People Tell Their Greatest "Get What You Give" Revenge Story
13. Wife Has A Year-Long Affair, So I Pretend To Have An Affair Too
“My STBXW (soon to be ex-wife) was my high school sweetheart. We started seeing each other in 1992 when we were both 17 (we’re both 45 now) and have been together ever since. She’s the only woman I’ve ever been with my entire life. We married 5 years later at 22, fresh out of college. A year later, we had our 1st of two children, both boys.
(22 and 17). 23 years I gave to her. Built her a house. Worked my butt off to give her the life she wanted. Sure, we had rough patches, but what marriage doesn’t? Even in the worst of times, we found a way to pull through and come out the other side better, which made the discovery of her affair that much more jarring.
Flashback to March 2020, when I 1st got the feeling something was “off.” For a good 2 months prior, we were in a funk.
I was on the mend from reconstructive knee surgery (blew out my ACL fall 2019) but still lacking in movement. At the time, I only had about 55% range of motion on my knee. This took a toll on quite a lot in the house. I was out on worker’s comp, as I had been injured on the job, and I was unable to do my usual household duties, so a lot got backed up.
My sons would do what they could, but tasks only I was capable of doing had to be put on the back burner, or my wife had to do, which she wasn’t pleased with. Things also crawled to a standstill in the bedroom between us. It had already slowed down prior to my injury, but in the state I was in at the time, it completely stopped.
During these months, she (we’ll call her Sue) was spending more time “hanging with co-workers” after work.
Between November 2019 to March 2020, it was a regular occurrence for her. Naturally, I thought nothing of it. I’ve never in the 23 years I’d been with her had any reason to worry or not trust her. She has her friends; I have mine, and we have mutual. I’d go hang out with my friends all the time and there was no issue. It was all above board.
It was around January of this year that I noticed something odd. Sue started getting noticeably distant from me. Sure, we were in a funk, but she’d never deny me affection to that point. The usual hugs and kisses she’d give me came to a halt. Her phone was attached to her hand long before my suspicion grew, but she’d always share and show me things she’d discovered on the web.
DIY ideas and recipes on Pinterest, memes, all kinds of stuff. But she was now being guarded about her phone. Even her interactions with me became more snippy as if she couldn’t be bothered.
So we’re now in March. New York City is locked down. Our chosen careers fall under the “essential” designation, so neither of us has to work from home. I’d just been recently cleared to return to work after 5 months on the shelf, and I was eager to get back after it, as 5 months on my butt rehabbing my knee and not being able to do physical stuff drove me nuts.
(For context, I enjoy physical activities. I’m an avid martial artist and I’m typically in the gym 4 days a week, on top of all of the home projects I did.) Within a week or 2 of the world shutting down in 2020, my STBXW alerts me that she’s going to have to start putting in extra hours. Again, I think nothing of this because of her field.
Of course, I was under the assumption it’d be every other day, but no. It was every day. And not just an hour or 2. She’d come home 3 or more hours later and go straight to the shower, spend a little time with me, a little time with our 17-year-old (22-year-old lives with his partner crosstown), and then go to bed. As I’m able to support myself on my knee better, we started getting intimate again, but as you’d probably guess, she wasn’t mentally or emotionally present for it, which I noticed quickly.
So by early April, the picture started getting clearer to me.
All of the signs were pointing to the idea that she was having an affair. That’s when I decided I needed to find answers. So I scoured the internet on things I should be looking for. Signs of infidelity in one’s partner, and sure enough, she was pretty much ticking all of the boxes on such behavior. So then my search inquiry advanced to how to find proof.
I started with her social media. Looking at her social media entries from months prior, it’s pretty much the usual. Pics of us and our sons, pics with her and her friends, and more than a few pics of her nights out with co-workers. In these pics, it’s a mixed bag of her closest friends from work and a couple of folks I’ve never met from her work.
But I see one recurring thing in a number of these pics, one guy. In every picture he’s in, he’s rather uncomfortably close to her. His arm is around her shoulder or his hand on her lower back. WAY too close for a guy I’ve never personally met. Needless to say, that put a sour taste in my mouth.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
No, no, no.
The worst was the fact that apparently, this dude is a friend of hers on social media and follows her on Instagram. So I go to look up his social media account, and wouldn’t you know it, I’m blocked. Why am I blocked from seeing this guy’s social media account, but he’s friends with her on social media? Yep. Now I’m in Batman detective mode. At that point, I wasn’t even trying to deny it.
I knew she was deceiving me with this guy. My mission was to find out for how long. And over the course of April and May, that’s what I did. You know I never had any clue the depth of info you could secure from phone, text, and email records up until then. We have a family plan cellphone package, and I was able to pull up quite a bit of data.
My STBXW’s data history was telling. The 2 most frequent numbers she had interacted with from October 2019 to April 2020 were my own and a number I’d never seen before. Take a wild guess who’s number it was? A quick check on Google and I confirmed it was the dude from the photos who blocked me on social media. (We’ll call him Jerk, cuz that’s what he is.) Again, the picture becomes even clearer at this point.
But a lot of their messages and texts were disjointed, which meant she was deleting a lot of them. I knew she was two-timing on me with this guy, but nothing in the data could serve as a smoking gun. I needed more evidence.
It’s at this point that I tell my best friend Oz what I had found. He asked me did I confront her with what I had, and I said no because I felt like it wasn’t enough.
That’s when he told me about an app that I could download to apparently spy on her communications in real-time. I got it installed, sync up my data plan, and waited. Within days of doing so, I finally saw it. A text string between the 2 of them talking about how much fun they’d had the previous night and making plans to do it again that weekend.
Boom. Gut punch. To say I was completely devastated was an understatement. I guess that moment counts as my “D-Day,” and for the next 2 days after, I was just broken. I actively distanced myself from her those 2 days immediately after D-Day, which she was noticeably shaken by. She’d try to console me and ask me what was wrong, but I’d brush it off and leave her presence.
I couldn’t even look at her. This woman, who I gave 23 years of my life to. Whom I have given everything I could and more to as a husband, and she stepped outside of our marriage for a guy just 5 years older than our eldest son. By the 3rd day, I wasn’t even sad anymore; I was angry.
I contacted Oz to let him know my suspicion was confirmed, and he asked me if I had confronted her yet.
My answer was no, and I told him I wanted payback. I didn’t want to just divorce her; I wanted to destroy her. I wanted to leave her life in shambles and ruin her. It was going to take time to do so, and I devised a plan. In my readings and research on infidelity, I had seen a quote that resonated with me that went, “The enemy of infidelity is unpredictability.” Or something to that.
That was going to be the basis of my plan. I was going to make her life a nightmare on wheels, while also secretly planning my exit strategy.
So we’re now in early June, and I’ve still got the app installed. Pretty much every night, I’m gathering as much data as I can seeing their back and forth messages. They’re talking like it’s a full-blown relationship they’re in.
Texting, lovey-dovey romantic stuff, the whole bag. At that point, I had stopped looking at any of it, and I was just collecting info and cataloging on my private FPS server. Meanwhile, I start doing things “out of the ordinary.” I start going out at odd times. I start coming home even later than she does. In her presence, I’m on my phone a lot more than usual, and when she asks, “What are you up to?” I just simply say “just stuff” and put my phone away.
I’d also changed my login info on everything, so she couldn’t access any of my stuff. Mind you, for our entire marriage, we’d never hid anything from each other. But right around I’m assuming the start of her affair, she’d changed her password on social media, as well as on her phone stating “she had to because of the security breaches in recent months.” Yea, really, nice cover for hiding your affair from your husband.
Anyway, I’d clued Oz in on my plan, as well as telling my older (and only) sister and two more of my closest friends what was going on. These are people I trust with my life, and I swore them to secrecy. (For context, Oz and I have been friends since we were kids. The other of our friends Joey and Nina we’ve known since high school.
Make note of Nina, she comes into play down the road.)
July comes, and my STBXW is in full paranoia mode. She’s texting and calling me a lot more frequently now, asking me if I’m going to be home when she gets home, when am I coming home while she is and I’m not, asking me what am I up to, the works. I can see the seed planted in her head the month prior is starting to sprout, especially in her communication with Jerk.
She’s confiding in him her doubt and confusion. Telling him that I’M getting cold and distant. The nerve of this woman!!! In the interim of these interactions with Jerk, she suggests that maybe they should stop meeting up at our house because she has no idea if I’d just show up, confirming that yes, she’s had this jerk in my home. Thanks, Sue! Jerk asks her in that specific communication if was she worried about me potentially two-timing on her, which actually angered her.
I can’t even begin to describe the level of joy and how many laughs I got out of reading that exchange. My deceiving wife arguing with her affair partner over if she’s mad that her husband could be two-timing on her. Oh, the irony. Now bear in mind, I’m not hooking up with anyone. When I leave, I’m usually at Oz or Joey’s throwing back some booze, watching fights, and spending time with my bros or at my big sis’ house hanging with her and my brother-in-law, who’s like an older brother to me.
