In retrospection, I’m lucky the police nor the FBI were involved… I’ve never been involved in school fights and I’m lucky I was still a minor. I didn’t have any plan b, I was not going to do anything, I had no weapons or means to defend myself. I just used psychological warfare to defend myself.
To this day I’m low key proud of myself for that moment.”
19. Switched Up My Presentation Slides? Have Fun Failing That Class
“When I was in college, we had a group project and one of the people in the group was required to submit the final presentation. A girl I considered my friend was in this class with me and she was chosen in our group to do the submitting.
I sent her my slideshow file and on the day of the presentation, I realized she messed up all the words in my presentation and rearranged things. My presentation looked sloppy and I felt embarrassed during my portion of the presentation.
It was too late for me to fix it so I went along with my presentation anyways. I ended up getting a bad grade on it since it was all messed up.
When I confronted her, she denied messing with it and went to the professor and told on me.
She said I was being unthankful for her submitting my presentation slides. After this happened I was upset but it was my word against hers. I couldn’t do anything about it so I accepted the bad grade. At the beginning of the next semester, she ran into me and acted like nothing ever happened.
She was complaining that she couldn’t find an easy class this semester and she needed a class she could get an easy A in. I became very petty and told her to take a class I took last semester which was insanely hard and not a lot of people could pass.
She was so happy to listen and ended up enrolling in that class.
Later in the semester she came up to me in a bad mood and said that she had to drop that class and couldn’t believe I thought it was easy.
Because of this, she had to pay the tuition even though she dropped it. I don’t feel bad about this. She messed with my grade in which I would’ve had to retake this class again, so I got my petty revenge.”
18. All Shift Exchanges Must Be Approved By Management? I'm Out Of Here Then
“In college days I worked as a waiter at a major chain restaurant—you know the one, they’re all identical. Marla (her real name, because screw you and your bad teeth, Marla), is scheduled to work Saturday morning, I’m scheduled for Saturday night.
Marla and I are working together Friday night, and she wants to get wasted after work. She wants to get VERY wasted. She wants to get so wasted she doesn’t think she can work Saturday morning. She asks me to trade shifts, my P.M.
for her A.M. shift. Normally this is a flat-out no, because Saturday night is usually pretty bank, but whatever—I’m lazy, I already have rent for the month, and I can take a chill Saturday A.M. shift to help a coworker get her drink on.
We make the trade.
I show up Saturday morning to start my shift. Just 45 or so minutes into the shift, business picks up. Place starts to be slamming busy.
Manager Dave (his real name because screw you and your ferrets, Dave) says, ‘Wow, you don’t usually work double shifts, I’m surprised you picked up this shift for Marla.’
(He’s right, I hated doubles, they’re exhausting bull crap and I refused to let them put those on my schedule).
‘Nah, we traded,’ I said. ‘A favor to her.’
‘That’s not what she told me this morning—she’s out all day.’
‘You must know I wouldn’t do that. We traded.’
‘I’m the manager, all shift exchanges must be approved by management, and I did not approve this trade.
You are working tonight.’
‘All shift exchanges must be approved by management?’ I repeated.
Manager Dave, the smug loser, replies, ‘Yes.’
‘And you didn’t approve this exchange, so I must work tonight?’
Manager Dave, savoring this moment of power: ‘That’s right.’
‘OK, this is Marla’s shift then.
See you at 4:00 when my shift starts.’
And I immediately walked out on that full house. Went home, ate a leisurely late breakfast, played some video games, and took a nap. Not sure if Marla got in any trouble for her stunt, but I definitely didn’t.
As bad as that loser Dave wanted to write me up, I didn’t do anything wrong, and the G.M. seemed amused if anything. I came back at 4:00 p.m. sharp and made a bill, smirking at Dave the Dumbledore Jerk (who, as a manager in that sad little place, works all day every day) the whole while.
Eat a cactus, Dave, and eat a cactus, Marla.”
17. You Wanna Finish That Puzzle? Too Bad I Stole One Of The Pieces
“Growing up, my sister and I would always steal puzzle pieces from each other and hide them if we hadn’t been caught during the steal—if you were caught, you had to put it back and bide your time to try again.
Anyway, I was living overseas and wasn’t due home for at least another 12 months. For Christmas that year, I bought my sister a 1000 piece puzzle. I thought about opening it and stealing a piece but didn’t want to risk losing it before I got back home.
So I decided to go for some petty mental revenge.
I took a piece out and took a photo of me holding the piece. I printed the photo and put it in the box, but I also put back the piece from the photo—as I said, I didn’t want to lose it, I just wanted to be an annoying little sister!
For a month after she got it, my sister kept asking me if I had stolen a piece and I refused to confirm or deny it.
My sister eventually gave in and counted all 1000 pieces to make sure they were all there before she started the puzzle. But my mother, who knew the truth and who was as petty as her children, kept interrupting and making her lose count.”
16. Steal My Newspaper? I'll Solve All The Crosswords Before You Can Take It
“To give some context, our house is in a community of like 8 houses that uses the same driveway out to an access road that leads to the main roads. So you’re looking at like 8 families that come into contact quite regularly.
