People Share Their Gutsy Moment Of Revenge
13. Gold Digger Gets Forced To Pay Her Own Bill
You want it? You got it! (But you’re paying, Princess.)
“I live in China. Yesterday I started talking to this girl on a meet-up app. She wanted to hang. She lives in Shanghai. I had nothing planned for the day of the meet up, so I figured, why not?
After I met up with her, we walked around. Everything was going good. She asked if I had lunch or breakfast.
I didn’t, so she said, “I know a place nearby we can eat.”
After we got to the place, I ordered some shrimp and orange juice. She got some whiskey, fish, prawns, oysters, crab, and later got some clams (which at this point cost about 3,000 rmb, which equals roughly $400).
Every 15 minutes or so, she would order 4 more glasses of whiskey. All together, she ordered around 15 or so shots of whiskey, and the price came to 6999rmb (over $1,000).
Before I go on, let me just remind, people, this is in downtown Shanghai.
1 slice of pizza costs around 60 rmb (~$9.17). I can get a whole 12-inch pizza in my small town for that price. For anyone who has lived or been to Shanghai, you know that it’s very expensive.
After that, she mentioned wanting to go to a karaoke place and dance. I’m frankly appalled that she has the nerve to ask me to do anything else that after, but we go.
I’m thinking, I’m going to get this b*tch.
So we arrive. After I say, 10 minutes, here comes her friend. She (the gold digger) orders a bottle of fine wine (around 3,000 rmb), and her friend ordered some sprinkling wine (1,100 rmb). I got some Tsingtao (common beer). I told her, “I’ll be right back; I need to ask the bartender a question” (the karaoke has a bar too).
I informed him that I didn’t order the bottles and that I will not be paying for that, but the beer, I will.
Luckily, the guy was understanding of it.
Here comes the gold digger, asking what I’m doing, and I said, I’m paying for my drink. She said, “You going to pay for the 2 bottles?” I said, “No, I didn’t order those.”
At that moment, I think she knew I’ve caught on to her scheme, and she frantically said, “Here, I’ll pay half, and you pay half.” I did see she gave 2,400 rmb to the bartender.
I stood my ground, and I said, “I’m not paying that.
I didn’t want that.” After literally 5 minutes of telling her that, she went back to her seat. I paid 60 rmb for the beer. I decided to be pettier and started talking to other girls nearby. n She mentioned she doesn’t have the money to pay for the drink. I said not my problem; I didn’t want that. I’m not your sugar daddy.
Then she said, “If you can’t pay for that, I have to get another friend to help me.” In the corner of my eye, I look at her friend who came in earlier, and she had that awkward look on her face that she didn’t have any money on her either.
Her last attempt to have me pay was on the promise of s*x (which she wasn’t going to do even if I agreed). I said, “F*ck nah” and walked out.
At that moment, I pulled out my phone and removed her from my WeChat (it’s a messaging app).
So for her attempt to have a night on the town at my expense, she had to pay a 4,000 rmb bill (about $600) that she couldn’t pay.
She had to resort to getting another friend to help her out. She going to have a rough time smoothing that over. Under any circumstance, it probably ruined their relationship after that. Or if she is lucky, she is going to pay off the bar by working there for awhile.”
Another User Comments:
Seriously my thoughts…
“She wanted to keep drinking after 15 shots of whiskey and was still able to walk?” thumb_of_justice
12. Mad That I Won't Fold Your Clothes Before Bagging Them? Just Wait Until Next Time
“I used to work at a discount department store (the name rhymes with boss). If you’re unfamiliar, we buy the clothes from the big stores that don’t sell and we sell it for a fraction of the price. We actually had some decent stuff that we priced close to thrift stores. The thing is, they make their money by understaffing and hoping to sell high volume.
As we were understaffed, we didn’t do the fancy folding and boxing that you might see at a Macy’s, just a normal plastic bag like a grocery store.
This story begins during the holidays when all retail is a nightmare. I was a cashier and trying as hard as I could to get people through the long line having worked 8 hours with no breaks (remember, understaffed) when this woman takes a giant cart load of clothes (think 3’ pile of clothes) and throws it on the counter.
I start trying to untangle this giant mess she made and scanning her items in. When I ask if they found everything alright, she cuts me off and says, “Can we hurry this up? I’ve got important things to take care of and I don’t have all day to be here.” Now it was 10:30 pm on a Tuesday, so I can’t imagine what big time events she was planning at being at.
Then she looks down and practically screams, “What the eff, you oaf! You’re going to ruin everything.
Take everything out of the bag and feed them nice!” Now a couple of things here: I’m a big dude. At the time, I was 19 and only working there cause I lost my college football scholarship for D-line due to injury (think 6’4”, 330lbs and could run the 40 in 5.0, so not a flabby 330). Also, when I put clothes in the bag, I was a bit nicer than my co-workers.
I tended to do the half loose fold and set them in the bag. Nothing fancy but trying to not seem aggressive (again, big dude, so it’s easy for people to assume I’m aggressive).
I was completely thrown off when she yelled. At this point, I’d dealt with annoying people but not a full Karen. I’ve generally always been able to keep composure, so I took a breath and calmly told her, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we don’t do folding here; that tends to be more of a Macy’s thing.
I’m trying to be respectful of your purchase though, I promise.” Still unhappy, she then utters the song of her people, “I want to talk to your manager. I don’t like your attitude.” Luckily, I had my favorite shift on duty that night who I had to call over (which sucked with this giant line of people backing up). She came over and told the lady the same thing that we don’t fold clothes and we try to be careful.
Karen then wants my job for ruining her clothes and a discount for having to “deal with this sh*t.” My manager just tells her she does not see anything wrong, but she’ll go over to cctv later (her way of getting rid of them).
I then give her the total and she pays (complaining the whole time). She then takes the bags and dumps them back on the counter looks right and me and starts folding her clothes neatly one by one.
At this point, I was done. I was so tired and annoyed, but there was nothing I could do. She just stood there and folded each thing (remember, she had a 3’ pile worth of clothes). After 10 minutes of my manager and I trying to get her to leave and her not letting us touch her clothes without her slapping our hands away and yelling at other customers who tried working around her, she was done and left.
Here comes the petty revenge (emphasis on the petty).
About a week later, she comes in again with another (slightly smaller) pile of clothes. She plops her clothes down and says, “I hope you learned to fold clothes.” This automatically puts me on edge, I look at her, take her stuff, scan it all through, and shove it all in one bag as one giant mass set it on the counter. This time, she grabs it and calls me a few choice words and leaves.
I then send a message to all my coworkers about her and that they should do the same.
A few weeks later, and I see her go through another line, and my coworker shoves all her stuff in a bag. This kept up every time she came in and every time, and every time, I’d see her get huffy and walk off. I know it’s not some big amazing payoff, but to know that every time she came in, she would leave annoyed with her bagging. She still yelled at us all for anything and everything, but we always had that nice little “eff you” as she left.”
11. Steal Money In My Name? That Money Will Come Back To Me
“This is a pretty recent story for me that finally had its conclusion a couple of weeks ago, and someone told me to post here, so I figured, why not?
One more thing before I get all into it: every story has a silver-lining, and this is mine. It doesn’t take away from the fact though, that it was caused by much worse circumstances that no one should have to go through, and anyone who’s been through the same as I have can attest to it.
If anyone out there right now is going through domestic violence or emotional abuse, I urge you to contact the authorities and am myself always available to chat as well if you need advice or such!
Anyway, so all this started a couple of months ago with an incident between my parents. It’s important to note I still live with them but have been working and providing for myself since graduating in the summer and am fully self-sufficient.
My father has always been an abusive person, albeit one that did support his family at the time, but due to his lack of self-control and outbreaks, the situation was more often tense than not, especially between me and him as the power began to shift and I stopped relying on him.
So yeah, a couple of months ago in an incident between him and my mother, he hit her which started my mother’s silent treatment of him for about two weeks, when he decided to get physical again, this time against me, which resulted in a bigger fight, and in the process my younger sister’s shoulder getting hurt, mother breaking her nose, and me calling the cops.
He was arrested that day and had a restraining order filed against him for ten days. All temporary as the police over here in Switzerland tend to avoid stepping in more than necessary and did this for our protection while leaving us to make further decisions.
An important thing to note is that my mother has always been a stay at home mom, especially since my sister is still underage and she doesn’t have a formal education to make much money in this country.
So for her, divorce was more something like a last resort, and she attempted to try and get family counseling/couples therapy setup, which didn’t turn out so well at which point we got her a lawyer and began the proceedings. I also studied law myself to an extent before going into my current field, so a lot of what happened here I was well equipped for which did make things easier.
This is where the money part starts.
Our family has been pretty well off ever since I can remember, so my sister and I both have had somewhere in the ballpark of $150K each saved up for our schooling, first cars, etc. Half of this money was put into accounts in our name, and while our parents could still access them, the money was legally ours. The other half was put into accounts in our grandparents’ names in the US for logistical reasons.