My sis is 52 and her hubby is 58. She had told him about my STBXW’s infidelity but not of my plan. Couldn’t risk it as he’s a bit of a blabbermouth.
We’ll fast forward now to October. That’s when things seriously pick up. I’ve been in my “faux affair” for 3 months now, and Sue is hyper-aware of the fact that I’m actively pulling away from her.
It’s been as long as the day I enacted my plan until the day she “confronted” me, October 20th, 2020, that I’d even touched her. No hugs. No kisses. No initiation of intimacy. Nothing. Not like she needed it; she was still hooking up with the jerk, just at his place or at motels. So that afternoon, she calls me at work, which wasn’t rare before all this began but certainly hadn’t happened in a while, and asks me to come straight home after work saying she had “something important to tell me.”
I’m not gonna lie to you all; I half believed she was going to come clean about her infidelity, but she of course didn’t.
Instead, I get home to her asking me was I unhappy with her. The. Nerve. She sights the fact that I’ve been spending way too much time away from home, I don’t show her affection anymore, and our intimate life has completely died. She tells me she’s worried I’m pushing her away because I was resentful of how she treated me the months I was rehabbing my knee.
And then came the punchline. She asked if I was two-timing on her. Folks, I fell out on the floor laughing hysterically. And when I say hysterically, I mean Joker laughing gas hysterical. On the surface, it looked like (to her assuming) it was me laughing off the notion of being unfaithful, but it was, of course, actually me laughing at the sheer irony of what was happening in front of my eyes.
I’m tearing up, pounding on the floor in complete hysterics for a good 2 minutes before I compose myself enough to answer. I sit up and look her in the eyes for the 1st time in months shaking my head, but I don’t give her an answer. I stand up, brush myself off, kiss the top of her head, and go about settling in for the night.
Later that night, as I’m in my office, I decide, you know what? Given the brevity of what happened, I wanted to see what she was telling him. So I fire up the app and sure enough, they’re actually texting in real-time. She tells Jerk “I know he’s lying to me. I asked him tonight and he literally laughed in my face. He fell on the floor and laughed for like 5 minutes.
(It wasn’t 5 minutes obviously.) He doesn’t even care how I feel anymore. I don’t know how or why, but he’s gone. I know I’ve lost him. This is karma, I know it.” The smile I had on my face reading that must’ve resembled the Cheshire Cat. She was breaking. Jerk attempted to console her, saying that if I cared enough for her, she wouldn’t have had come to him to give her what I wasn’t giving her, but the tone of her responses told me she was having doubt now.
She had the nerve to step out of our marriage because I was unable to fulfill my role as a husband due to a legitimate injury and kept the affair going for at that point nearly an entire year, but the idea of her losing me to another woman was enough to make her waver? What a weakling.
Now, during all of this, I was also exacting the 2nd part of my plan for payback, getting all of my affairs in order financially.
In September, I had met with a family attorney to get the ball rolling on divorce papers with the mountain of evidence I’d piled up to that point. New York is an “at fault” state as far as divorce, and the overwhelming amount of proof I’d gathered displaying Sue’s infidelity pretty much solidified I could nail her to the wall in a divorce case. My lawyer instructed me to get all of my financials in order in preparation for whatever division of assets might come as result.
I went one better than that, secretly pulling all of my money out of our joint account and putting it in my personal account. I also started shopping around for an apartment as part of “phase 2.”
We’re now in November, and I’ve not changed my behavior. In fact, I’ve ramped it up. This is where my friend Nina comes into play. For context, Nina and Sue have never been what you call “close.” I met Nina freshman year of high school 2 years before I met Sue.
Even way back then, Sue has seen Nina as a “threat,” as she’s my closest female friend. There’s always been an implied “I don’t trust her” from Sue regarding Nina. She’s never addressed it directly, but it’s obvious to anyone who pays attention. Conversely, Nina’s never been a big fan of Sue. Early in my and Sue’s relationship, Nina called to attention to me how Sue was pretty much imposing herself into our little “square” of friends, whereas I didn’t do the same with Sue’s set of friends.
That irked Nina because she knew why Sue was doing it, her. Among Sue’s circle even now, there are no male friends…aside from Jerk. Whereas Nina is the only girl in my “square.”
Nina had been “stuck” overseas and finally returned to NYC on November 3rd. Oz, Joey, and I decided we were gonna celebrate her return with a night at Joey’s house for dinner and drinks.
(There were only 5 of us: Oz, Joey, Joey’s wife…who is also Nina’s sister, Nina, and myself.) Nina, being the evil mastermind she is, comes up with an evil idea to trigger Sue. She suggested we take some photos in the same vein as the photos I discovered of Sue and Jerk months prior…and post them to my social media. And that’s just what we did.
It wasn’t until the 5th that Sue got wind of it, as I’m guessing a few friends noticed my updates and saw how “uncomfortably” close I was with Nina. This really messed her mind up because she still believed I was lying, and I can almost guarantee she “wanted” to accuse Nina, but she knew that Nina had been stuck in Europe for the majority of the year.
Still didn’t stop her from attempting to dress me down that night for being so as she said “handsy” in the pics. I saw this as a golden opportunity to deliver the lead jab for my knockout blow. I say, “So what about the pics with you and Jerk from last year? He was pretty handsy in them. But did you see me get bent out of shape over it?”
Deer in headlights.
It was the 1st time I even mentioned the dude’s name throughout all of this. The hamster wheel in her head started reeling in real-time as she tried to explain away those pics. To that point, she hadn’t even known I saw them, that’s how little I use social media. When I actually do post something, it’s like an event to people, which is why the pics with Nina specifically got so much traction among our circles.
And explain away she did. “He’s that way with everyone.” “He’s just a really friendly guy.” “I can see how it looks, but there’s nothing there.” “I’m sorry if those pics hurt you. I’ll delete them.” No, no…the pics aren’t what hurt me. The year you’ve been hooking up with the dude whilst lying to me that you’re working extra hours and hanging with friends is what hurt me.
But vengeance, as Lt. Comm. Warf from Star Trek: TNG so famously said “is a dish best served cold.” From that night, Sue was being extra especially clingy and attentive to me. Like, annoyingly so. She’s trying to initiate affection and intimacy with me and I’d stonewall her at every chance. All the while, I’m still archiving everything she’s saying to Jerk. Mind you, by this point, I’d long since gone numb.
Any desire I might have had to save my marriage was dead. I’d checked out the day I enacted the 1st phase of my plan.
She’s confiding in him that I’ve gotten worse. That she doesn’t know what to do, and she feels like I absolutely hate her. (I do.) Then comes the bombshell. She says she can’t see him anymore. The guilt is too much for her, and she feels like karma is suffocating her.
She can’t risk losing me. She says that she loves Jerk deeply, but she’s “still in love” with me, and she has to save her marriage before she loses me. No, my dear…you’re about 8 months too late for that. Jerk loses his mind, saying such lovely things as, “He doesn’t love you the way I love you.” and “You’re making a mistake; you can’t just throw me away like this.” That text chain would be the last they’d have until about 3 weeks ago.
Throughout the remainder of November into December, Sue is stuck in limbo. She’s trying to gauge where my headspace is and is still unable to tell if I’m actually being unfaithful. Meanwhile, Jerk is steadily blowing her phone up daily, but she’s not responding to him. I’d see her check her phone often, then quickly put it away. Meanwhile, phase 2 of the plan was now officially complete.
The divorce papers were done. I’d found myself a studio apartment in Co-Op City (New Yorkers will know the area) and signed a 2-year lease on it. All of my money was in my personal account. I was ready to throw my haymaker.
So we’re now at Thanksgiving. My oldest and his girl were hosting a small gathering of our immediate families. So them (oldest and his partner), oldest’s partner’s parents (she’s an only child) myself, Sue and our youngest.
We have a great night. My oldest’s girl is studying to be a chef, and she did all the cooking herself. The girl can cook, lemme tell ya. As I had to keep up appearances of nothing being wrong between Sue and me, I initiated affection with her several times that evening. Kisses on the cheek. Cute lil hugs. Wrapping my arms around her shoulders from behind.
The gestures didn’t go unnoticed by her, as she reveled in them. Bear in mind, this was the 1st time I touched this woman since I kissed the top of her head the night she “confronted” me in October…so just about 2 months. Not gonna lie, I felt repulsed doing it. But I had to. I couldn’t risk the plan, and me being distant to her in the face of my boys, my oldest’s girl, and her parents would set off alarms.
So my youngest decides he wants to stay over with his big bro for the night, so Sue and I head home. On the drive home, she thanks me for being so good to her, and says, “I don’t know what you’re going through, baby. But I’m here for you.” I had to hold off busting out in maniacal laughter again and responded saying, “I know.