Among this group, my house is the only one subscribed to an English newspaper. The others just read on the internet or just watch the news I guess.
I’ve subscribed to the newspaper because my sister is an English major and since we’re not native English speakers, I thought she’d find it helpful to read some standard English articles on a daily basis.
Well, that’s the context done. Not one month after the subscription started, we noticed we stopped getting the newspaper. A couple of days later I decide to call the newspaper distributors about it and they let me know that they have been sending the paper.
So, I decide to do some detective work, I check for the newspaper in the neighborhood trashcans, and sure enough, it’s in one of them.
Now this annoys me, so I ask my neighbor why he’s taking our newspaper and with a sheepish smile he goes, ‘Well I was just doing the crosswords and reading the comics then I spilled my drink onto it so I thought it wouldn’t be of use to anyone so I threw it in the trash.’
I respond with ‘If you want to just do that at least return it afterward, it doesn’t belong to you, I’m the one paying for the service.’
He promises to be careful and return it after he’s read it.
He doesn’t go through with his promise, not fully anyway. Instead, he now starts to cut out the crossword puzzles and the comic strips and then throws the newspaper into our compound. Now, this obviously is starting to get on my nerves.
So, revenge mode activated. I specifically set my alarm to wake up at the time the newspaper gets delivered and start taking it myself to the house each day (which is like 3 hours before I normally wake up) and go to sleep until I normally wake up.
Then I solve the crossword myself and then cut out the comic strip and also, I ask my sister to cut out any article she finds interesting and would like to read and finally I put the newspaper in the place the delivery guy usually drops it off on the next day, so now he only gets to see yesterday’s ‘solved’ crossword and no comic strip and some missing articles. Ever since I started doing this, he’s only taken the papers once and then probably realized what I’m about and has left the newspaper alone.
He probably hates my pettiness.”
15. My Colleague Cc'd My Boss To Get Me Into Trouble, So I Got Her In Trouble Instead
“To start, this woman is great as a person. As a co-worker, she is the worst. Let’s call her Regina. When I started at this place a year ago, Regina was to train me on an aspect of our job. I had to ask her to slow down and repeat herself several times because nothing made sense (keep in mind I’ve worked in this industry for 8 years longer than her).
My boss was able to explain it clearly in 5 minutes and I’ve never had an issue.
Shortly after starting, I noticed Regina would CC our boss on every email she sent to me. Regina would email me several times a day calling me out for ‘problems’ she noticed, always CC’ing our boss, but I was always in the right and my boss would back me up.
I emailed Regina (only Regina) and said I felt like she was trying to get me in trouble, I felt disrespected, and I was wondering what I could do to improve. She replied, CC’ing our boss, telling me that if I felt that way it was my own doing.
Got it.
My entire team works from home, so our boss has put people in charge of certain things so one person has control. One of my tasks is issuing documents for signature via the very popular system we all know. Basically, my team sends me an email that says, ‘Send these documents to x, y, and z.’ and I get to it.
Good news, Regina only copies our boss on super important documents, which I understand.
The other day Regina sends me a request, and I failed to copy her when it was issued. Fixed in under a minute and did not cause any issue, but she still made a big deal about it over email and in our team meeting.
Next request I get from her has, ‘Be sure to double-check your work and all people are copied as detailed below.’
This ticked me off. The funny thing was: she didn’t attach the documents I needed to send, nor tell me where the docs were located for me to get them myself.
I reply asking for the docs and she sends them, stating, ‘These are the final, approved versions.’
Except they are wrong. First, we send PDFs, not Word docs. She sent me Word docs. Second, the formatting was atrocious. Signature blocks cover four pages when they should be on one.
The vendor name and address were put into different tables so it made no sense.
So, I sent it as is. Of course, my boss is copied on this (and actually has to sign this doc), and she is NOT happy with the state of this document.
I replied to my boss with the email from Regina saying this doc was approved by our boss, and with my other projects, I didn’t QC like I normally do (which is not expected of me, but I do normally to prevent issues down the road).
Boss replies to Regina, and CCs me LAYING INTO HER that I am not to fix her mistakes as I have my own job to do. This was also reiterated in our next team meeting, and I could see how angry my boss was (she and I had a 1-on-1 and she said she was not upset with me).
The next request I got from Regina was incredibly detailed and had everything I needed in the right format.”
14. My Coworker Threw Me Under The Bus, So I Stopped Fixing His Errors
“I had worked for the same retail outlet for some years before deciding to go to university. When I decided, the company happily transferred me to the store in the city I was attending university.
When I started, I got on well with one of the employees there called Jim.
Jim had been at the store for a year or two and was vying for the supervisor position that was meant to be coming up.
The issue was that Jim made a lot of small mistakes. Nothing crushingly major if they were caught early enough but could be if not noticed.
Because we were friends (and I had management level clearance because of my experience), I often would fix these mistakes before they got to the manager. I would let Jim know, show him what he had done wrong, and never speak of it again.