The day of the first court hearings, I was in the process of transferring said account fully into my name, as I was expecting something like what did end up happening to happen.
Later when the transfer succeeded, I found out almost all the money up to a fairly round number was transferred to my father’s locked pension plan. This was a surprise to me, as to my knowledge until then, only my mother was supposed to have direct access to it, while my father would have had to have the bank card, which I knew was with us.
So after some checking, I found out my mother wasn’t fully aware of when she had signed forms that gave him access, but more on that later…
As I was now down on a big chunk of money, part of it was my literal income I had been saving. It was time to get my own lawyer. In addition to this transfer, back when we were building our house, my father took a loan from my account which was understood to be a mutual agreement and him paying me back at a given time.
Knowing a little about how his lawyer operated, the number of offenses he potentially had to his name, and the fact that my mother and sister were now open to pressing charges against him if it came to it, I had a feeling that this would end up in an out of court agreement.
I set up a meeting with my lawyer and collected as much evidence as possible regarding the transactions and ownership of the account.
While my father did have the legal papers to manage my account, in Switzerland, that means any action is meant to be taken in my best interest. His pension plan doesn’t concern me, so any reasonable judge would rule in my favor. Additionally, my mother’s lawyer became aware of the situation, as she legally represented my sister as well, who lost a similar amount of money due to the same thing.
Before I even met my lawyer, he and my mother’s lawyer discussed the situation and managed to create a good picture of it.
So finally, the first meeting. I discussed the situation with my lawyer. As my father assaulted me I had the options to press charges, as well as request for damages made and possibly sue him for the money, but to this day, it’s hard for me to say if I’d have managed to get all of it back with that method, as courts would have trouble recognizing his debt to me from the house loan and not to mention the insane costs involved with starting a legal case against someone in your own family.
Knowing my father, I also knew that he wouldn’t shy from spending thousands of dollars to protect himself in court with better lawyers which was exactly why my lawyer figured it’d be better to come to a settlement as I certainly had more I could use against my father than vice-versa with the only difference being that, this way, I might get a lot more out of it than the money he only just took recently.
At this point, I’d like to note that my grandparents had officially cut myself, my mother, and my sister out because they didn’t agree with the decision for us to stay away from my father.
They insisted on the need for family therapy, whereas we had already decided there was no point and my mother was divorcing him while I decided to get a lawyer and fight for myself. My father also managed to allegate that I had hit him on the day of the incident, which was another reason for me to make sure that no one could claim I accepted that statement for the obvious lie it was.
Since my grandparents cut me out, I could say goodbye to that half of the money already. No way to sue for it, nor was I legally entitled to it so the bank couldn’t do much. This is where it gets interesting, though.
My lawyer created a whole list of things we could use against my father. Ranging from the recent incident to cases from the past that I had written up when this all started, as well as using statements from my old teachers and my therapist to create the skeleton for a case that would certainly get expensive.
The whole point of this was to have a solid foundation on which we could then approach my father’s attorney and suggest a settlement for the money taken out of my account recently, as well as him returning the loan for the house. He was hesitant at first and even suggested to my mother that she and he would together would pay off a small part of it over time as a “compromise,” but that clearly wasn’t an option for me.
After hearing this, I contacted my lawyer once again and had him double down on our very specific demands, that we wanted to come to an agreement for $50K, and in exchange, I would drop the charges and leave him alone.
This also meant in return he would have to let go of the claims that I hit him, essentially closing the case for both parties. There was also a deadline for me to continue with the case, leaving him 3 more days to consider it.
Luckily, the whole thing seemed to be a game of chicken, with him waiting until the night before the deadline to finally agree to our request.
His lawyer contacted us and eventually wrote an email, saying that they agreed with the requests and would be glad to sign a contract on the matter, making it up to my lawyer now to write-up the contract and end the whole deal. A funny part about this whole exchange was my father’s statements that were part of the email to us, claiming that they had just as much of a case against me and could press charges if they so pleased, listing a bunch of things I had allegedly done that would warrant a countersuit.
In the end, seeing that they agreed to pay me all that money, I’m quite sure those statements were just to show that they weren’t afraid more than anything else, really. Since if they truly believed the allegations, they would have just proceeded with the case.
Now a couple of days later, I received the transaction for all the money that we agreed on, and the case is officially over for me.
The irony of it all is, my grandparents cut me out and probably encouraged my father to do what he did regarding the last money I had left to my name. In the end, all the money that was in the US was the money my father used to pay me back since the pension plan he paid the money into was locked, and he had no other quick financial means to reach the settlement.
So a big chunk of money went down the drain on a lawyer, and most of the money saved for me ended up with me. The part that landed in the pension plan even came with its own benefits. As my parents are still married, my mother gets 50% of it in the divorce.
All of this did come at a cost, though, which is why the first thing I said in this post is the most important to me.
My mental health has suffered a lot from all this, and I’ve never been so burnt out. Not only that, I need more psychiatric attention than ever, and my relationship with my father’s side of the family is forever ruined. So while that last part was necessary, they were toxic, manipulative, and abusive, and picking his side after all the incidents they knew about, and also knowing that there were more they didn’t know about, the mental toll these things take on a person can affect your entire life, which is why I once again want to stress that if anyone out there is going through anything remotely similar to please reach out to people you can trust and contact the authorities or something like that. You don’t need to be stuck in that situation for as long as I was, which is a whole ‘nother story…”
10. Wrongfully Accuse Me Of Stealing? You'll Lose It All
“This happened way back in the dark ages, 1986. I was 21 at the time and working for a gas station that was associated with a certain grocery store chain in Washington state. It was owned by a company not affiliated with said chain but had locations at nearly every one.
As this was long before the days of debit cards; this was a cash-only gas station.
We didn’t even take credit cards. Customers would pull up, pump their gas, and then come to my window to pay. We also sold cigarettes. No drinks, no snacks…customers couldn’t even get into my booth. I had been working there about a year when the company announced it was closing the location. My manager and I were offered positions at another location upstate and we both accepted.
We moved our respective families and started our new jobs. As new hires (ugh).
This station was incredibly busy. We did more business in 8 hours than my old location would do in a week. This location also had a different set up: here you would pull into the station from a single entrance, pump your gas, and then drive forward to a single exit where the “Pay Here” booth was located.
There were always 2 cashiers on duty. Each cashier had a cash drawer.
One thing I should note: there were also no computers. So closing the drawer down between shifts was time-consuming and tedious. We had to manually count the cigarettes remaining and count the cash drawers. We would fill out an end of shift report listing the starting balances and the ending balances. We also had to list the gallons sold from each pump.
At the end of the shift, the total of gallons sold, and the total cigarettes sold should equal the cash balance. It is important to note here that not once in the year I had worked for the previous location had I been off by more than 10 cents.
The following morning after my first shift, I was informed by the manager that I was short $50.
Impossible, I said; I balanced out yesterday. He said that I must have stolen that money after I had completed the paperwork. I just looked at him and said that, no, I didn’t. He gave me a verbal warning and said if it happened again, I would be fired and the stolen money would be deducted from my paycheck this week.
In the 5 days that followed, I realized quickly the manager was up to something.
My old manager who was just another worker now was also accused of stealing. As was one other new employee. I can’t vouch for the other employee, but I’m pretty sure she did nothing wrong. The employees who had been there a while were never accused of anything. I did some checking and found out this manager was relatively new (had only been there about 6 months) and the other cashiers had been here before him.
Only new cashiers were being accused of stealing. And that location had been having “stealing problems” for about 6 months and the turnover was high with the new employees.
I came to work at 6 am on a Monday only to be told I was being fired. For cause. The manager accused me of taking $500 out of my drawer the previous Friday. He said he only discovered it this morning (even though he had worked Saturday and Sunday).
I said ok and left. I was pretty angry, and instead of going home, I parked in the grocery store parking lot and proceed to settle in to watch the gas station. I knew that at 9 am sharp, he would take the cash in the safe and make the weekend deposit. At 9 am, he left the gas station and headed to the bank. But instead of walking into the bank, he walked into the casino next door.
It’s not really a casino like we think of today but more of a betting parlor for the races. It did have slot machines but no card tables.
I think “Well, this is interesting.”
He comes out of the casino at exactly 10 am, walks next door to the bank, does his business, and then heads back to the gas station. I head home with a plan.
Every morning I follow him from the gas station to the casino.
I take a picture of him leaving and one of him arriving at the bank and walking into the casino. I take pictures of him coming out and then heading to the bank. I do this for 5 days straight. He even went on Saturday. On day 3, my old manager was fired for “stealing” $150.
I get the film developed (no digital camera in the dark ages) and note the times and dates on the back of each one.
Then I call the main office of the gas company. It’s after 5, but I’m hoping someone is there. And there is. I speak to a woman and explain my situation, and she says she knows exactly who I should speak to and transfers me. By some grace of God, she has transferred me to none other than the President/CEO of the company!