I just need time.”
So for the 1st time realistically since Springtime, we hooked up that night. I figured screw it, with what I’m about to do, may as well get some action before I delete her from my existence. I won’t go into detail, but it wasn’t “lovemaking.” No cuddling or anything after. I just got up, showered, and went to go sleep in my office.
I wake up the next day and check my handy dandy spy app, and for the 1st time in weeks, she responded to Jerk. Dude went full novella. He professed his love for her. Said she was wasting her time trying to rekindle a flame in me that died. That she’d been “in a prison” with me for 23 years and deserved to experience the love and affection of a man who would cherish her.
Mind you, this dude is 27 years old. Five years older than our oldest son. And he’s THAT sprung on a 45-year-old married mother of 2? She chose to blow up our marriage and destroy the home we’d built for this dude? Pretty boy with a “soft side”? HAAAA!!!
She responded saying pretty much the same thing she said when last they talked. That she loves him and enjoyed their time together, but she can’t lose me.
I’m still the love of her life, but she’ll always have a place for him in her heart. That they can still be friends if he chooses, but the physical relationship between them is over. He begged her to see him one last time that week, and yep…you guessed it, she said yes. One more for the road, right? Who am I to say anything; that’s what I did to her the previous night.
Of course, I added all of that to the archive I’d compiled. December 4th is when phase 3, the final phase of operation, “Shinobi Ghost,” started. The divorce papers were in hand. My new place of residence was set up. Now I had to slowly start moving my stuff out of the house. But first, I had to break the news to my boys. I called my oldest to the house that Friday night, had them join me in my office…and laid everything on that table.
Not the specifics but that their mother had been having an affair for over a year, and I was going to be filing for divorce soon. My 17-year-old was especially shaken up by this because he himself had recently experienced his 1st taste of infidelity. Yep, his 1st partner had deceived him just 4 months prior. Seeing his heart broken a 2nd time at the idea that his own mother was capable of doing this hit him hard.
My oldest took it a lot better and suggested taking his brother in to live with him until this blows over, to which I agreed.
We packed up some of his stuff, and he asked me was I gonna be ok. I told him, “Yes, son. I’m going to be alright. And so are you. We’re going to be alright. I promise.” And then they were off.
The hardest part was now over, and it was now time to arm the nukes. Over the next few weeks, day by day, Oz would help me get a little of my most sensitive stuff out of the house. Gave him a list of all of the definite stuff to grab while Sue and I were at work and left him the spare key. This was all stuff Sue wouldn’t notice was missing unless you told her it was gone.
I’d also gotten a new phone and phone number, and told everyone who needed to know (Oz, Joey, Nina, My boys, big sis, and my mother) my new contact info. Meanwhile, I’m keeping up the rouse with Sue and she’s none the wiser. Trickling bits and pieces of affection to her just to keep her off of the trail, whilst she’s still in contact with Jerk.
Not to the extent that they’d been prior, but there’s still an emotional thing happening. The fog is faint, but it’s still there. All the while, I gather everything, and I do mean everything. Every bit of data I’ve archived since I started the plan, call logs, texts, pics, emails…everything, and start making printouts. Folks, I must have spent over $1,500 on Staples supplies. Printer ink, paper, binders, the works.
And I cataloged everything in order, from the beginning of the affair until that last bit 2 weeks ago, December 16th in the binders. 14 of them.
I then put each one in a box, and gift-wrapped each, addressing them to various people. My mother (my father passed 7 years ago), her parents, her 2 sisters, her brother, her HR department (Did I forget to mention Jerk works for the same company, and there’s an expressed rule against inter-company relationships because of the nature of what she does?), several of her friends, Jerk AND Jerk’s parents.
Lugged all of those things to the post office and shipped them all out on December 16th. ETA for delivery, December 22-24th. PERFECT.
So we’re now at Christmas Eve. Sue comes home around the usual time, no idea if she’d seen Jerk; I’d stop tracking her on the app on the 18th. Figured I’d gotten all the mileage I needed from it. As per usual, she showers, hangs out with me a bit, and turns in for the night.
The final phase was upon me at long last. The nuke I’d been arming since June was finally about to launch. In the middle of the night, I woke up and wrapped up one of the 3 remaining binders, with the divorce papers taped to the inside cover, and set it on my side of the bed with a note that said, “Merry Christmas” on it.
Next to it, I left my old phone and the business card of my lawyer. I packed up the remainder of my most needed items, enough to fill 2 backpacks, and I left my home…that I spent 23 years in, for the last time.
That, my friends, was one week ago. To Sue, I am completely off the grid. Gone. Shadow ghosted. She’s blocked on social media but still hasn’t blocked me for some reason, so I’m keeping tabs on the fallout.
It’s absolutely glorious. My packages have reached everyone I sent them out to, and Sue is getting crucified. Her youngest sister completely dressed her down. Both of her parents have condemned her. My mom absolutely destroyed her. Like I know my mom has a mean streak…but the things she called Sue were unholy. She’s been frantically trying to find out if anyone knows where I am, but those that do aren’t saying a word.
All over her social media feed, she’s desperately trying to reach me because I’m guessing she knows I’m likely looking. But I’m not saying a word to her without my lawyer present. That’ll be the next time I share oxygen with her. She’s got no way of spinning the narrative to paint me as the bad guy because I’ve exposed her to everyone who matters to her.
And from what a mutual friend who works in the same company as her said, she and Jerk apparently are being put on administrative leave as of tomorrow, so yea…chances are, she’ll be going into 2021 unemployed. As for the final 2 binders, well…one has been turned over to my lawyer as my final bit of evidence for my impending divorce, and the last one I put in my storage unit to be burned in Joey’s fire pit when the divorce is final.
Do I feel guilty about this? No.
Not even in the slightest. 23 years I did right by this woman. I gave her the home she wanted. I gave her the family she wanted. I gave her the life I felt we both deserved, and I loved her unconditionally. Never have I faltered. Never have I strayed. Never have I even entertained the notion of breaking my vows. When an issue came up that I felt was affecting our marriage, I came to her and told her, and we sorted it out as best we could.
She opted to find comfort in another man’s bed rather than come to me and say she was unhappy with our intimate life at the time. She decided to step out with a young punk who gave her the tingles. So no, I have no sympathy for what I did, or for her. She can burn for all I care. The most I stand to lose is my house, a car, and maybe a couple of hundred bucks a month in alimony, but seeing as the divorce is filed under the statute of adultery and NYS is At Fault, that might get waved with the insurmountable about of evidence I’ve provided.
As far as I’m concerned, she’s dead to me and I’m never looking back.”
Another User Comments:
“Wow. Just… Wow. I’m younger than your marriage was, so I may not have the slightest idea of what you’re going through, but I can see you’re one tough man, who sticks to their principles.
My mom never married after my dad died 17 years ago. I never understood why, until now. When you love someone so much, it must hurt so bad to see them gone. And your retaliating in such a manner showed me how much you loved her, in such a twisted but pure way.
I might not agree with your methods, but again. I quite literally have less than half of your life experience.” Palkesz
12. Think You Can Treat Us Like Garbage Because You're A Customer? Get Out Of Our Store
It’s about freaking time that someone stood up to the customer, ya know?
“I used to work as a reluctant supervisor at a Seattle’s Best Coffee, the kind that was attached to Borders back in the day. Although we were connected to the bookstore, we were definitely our own entity, something that the Borders management was quick to remind me of all the time.
One of our customers, who we called Silvers, was a certified nutball.
She came in almost every day and spent hours sitting in the cafe writing on scrap pieces of paper and talking to herself and drinking cup after cup of coffee. She ate lunch with us almost every day, too, which I never understood, because our sandwiches were basically soggy pieces of bread with meat on them. Because she was there ALL THE TIME, we were also privy to her crazy conspiracy theories.
In our communications logbook, we referred to her ramblings as “The Silvers Saga.” Among her more notable pieces of conversation: Oprah stole her idea for a magazine, Jennifer Aniston stole her haircut, her ex-man was awful (we suspect that he was making her take her medication), sandals were a conspiracy so that people could hurt your feet and blame it on you, the Pope was part of the Illuminati, witches had cursed her, etc.
Like I said, crazy.
As part of her insanity, she also used to regularly call corporate and make false accusations against us. Two or three times a day, she would use our payphone (I really wanted to rip that thing out of the wall) to complain that we were putting poison in her food and her coffee. She would act all nice to your face and then three minutes later would be on that phone telling someone that her coffee smelled like arsenic and she was probably going to die and she wanted us all fired.
And then she would come back the next day and do it all again. Everyone in the corporate office knew who she was and completely disregarded whatever she said. When I tried to get her banned from the store, I was informed that I didn’t have the authority — only the Borders could do that. Since the bookstore management never had to deal with her, they weren’t at all concerned about it.