One day, I was crushingly hungover. I hadn’t realized I was working the next day until late into the night and was suffering because of my lack of organization. Due to being completely clocked out mentally, I made an error when taking payment from a customer.
Instead of charging them 1.50 for their item, I charged them 15. I noticed the mistake, apologized to the customer, and refunded the difference. They were very understanding and I thought all was good.
Next day, the manager pulls me into the office.
They discuss the mistake and why it happened. They were very nice and fair and as this was my first error in months, just told me to be more careful, especially if I was hungover (They even told me to tell them if I was hungover and they could stick me in the backroom, due to it being such a rare occurrence.)
The only issue was that the manager wasn’t in the day before.
It was me, Jim, and the supervisor. The supervisor and I got on well and when I asked him about it, he told me that he got called into the manager’s office as well and got told off for not telling him about the mistake, his argument was that the mistake was rectified without issue so he didn’t see the point.
Which left Jim. I was mad. I had covered him so many times and at the first chance, he had run to the manager to throw me under the bus.
So I stopped. Every day something would pop up, little errors when counting tills or selling items.
Stock room errors, final report errors. I just stopped fixing them.
I also found out that the supervisor had been doing the same. Fixing little mistakes and retraining Jim rather than going through disciplinary procedures. After a brief discussion, he stopped as well.
Our monthly meeting was delightful. Due to the dramatic increase in errors, we had missed our bonus requirements by a fraction and the manager was angry (This was my mess-up as well because I lost out on some income due to being petty.)
The manager provided the errors report and in a staff of 12 people, Jim made up just shy of 40% of all errors. He got roasted in front of everyone.
This happened for a couple of months before Jim realized the supervisor position was a no-go and moved to another job.”
13. When My Mom Got Her Revenge, I Never Called Bluff On Her Again
“I learned rather early that my mom does not bluff. Tease, yes. But she doesn’t bluff. I was back in elementary school, probably around 3rd or 4th grade, not really sure. Like a lot of kids, I had a problem getting out of bed early enough to get ready for school.
Mom had tried various methods to help me, and she finally had enough. She told me that from then on, if I wasn’t up by X time, she was going to come upstairs and dump a glass of ice water on me.
So this particular morning, I did wake up early enough. But I wanted to test her, maybe make her laugh, not entirely sure. So I quickly got dressed, even put my shoes on, and then got back under the blankets. I figured that even if she did have a glass of water, she’d back down when she saw I was already dressed.
She didn’t.
She was probably upset that she had to come upstairs and check on me in the first place, so my being dressed didn’t stop her. When she walked into my room I pulled off the blankets to show her that I was already dressed and ready to go downstairs.
Didn’t matter. She came up to the bed and dumped the water on me anyway. Then she told me to change and be downstairs in the next 5 minutes, or I’d miss breakfast.
I never tried to call a bluff on her again.”
12. If Rules Are Rules, Then I'll Use Them Against You
“I was burned out in my career and decided to try retirement at the ripe old age of 38. The first 2 months were fantastic, the next 2 I tried to work on projects and keep busy but I had too much energy with no outlet.
I decided to go back to the auto industry, but I wanted a position that was low pressure and that wouldn’t destroy my career if I bailed out. The first dealerships saw my resume and just kind of laughed a little.
They seemed suspicious that I was a spy or informant. I removed all the engineering jobs and education from my resume and applied to a luxury dealership. They were exceptionally happy to offer me a position with long hours and ‘great pay’ according to them.
I was a mid-level manager in the service department and had 2 other managers above me.
This was pretty much what I needed. It really cleared out all the stress from my previous jobs and I started feeling like my old self.
I really enjoyed aspects of that job, and I know the service manager liked my performance. After 6 months the assistant service manager, sensing a shift in the service manager force, started trying to get me fired. It blew up in his face in the most hilarious way possible.
(Long story). He was fired and I was moved to assistant manager which bumped my pay up to 25% of my previous job. Yay!
I had a company toll pass that I used when I had to drive a customer’s vehicle. We were very cautious about them paying tolls during road tests etc.
I kept this in my desk and occasionally loaned it out to the drivers who delivered customer vehicles. They were supposed to ask, but on weekends it seemed to be a free for all. They were always good about returning it though.
One Monday I went to check a problem customer vehicle. I saw I had left my toll pass inside so I drove it a bit and parked it. I went to put the toll pass in my desk and there was already one in there.
My mind started running through all the scenarios and it hit me. I had driven this customer’s vehicle a few days earlier and they must have left their toll pass in the car. I had grabbed theirs and put it in my desk on Friday.
Suddenly I remembered the delivery guys. I called them and they confirmed that they had used it all day Saturday. I called the toll company and there were approximately $35 in charges to the toll pass. I had the option to pay directly with my credit card or add it to our company account.
I chose the latter.
Ok, long-winded back story is complete. On with the petty revenge:
I went to the office department and explained the situation to an older lady (Shirley) with a reputation of being mean. I told her I needed them to either contact the toll company or give me the password so I could add those charges.