I tell him my story and tell him I did NOT steal from his company and could prove who actually did.
He took down my information and said he would be in touch. I’m thinking to myself “yeah right.” The next morning, I went to the station to perform my usual observation of the manager. At 9 am, he leaves for the “bank.” At 10 am, he comes out. At that moment, 2 stern looking gentlemen approach him. One pulls out his wallet and shows him something.
The other one is talking. The manager goes pale and takes a step back. The next thing I know, he is being escorted to a car I hadn’t noticed and they drive off. I lose them at a traffic signal, so I head back to the station. They all show back up about 5 minutes later, and a few minutes after that, a police cruiser pulls in.
The officer talks to the stern gentleman and proceeds to place the manager in handcuffs. The other man says nothing but is glaring daggers at the manager.
The President called me later that afternoon and informed me that the manager had been arrested for embezzlement (turns out that in 6 months, he had managed to steal about $5k). He would take the store cash into the casino and gamble with it; if he won, he would make the normal bank deposit.
If he lost, he would make the deposit and note in his records that we had been short the previous day. The CEO had already been focusing on that location because of the stealing and high turnover rate, but my information helped them figure out what exactly had been going on.
I was thanked and sent a substantial check as a reward. My old manager was offered the manager’s job and I was offered my old job back.
I declined as I had already found another job that I liked more and paid better. The gambling manager was sentenced to 1 year in jail and ordered to attend counseling for his gambling addiction. His wife divorced him and took their 3 children to California. His house was foreclosed on and he ended up in a homeless shelter.
Don’t accuse me of stealing. I will get revenge.”
9. Blame Me For The Bullying You Did? I'll Get You Expelled And Break Up Your Friend Group
“This is a story from my time at my uni LGBT center. There are a lot of characters, but the most important ones are me, Aleph (a guy on the autism spectrum), Brittany (a really mean guy), Charlie (the incompetent director), and Ducky (another catty gay guy). A couple of side characters are Olimar (my friend) and Louie (employee at the center).
So one day I’m sitting down at the center and Aleph points out a guy walking by.
This center had a bunch of student workers (including Brittany) there because they had a weekly meeting soon. One of them made a joke about getting him some water and it became a whole thing. For like half an hour, they were joking and making innuendos while Aleph was asking if they were making fun of him, saying he had no idea what was happening. At this point, I had to leave anyway, and sensing that Aleph was in some sort of emotional pain, I said, “Aleph they’re offering you water because they think you’re acting thirsty.”
Big mistake.
All the student workers ganged up on me and started yelling at me. Now I was angry, so I stormed off to the library. On my way there, I ran into Charlie and explained what happened and how I got the shaft. After a couple of days, my friend Olimar told me that the incident came up at that meeting. All the student workers threw me under the bus, lying about what happened.
So I went back there, saw that Charlie was out, and talked to Louie instead, again explaining what happened and specifically saying the student workers lied about what happened.
The student workers weren’t punished at all. Instead, they were told at the next meeting that the events of those meetings had to be kept confidential. Since Olimar was the only person there known to be my friend, he was basically known to be the snitch and locked out of the clique.
Meanwhile, I was accidentally dropped from a bunch of mailing lists for events at the center, and my therapist mysteriously moved my appointments to the main therapy area, meaning it was harder for me to get sessions booked. I got the message and stopped going there for the rest of the year.
That was my senior year. I graduated, started grad school, and found a much healthier community.
Then one night after an inadvisable number of drinks, I went on my college confessions page and wrote out my side, anonymizing all the names, submitted it, and knocked out. I had known that most of the people there had graduated, and Charlie had moved to a job in a different state. I thought it’d get a few comments, maybe some hateful homophobes calling to defund the center, and that’d be it.
It turns out that Charlie’s replacement was competent and actually cared for the students he was in charge of.
He spoke to Louie, the only remaining person from that day still working there. Louie gave the student worker’s side but named me and Olimar. Olimar had stopped working there but was in his senior year. The replacement managed to get to talk to Olimar and reached out to me via e-mail. I gave my side and got a response with an apology for my treatment there.
I wasn’t allowed to know what steps would be taken next, but I did notice a few things that happened within the next month:
I have no idea what happened to Aleph; he never had social media.
Brittany was expelled from his grad school program. Everything else is the most unbelievable part of this story: He would later go on to reach out to Olimar with a few very h*rny messages with some weird, racist undertones.
We read and laughed over them while splitting a bottle of rosé, took screenshots, removed the name, and uploaded them to a meme page. Brittany actually commented on it about how messed up “straight people” were and how he’d “never say anything like that to his LGBTQ+ siblings.” Olimar and I both gave laugh reactions to his comment, and I got blocked by him.
Charlie accepted a new job at a much smaller college and stopped posting about how he and his husband were going through the adoption process.
He has a cute dog now though, so I guess he’s doing OK.
Olimar got a letter of recommendation from Charlie’s replacement and put that into getting his first job out of uni.
Louie was fired that week. I knew he was using the job as a way to get into a very competitive social work program but instead moved in with his parents. Last I heard, he just managed to start at a different social work program, and I don’t know if it was worse but I do know it’s at a smaller, less important college.
Finally, the clique itself seems to have been dissolved.
None of them comment on each others’ posts, and they stopped posting to Instagram every Friday about going to the same gay bar (pre COVID, obviously). The final nail in the coffin was a long, rambling email written to me by Ducky, saying that I should’ve let the whole thing die down, asking if I fancied myself “the Indiana Jones of digging up dead truths” (yes, a direct quote, and yes, the only time any of them came close to owning up).
An entire paragraph was devoted to how lonely he was after the clique (they had their own clique name, think like the Ashleys from Recess) dissolved. I forwarded that email to the dean of students (he was in grad school), highlighting the threats of self-harm and the racial slurs. I never heard back from them, and in the seven years since, I’ve never heard from or seen any member of that clique.”
8. Make Me Only Listen To You And The GPS? Good Luck Catching Your Flight Then
“About a decade ago, I was the new guy at the company. We have people fly in from all over the world to start putting gear together before leaving again for job sites, and one of the things I did in my earlier days was pick those people up from the airport, take them to their hotel after work, etc.
I pick a guy up who’s going to be my boss on an upcoming job.
The airport is about an hour from our HQ and hotel if you take the highway and main roads. When I meet him at the airport, he makes a request that I follow the directions on this “awesome new GPS app” that he’s got on his phone. Swears it finds the absolute fastest routes. I’m paid by the hour and I’m the new guy, so sure, no problem.
It ends up taking almost 25% longer than the main roads would have, but I’m not bothered.
The next day, I’m asked to take him to his hotel. It’s a straight shot a few miles down the road, but the road is always stop and go at rush hour. I make a turn off the road almost immediately in order to take a route that I know is faster, and he starts giving me a gentle amount of grief about not listening to his magical GPS app.
I get him to the hotel in great time, but he still just won’t stop insisting that the main road, which we could see was backed up, would have been faster. Okay, fine.
A couple of days later, we drive a few hours to our primary job site. The trip is fine; I follow his magic app and we arrive without incident. It’s the largest job I’ve done so far, and I admittedly stumbled with a little bit of it.
Boss tries to give me a pep talk at the end of day one but fails miserably. One of the critiques he gave me is, “You’re not here to think.” There are engineers on the job, and there are techs. I’m just a tech, and I’m told I’m basically there to do the grunt work as spec’d and just listen to what people like him tell me to do.
Pretty demoralizing lecture, honestly. But I take it to heart.
Once the event is over, it’s my job to take the boss man back to the airport, which I’d like to remind you at this point is in the city I live in, and not where he’s from. We’re running a little later than I would prefer to, but he’s the kind of guy who would rather get to the airport 15 minutes before his flight boards.
And as always, we’re using his GPS, which he is still raving about. I don’t know if the dude’s friend invented the app or something, but he’s just seriously fawning over it.
Well, we approach what I know is the exit to the airport, but the app says to stay on the highway and take the next exit in a mile or two. So I follow the app, having learned my lesson from the boss, and soon we’re stopped dead in a tight, single-lane construction zone.
Boss realizes this and starts to panic. And then starts asking if I’m sure I took the “right route.”
“The exit I’d normally take for the airport was a little ways back, but the GPS said to keep going.”
“You went past the exit for the airport?!” His voice is raised, but not shouting.
“I went past an exit for the airport,” I calmly replied. “I’m sure this one will get us there, but with the speed the traffic is moving, I don’t know if we’ll make your flight.
It’s already a pretty tight connection.”
He shouted at me this time: “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!”
Since the car was stopped dead, I turned my head so I could meet his eyes, and very blankly said, “I’m not here to think.“
If Uber had existed there at the time, I think he would have gotten out of the car with his bag and called for a ride. As it is, I spent the rest of the trip listening to him yell at some poor airline agent about getting his flight rebooked, since it was at this point that he wasn’t going to get there in time. And the thing is, this really wasn’t even malicious on my end – I was just too timid to rock the boat anymore, so I was doing things exactly as I was told. Not my fault that it bit him in the a**.”