That is, until the day she complained and a new employee at corporate, who didn’t know anything about this lunatic’s ramblings, raked the Borders HR manager, Bob, over the coals. “There is a whole file on this woman. Why haven’t you done anything about this? We are going to have to send someone to investigate because these are serious accusations. Your cafe staffs’ jobs are on the line.
Your job is on the line.” Well, now the management cared. Silvers was, as usual, sitting in the cafe eating a sandwich and drinking her coffee and pretending like she hadn’t just called corporate to complain about us for the hundredth time. With the woman on corporate still on the line, Bob marched over to Silvers and the following exchange happened:
Bob: Get up.
Silvers: (smiling) Are you talking to me?
Bob: Yes, get up.
Silvers: (with a look of righteous smugness) I guess you’re finally going to take me seriously now?
Bob: Yup. Get out of my store. Now.
Silvers: (smile gone) What?
Bob: What word didn’t you understand? Get? Out? Now? You are not welcome back here. No one wants to poison you, because no one cares about you. No one. Get. Out. Now.
And then my favorite part: Bob put the phone to his ear and asked the lady on the line, “Was that handled to your satisfaction?”
Coincidentally, after this incident, management was a lot more open to employee complaints concerning foolish customers.”
11. Taking An Ex To Jail
“I was seeing a woman for 3 years. Let’s call her Lisa. We lived together. Grew apart. I thought the breakup went fairly smoothly. I agreed to pay for the apartment for the remainder of the lease (about a month and a half), and I went to stay with my bandmates.
I came back a few days later to grab some of my things, and the whole apartment was wrecked.
She ripped all of the pages out of my textbooks, burned them in a trash can, and scattered the ashes all over the couch. All of my DVDs were shattered and placed neatly back inside their cases and on the shelf. She wrote vulgarities all over my paintings, slashed them, emptied my paint tubes on the floor, and cut the bristles off of my brushes. I didn’t deceive or lie.
The others are up for debate. She took a hammer to my gaming PC, the fat gray Gameboy I’ve had since I was 8, my NES and SNES, all of my toys, some flower pots that once housed some really nice shrubberies, and both of my cameras. My comic book collection was ripped to shreds. My clothes were cut into ribbons. My N64 and Wii and all of the games were missing (likely pawned).
She smashed my glass desk. The cats went unfed, and she left a turd in the toilet.
The cops came and told me that there was nothing they could do for me. Because we had lived together for so long, they were her things too, and she was certainly allowed to destroy her own property.
The landlord was next. He changed the locks and struck her name off of the lease.
All of her things were already moved out, so we both assumed she wasn’t coming back. My brother came over the next day to help me move the rest of my things. Bed, furniture, washer/dryer, etc. We were nearly done when Lisa shows back up screaming obscenities. She put a few dents in my brother’s truck while telling him how much of a jerk my mother is for giving birth to us.
Then, she tried to get inside to get some more of her things (nothing she owned was in there anymore) and further lost it when her key didn’t work. She punched me in the face and started hitting me with her incredibly dense purse.
My brother called the cops and let her know that they were on the way. Cops arrived, and she was gone. Their immediate reaction to the domestic dispute call was that I was the bad guy, so I ended up in cuffs while they looked for Lisa.
After they realized that I was hurt and Lisa was nowhere to be seen, they started listening to my brother and me. He showed them the dents in his truck. I showed them my still wrecked apartment. One of them got a good laugh out of the situation. They took pictures and a statement and left.
Fast forward a couple of weeks later. It’s the last day of my lease.
I’m sleeping on a mat on the floor. The only things left in my apartment are a few lamps, a TV, a microwave, a backpack full of some clothes I bought over the last few weeks, and my cats. It’s 2 AM when I start getting intoxicated texts from Lisa. ‘I love you! Let’s get back together’…The usual. I ignore all of them and try to get some sleep.
At 3 AM, I get a knock on the door. ‘Hey, open up. This is my apartment too.’ I tell her to screw off. Then I hear a much, much deeper voice. ‘Open the door or I’ll kick it in.’ Before I get a chance to respond, the dude is already trying to kick in my door. I grab my backpack and jet out the back.
I called the cops as I left, but I didn’t stick around to see what happened.
When I return the next day, there are a few giant footprints in the front door (it’s one of those big steel ones), and the door frame is broken. She has smashed all of my lamps and the TV, peed on my pillow and mat, dumped all of my food out on the floor, spread kitty litter throughout the apartment, and smeared cat poop on the walls.
She also let out or stole all of the cats.
I got a call from her mother a few days later pleading with me to not press charges. I told her it was out of my hands. The cops had taken pictures and Lisa was going to be arrested and charged whether or not I wanted it to happen. I did. Last I heard, she spent a month in jail, paid a $5,000 fine, and had to sit through anger management classes for 6 months. Good riddance.”
10. Get Mad At Me Over An Issue That Was Your Fault? Say Goodbye To Your Lovely Rose Garden
“My neighbor from a couple of doors down and I had a long-running feud. It all started when his dog came into my backyard, and my dog attacked it. I was nearby, and able to call my dog off before it got serious, but the other dog had a couple of bite wounds.
The neighbor wanted me to pay the vet bill. When he threatened me with a lawsuit, I offered to pay half, even though I owed him nothing; it was his dog that was off the leash and in my yard, after all.
He declined the offer, took me to small claims court, and lost. The trial lasted all of 3 minutes when the judge found it in my favor.
That set into motion him starting to mess with me on a regular basis. My garbage cans would get knocked over every trash day. He would honk his horn and flip me off if he drove by my house. He tried to get my 10-year-old son arrested for riding another neighbor’s mini bike (never called the cops on their kids, just mine.) It was all stupid petty nonsense.
We were growing frustrated and mildly concerned about what he might do.
We eventually grew tired of it and filed a restraining order against him. We dropped the legal case against him when we received a letter from his lawyer stating that he would refrain from any sort of contact with any of my family for a period of 2 years. Things settled down at that point.
But I was not yet satisfied.
I had been staying on the high road through all of this, not responding to any of his nonsense in any way. I had a desire to get revenge but never acted on it. Then one day, I hatched my plan of evil genius.
I was in the hardware store and I noticed some Japanese Beetle traps. These traps are just a plastic bag with a scent pack; the beetles are drawn to the scent, fall in the bag, and can’t get out.
They also sold refill packages of the scent packs only, 4 per package.
My neighbor has a very large rose garden on his front lawn. It is his pride and joy.
Japanese beetles love roses.
So I bought 4 packages of the refill packs. The scent pack is a waxy substance in a shallow plastic cup. I put the packs in the freezer overnight, to allow me to pull the wax out easily.
The next morning, I woke up at 3 am.
I popped the wax squares out of their cups and put them in a baggie. Then I crept over to my neighbor’s house and spread the wax squares in the mulch under his rose garden, covering them from view with a bit of the hardwood mulch.
That day was a hot one. By 11 am, it was north of 90 degrees F. I figured the wax had probably melted into the dark mulch.
Also by 11 AM, the Japanese beetles were starting to arrive at my neighbor’s roses. I went on a bike ride later in the evening and could see a small swarm of them attacking the roses. My neighbor had not yet noticed what was happening.
By noon the next day, there was a freaking cloud of them. There had to be hundreds, if not thousands. My neighbor noticed.
That afternoon, I could see him spraying them and spreading Sevin powder, and waving his arms in the air in frustration.
By the third day, there were thousands of the beetles, if not tens of thousands. They were everywhere on his front lawn and wreaking havoc on his roses.
By the end 4th day, there was nothing left of his rose garden, other than a few tattered leaves and the thorny stalks.
Those scent packs must have drawn every Japanese beetle in for miles around.
I had never seen so many in a single place.
And that was it. The deed was done, and I was satisfied and laughing…quietly to myself, but laughing and laughing. And I never told a soul what I did, not even my wife.
This was a few years ago, and his rose garden is fully recovered now. And it will stay beautiful so long as he keeps being a quiet neighbor.”
9. Keep Cutting My Plants? I'll Salt Yours To Death
“I had a real jerk a neighbor many years ago on Long Island in NY.
For background, my backyard was half abutted by the nuisance neighbor and the other half my best friend. She and I had a gate that joined our backyards, so she and I could get together without having to walk or drive around the block. Her husband put it in after I moved there.
That gate is important.
Her next-door neighbor, who was the same moron whose backyard abutted mine, was a real winner. He would take his leaves and throw them over her fence into her flower beds, which was bad enough, but what he did to me was worse.
He actually lived half the year in Brooklyn and came out to the island in the summer. He also grew a vegetable garden, which he was fanatical over.
His yard was raised a bit, had a cement border, and a chain-link fence separating us. The guy was a creep. I had a cement patio and if I was outside reading, he would come out, water his garden, and stare. Fine. I put up a trellis and planted a couple of butterfly bushes and wisteria for privacy.