While I was there she asked me to check her Plymouth PT Cruiser since it was overheating. She told me she would handle the toll situation and keep it on the DL so the customer didn’t get even angrier.
We took one look at her car and realized the repairs were more than the car was worth.
It needed a radiator, fan, tires, suspension work, AC repair, a full tune-up, and service as well as an alignment. I thought since she was doing me a favor, although a small one, I would pull some strings.
I called around to some friends and had some other employees do the same.
By lunchtime, we had 4 new take-off tires (when a customer complains about tires you often have to give them new ones and then you’re left with tires that have a few miles on them that you can’t sell), a used radiator, and fan, used AC compressor, etc.
All free of charge from various friends and dealerships nearby. Two of the hourly wage employees agreed to do the work when they didn’t have anything to do and finish it up after work in exchange for some pizza. The total cost for her repairs was going to be about $200.
I called and told her we had sourced some used and free parts so her bill would only be $200. She was overjoyed at the news, but then told me she had informed management about the toll pass fiasco. ‘Rules are rules.
You can’t just put your charges on the company toll account.’
Before I even had the chance to reply my Nextel (look it up) starts chirping. I was called into a meeting with my boss and his boss.
Immediately I’m met with accusations of using the customer’s vehicle to take a weekend trip.
I explained the situation and after a few minutes of being told that ‘we have to be more careful’ they laughed it off and said they would have the office fix it as well as get another toll pass for the delivery department.
Problem solved.
I walked out the door, called the guys who were doing the free work, and told them to stop immediately. I had them put the old tires back on and return it to the condition it was when we got it.
Fortunately, they had only changed 2 tires and drained the rusty water from her radiator.
I went to a service advisor and had them write an estimate ticket for the work at full price with the employee discount. No used parts, no free parts, and definitely no free labor.
I walked into the office and Shirley came waddling over saying how grateful she was that we could get her car fixed for cheap. She apologized for having to tell management and repeated her ‘rules are rules’ line.
I just smiled and said, ‘I completely understand! Top management is going to contact you and have you do precisely what I asked earlier.
Oh, by the way, we can’t do that free work on your car. It turns out that it’s a liability and as you know… rules are rules.’
I then slid the price estimate ticket over to her and walked away. I returned the goodwill parts to the other dealers and bought some pizza for the guys who tried to help.
She actually paid the full price for the repairs and talked so much trash about me right up to the day she was fired for refusing to do some office tasks I needed to be done.
Adios you racist old bag!”
11. You Want To Take My Soda? Sure, But It Won't Taste Very Good
“I started a job after a long period of unemployment, my savings had almost run out, and I was dejected and desperate. The job didn’t require anywhere near the amount of experience or education that I had. I was friends with someone that worked there.
He cautioned me not to let anyone know of my experience and downplay my education and that the group was very dysfunctional. It was a very small group office with people that had all worked there for years. Especially the office manager.
The office manager started the office with the owner and had been with him from the beginning of a one-person group to the 50+ it had become. He was in his 60’s and had been with this for almost 30 years.
For the most part, still did everything like he did 30 years ago. He was very knowledgeable about the business—but only the parts he wanted to know about. Never bothered to add new skills or even try. He was keeping things together but things were slipping.
And it was beginning to get noticed—so what did he do? He complained and complained about being overworked. That’s where I come in.
My position wasn’t one that kept me really busy so they ‘gave’ me to him to help him out.
I’d been at the office for a few months so I already had a clue he was difficult but now I was his for 4 hours a day. He had to teach me how to do some of his work in order for me to help him and he felt like that was another reason why things were slipping.
My fault I didn’t already know how to do his work. To say that he didn’t like me is being kind. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea—I get that. Nothing I could do was how he wanted it done. The first time I had to work on a ‘project’ with him I knew this wasn’t going to go well.
He gave me a list of people to call and information to get. Not as easy as it sounds but I completed it and gave him the information.
Then he said. ‘Oh, I forgot, you have to ask X and X as well.’
So back to calling and getting the information.
He then gave me the form for this information and told me to fill it out but proceeded to criticize my printing. Then got mad when I typed it, claiming I was wasting time. Also, the information I had was incomplete because—you guessed it—he forgot to tell me to get other pieces of information as well.
So back to the phone calls.
Now I had come from a LARGE corporation and this is where you start to document everything. That doesn’t work in a 7 person office. I can’t send him an email saying ‘You told me to do X and X and X, is there anything else?’ because then you get in trouble for writing emails to someone in the office outside your cube.
He would criticize me for mistakes he made and at one point almost got me fired. There is no HR and he has been working for the owner since the beginning and I’m some new kid. I just have to suck it up.
There were a bunch of other things. When I go out for lunch he’d ask me to pick him up something and always be a little short on what he owed. I took to carrying singles and change so that I could absolutely have change from the large bill.
He never thought to pay me back and it was hard to say anything because it would look petty asking about the dollar or two he was short previously… except that it was all the time. Then I took to bringing lunch and eating alone away from the office.