7. Force Me To Buy Presents For People I Don't Like? I Have The Perfect Gifts
“This slow-burn starts a full year and a half before my plan came into effect. Earlier in the year, my dad quite sensibly suggested that with the size of our family Christmas party, we skip a generation with gifts to ease the financial strain as the extended family grew. At the time, I was struggling with my business and athletic career and my now-wife was working on her second master’s degree, so I suggested names from a hat, but he wanted to spoil all his grandchildren.
I said fair enough; I’ll chip in for Oma’s cruise and buy gifts for my step-siblings, but don’t expect anything grand.
The family:
Me – 28-year-old (at the time) heavyweight mixed martial artist and strength coach, AKA small-time athlete working a day job to barely make rent in addition to training full time.
Martha – stepsister – 40ish, an aging mombie whose only assets are starting to sag too much for them to be assets anymore, leaving her with no other definable personality traits.
Jane – My oldest niece – 12, stepsister’s daughter, imagine the vapidest tweenager stereotype you can and multiply it by 1,000.
Tim – My oldest nephew – 9, stepsister’s son, living proof that you’re never too young to be an a**hole.
Robert – stepbrother – 36, formerly cool dude who gave up on life when his kids were born, years later would gain back enough willpower and gumption to physically assault his wife.
Tammy – 6, bro’s daughter – sweet and shy girl, terrified by my mere presence, the wisest of the bunch in my opinion.
Bubba – 7, bro’s son – a generally nice kid who at this time was partway into evolving into an a**hole after being constantly told to look up to and emulate Thing 2.
Tammy has brought a Nintendo DS and all the kids are struggling to see/play it together, so I foolishly offer to loan them mine to lighten the load.
Tammy agrees to share with Jane, and Bubba agrees to share with Tim. Having stupidly deprived me of my means to escape social obligations, I go to the living room to acquire that much older cure for not wanting to deal with other people: adult beverages.
Not even having had time to pour a dram, my trained ear picks up from the kids’ room, the unmistakable sound of one human being pummeling by another.
I politely suggest to Robert that he might want to go have a look, but Bro hasn’t given two sh*ts about anything in about 7 years, so he waves it off and I go to investigate.
I walk in to see that Tim may be an a**hole but is not untalented and is managing to strike, shove into a wall, and kick Bubba all at the same time, while attempting to play my DS with his other hand, having decided his turn began the moment I left the room.
Jane has simply wrestled the DS from Tammy, who is now sitting in the corner crying.
I shout for Martha, informing her that if she doesn’t get in here to break things up before I count to 10, I would have a stern conversation with them. She turns up and separates the kids and I retrieve my DS. Instead of giving Tim a lesson on sharing and not hitting people, she proceeds to berate Bubba (the kid who was beaten) for not simply giving up the DS to her little piece of sh*t and making her son look bad.
Jane simply lets out a tweenage sigh for the ages and tosses the other DS into the crying Tammy.
I then excuse myself from the party, thanking whatever gods may be that I don’t have to provide gifts for any of those little sh*ts.
6 months later, my firm belief in atheism is confirmed as Bro calls me and this conversation ensues.
Robert – Hey Elbowsmash, while I really appreciated the gifts last year, you should really get something for the kids this year instead.
Christmas is all about the chiiiillllllllllldrrreeeeen after all.
Me – No, I turn up to chat with you and Dad and Oma; I really don’t give two sh*ts about the kids.
Robert – That’s a mean thing to say about my kids. Don’t you care about them?
Me – You cared about them so much that at the last party, you couldn’t be bothered to break up a fight where your son was being beaten bloody.
Robert – Tim is a good kid.
Martha said he just had a bad day.
Me – He was literally beating your child. You didn’t put pics on social media for a week because of the bruises. If Tim were an adult and had that kind of bad day, I’d have had a stern conversation with him and convince him peacefully to lay on the floor until the police arrived.
Robert – Well Stepsis and I were talking and we think you should buy stuff for the kids next year instead of us.
Me – Well I’m happy not to buy you anything, but I’m not getting crap for Martha’s little sh*ts, especially when she encourages that behavior.
Robert – Well if you aren’t going to get something for all the kids, you shouldn’t get anything at all.
It’s not right if you don’t treat them equally.
Me – Done.
Now I’m sure they wish it has been this simple, but unfortunately, it wasn’t and I certainly wouldn’t have written such a long-winded story if that were the payoff. T
A few months later, about 2 weeks before Xmas, I get an email from my dad with links to various toys (mostly from Toys r Us, which still existed at the time).
When I call him back to ask what that’s all about, this conversation ensues.
Me: Hey, what’s up? I got your email. What’s that all about?
Dad: Those are gifts for the kids for Christmas.
Me: That’s cool if you’re getting them that. I’ll see them when the kids open them.
Dad: No, that’s for you to get them.
Me: I don’t buy for that generation, remember? And I already sent you my contribution to Oma’s cruise.
Dad: You need to get stuff for the kids.
Don’t you want them to look up to you as an uncle?
Me: Not really. Also what part of my life suggests to you that they ought to look up to me as any sort of role model? You’d be better of telling them to grow up to be rockstars.
Dad: Not the point. Christmas is about the chiiiiiiiiilllldreeeeennnnnnn, if you don’t get them this stuff, I won’t put your name on the card for Oma.
Me: That’s a sh*tty thing to do, considering I already paid into that.
Dad: Will you get the stuff or not?
Me: Well guess my name isn’t going on the card then, this will cost me more than a month’s rent, so you can take this list and grease it up real nice…
Dad (Interrupting): Calm your jets.
This is what they want.
Me: I’ll get them a token something, but I’m not taking out a loan.
Dad: Fine, just make it something they enjoy.
Me: If what I get doesn’t put a giant smile on each and every one of their faces, I’ll buy you dinner at a steakhouse of your choosing.
Dad: That’s the spirit. Talk to you later.
So, Christmas rolls around and my wife and I have bought not just 1, but 4 gifts for each of the little ones, and wrapped them all beautifully.
My dad (correctly) assumes it’s all probably from the dollar store, but it’s nicely wrapped and he gives me a look of approval as I place it under the tree. My wife and I schmooze for a bit and then suggest that since we brought several gifts for each of the kids, why don’t they open one each before dinner so they have something to do while they wait.
Their parents, of course, agree as it gives them more of a reason to ignore their kids and talk about them instead, so they send us off to hand out gifts to their kids, Martha is looking especially smug.
As they begin to unwrap them, I prepare the camera as my wife goes for our coats, and I stick around just long enough to immortalize on film the big sh*t-eating grin on each of the kid’s faces as they see what their gift is.
Less than 1 minute later, the first blast from the airhorn (Tim’s gift) can be heard in the hallway clearly by my wife and I as we make our way to the elevator.
I have no idea how much of the bulk pack of silly string (Tammy’s gift) or the 36 rainbow pack of off-brand sharpies (Bubba’s gift) ended up on the walls, but I do know they repainted the place the next month. Whether or not the pile of slap on bracelets we got for Jane ended up on the wrists and legs of the parents as they tried to contain the other three will be left to the imagination, but I like to think they all ended up in the height of 80’s fashion before boxing day.
I may never know if they opened the rest of their presents (everyone got a copy of each of the other’s gifts, you know, for fairness, plus a bunch of gross and mildly inappropriate temporary tattoos).
In the confusion none of them noticed either me or my wife leaving. I’m certain at some point they did notice the pretty gold envelope addressed to “the parents” on the tree. Inside was a very pretty card, blank, but for the following note:
“This was a warning shot from off the top of my head. I’ve got a whole year to get creative for next time. Merry Christmas, E.”
I never bought anyone steak dinner, however, I enjoyed several more Christmas’s with my Oma and Dad until they passed and I stopped seeing that side of the family at all. No mention of this incident or gifts for the kids was ever made again.”
6. Threaten To Kill Him? No More Political Career For Your Family
“This story took place in the late 1990s to early 2000s.
My Father: Dad
Politician: Jack
Politician’s Brother in Law: Bill
Bill’s Consultant: Dave
Dad’s Friend: Rob
Background: I live in an economically developing nation that used to be heavily dependent on Agriculture produce for economic activity. My grandfather was a farmer and he wanted his children to get educated and get a government job. So my dad got his master’s from the only university we had in our region.
Most people study from the same university and get government jobs, so everyone in government offices knew one another in some way or the other. My dad was offered the position of officer in charge of our home state for the agriculture department and had around 40 people working under him. His task was to take care of agriculture and its related activities and acted as advisor to the local farming community via local newspapers.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, our country had long droughts and famines. The then government decided to create two different government agencies to take care of food security, one agency will take care of buying and storing food grains and another agency was tasked to enable building the infrastructure for food security.