At some point, he decided that my plantings and trees were interfering with his precious garden and that’s where the fun starts.
I had honeysuckle growing on the side fence. It in no way was growing on the back fence, so it wasn’t growing into his garden, but while I was at work, he came into my yard and cut it down to the ground.
I also had an oak tree in the corner with some gladiolus planted around it and some bayberry bushes in front. There was also a small birdbath.
He decided that my oak was blocking his sun, so he came in the yard while I was gone and started cutting branches. Not the ones hanging over his yard, but the ones clearly in mine that were supposedly blocking his sun.
When I confronted him, he admitted to doing it and basically told me that his garden trumped my property rights and too bad if I didn’t like it.
I called the police, but if they don’t see it or you can’t prove it, tough luck. Now, I’m starting to about have had it with this guy.
I was a single mom then and worked a lot of hours. I drove a school bus, so I was also in and out. He would wait for the bus to leave and strike. Now, I had three dogs.
Two I couldn’t leave out because they were both descendants of Houdini but one, a lab, I could. He had found some potpourri and tried to eat it, (he ate anything) and while it didn’t really hurt him, he did get diarrhea, so he was banished until it was out of his system.
Now Tar (the lab) was a typical lab. Friendly, but dumb as a box of hair.
He also barked if you were in the yard and he didn’t know you. It was during this time that my jerk neighbor decided to trim a bit more of my tree while I wasn’t home. I come back later and poor Tar is leaning on the back of the house trembling.
My gate is wide open and my shovel, which was on my patio is also leaning on the house.
I have no idea what was going on I’m trying to calm the dog down and it all falls into place. Creepy has gone into my friend’s yard, through her gate into her backyard, through the connecting gate into mine to cut back that tree, but this time, the dog was there and probably barking at him.
So he grabbed my shovel, hit my dog, God knows how many times until he was cowed and cut that tree.
Could I prove it? No, but Tar would make a wide berth past that guy’s fence and cower when he saw him, so that was all the proof I needed. I had Tar checked out and other than being scared, he was fine and that was when I made my plan.
When the jerk went back to Brooklyn, I went to the store and bought six boxes of Kosher salt.
I also bought three gallons of kerosene. I salted his precious garden and gave it a good dose of kerosene on top of it. Falls on Long Island are rainy, so it soaked into the soil.
The following Spring, I put a small 10 by 10 garden next to my patio. I planted tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and some herbs. My tomatoes grew beautifully, and I had so many I gave them away.
His garden? Well, the plants would start then shrivel up into a brown mass of death.
He kept asking me what I was doing to make mine so nice while lamenting his and wondering what was wrong.
I just played stupid. He never had a garden that year and never found out why. I put a lock on my gate and gave a key to my friend, so he was never able to trespass. Hurt my dog, will he? Fixed him, but good.”
8. Snow Wars With A Selfish Neighbor
“We had a neighbor who lived across the street from us who was a real witch. After hearing the things she’d yell at her terminally-ill husband or her adult son or any of her other relatives who had somehow been induced to stop by, it was pretty obvious to me that it wasn’t just her neighbors that she hated.
She had a three-car-wide garage with a correspondingly wide driveway, even though she only had one vehicle (this was after her husband had died).
When it snowed, she expected whichever of her male relatives were currently at her beck-and-call to clear the entire width of the driveway. If it was just an inch or two of snow, a snow shovel would suffice. But once in a great while, we’d get a deep snow. At that point, random-male-relative would arrive with a snowblower.
In addition to the snowblower, he also brought an apparently genetic lack of respect for other people, because the direction in which he chose to blow the snow was not—as would seem logical—onto witch-neighbor’s lawn, but instead into the street…specifically, toward the end of our single-car driveway (which was a bit further down the street from her driveway), where it turned into a wide patch of ice.
Because the street had a bit of a slope upward in the direction, you’d need to drive to get off our street in the winter, and that patch of ice made it nearly impossible for a car to get any traction after exiting our driveway.
It wasn’t just a nuisance; it was a dangerous nuisance.
Despite my husband having had words with her and with random-male-relative about the situation, it kept happening. Finally, since I was pretty sure that this behavior wasn’t legal, the next time that the snowblower was used to cause this hazard, I called the police.
Sadly—according to the cop—moving snow onto the street turned out to be a perfectly legal thing to do.
That news (which she overheard) seemed to please witch-neighbor quite a lot. Unfortunately for her, that fact was very useful to me.
When her random-male-relative was done with his dirty work and gone, and the sun had gone down, I went outside with a nice, quiet snow shovel (we didn’t own a snowblower ourselves). I removed the snow from the road in front of our driveway. In fact, I removed it from most of the street between our houses.
But I was very careful about where I put it…
I put it, very legally, on the street in front of her driveway. From one side of her very wide driveway to the other, I built a ridge of snow about a foot high and a foot thick. I didn’t set foot on her property at all. The snow was all on the street, where the cop had very plainly said it was permissible to put it.
But once the twice-moved snow froze into a solid mass, there was no way she was going to get a vehicle out of her driveway. In fact, it took her quite some time the next day to get someone out to do the very difficult (no snow blowing possible) work of removing that ridge. The only bad part was that it was a Saturday (it would have been much nicer if she’d been late for work).
Interestingly, witch-neighbor never permitted her random-male-relatives to blow snow into the street after that.”
7. Keep Sticking Your Nose In My Business? I'll Give You Something To Shriek About
“When I left college, moving back in with my folks just didn’t seem like the thing to do, but back then, my girl and I didn’t feel ready to move in together. So I found a flat to rent close to where she lived. It was a nice area with four houses with generous gardens. Most had been bought by the tenants, and as a result, were well maintained by the owners; quiet, leafy suburbia.
The flat in question was leased to me by a middle-aged couple who had bought it for their elderly mother hoping to make a killing flipping it when she died. Granny, it would seem, helped them by apparently smoking herself to death and left them with a slight problem – they couldn’t sell the place. The decor was horrendous, and the interior was yellower than a toilet.
I could limbo under the gap between door and floor. But my new landlords kindly said if I wanted to strip out all the granny stuff and redecorate, they would pay for it – splendid!
The only blot on the horizon was the two chintzy, old ladies who lived next door. They had been there for decades, so their normality must have been shattered by the death of their neighbor who had lived there for years.
I was sensitive to this and was as friendly and courteous as could be, but it wasn’t long before the barbed remarks began. One day I was in the back garden stripping layered paint and smoke off the doors. Obviously, this would meet with firm disapproval. So no real surprise when from the corner of my eye I caught a garish splash of floral polyester. They had a habit of appearing stealthily like some incontinent ninja brigade.
They were standing silently, side by side, like a horribly shriveled version of the twins from The Shining. A few pleasantries were exchanged – then it came…
‘So you don’t work, do you?’
‘Well no, I’ve just finished an honors degree and I am looking for a job in my field, but there is a pretty major recession on.’
I continued to be cheery and redid the place from top to bottom – whilst also applying for jobs.
During this time, they closely monitored my EVERY move. If I went into the back garden they would immediately appear, set up deck chairs, plonk themselves down, and knit with sustained and intense fury – never once taking their little beady eyes off me. It started raining lightly one day, so they simply moved the deckchairs into their shed, left the door open, and continued the surveillance!
Eventually, I found a job.
They quickly turned their attention to my relationship with my partner.
‘So you’re not married, ARE YOU?’ they chimed in unison with their powdery bunched-up little faces.
The curtain twitching would go into a frenzy any time my girl arrived. It was a warm summer, so I’d often have the barbecue on the go of an evening. As soon as I lit the thing the same routine would begin: they would make a huge deal out of slamming all their windows shut, then rush out to take in their washing, tutting, and muttering.
I should point out the washing that was about 40 feet away down their side of the garden and well up-wind from my tiny barbeque.
Then one day, they made some comment about hanging out laundry. From what I could gather, they had certain days for washing and somehow expected me to adhere to this bizarre ritual. This and the constant prying about my girl gave me an idea.
The following day, I waited until they toddled off to wherever the public hanging was that day.
Then I hung my washing out, sat in the garden, lit the barbecue, opened a brew, and waited for their return. I even took my shirt off for good measure. It was at this point I really wished I had some tattoos. Soon enough, I heard their respective front doors slam, counted to 5, and turned around. Sure enough, there they were peering out their windows.
Clearly, they couldn’t get a close enough look from there so out came the deckchairs.
They sat in complete silence staring at the spectacle of my laundry billowing in the breeze. With considerable skill, I had carefully pegged one of her laciest, prettiest bras to the line. Then below the bra hung a matching suspender belt which in turn supported a tiny wispy little pair of underthings and of course a pair of sheer lacy-topped black stockings that waved lazily in the breeze, like a very thin lady running in slow motion.