I’d eat my lunch and read then head back to the office and he just couldn’t figure out what I did with my lunchtime. But he really got to me when he would ask me for soda.
I’m a soda drinker and we have a small fridge in the office.
The building had a vending machine for soda but it was just smarter and cheaper to bring in my own 12 pack and put a few in the fridge. Eventually, the vending machine was taken away. Didn’t matter to the office manager because he knew I would have some.
Two or three times a week he’d be like, ‘Oh, hey—do you mind if I have one of your sodas? I have a craving.’
I couldn’t say no, he knew I had them in the fridge, so he’d get the soda. Every so often he would throw (and I do mean throw) a dollar at me and say ‘I feel so guilty about your soda, here’s a buck.’ Yes, he would take the last soda in the fridge and say, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize it was the last one.’
New girl starts at our very small office and has issues with a different person so we bond pretty quickly.
She also quickly realizes that she needs to get out and leaves after six months. When she left she was clearing out her stuff and left me her 24 can pack of soda that had been under her desk since she started.
I didn’t know this could happen but I got really bad soda, tasted awful. I thought it was a one-off, but the 2nd one from the pack was also bad. I hid the remainder of the 24 pack under my desk.
Evil plan hatches.
I bring in Soda X and also put soda Y (the one that went bad) in the fridge. Next time office manager asks for soda I say sure—but hey would you take the Y, I only have two in the fridge and I prefer X.
So office manager takes Y and goes off to his office. Nothing happens. A week later, he asks again and I answer the same way. He takes the Y. Says nothing. Dutifully over the next few months if he takes one I replace it with one from under my desk so there is always a cold one in the fridge.
He never catches on, and eventually stops asking for my soda.
The office manager started working from home at the beginning of 2020 and never came back and has decided to retire. I share this because I threw out the last few cans at the end of the year. Finally free!”
10. Complain About Me Shaving My Legs? Enjoy Your Cold Shower Every Morning
“So several years ago I was a firefighter in a small ARFF (Airport Rescue Fire Fighter) station where I was the only female. So I was assigned the Captain’s bathroom which was separate from the bunkroom bathroom for showering and using the restroom.
I was on a shift with a captain who was a grade-A jerk. His way or the highway, and he was verbally abusive to everyone, especially me. Anyway my ‘shower time’ was morning and I, being a female, also shaved my legs.
One morning I cut myself pretty badly and had to rummage in the first aid kit for a band-aid. He asked what happened and I said I cut my leg shaving. He flipped out. Started yelling I had no business shaving my legs, etc.
Keep in mind that I only ever spent 10 minutes with the water running, if that. I was in and out as fast as possible to avoid his wrath. I even shaved using lotion in the sink, to keep from using too much water so he could have his long, hot shower every shift.
Well no more.
Every morning he turned the heat on and stood in front of the oven to warm up. As soon as he disappeared to the back, I went to the janitor’s closet and ran hot water in the mop sink for 10 minutes.
Then I went up to the bathroom I used and ran the sink hot for as long as it took to use the toilet, shave, etc. By the time he got his shower, it was cold. Mine was too, but I didn’t care, he was miserable and I lived for it.
Each shift he yelled at me for being in the shower too long, even if he ran out of hot water before I got my shower. He yelled at other guys. He complained. No one else had that problem. No one else in the morning had cold water.
I didn’t complain.
For nearly two years I quietly ran out the hot water each morning so he would run out mid-shower. No one ever asked why I was in the janitor’s closet. No one ever said a word. They replaced the heating element twice and the whole water heater once.
Every single shift. Every third day. For two years. Until I got swapped to another shift. Then they changed the filter on the hot water heater and suddenly it worked again.
He never figured it out. He had that and more coming for what he did to us.
And I still hate that jerk.”
9. My Coworker Kept Spilling Water Into My Section, So I Left Him A Puddle Of Water
“There was this really awful guy in the kitchen where I worked a few years ago who everyone hated. He was trying to make supervisor.
One thing he did was take pictures of all the dirty equipment at the end of a shift and send them to the owners to get someone else in trouble for not cleaning when he was the one supposed to be cleaning.
He wore flipflops in the kitchen and was constantly listening to something on his Air Pods. This was a kitchen with fryers, ovens, loose food everywhere. Not only was he breaking OHS, he never heard us when we called him and we would have to yell multiple times for him to take out one of those Air Pods and he’d give us a blank look on his stupid face.
I called him out for it multiple times and he just gave excuses. Since he had been there longer than me, I didn’t want to cause a ruckus, but I definitely regret not telling on him to the owners, not that they would have done anything.
At the end of a shift one night, we were cleaning. You know how they clean kitchens, splashing water everywhere and mopping it up, etc. I was cleaning my area and he was cleaning his. He splashed his water into my section after I had just finished it, and I told him not to do it again.
I cleaned it up and got ready to go. Guess what he did? He splashed water there again. I was finished and not going back there, especially after asking him not to splash water in that particular area again. So I left it and went home, figuring he’d fix it when he was finishing.