Dad was attached to the agency which was tasked with infrastructure. His agency’s job was to give grants to anyone building infrastructure for food security.
His duty was given the task of providing grants to anyone building warehouses for storing food. His job was to review the entire warehouse from planning to construction that can store food and provide a third of project cost as a grant/subsidy to people who built it.
This was the time when my country was doing all the stuff on paper – no computers (only typewriters) in government offices and no cellphone; your options were limited to a fixed telephone line and fax/copying machines (which were mind-blowing technology for my dad), which were new to government offices.
My dad used to do tons of paperwork in the office (reading through stuff, adding remarks, writing stuff). Add to that you had postal service that took somewhere between 7~10 days to have your mail delivered to the nearest town or city. (Yeah, those were the times my dad lived.)
The Story:
In the late 1990s, my dad was doing his work at his office. When a commotion at the office entrance gets my dad’s attention, he sees from the office window where 10 expensive cars are parked and a group of thugs holding the collar security personal while warning them with long sticks and knives (my country didn’t have armed security for government building back then; security folks usually had small sticks).
There were several unauthorized people were entering the building. You see people were not allowed inside any government office unless they state the purpose to the officer in charge and the officer permits the security to allow them. Suddenly Bill and his men walk into my dad’s office pushing my dad’s staff away, Bill introduces himself and mentions that he is the brother-in-law of Jack the senator from our region, and calls himself one of the most powerful people in the region.
He sits in my dad’s chair and then drinks coffee and eats the cookies that were ordered for my dad which were kept on his desk. Bill informs his men to go easy on my dad’s staff as they start to drink coffee and eat cookies that were meant for the employees. Bill tells my dad that he was there to discuss availing the grant the government provides for a project that he was planning.
My dad at times is submissive to people in positions of power as he has seen consequences first hand – some of his friends lost jobs or lives standing against powerful people.
So Dad asks for the details of the project Bill was planning and asks him to send over the project proposal and an official request for the grant to him for reviewing and informed Bill that the grant cannot be processed until the project is completed.
Bill gets angry that any proposal for the project is enough to qualify for a grant and should be paid upfront for the project construction. My dad tells him how the grant works and the project should be completed in order to qualify for the grant. Bill is p*ssed at this point and yells at my dad and his office staff how government officials are uneducated morons running the country into a grave.
Bill takes all the necessary forms and applications from my dad and leaves the office furiously. My dad didn’t bother much about the incident. Few weeks go by and my dad receives a huge set of documents via the postal service, and you might have guessed it: those documents were related to Bill’s project. Going through those documents, my dad identifies that they came from Dave, a consultant who was doing the work on behalf of Bill and the documents further reveal that the warehouse proposed in the region was big enough to hold enough food grains to feed a population equivalent for two states for an entire year.
The proposed project would cost them 1.5 billion, and once completed, it would cost the government 300 million in the grant.
This was a huge amount for dad to handle. Till that time the largest project he ever reviewed for providing a government grant was 50K (that’s total project cost, not the grant). Building such infrastructure would mean that any other warehouse existing/to be built in the region would be rendered useless.
He quickly called his boss asking him what he was supposed to do. His boss quickly looks at the rules and tells my dad that since there was no upper limit on the size of the warehouse or project cost, the only thing they could do was to review and process the application, and if everything checks out, they might end up with 300 million in grant money.
Since his Boss ok’d processing of the application, my dad further reviewed the project proposal to identify that the warehouse was specifically designed for industrial use and not for storing food grains.
Dad was confused, so he gives a call to Dave. Dave informs my dad that he was hired to plan for a warehouse for industrial use and there might have been some confusion over the details. Dave promises that he would fix it and not reject the application based on those terms. Unsure of details, he decides to process the application and sends a note to Dave that the government would be reviewing the application and once the project is completed, he should be informed about project completion and my dad would visit the premises and give final approval after reviewing and it would take another 3~6 months time to get the grant money as a check from the government after the review process is done.
Two years go by.
Dave comes to my Dad’s office in an expensive luxury SUV and dares the security personal to stop him if they want to keep their job. Dave then rushes to my dad’s cabin and asks my dad if he was available on that day to visit the premises and give final approval for the project. unsure who Dave was and asks for clarification and why he would need to do approval today.
Dad also informs Dave that there is a lot of documentation work that he needs to be prepared before visiting the warehouse to give final approval. That would take at least 2 days for my dad. Dave tries to reason with my dad that he came from far off city and he couldn’t stay for long to get this completed. My dad again tells Dave that two days is the minimum it would take him to documentation ready.
Dave now angry informs my Dad that he represents Bill & Jack and the warehouse needs to be inspected today or lose his job. Dad was not buying it and told him, again, two days or forget it.
Dave leaves the office warning my dad that he will face consequences. Dad calls his boss informing him what had happened and the boss tells my dad to take priority and inspect the warehouse at the earliest.
Two days later, my dad visits the warehouse, and to his surprise, he sees Dave on location. The first thing my dad noticed about the warehouse was it was not built for food grain or any agricultural produce for that matter. It was built for industrial purposes. Dave gives my dad a tour of the entire warehouse explaining to him how state of the art it was at the time.
My dad takes note of every detail of the warehouse and informs Dave that the grant can’t be approved due to fact that the warehouse was not constructed with storing agricultural produce in mind and no one with a sound mind would overlook that fact to approve the grant. Dave starts yelling and excusing my father that he was looking for a bribe by withholding their grant, and my dad would approve the grant once he gets paid off, Bill and Jack are being targetted for making money off them.
None of that was true about my dad; he was an honest man his entire life. My dad leaves the warehouse unsure of what he could do to get out of this situation.
My dad was super confused about why Bill built an industrial warehouse in the middle of nowhere and the only major activity in the region was farming. So he decides to call up Rob and asks him a few questions about how Rob’s government agency (construction and building permits) has provided, Rob and takes a couple of days to identify some horrific realities.
First, the plans of the warehouse showcase and request permit to be an industrial complex for storing manufacturing goods. Bill bribed his way through Rob’s agency and got environmental clearance and other permits without conforming to standards. He was also able to identify a report for building completion that was forwarded the agency’s requests for considering storing food grains. Last but not least, he was able to find a construction tax bill submitted to the agency stating the construction cost of the warehouse was around 300 million along with plans of creating an industrial zone for the region that was proposed to the senate by Jack.
This was news to my dad and Rob; they were shocked to know how Bill and Dave were able to inflate the cost of the warehouse and they had plans to make the region a new industrial zone.
My dad calls his boss and informs that Bill’s project seems fishy and he would reject the grant and forwarding him the documents once done. His boss tries to reason with him it could be a career-ending move for both of them. Jack was trying to put pressure from the leader of the agency to have the grant approved.
Rob decides to dig around to see if he can get any more information and found the contract paper that was sent to the food procurement and storing agency, which raised several red flags.
First, the contract stated an inflated rent for storing food grains, then rent will be reviewed on yearly basis based on market rate and then the contract would make the agency pay for the next 15 years irrespective of whether the agency stores food or not. Rob calls my dad with this information. Now my dad is furious to know how Bill and Jack are planning to rob the government.
He decides to reject the grant for their project.
A few days later, Bill turns up at my dad’s office along with Dave in the same bashing manner he previously did, but now even more furious asks my dad why is he is not approving the grant for his project and why it’s taking so much time. Dad tries to calmly reason with him stating it was not built as per norms, so he won’t be able to approve.
Bill turns red and fuming with anger. He can throw around as much money as he wants to attempt to get his signature on the documents approving the grant, but my dad refuses and says it’s a crime to bribe an officer. Bill goes on to tell my dad that he lives in a mansion filled with escort girls and can have as many as he likes.
Dad refuses again. Bill now threatens my dad saying he could get out of his job and that someone else in the same position can do the job for him. Again, my dad firmly tells Bill that he can do whatever the hell he wants to do, but he would not approve the grant.
This goes as a shouting match for around 3 hours in front of the entire office staff, but my dad didn’t budge.
Bill starts swearing at my father telling him that he’s impotent to pass up an offer of having s*x with the cheapest escort girls Bill has which would cost my dad his entire year’s salary to hire such an escort for a day. He also goes on yelling how my dad’s parents might have abandoned him as a child who refuses to bring fortune to his family.
My dad had enough of Bill at this point and asks Bill to leave his office, and in the last attempt to threaten my dad, Bill asks his thugs to take care of him and leaves the office along with Dave. Bill’s thugs threaten my dad at knifepoint stating he needs to sign those papers, otherwise he would end up dead in a pile of rotten garbage.
He also tells him that they wait for one month and expect those papers signed after that. Thugs then go on to ransack the entire office before leaving and also threaten the staff to make sure his boss sign those damn papers approving the grant.
My dad calls Rob and informs him what had happened and asks him to fax all the documents collected so far, and he would be asking for those documents officially.