‘Hello ladies, lovely day!’ I waved cheerily.
If they could have pursed their little faces up any more, they’d have turned them inside out.
Vicious old bats.
Then, things escalated considerably.
This first became evident when they started to mow further and further into my lawn. The old biddies were quite literally cutting my grass. They always conspired together, frantically rushing around the garden in tartan slippers, always at dusk – one mowing, one cable bashing. I’m not a petty man; well I am actually, so clearly, this was going to escalate.
The garden had a white fence about 6 feet high at the division point of the properties, but this barely extended onto the back lawn-whereas the lawn stretched farther.
To make matters worse, my side was an end-terrace, so I had another large garden area and parking for three cars at the side of my place. They had no such luxury, so this was probably an issue of hot contention for them too, even though neither of them had cars.
The wonky line that veered further into my lawn, now twice a week during the height of summer, was getting on my nerves.
Then plastic bottles filled with water started appearing everywhere. I had to ask.
‘The bottles keep YOUR cats out of our garden?’
‘Eh?’
‘Their reflection, it scares them off.’
‘Does it really? How ingenious!’
On further inquiry, I was informed (incredulously): ‘It keeps cats out – cats are too lazy to climb fences.’
But it was the lawn thing that really made me mad. When the man arrived to deliver my fence, I got him to leave the posts: 16-pound sledgehammer, fence panels, clips, and other related paraphernalia stacked up ominously in the back garden.
Then I went out for a brew.
By the time I came back, they were out on the deckchairs perched on the disputed border, knitting. I stubbed my smoke onto the lawn, dead on the borderline. Grinding it in with my foot I squinted into the sunlight and snarled…
‘Can’t hang around ladies, things to do.’
Whang – the first metal post spike pierced the lawn and plunged into the ground.
It was like pushing candles into a birthday cake. A few taps on the wooden post and it was done. The first birch lap, the pressure-treated panel was up. At 6 foot it was considerably taller than me, and these old biddies were struggling to hit 5 feet.
They went absolutely, vein-popping, mental. Literally running in and out of their flats, shouting insults from upper windows.
‘You can’t do that; this is private property,’ one shrieked.
‘Yes it is, and this half is mine,’ I smiled sweetly.
‘You don’t own it; I’m phoning Mrs.
Cantremeberhername (my landlady).’
‘No need, I have in writing from her that she approves of the fence. Would you care to see?’
‘You need planning permission.’
‘I don’t.’
‘You do.’
‘I don’t – it is classed a temporary structure, and as it is less than 7 feet in height; therefore, I don’t need permission from anyone except the landowner, which I have.’
‘It’s on the wrong boundary.’
‘Not according to this copy of the deeds (flip, flap, unfold) – care to see? In fact, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you but that part of the end of the garden is also actually mine – right up to the back fence.’
She was apologetic by this point – the bit at the bottom of the garden was her favorite spot for deckchair surveillance.
It actually looked into my living room.
Then, her son arrived.
‘Tell him Malcolm, TELL HIM.’
I explained the situation to the clearly long-suffering man. He apologized and gave me his number in case I needed it. Then smiled weakly as he tried to assure her it was not a police matter and I was not deliberately destroying the value of her property. I continued to put the line of fence panels up at an impressive rate.
The mad old witch now had to be physically held back by her son. Then the other old lady who had been quieter up till now suddenly opened her upper window and screamed…
‘You’re not even married; it’s disgusting!’
‘Why don’t we elope?’ I suggested. ‘Blue hair really does it for me?’
As the last panel went up, I stood back and took stock. Just as I was about to pop another brew, I heard a clattering from the mad old bat’s garden shed.
Then perched on ancient stepladders, craning and wobbling awkwardly around the last panel, I saw a frazzled mop of blue hair attached to an alarmingly purple face glaring ’round the fence – so far down the garden, I struggled at first to see which poisonous harridan was there screeching the now immortal line…
‘I can still SEE you, you know! I can still SEE….’
I can only assume at that point the ramifications of a person of advancing years clambering onto an antique ladder suddenly became distinctly apparent to the old witch.”
6. Take Our Dog? We'll Take Your Kids
You should have thought twice before stealing someone’s beloved pet, now, shouldn’t you have?
“This happened when I was around 12/13. For most of my childhood, the house right next to ours has been condemned and abandoned. The property owners were willing to sell the land for $200. That’s how bad it was. My family didn’t buy it because the land tax in our area is high because we are a school of choice.
Eventually, someone bought it and threw a manufactured home on it to replace the condemned home.
Soon, a nice old man moved in next door, and we didn’t pay too close attention because he kept to himself. That was until his daughter moved in with him. Soon, our quiet little neighborhood turned into an episode of “white trash in trouble.” The daughter would fight with her spouse about every little thing and keep my family – along with our neighbors – up half the night.
Their kids were the worst part of all. We never knew how many kids lived in that house because so many different children and adults were in and out of there all the time.
My siblings and I tried to become friends with them because there are not too many kids our age in the town. We ended up being more of their babysitters than just a friendly neighbor kid.
They would come over to our house and each of my siblings had a group of kids 3-4 each to watch over. These kids would walk in uninvited into our house while we would play with their siblings in the yard then steal toys and games from our rooms (honestly, they stole stuff from all over our house, but this was the main area). They would either take it for themselves or throw it in our backyard river.
They did that a lot if we made them mad for taking back our stuff. They would constantly run in and out of our house, even if no one was with them. They would steal all of the fruit in the basket my mom left out for us. My mom didn’t kick them out immediately because she never wanted to deny a kid food if they need it.
My mom confronted the parents about their behavior, and their three-year-old son called her a jerk. The parents refused to apologize for their behavior. Saying stuff like, “If you loved it so much, you wouldn’t have let them take it” or “Don’t parent my kid.“
One thing they would specifically do with me is they pulled on my hair all the time. I’m a tomboy, and they would just call me a boy in a wig because “girls can’t play with skateboards, and “girls can’t play with ninja action figures” or any other gender stereotype.
They would constantly bombard me because they truly didn’t know girls were allowed to play with anything they wanted. One of their heavier children stole my skateboard and jumped on it breaking it in half. Then they said I shouldn’t have been playing with one anyway. There are plenty more examples, but I think you get the point.
The neighbors decided that because our house was nicer, that they had permission to run an electrical line from our back yard plugs to their house, which in itself is a bad thing, but they decided to runoff our electric bill to triple the cost of our original.
We were lower middle class/below poverty level. So we couldn’t afford that kind of bill. The rule in our house is if you’re not using something, it is turned off. That’s why my parents were awfully surprised to see an $800 electric bill. Eventually, a person from our electric company came out to our house to see what was happening. They found an extension cord running to their house.
The electrician simply unplugs it, then warned the neighbors of the legal reasons why they can’t do that. Then said that should be the end of that problem. My mom politely but sternly went to the neighbors that this was not okay. The neighbor had a small adult tantrum about it and cussed my mom out, but eventually, came back into her home. My mom was obviously not pleased with their behavior but tried not to escalate the situation any further.
Our neighbors tried 1 or 2 more times to run the line from our house to theirs.
They would move it at night, so we wouldn’t see them move it. Each time when we unplugged it, they would cuss us out and send their kids over to destroy something else in our home. Eventually, my mom straight up told them if they or their kids come on our property again, she would call the police and press charges. We could still be “friends” with their kids, but they weren’t allowed on our land.
They decided that because we won’t let them use our electricity, that the next best option was to steal our dog from the backyard and claim our dog attacked her kids (even though our dog was harmless and cowers at everything due to bad owners before us).
I’m guessing because our dog liked to rip her tags off a lot that the neighbors said she was a stray. That attacked them. The pound came and took our puppy away. By the time my brothers and I got home, she was already gone. We just assumed she ran off to our grandmother’s who lived down the street. (She would do this often because my grandma spoils her.) When my parents came home, they about lost it, learning our dog was missing.
We obviously looked for her but couldn’t find her. After 2 days. We found her at the dog pound. The officer said it was obvious that our dog didn’t hurt their kids, but they still had to take her in for an evaluation. My parents had to spend $200 to get her out. The pound told us why the dog was taken, and my mom said enough was enough.
Now the revenge.
When my mom got home, she sent my little brother over to their house to “play” with their kids. He was still friends with some of them at the time. My brother became a little spy that day. His job was to look around their house and report anything that could be suspicious. We learned from him that they were sitting three kids to a twin bed.
The entire house was cramped and dirty. The old man that lived there was hardly home because he couldn’t stand his adult daughter who lived there, but he didn’t want to evict her from the home and leave his grandkids homeless. All around, the kids were being neglected. With the information my brother gathered, my mom called CPS (Child protective services) on the home. Within the month, all of the children minus one (who the old man cared for) were removed from the home.
While I agree the foster system is bad, it was definitely better than what they were going through in that house.