Well… the next day I come in and the kitchen guy I actually like is there instead of sucky dude. He tells me that sucky dude will not be coming in anymore, and will in fact be moving back to India after getting out of the hospital.
Yes, I said hospital. You see, old mate came in early that morning as usual, in his trashy flipflops as usual, and guess what he slipped on? A puddle of water left on the ground. That wouldn’t have been there if he didn’t put it there, and he wouldn’t have slipped if he was wearing shoes suitable for the kitchen.
He broke his leg and decided to quit.
I did not get in trouble for this. Partly because I didn’t tell anyone that it was partly my fault, partly because everyone knew the shoes he wore, and mostly because everyone hated him so much that they were glad to see him go. So, you’re welcome, I guess.
It was accidental, but I feel like it was suitable revenge for this jerk.”
8. This Lady Never Let Her Students Wear Hats, So I Bought All Of Them Hats To Wear
“I manage high school theatre tech kids. I don’t care much about what they wear. Just has to be black, comfortable enough for them to do their jobs, cover their limbs, and no open-toed shoes.
Some of my kids like to wear baseball caps.
So long as they’re black… who cares? Apparently, this one lady really cared. She wouldn’t stop going on about how rude they were and their hats should be taken away.
Spoiler alert: I did not take their hats away.
Now for the petty bit several years later.
These particular kids are now seniors. When looking for a graduation gift for the younger crew to give them, I remembered in high school, part of our tech uniform included a black baseball cap. The only reason I brought up the hat idea in the first place was because this lady thought the hats were rude.
So now these kids and all their successors are going to get just that.
Also…she made one of them cry in a later production and was generally rude to the tech kids to the point where a lot of them refused to do another production with her. I can hold a grudge when it comes to my kids. So while she has since moved continents and will likely never be impacted by this relatively small revenge, it still makes me feel better.”
7. The Teacher Didn't Want Me To Hand Out Candy To My Students, So I Tossed It instead
“I teach middle school and even though I’m not ‘the cool teacher’, I like to say that I have a solid relationship with my students, good enough to get them to work hard for me. Their latest diagnostic shows this in spades.
As I release one of my tech classes to lunch I see a one-foot-tall plastic jar of Kopiko candies. It’s a cappuccino candy that’s sweet with a mild coffee flavor. I know this because I tasted this delectable treat as I saw them in the common area.
We all put things in the common area for other teachers to eat, utilize, etc. It’s literally a zone identified as a ‘take some but not all’ sort of thing.
So I took some. By some I mean half a handful, like 8 of them, representing 1% of the jar max.
I give them to seemingly-random kids in my class as they enter for Mathematics (but I’m truly picking the kids I’ve earmarked as having the highest growth, regardless of level). They were so ecstatic to receive such a treat. Kids really dig this stuff, even if they didn’t like the flavor.
It was the thought that counts.
Anyway, one kid loved it so much she went bragging at the end of class about the candy she had whilst passing the teacher who, evidently, left the jar there for ‘everybody’.
The fact that the joy on a young child’s face brought such a disdain-fueled frump on anybody is downright criminal, but for a teacher? Come on.
She then turned in my direction, wagging her veiny, decrepit, hate-infused phalange at me saying
‘Are you serious?? Don’t be handing these candies to students. That’s not what they’re for and you know it!’
She shook her head, walked away, and just as the last bell was ringing and kids were in class finally she turned back to scoff, as if she hadn’t been dramatic enough already.
Enter Delicious Compliance.
The next day I truly expected to not see the jar of candies there, but there it stood in all its taupe glory. No sign or anything, just a vague memory of the words, ‘Don’t hand these to students.’
My math class comes in again and after I take attendance I go, ‘Okay, who didn’t get a candy yet that wants one?’ 18 sum-odd hands raised.
That’s exactly how many I threw, tossed, and slid to students’ waiting arms… a thank you for trying so hard on the exam.
I’ve got to hand it to that teacher, though. She really found a way to extract the petty out of me. I’m pretty sure it’s as easy as getting juice from an orange.”
6. My Sister Kept Stealing My Food So I Gave Her The One Thing She Hates
“So this happened quite a while ago. My dad, my sister, and I went to stay in an Airbnb with other family members for new years. A different family and I went to get sushi while the rest would eat hot pot.
I specifically asked for sushi only and ordered one for myself. But when I put it on the table my sister had the audacity to eat one bite without even asking. Like yes, a couple of the sushi packs were made to share with the other but that sushi was specifically set aside for me.
I waited a whole hour for that.
Then when I pointed it to her she said, ‘Did you say it was yours? No, you didn’t.’
Since she just loved to have what I have, she would DEFINITELY love to have the coffee that I also brought specifically for myself.
So I made myself one with lots of creamer and hers is a dark roast coffee with like 2 sugar-free creamer packs in a cup that my dad lends me telling me to use it for her and said that I don’t need to wash it as it was just from his tea.
She came over and I handed her coffee and she couldn’t even finish half of it before running away and leaving it on the table for others to find out that she doesn’t finish what she’s given.
Now for a bit of context: she doesn’t like real coffee.