Rob asks my dad what was his intention of using those documents and what his plans were. My dad says he’s am going to take them down and that he’s had enough from them. Rob tells my dad not to do anything crazy in the heat of the moment but assured me that he would send those details to my dad. The same day, Rob faxed my dad around 2,000 documents.
My dad then calls up his boss to inform him that he would be going on a 10-day vacation. By the end of the day, my dad leaves the office will all documents related to Bill’s project and faxed documents from Rob and headed home.
For the next 10 days, my dad sits at home going through every document, evidence he gathered with the help of Rob and drafts his grant rejection letter with a lot of details as didn’t want to leave a chance anyone who can replace him or higher up above him rejecting his comments on the project and approve the grant.
After the vacation, he goes back to the office and the staff were surprised to him and were thinking that Bill’s men abducted him since he didn’t inform anyone about his vacation plans. The same day, my dad asks his assistant to mail the documents to his boss as a confidential report. His assistant takes the documents and heads to the nearest postal office. At the same moment, Bill’s men come to my dad’s office to check with him if he had signed the documents or not and he would be in serious trouble if it was not done.
My dad lies to them that he has approved the grant and his assistant has just gone to mail those documents to his boss for processing and would take up to 3 months for the grant to arrive. My dad also tells them to inform Bill that everything has been taken care of and there is nothing worry about anymore so that my dad won’t be bothered by Bill or his men any further.
A week later, my dad’s boss furiously calls and asks my dad about the grant rejection letter he sent him and how crazy my dad was, which could end up having both of them killed.
My dad assures his boss that he has taken care of everything including Bill and Jack and that there was nothing to worry about and all he has to do was to hold on to those documents for a month or so.
A month later, a local newspaper breaks a story of how Jack was corrupt to the hilt and Bill was a partner in his crimes.
The same morning, Bill is arrested from his mansion half-naked and totally drunk along with a lot of escort girls. Bill was charged with corruption, bribery, s*x racketeering, money laundering, and murder. Bill’s men were also arrested for murder and were sentenced for life along with Bill. Jack was arrested for corruption, bribery, intimidation, and abuse of power. Jack made bail but never won the election again eventually retiring from politics.
A decade later, Bill testified against Jack for the crimes they both committed, and Jack was sentenced to 15 years in Jail. Dave was also charged with bribery, forgery, and money laundering. Dave fled the country to escape jail time, but no one knows for sure where he is now. Police are still looking for him.
No one ever knew how that happened to Bill and Jake except Rob and my dad.
The Revenge:
You see, my dad took 10 days vacation not just to hide from Bill’s men, but he was planning to execute his perfect plan for revenge against Bill.
He systematically documented every ounce of evidence he had and drafted a comprehensive report against Bill and Jack on how they plan to cheat the government and have the government cough up the money for nothing.
Remember when he asked his assistant to mail the documents to his boss? He actually had mailed 4 copies of those documents. One for his boss for rejection of grant, and the second one was to the agency that was planning to store good grain in Bill’s warehouse proposing to blacklist his property for non-compliance with standards.
The third and fourth pieces of mail were sent as an anonymous tip to a federal agency equivalent of FBI (let’s call it XBI) and to an investigative journalist from a local newspaper. XBI was also informed that a copy was sent to the local newspaper. XBI and the investigative journalist did their own investigation and found that the money put into the warehouse project was Jack’s entire stash of money what he got through bribes, commissions, and favors for doing things while he was in power.
This was money was laundered by Bill through a network of entities to find the warehouse project and cook the books to inflate the project cost get his money back from the government as a grant in legal form. The journalist also uncovered some government officials were murdered by Bill and his men for not doing what Bill asked them to do and handed the evidence over to XBI.
It took them a month to investigate and identify all the pieces of the puzzle to nab Bill and Jack. Neither XBI nor the journalist were able to find out who sent those documents to them.
My dad’s boss took an early retirement and Dad became the director of the agency he worked for a few years later and eventually retiring 15 years after this incident. Rob retired a year later and narrated this entire story to our family at his retirement party.
I still see the abandoned warehouse whenever I travel to my home town from the city where I work.”
Another User Comments:
“If this did happen, I fear for your life.
I also live in a country where politicians have their own private armies (basically, big “security teams” armed to the teeth) and there are times especially after an election that they are very dangerous especially if they lost because a lot of them resort to vote-buying (basically paying poor voters money, so they get votes). If they lost, they take it out on the people.
They are nothing more but criminals engaged in businesses, fattening their bank accounts while they rule the land and the people are kept poor.” neon31
5. Nearly Kill Me Due To Incompetence? Time To Go Nuclear
“A few years ago, at the age of 22, I was diagnosed with epilepsy, which came out of the blue. At my appointment with the epilepsy nurse and my neurologist, I was informed, by way of informing those who were looking for a cause for my epilepsy, that I had suffered from measles when I was around 13 months old and was not yet fully vaccinated against it.
Upon returning home, I spoke with my sister and remarked that I had never heard of this before. In private, my sister decided that, as it was me who was involved, I had the right to know what she knew of the story. However, she was only 8 years old at the time and was unsure of the true extent of what had transpired. The story that she told me was as follows:
Shortly after I was born, a family moved onto our street, and they had a son who was around my sister’s age.
My sister wasn’t fond of him. He was a bit pushy but not in an unkind way. He likely just wanted to make friends and pushed his way into playing with the other children. My sister, however, has an anxiety disorder and has had it for a long time, and she didn’t really appreciate his behavior, finding him quite intimidating. She knew very little about his parents and has never actually spoken to them.
About a year later, I came down with the measles and was rushed to the hospital with severe complications.
My sister explained that, as far as she was aware, the family was opposed to vaccinations and believed that the only way to build a “natural immunity” was to be infected with a virus (this was before the falsified study linking vaccines to autism). As such, when their unvaccinated son contracted the measles, the first thing that they thought of was to “do the other families on the street a favor” and send their infectious son out to play with the other children without warning anybody.
My sister inadvertently brought the virus into the house, and we were both infected. She shrugged it off, but I wasn’t so lucky. 21 years later, I would find out that this virus and the seizures that it caused at the time caused scarring in my brain that has left me with epilepsy and all of the joys that come with that. Lovely stuff. I returned from the hospital after an anticlimactic recovery, and a month later, the family disappeared.
Until recently, that was all that I knew of the situation.
My parents were understandably traumatized by the whole thing, and they didn’t like to talk about it, so I dropped it into conversation with an elderly neighbor who was not in any way affiliated with what happened at the time. I was informed that, while I was in the hospital, my grandmother, who has passed away, had confronted the family over what they had done during a time when it was still possible that I might have died.
Their response had made my grandmother livid, and she had gone around telling everyone what they had said, which was essentially something to the effect of, “You should be thanking us. She’ll be much safer now that she’s had it. She’ll have a more natural immunity now.”
To my neighbor’s knowledge, nobody liked that and for good reason. On top of that, parents didn’t feel safe with them around, and there were other infants on the street who were my age or younger.
People hurtled abuse at them, he recalled, and they ended up leaving to stay with relatives before the house could even be sold.
It was only recently that the extent of the abuse was relayed to me by another neighbor who may or may not have taken part in it all. Their tires were slashed multiple times, almost as soon as they were replaced. Their car was keyed.
When people weren’t hurtling abuse at them in the street (the worst of all being my grandmother who had a razor-sharp wit, always being able to come up with something new and unique), they wrote handwritten letters calling them every obscene name under the sun and reminding them that they could be responsible for my death, posting them through their mailbox and sticking them to their windows and doors.
The resident baseball boy, with the blessing of everybody present, tore their letterbox off their wall and smashed it in with a baseball bat. One of the residents on the street had a pair of cats, and when they brought any little presents home, she would scoop up the unfortunate prey with a shovel and leave them on their doorstep. This evolved to include the waste of the cats, too, and another neighbor who had a dog decided to do the same with his dog’s droppings.
This would be done primarily when they were out of the house, and this was being done in the heat of summer, so you can only imagine the smell and the cloud of flies that would be wafting around their porch when they returned hours later. The owner of the dog even went as far as to smear the droppings all over their door handle and as much of their front window as he could (though people found this just a wee bit disgusting, so he stopped).
While the abuse and letters kept up, people very quickly stopped leaving droppings and such on their porch or sticking the letters to their windows because, unfortunately, their young lad who was about 7-8 got caught in the crossfire.
Some of the older children caught on to the fact that their parents didn’t like his family and began to bully him without really ever knowing why his family was hated so much, and this ended up reaching him at school.
To their credit, they realized that he likely didn’t understand what was going on, and it wasn’t his fault, so they dialed it back a bit and kept the abuse to where only the parents could see.