The mother of the children started to fight with the old man (her father) on everything because her kids were no longer there as a distraction. The old man was to be her next victim. The old man eventually was fed up with her and kicked her out of the home.
All that was left in the home was the old man and the grandson he was fostering. They are both very kind and amazing neighbors.”
Another User Comments:
“Did this happen back in the 1800s where locks were nonexistent?” PotatoClanMember
Reply:
“We didn’t lock our doors in the daytime. They would come into our house while we played with other kids in the yard. That and our parents didn’t want us to lose our key and be stuck outside in the winter.” PhilipHamilton19
5. Try To Dine And Dash? We'll Hold Your Tablet Hostage Until You Pay
“I serve at a higher-end pizza shop in Minneapolis — local, organic ingredients, big ol’ compost bin, run on wind power – that whole deal. The very first table of my shift on this rainy Tuesday was a big ‘n’ tall dude in his late 20s/early 30s, sipping a drink and chowing down on pizza. My boss transferred him over to me, saying that he probably wasn’t going to order anymore and was almost done.
I go over and introduce myself, let him know I’ll be taking over his service and that I applied happy hour to his tab, so if he needs more drinks/appetizers, they’ll be discounted. He thanked me and I continued with my starting side work.
By the end of Happy Hour, his tab contained five drinks, two appetizers, a small salad, and TWO 10″ pizzas. While alarms should’ve been sounding in my brain, I was too busy being impressed with the sheer volume this dude could take in to worry about him walking out.
I checked in toward the end of every drink to see if he wanted to tab out, and every time he’d look at his fancy Apple watch, shrug, and order another drink. I encouraged him to keep drinking water, shared that I was nursing a hangover and wanted to do what I could to help him avoid the same fate, and generally did my best to connect with him because I care about my tables.
Over the next two hours, the restaurant filled and emptied. Tables turned, and he added four more drinks to his tab. All of my tables other than him were closed out, a few of them just hanging out, avoiding braving the rain (it was slow at this point, so it was no problem). He was cozy in a booth with his computer and a full glass, so I figured I was good to go on a quick break.
After about three minutes of glorious sitting, my super-server senses started tingling. Something was not right. I popped into the dining room to see my closed-out two-top hanging out and chatting, and my $90+, small salad, 9 drinks, two pizzas, and two appetizer table GONE. There was a practically full drink at the table, plus half a small pizza and the box that he’d had for the last two hours.
I checked in with my lingering two-top, and they said that he had come up to the front, looked around, packed up his things, and left. They were shocked that he hadn’t paid.
I was shaking with frustration. Having just spent four hours serving this jerk, making sure he was drinking plenty of water to go with his 8 finished drinks, offering to call him a cab if he needed it, I felt personally taken advantage of.
Our mid-shift cook that night (a service industry vet who suffers no fools) happened to get off his shift just after BeerBelly McAllTheFood (let’s call him BM for short) ditched, and because he’s the best, went out into the neighborhood looking for him. About 30 minutes had passed when our dear cook called the restaurant to let us know that he found BM at a bar two blocks away.
Ten minutes after, in walked BM, accompanied by my coworker. He let us know that BM’s cards were getting declined down the street and that we should be prepared to call the cops. He came to the counter, and I told him I’d prepare his tab for him.
He started to walk away, saying, “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
He pointed to his bag sitting in the booth, grabbed it, and came up to the counter.
He smiled apologetically and let me know with a light laugh that– it’s funny– but his cards hadn’t been working! Totally weird. Such a surprise to him. I told him we’d give it a shot anyway.
BIG SHOCKER, his cards were declined. He could tell my patience was wearing thin. He did not have any cash on him. I stared him down, trying to figure out how to proceed, while he tried to lighten the mood with excuses, presumably so I wouldn’t get his dumb butt arrested.
“Yeah, it’s funny, I just… I realized my cards kept getting declined.”
“Without us running them.”
“…Yeah!”
With a deep breath and the smile of someone about to lose their mind, I said, “So, just to be clear: you ordered over $90 of food and drink, and then you left without even TRYING to pay your tab… because you realized that your cards–that we never attempted to run–were getting declined?”
“Yeah! It’s weird, right?!” he said, with a “pfft” sound at the end, as if I were on the same page as him.
At this point my manager had come up front, both of us thinking “ARE YOU KIDDING ME? NO, IT IS NOT WEIRD! WHO EVEN ARE YOU?” and we both responded with, “No. It’s just awful.”
He asked if we could take down his information so he could pay at a later date. My manager took the lead from here.
“Can I have your ID?”
He nervously dug into his bag and then offered her his passport to hold as collateral.
“This is expired.”
“Oh, uh…yeah…I, uh, I just ordered a new ID. I have a new one coming in the mail soon.”
“This is useless to us. Do you have something that isn’t expired? Like a driver’s license?”
With a smile and a shrug he said, “I biked.”
Because he wasn’t going to budge on this, he didn’t have valid identification, and he was being a smug piece of trash, I went to the back to call the cops.
When I came back up front, my awesome manager had his iPad behind the counter and was writing him a note explaining where it was and how to get it back (he seemed functional, but he was still 8+ drinks deep).
He said, “Please take care of it” before going back to his abandoned table, boxing up his last slices of pizza, and leaving.
So once he pays his $90 tab, he can have his $500+ iPad back. We canceled his police escort. Here’s hoping that he pays and leaves me a fat tip for the four hours I gave him excellent service.”
4. Can't Seem To Keep It Down? I'll Record You And Make A Song Out Of You
“Well, this was petty and insidious too. I felt bad about doing it, but something had to be done.
I lived in the bottom condo on the big golf course in Laguna Niguel, California and it was in the 90s. I lived there for 25 years total and this was in the middle of my time there. It started out as a retirement place, but as the older folks passed away or moved to the rest homes, younger folks bought and some rented the places out for income.
We had new neighbors in the upstairs condo two over from me.
Renters! Two college-aged girls and one had a Marine partner. They had the outer bedroom and she was a screamer. It was so loud and obnoxious and in the middle of the night, she shook the building. They had several sessions every single night!
It was so embarrassing, and many times it started the coyote packs howling from across the canyon. It was a predictable sonic mess and I thanked my lucky stars when the Marine was finally deployed.
Her ritualistic voice was annoying and very obnoxious. But, she got another man – another Marine!
I had my buddies over and they would laugh and joke about her cartoon-sounding screaming. Intolerable.
Then, I started seeing a divorced lady with two young children and they stayed the weekend. As I was teaching the kids how to swim and then surf, they were scared from the wailing and would jump in bed with her and me.
My passionate life suffered.
I had a sound recording studio and it was very soundproofed, so I put a king-sized bed in there, and we all slept in it and had quiet. But, the daytime drama was getting me and the other neighbors edgy! Then, I got one of the new samplers and it was way cool. It had a microphone and you could sample 9 seconds of sound and play it back on the keyboard and you could transpose it and pitch shift it and add reverb and echo.
It was so much fun and musical too.
So one weeknight, I sampled her screams. I had the mic set up in my neighbors upstairs balcony and it worked beautifully and it was her to the tee.
Cue the sounds of the big moment.
It was the weirdest thing I ever heard. My neighbors left notes and called her landlord all to no avail!
She was going to her car once and I played a couple of seconds of it.
She was looking around and dumbfounded. Her distinctive voice was apparent. On the weekend, I set up a big speaker on my patio and had the sampler hooked up, and when she wailed, I played her back and it shut them up as they were on the balcony trying to figure out what was going on. The coyotes loved it too.
Her parents stayed a week and I played it at night for them.
I even wrote a song with her screams as the backbeat it was a cool riff and my buddies busted a gut when I cranked it up in the cassette player in the car or the beatbox!
Finally, she moved out and the condo folks of unit A had a party in celebration at the pool that weekend. I brought the sampler and my song and the mom’s covered their kids’ ears as I let her rip. I still have it somewhere and I have been listening to the hundreds of tapes trying to find it. The song was called ‘Organic Jelly!’ I am desperately looking for it as it is on a cassette and the sampler was sold years ago!”
Another User Comments:
“Gawd, imagine hearing yourself in the most intimate moments blasted out to the whole neighborhood! Awkward.” Gizelle Bichard
3. I Told Her To "Just Be A Mom"
No mother wants to hear that, ouch.
“For a few months, I babysat for this family. The husband was a millionaire businessman and the wife was a stay-at-home mom. She put an ad out on a babysitting website and I responded. She had three kids: a 13-year-old bookworm, a 9-year-old who loved anyone who showed her attention, and a 5-year-old demon child. I only watched the kids (mainly the two younger ones) for a few hours three times a week.
The first warning I got was the pay. I told the mom that when I was with one kid, it was $15/hour, two was $25/hour, and all three were $30/hour, and if I drove anywhere, I would be compensated for gas. She was ‘so completely ok’ with that arrangement until it was payday. She found every excuse in the book why she didn’t think I should get paid that much.