She only gets the Frappuccino from Starbucks that doesn’t even taste like coffee. And she gets grossed out by having to share a cup. It was a very normal thing to do in my family where we would share cups of drinks among us which is why my dad gave me his cup to use. But my sister doesn’t want to do that anymore because she’s grossed out by it.”
5. This Girl Spoke To Me In A Formal Tone, So I Responded Equally
“A girl I don’t get along with very well recently reached out because she wanted to talk about our friendship. I agreed but after 2 weeks of her being sick or something coming up, I texted her and asked if this was something she actually wanted.
She said yes and then said she was ‘just waiting to get my schedule’ (I had sent it to her 4 days earlier) and I started getting a little snippy in texts. So she switched to using a very formal, HR-like email tone.
For example, she would say, ‘I have standing plans on Monday, but we can revisit when you get your schedule for the following week.’
I don’t work with or for this girl. We just have a lot of mutual friends and often end up at the same events, and the bar she works at is one of the go-to hang-out spots with my friends.
So I asked her to stop sending me ‘Sterilized HR emails’ and to ‘talk to me like a human being’. She ignored me and said she was using neutral language to prevent conflict and if I needed clarification I should simply ask and not infer negative tones.
So I responded in an equally HR-style text asking if she needed clarification on my request or if she was being willfully ignorant.
She has since stopped answering my texts and has told some of our friends she will never be speaking to me again.”
4. You're Laughing At My Salary Expectations? I Have 20 Years Of Experience Under My Belt
“I am a healthcare worker with a skill set which is currently very sought after. I’m crazy at times but due to my credentials, people WILL put up with my shenanigans. I must also stress that I love my current job as I get to work regular hours and get paid a decent hourly wage and have a good relationship with my boss and coworkers.
So for the most part, I have the semblance of sanity when I come to work.
Three years ago, I got worried about work stability after the facility I work at changed management twice in my tenure. So I started looking around within a 20-mile area from my home for other potential employers.
I wanted to see if I could land another job that pays me more. It was more like testing the waters to see what opportunities might be lurking.
I stumbled across an opening no less than 10 minutes from my home and got a phone interview with HR.
I have done multiple interviews previously but this one was different as I swear it felt like I was back in school again. This lady, who had no background in my field, was testing my competency in a field I had 20 years of experience in.
The audacity. I try to ignore how condescending the situation was and reminded myself to hide my fangs. I was trying to navigate the conversation towards salary but she kept evading the topic for a good 20 minutes or so. After I answered her questions, she asked what my salary expectation was.
I gave her a number and I kid you not, she gave me a sarcastic laugh. I rolled my eyes. Thank God this was a phone interview. She countered with a rate that was $4 less than what I currently make.
She made no attempt to negotiate from there.
My next words were ‘I don’t think I will move forward with the application. Thank you.’
I probably ticked her off as I got a rejection letter via email stating they’re ‘moving on with another candidate’.
I was like, yeah right, keep telling yourself that.
Here’s the best part: days after that interview I got a survey from them asking how the recruitment process went. I waited 6 months before responding to it. I described in full bloody detail where it went downhill and named the person I was dealing with.
But wait there’s more. About a year after that interview, that same place was in dire need of someone who can work per diem for the weekend. I tried my luck again. HR this time was very pleasant and the department head was just happy to hire me.
Tables have turned as they sound like they’re selling me something instead of screening me out. I smell desperation. Interview was quick but they failed to bring up the hourly rate. This should be interesting, I say to myself. So when they sent me the offer letter, I wasn’t impressed by the numbers.
I frankly told them they’re lowballing me. The rate they’re offering is $6 less than my per diem rate at another place. There was a weak attempt at a counteroffer of $0.50 more. I proceeded by typing a rejection letter to their offer and sent the email before they could do it.
I said something along the lines of the rates not being competitive enough. Thanks but no thanks. So long suckers! (Didn’t really say that last part).
I still work at my current building and continue to be very happy and content. I have several facilities that take me for per diem at the rate I am happy with.”
3. Woke Me Up At 3am For No Reason? You'll Regret It
“Little essential background. In where I come from, males have mandatory service in the military.
Usually, people go at the age of 18 after high school but if you go to college (university where I come from) they postpone your military service until you’re done (you can’t pull this card forever to avoid military service because at the age of 28 they take you regardless of educational status).
They wait for you because they get more technical labor this way for cheap (think engineers, doctors, pharmacists, nurses, etc.). I went to serve in Air Force after finishing medical school so I had a license to practice as a doctor.
They basically have a doctor for cheap.
I served in a base that had on average somewhere between 500 to 1000 personnel at a point. Since we were close to a big military hospital we had a very humble clinic. There were 2 doctors (I am one of them) and two nurses.
Every week a doctor and a nurse will stay there the whole week and see patients and dispense medications etc. and then we switch with the other two and get a whole week off. Pretty good deal but the clinic was relatively busy and most of the personnel were younger than me (I was around 26-27 by the time I finished medical school but most were between 18-21 years old).