This family was so distressed that they took their son and ran to the sibling of one of the parents after the sibling of the other told them quite frankly that they didn’t want their unvaccinated son around their children. The house was sold in their absence. I wondered aloud why the police weren’t called because some of the perpetrators were very obvious, at which point I was informed that these people had an inherent distrust of any and all authority figures and held the belief that the system was against them, they were being oppressed and that the police would sweep it all under the rug, so they just left instead of “exposing their son to the biased police,” which is really baffling to me, because in my country, their community is a majority, and they’d be more likely to receive support.
So, the moral of the story is to vaccinate your children, folks.”
4. Leave Their Kid Out In The Cold? No More Teaching For You
Who in their right mind leaves a child or teen out in the snow?!
“So this story happened back in 2009 when I was starting my sophomore year – 10th grade for anyone unfamiliar with the term. It’s more my parent’s revenge and I have their permission to post it here. I’m reminded of it now because I was on a date recently and she asked me why I only had one hand on the steering wheel while we were driving to our destination.
The answer to that is simple: I grew up on a farm and the first vehicle I learned to drive was my dad’s tractor when I was 9. Yes, farm kids learn to drive very early on in life, especially if they’re fast-growing beansprouts like me. Like many vehicles, tractors have the pedals for clutch, brake, and gas, and the steering wheel. In addition to those, you have the implement controls for the tool(s) the tractor is pulling alongside the gear shift and engine speed.
These are typically on the right-hand side and usually require you to keep one hand on them, with the other hand on the wheel.
These days, I drive an automatic transmission vehicle, but having driven tractors and large manual transmission trucks through the fields for so many years as a kid left me with the habit of resting my right arm on the center console since there’s nothing I need to do with it except maybe hold hands with my dates.
This is something my dad does all the time when he and my mom are in the car together, either on their own or with me and my siblings in tow. And no, for anyone who is wondering, my phone stays in my pocket until I’ve reached my destination. Answering a text while driving is not worth mine or anyone else’s safety.
So back to the story, entering sophomore year, I was now old enough according to my state’s laws that I could take driver’s ed, something my high school offered as an extracurricular class.
I aced that class in every respect.
Until it came time to get in the car with the instructor.
The driving portion of the class had two sessions each, one in the morning before school started and one in the afternoon after school let out with extra sessions on Saturdays to handle all the prospective drivers in the class. We were sorted alphabetically so our instructor, Mrs. Tyrant, had an easier time keeping track of us.
She was a thin woman with a constant scowl and despised pointless questions. I got a ride with a friend the Saturday morning. It was his and my turn on the list, alongside one other student. It was the weekend before Thanksgiving, and getting close to winter, but it hadn’t snowed yet and was, therefore, bone-cold outside. Mrs. Tyrant was waiting inside the exam car with the engine running.
The other student got out of her mom’s truck once she saw us, and her mom and my friend’s dad both drove away once we were in the exam car.
I was going to be the first to drive that morning with my friend and the other student in the backseat waiting for their turns. We went through the checklist of pre-driving safety checks and then we were on our way.
I put the car in gear, rested my arm on the center console since it was an automatic, and there was nothing I needed to use it for, I thought, and pressed the gas. Nothing.
“Both hands on the wheel,” Mrs. Tyrant sternly said with her foot on the examiner’s brake.
I apologized and put my right hand on the wheel, and it was soooooooooo weird, especially since I was accustomed to not doing that.
As such, my right hand slackened and dropped to the center console again before we even left the parking lot. Cue the brake.
“Both hands on the wheel,” Mrs. Tyrant repeated. I tried to explain why it felt weird but she wouldn’t let me get a word in. “If you’re not going to keep both hands on the wheel, you can use your little phone to call for a ride home.”
“I don’t have a phone!” I protested.
Really, at this point in time, I didn’t have a cellphone, and I’m ultimately grateful to my parents for refusing to buy me one. But this was another point in my teenage years where I wished they would have bought me one.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You kids all have phones,” Mrs. Tyrant said as she put the car in park and gestured for me to get out.
I complied and tried to get in the backseat while my friend got into the driver’s seat. “I said call for a ride home.” Mrs. Tyrant repeated. My friend tried to talk her out of leaving me there, only for her to threaten him with a failed test. We all know what teenagers can be like, and he chose the driving test over his friend. He and I still talk and play games together from time to time, but he does regret leaving me behind.
So I was left there in the school parking lot on a Saturday morning in the freezing cold with my only shelter being the school’s entryway.
Thankfully, I wasn’t out there for long, maybe about twenty minutes, when some dude I hadn’t met before kept honking until I noticed him. My parents later scolded me for trusting a stranger, and I don’t blame them, but at the time, I was too cold to care, and his car was warm.
Turned out, he was the girl’s older brother. He had graduated six years earlier and was visiting his parents for Thanksgiving that coming week. His sister, the other student, had frantically texted her family since she did have a phone to tell them that I needed help and he came over to the school straight away to take me back to my house. Mom was furious after I told her what had happened when I got home and called my dad who was out in the fields, who was equally furious at the news.
Despite their immediate efforts, Mrs. Tyrant and the school suffered no consequences, since there weren’t any security cameras around the school at the time. Meanwhile, I not only ended up with a nasty cold that lasted until after Thanksgiving Day but also got flunked out of driver’s ed and wouldn’t be allowed to take the course again that year.
Fast forward to May, the sun was out and shining and the end of the school year had arrived.
The only bad note on my report card was driver’s ed, which had done just enough damage to take me off the potential valedictorian lineup for my graduating class. As usual for summer, my dad needed help out in the fields but instead hired a few neighbors so I could take a summer driver’s ed course that he paid for. “So I could be more useful around the place,” he joked, but I knew it was because of Mrs.
Tyrant failing me before I even had a chance and that I had otherwise earned the privilege with my good grades. Each day, he or mom would take the time each day to deliver me to and pick me up from the course in the nearest city about half an hour away. The instructor for this course, Mr. Saint, was a big man with a bellowing laugh, and he took the time to listen to his students’ concerns.
Eventually, it came time for me to get behind the wheel again.
When I told my dad on our way there, he got all thoughtful for a good minute.
“Son, I want you to briefly explain to Mr. Saint before you even get in the car with him that you’ve been driving tractors for several years now as well as how the controls for one are laid out if he isn’t familiar with them,” he says to me.
I didn’t really get it at the time, but I agreed to do just that.
And just that I did when Mr. Saint invited me to climb into the driver’s seat for my driving exam. He was familiar with the typical layout of tractor controls so I didn’t have to explain it to him. He kept a very careful eye on me and everything I did during the driving exam. And unlike Mrs. Tyrant, he didn’t touch his brake once.
“Just like any farming kid I’ve had in my courses, your driving is top-notch,” Mr.
Saint says to me. “But why did you feel the need to let me know ahead of time?”
“My dad told me to,” I said, pointing to my dad who was waiting in his truck.
“Mind if I speak with him?” Mr. Saint asked.
“I don’t mind sir, but he’s going to want to leave soon, so we can get back to work.”
“I’ll be sure to make it quick,” Mr.
Saint said as he went over to my dad’s truck.
They talked for a couple of minutes, Mr. Saint making notes on his clipboard before Dad waved me over when they were done talking.
“What did Mr. Saint want to talk with you about dad?” I asked as I climbed in.
“Oh, nothing much,” Dad replied with a grin as he began to drive away.
I tried to get him to tell me what they had talked about, but he remained adamantly silent about the matter.
A few weeks later, I had my learner’s permit and was quickly racking up the hours I needed for my license.
The school year started about a month later, and I was asked by a few friends if I would be redoing driver’s ed. I told them no; I had taken a summer course since my dad needed my help sooner rather than later, and I already had my learner’s permit.
That’s when I found out that Mrs. Tyrant had been fired. Fired! Just the week before! And that Mr. Saint would be teaching the course in her place until the school board decided whether they would keep the course or drop it altogether. During my lunch break that first day, rather than eat with my friends, I went to the classroom where Mr. Saint was going to be teaching that afternoon and found him sitting behind what used to be Mrs.
Tyrant’s desk.
After a bit of stuttering on my part, I asked him what had happened, and he said he had been recommended by my dad as a replacement when Mrs. Tyrant’s teacher’s license was revoked, and she was subsequently fired. Also, Mr. Saint told me that my dad had stayed in contact with him after their little chat and that he had been told of Mrs.
Tyrant’s treatment of me and possibly other students. Mr. Saint then passed that info along with his records onto the county, who pulled Mrs. Tyrant into a performance review. And yep, I wasn’t the only one she had flunked over the years for what was perceived as one of many minor errors in this farmland rich area. That alone was enough to make sure she could never renew her license ever again.
What, or rather who, got it revoked, were my parents who finally had people listening to them about how Mrs. Tyrant had neglected her duty as a guardian to her students by leaving them stranded in front of the school until they were picked up, and I was the final straw.
The school board also invested in a security system at this time, so they had video footage for incidents like this that popped up in the future.