I threatened to leave and ‘talk to her husband about it’ and that quickly changed her mind. She could afford me. Maybe she was trying to play a power game with me, but I wasn’t going to back down.
The second warning sign was the 9-year-old. She was a good kid, but because she ‘loved me,’ she wanted me to go to her after-school talent shows, art shows, and school functions.
So I went to one, and after that, I was expected to go to all of them. Then she told me how out of the last ’13 babysitters my mom hired,’ I was her favorite. She also would text me non-stop from her mom’s phone all the time to the point I was getting at least 150 messages a day from her. When I mentioned it to the mom and asked her to tell her to stop, the messages would double because she didn’t like being told ‘no.’
The final warning was with the 5-year-old – a spoiled, horrible little girl.
She was the type of kid whose parents would get anything she wanted just to shut her up from acting out. She wouldn’t call me by my name; she would call me ‘sitter.’ ‘Sitter, I’m thirsty; get me a juice,’ or ‘Sitter, I don’t want you sitting with me. Sit on the floor.’ When I would tell mom about this, she would just laugh it off and said she calls all the help ‘pet names.’
But this is what did me in.
We were outside one nice morning. She wanted to ride her bike in the street. Now, I made it very clear to the mom that when she was with me, she could ride her bike in the driveway or the backyard (as the mom told me that she liked to just ‘takeoff’). And the mom agreed. When I told her that she was to stay in the driveway, this kid lost her mind.
She threw her $1,000 bike across the driveway, screaming and crying like she was being attacked. She told me how she was going to ‘get me to stay with the cop men.’ She was just flipping out because I told her that she has to stay in the driveway. I took her by her hand and told her that she was in time-out for 5 minutes, and that when it was over, she had to go pick up her bike.
This kid started ranting and raving like an adult. She walked around the room to the kitchen, hands on her hip, dramatically turning around and pointing a finger at me. She got a bag of chips and a juice box and flopped down on the couch muttering to herself about bikes. This kid was crazy.
After she was done, I told her to go get her bike and bring it outback.
As she was doing this, the scream that came from this kid almost gave me a heart attack. When I heard her I was like, ‘If this kid hurt herself going the two feet outside…’
I ran out to see her mom in the driveway, looking confused, and this kid screaming bloody murder all because her mom came home.
The mom came in with her and the kid told this outrageous story and the mom just rolled her eyes and told her to go watch TV.
I was just about to tell mom what happened and she cut me off and said, ‘I know…it’s ok.’ It’s then that I realized that I could no longer handle that kid. I emailed her the next day pretty much telling her that she needed to NOT hire help for everything and just be a mom to her kids, and that by the end of the week, I would pick up my pay and be done.
In the end, I feel for those kids because they needed parents, not babysitters.
On a side note, the 13-year-old was chill. I barely interacted with her. She would read by the window and I was cool with that. Although one time, the 5-year-old threw a tantrum outside and I asked her to help, and she just walked away. Looking back now, I don’t blame her. For a year after that, I would get a call now and then from mom asking if she tripled the pay if I could come back for a few days, and I would just say no. It’s not worth the money.”
2. I Basically Ended Her Career
“Well, I think I ended her career.
When I was working in Dubai a while ago, I was seeing a girl from India; let’s call her ‘S.’ S and I hit it off right away, and it was nice to meet someone to spend time exploring Dubai with. There was never a lack of conversation, as the range of topics spanned politics, my upbringing in the midwest, and hers in Hyderabad.
Mind you, we did not work in the same company. On another note, we were not friends on social media. And that’s because I didn’t have anything resembling a decent profile and didn’t really use it.
She went back to India for a family visit. While there, she got together with her ex or current partner or whatever. How did I find out? One of my coworkers and girls in her social group showed me some rather interesting pictures of her and let me know I was being played.
Also, there was some text from her bragging about, ‘What the American doesn’t know won’t hurt him.’ Obviously, I was angry.
Whatever. It’s not like we were headed to the altar together. When S got back to the UAE, I let her know that I would have appreciated some level of honesty and didn’t appreciate the treatment. She wanted to know who told me, rather than denying it happened.
Always a tell-tale sign. Anyway, I let her know that I didn’t want to see her again and we’re done.
A few months later, there was a decision from my company to engage the consulting company S worked for. My coworker (the one who showed me the social media pics and text) was in charge of that work effort and managing the relationship with the consulting company.
We had a talk, and she asked my thoughts on S being part of this work effort.
I said, ‘Perhaps it’s better we work with someone else. I don’t want a personal issue with her to impact the relationship with the consultancy.’
Pretty generic answer, and I really didn’t expect anything of it. I figured she would be there and we would just be professional about it. Happens all the time here in the US.
Nope. She was not part of the engagement team from the consulting company. Ok, I was a bit surprised and somewhat relieved. The last thing I needed was that toxic vibe. What I didn’t know was that she was already on some performance review with her company. And this was the last straw. They fired her.
What I also came to realize was that she had something like 30 days to leave the country if she wasn’t able to find a job in the UAE.
Which she did not. She also had a massive amount of debt that she had accumulated during her time in Dubai. Well, she had to leave the country and went back to India with a ton of debt and zero references. From what I have been told, she was never able to secure another job to come back to the UAE, or for that matter work for other western-based companies back home in India.
I guess from what she does (HR relations or something like that), it’s ultra-competitive. She wound up getting married and is now a homemaker. “
Another User Comments:
“I have a feeling both her debts and possibly integrity issues could be the main issues that caused her to be fired.
Perhaps your statement prevented her from securing the deal. That was the tipping point and excuse the company needed to fire to her.” James Teng
1. Steal My iPod? I'll Hack Your Laptop
“Imagine being in high school, back in the latter days of George Bush, and finally buying that iPod of your dreams. After saving up your allowance and the money you made around the neighborhood doing random work and lifeguarding at the local pool. Yup… that was me. And I was that jerk 14-year-old who would make sure you knew I had one of the better iPods, one that could play video.
It was the latest Nano, if I remember right. Simpler times.
But every story needs an antagonist – my sister happened to find that role many times. We are very close now, but back then, it wasn’t so rosy.
She was a teenager as well and spent most of those years resenting me. If I had something nice, screw you for having that. I was quite protective of my precious iPod – she raised quite the storm when my parents refused to buy her one.
“Your brother saved his money; we didn’t pay for it – we are not stopping you from buying one too if you save your money.” That was their attitude toward any luxury that us kids wanted, even up to that time when buying a first car was on the table. We each had to buy our own. It built character and taught responsibility.
Well, that iPod goes missing one day at home when I knew well I had left it charging at the family computer.
I left it unattended. My parents confirmed they did not touch it, and all eyes were on my sister.
I’ll jump ahead here – as it turned out, she had indeed taken it and had one of her friends temporarily store it until the heat was off of her. She knew my parents would essentially strip search her. After this unraveled (one of my buddies saw her with the iPod at school several days later), it was time for payback.
Back then, I liked to think of myself as a bonafide hacker.
That’s right – I knew all about batch files and how to open command prompt. Don’t cross me. You have no idea what I’m capable of.
Yeah, anyway…. we don’t talk about those dark days. But I actually did know enough to copy/paste some destructive commands into scripts, using “del” and “reg delete” commands and the like. In the days of Windows XP, this would essentially require re-installing the OS.
I also was aware of a program called Bat2EXE which could package your batch files (and associated files it would call from the same directory) into a normal EXE file. And you could pick an icon to slap on that EXE, if you had the ICO file on hand.
It doesn’t take a genius (because as much as I thought I was one, I wasn’t) to devise a plan here.
I put a script together with the worst thing I could muster and gave it the Internet Explorer icon. This went on to my sister’s computer, which was an old Pentium M laptop, which barely had enough stuff to load MySpace at the time. My “hacker” abilities allowed me to log into the administrator account by booting into safe mode or something and simply replacing the iexplorer.exe main file with my science experiment.
I believe I had it to where it actually opened the real Internet Explorer in parallel, so I could deny this more easily.
Fast forward to that magical moment. She’s home from color guard practice and is ready for an evening full of awful webcam photos that use every mid-2000s effect ever created. But before she can upload them, disaster! The screen resolution goes way up, and the color profile is 16 colors for some reason.
Random pop-up messages every few seconds…. “Microsoft Windows has detected a giant jerk. Please consider a system upgrade” and stuff like that. “Your hard drive is jammed with peanut butter. Restart required.”
The whole script plays out and she’s left with a paperweight until someone can get around to sorting it. Unfortunately, the “computer guy” in the family took quite a while to get around to it. My dad knew well that I had something to do with this, even if he didn’t understand it fully. He made my sister apologize to me before I helped her with her laptop and made her buy me a new case for it after she threw away the one I had to try and make it less identifiable.”
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