Of course, we had many more senior people in the base I am just talking about the majority.
The clinic was officially open for walk-ins all day every day between 7 am and 4 pm. After 4 pm it is emergencies only.
The only problem is defining an emergency is very subjective. We would get people late at night just for a simple cough or something very simple and they just say they felt it is an emergency situation. It is what it is and it’s part of the job.
One of those days someone knocked on my room really hard at 3:40 am (our sleeping room is the next room to the clinic in case there is actually an emergency so everyone knew where to find us). I wake up and there is this younger soldier telling me he had some diarrhea and his security shift ends in ~2 hours and he needs something to help.
He could have easily switched his shift or gone to the bathroom a couple of times instead of waking me up so early.
Please bear in mind we open at 7 and I am up at 6 every day. Yes we are available for emergencies but we already work 7 am-4 pm straight every day and in order for that to happen effectively we need some rest and we need the energy also for actual emergencies (had people walk in with broken bones, severely cut fingers while handling machinery, appendicitis, etc.).
I felt waking me up at 3:40 in the morning was unwarranted for this situation but he is here anyway so I told him one second I will get him medication from the pharmacy (the third room after where we sleep and the examination room).
Here is where it gets interesting. He suddenly needs to use the bathroom so he asks if he could use ours. I tell him which way it is. He leaves his machine gun at the door outside running to the bathroom.
Now, this is really a problem. He should not. Nobody should leave their gun unattended regardless of anything but it was very late anyway and he ran to the bathroom. At this point, I was very awake and decided to entertain myself.
I went and pulled the bullet magazine from his machine gun and hid it. He comes back and I gave him the medicine and he picks up his machine gun and notices. He asks me, I told him it was outside, I was inside the pharmacy getting the medicine and you should never leave your gun anyway.
Just a little context here, if a bullet goes un-accounted for this is a huge problem and easily ends in martial court so losing a magazine is really a problem. He keeps looking and can’t find it and then decides this is it and is going to report to his superior and once he starts walking back to deal with his fate, I called him (his birthday was coming in 3 days and I knew from his medical record on file) and said, ‘Wait, I have an early birthday gift for you,’ and he looks confused and I give him his magazine.
He is shocked and was like, ‘Oh my God, Doctor. I thought I was done.’
I asked him, ‘How is your diarrhea now?’
He’s like, ‘Probably gone.’
I took my sweet revenge while treating him at the same time. I wasn’t very surprised I started getting much fewer unnecessary calls after-hours after this incident.”
2. Left Me A Note On My Windshield? I'll Leave That Note On Every Car You Park Next To
“So I came home to my apartment complex from work late on a Sunday night/Monday morning around 2:00 AM. I will admit, my parking job was skewed to one side but I was still within the lines and had plenty of room to open my doors.
The next day, I get up to go back to work and find a note lodged under my windshield wiper written on the outside of an open envelope. It said, ‘Nice parking job, you had 4 feet on your passenger side and left me 6 inches to get into my truck, thanks.’
Well, I was a little peeved to start my morning on such a sour note.
Then I remembered the truck parked next to me was a large white pickup truck and the only one of its kind in my complex.
I took the note with me to work and used the photocopier to make around 10 copies and over the course of the next few weeks, left them on cars parked somewhat close to his truck.
I honestly had no idea if what I was doing was even noticed but eventually, I was presented a golden opportunity. I had about 3 copies of his note left when I noticed he was parked next to a handicap spot and the other car was parked really close to his driver’s side door. I quickly left the note under the other car’s windshield and I haven’t seen the truck in the complex parking lot since.”
1. My Niece Pulled The Greatest Revenge On My Sister By Destroying Her Cupcakes
“My sister and current brother-in-law were living together with his two daughters (Sansa and Arya) and her son Jon Snow. Arya and Jon Snow were pretty happy-go-lucky kids but Sansa was acting out (as do all young teenagers).
One evening, my sister baked and decorated four dozen cupcakes for a bake sale at Jon Snow and Arya’s school and put them in the fridge.
(Foreshadowing). Sansa and her dad got into an argument and when my sister tried to play mediator, Sansa lost her mind screaming at her. Her dad grounded her and sent her to bed. Next day, my sister gets ready to take the cupcakes out for delivery, and something seemed off so she opened one of the containers to check on them.
Lo and behold, at some point in the night, someone had snuck out and stuck their pointer finger straight down the top of each and every iced cupcake. It was not difficult to identify the perpetrator of the crime.
I still crack up years later thinking about this, just in total admiration of the sheer determination and resolution it had to have taken a 15-year-old to stay up, wait until everyone was asleep, and then systematically stick her finger straight down on 48 cupcakes stored in multiple food containers.
In my teens, I could easily imagine doing this to one or two cupcakes. Maybe if I was really peeved, ruining a whole container (about a dozen). But to one by one take each cupcake and jam a finger precisely down the top of each one, put the cover back on the container, return it to the fridge, and pull out the next container… that took true perseverance.
Sansa, I love and miss you and want your act of Petty Revenge greatness to live forever.”
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