Furthermore, my driver’s ed grade was purged from the system, along with anyone else currently in the school who had taken the class under Mrs. Tyrant, both good and bad. This put me back in the potential valedictorian lineup for my class, much to my parent’s delight. To this day, I don’t know what happened to Mrs. Tyrant, and frankly, I don’t care. She was a horrible woman and the less that is said about her, the better.”
Another User Comments:
“I think some driver’s ed teachers and testers are extra harsh and take some delight in humiliating teenagers.
I understand teen driving is very dangerous – much more now since I grew up before cell phone use was common. Still, I failed my first licensing exam. I was less than 1/4 mile from the DMV, and I took my foot off the brake (did not put it on the gas) to back up prior to looking over my shoulder. One strike and done. The instructor took me back and failed me.” AUGirl1999
3. Cut My Pay To Save Money? I Won't Work More Than I Need To
And they thought they were going to save money on payroll… Ha.
“This takes place in the “before times” when people could eat out and gather in large numbers.
I used to work as a chef for an owner who liked to micromanage things and was a bit narcissistic. I’d been working there for about 3 years, getting good reviews, customers loved me, updated the menu. Made everything from scratch, but people used to think the place was open box/heat and serve type of food.
Quality had gone up, and morale was great in my kitchen. Annual sales went from $850k, to $1.4 million, about maximum capacity for the space.
The increase in sales and income went to the owner’s head. He was always spending money on frivolous things and squandering cash. Sound system, a stage for the event space, etc. One example, I needed a new Alto-Sham (an industrial piece of kitchen equipment), a used one would have sufficed, but nope, he bought the top of the line one that could be used as a smoker too – $12k vs what I wanted could be gotten used for $1,500.
Granted, I enjoyed that piece of equipment, which after I left, they no longer use the smoker function. Years later, I still occasionally get emails invoices from a vendor and see they bring in precooked smoked meats now.
I was hourly, but then the owner realized during the busy season, I and my Sous Chef put in 70-80 hour weeks. Doing this, he realized I made more take home pay from his business than he did.
At peak times, he’d maybe work 40-50 hours a week.
So to save money, he puts me and my Sous on salary effectively cutting my pay by about $10k a year. My Sous netted a loss of $2k/year if we were to work at our current level of effort.
During all of this, the owner is saying he is not expecting us to work over 40 hours a week, EVER.
He even has this written into our contracts. So with the extra time off at home with family, it is ok. I still like the job and my staff. During the slower times, this was great. Also during this time, I had won a local award for my cooking, and the narcissistic owner was not too pleased. He was no longer recognized as the creative force in the kitchen that bears his name, so his meddling and micromanaging increased.
It had gone from, “It’s your kitchen, CopChef; do what you want” to “It’s my name and my kitchen; do it this way.” Morale and quality began to suffer.
Just prior to the holiday season, my Sous wants to go back to his home country for 2.5 months. November, December, and January are peak crazy times for us. I have good help and am good with it, and the owner approved the time off.
The owner was thinking I am gonna save him some $$ that holiday season by working my usual 70-80 hours a week.
Nope, cue the malicious compliance.
I start writing the holiday schedule, Sous is on vacation, I have my 40 during key prep times and peak business times. The rest of my staff get serious overtime. Basically, the Sous and I carried a lot of the weight in the kitchen and could outperform most of our small staff. So with Sous on vacay and I only pulling 40 full-time, the staff is now working 60ish hours a week, and part-timers are getting 40.
Things are running pretty smoothly until the owner realizes I’m not there like I always am during the holiday rush. He’s in the kitchen more trying to micromanage my staff, giving them poor advice contradicting my directions and timing for events, screwing up the small parties my staff could handle while I am off.
After a few weeks of this, he realizes he’s going to be paying the staff out more in overtime than he saved on moving me and my Sous to salary.
He starts demanding I work more hours to stop hemorrhaging OT to the kitchen staff. I show him my contract where I am not expected to work over 40 hours a week. Now he says it’s just a guideline. I hold him to the 40 a week, it’s Christmas, and now I can for once spend time with my family.
Now with my Sous returning, I’m burned out from the constant micromanaging and gaslighting by the owner, so I hand the reigns to my Sous and change careers after 25 years in the industry and never look back.”
Another User Comments:
“You go, you.
It’s always nice to see the d*uche canoes getting what they deserve for their selfishness.
My brother-in-law did something similar to my husband (and myself). Salary to hourly to force him to work longer hours. Then he was surprised when he got notice that hubby was leaving for a new job. Plus we were selling our place to move out of state to take it. He was scrambling to find someone to manage his businesses and someone to take over doing the maintenance also.
He was p*ssed because he ended up having to hire five people for quite a bit more money than he had been paying before.
I had already quit a few months before due to the *sshattery. So my management duties (Paperwork, inventory, court, 24hr telephone x2, my maintenance duties, and a whole lot more) were put on my husband’s shoulders. Yeah, he totally didn’t think that one through. He was trying to require him to work a minimum of 65 hours a week, ideally 80+. So he took him off salary and dropped his pay to $9 an hour. His thinking was that it would force my husband to go back to putting in the 80 plus hour weeks that he was wanting out of him again.
It always surprises me that people don’t/will not sit down and reason out the possible consequences and all likely outcomes of a decision. BEFORE implementing the decision.” daal_op_owen
2. Default Title - Please Change
1. Back Out On A Sale? We'll Annoy You With Hundreds Of Phone Calls
“Back in the early ’90s, my friend (I’ll call him “Lou” because that’s his name) was selling his RX-7 via an ad in the old print Auto Trader. It came out every Thursday, so that first weekend was critical for sales. The very first guy who came to see it on Saturday said he wanted to buy it after driving it. Of course, he had to finance, so they couldn’t finish the sale during the weekend.
Lou was worried about losing all the bites from the new ad, so he asked for a deposit of $500. The guy wrote a check. Lou told the rest of the callers that weekend that it was sold and, unfortunately, didn’t ask for their numbers in case it fell through; this story predates caller id availability in my area by a couple of years, so those leads were gone.
As you surely expect by now, the guy flakes on Monday, and Lou deposits the check. Payment stopped. Big surprise.
Sitting around my apartment, we schemed revenge, but all we had to go on was the check. Lucky for karma, there was a phone number printed on it. Our first idea was to write a little program to dial his number repeatedly from my modem, but that would be easily stopped and probably get us in direct trouble.
Then Lou got a page from his work: this was back in the one-way pager days. You call the pager’s dedicated phone number, it sounds a tone, then you punch digits for the number you want to be sent to the pager. The person with the pager receives the number you entered and, presumably, calls it. Everyone with a pager made sure that people who needed to get a hold of them had the number for their pager.
You’d see pager numbers in print and TV ads all the time for various services.
Boom: angelic choir sings, heavenly light goes off. Lou’s pager number and my pager number had the same prefix (middle 3 digits). What if we randomly dial numbers with that prefix and page them all to this guy’s number? So we order a pizza, open some beers, and start looking through the yellow pages at locksmiths and tow truck services to find more pager prefixes.
We wind up with a dozen or so.
After that, it’s half an hour of coding in Ye Olde Borland C++. I put together a program that would cycle through our list of known prefixes and add a random final four digits to get a random pager. It calls the pager’s number, pauses, then dials this a**hole’s number and throws a *911 suffix on there for good measure, which is something people with pagers understood to indicate an emergency of some kind.
The whole thing was just generating a string like “ATDT602XXXYYYY,,<a**hole’s number>*911#,” where XXX is the pager prefix and YYYY is random. Commas make pauses since you need to connect to the paging service before you can enter the message. Make string, send to modem, wait for “NO CARRIER,” hang up, repeat.
We start eating the pizza and let it fly. I was very picky about my devices, so my modem was a USRobotics Courier.
You could set an S register to control how long it would sound each tone when dialing. Uber-nerds like myself would keep tinkering with that to get it as fast as possible while still being recognized by the phone service. It was very fast. I swag it could run through 4 pages per minute, so this guy would get 240 calls/hour. We just watched it run and laughed our a**es off.
We realized pretty early on that we didn’t really know if it was working, so we wandered down to the 7-11 and called him from a payphone, just in case he could somehow trace it or the po-po were on the case and watching.
A man answered and I said, “Hello, I got a page at this number.” I heard an audible sigh and then he just hung up. Gold!
We ended up running it for a few hours, then let it go quiet for a few days. Then we scheduled it to start dialing in the middle of the night every few days, plus we’d fire it up by hand randomly whenever we had a party.
We checked again from the 7-11 after a week and it went to an answering machine, which did the rapid-tone at the end of the greeting to indicate the tape was full. We reasoned that the line was still ringing, anyway, so we kept at it for another month or so. Eventually, we got the disconnected warning when we made one of our regular checkups. I’m sure he just changed the number.
I like to think about that guy answering the phone after a few days of silence when we started it up.
I can vividly imagine his response at the, “Did someone page me to this number?” as he slams the phone down and then it rings again a few seconds later. Or, of course, coming home from work and having an answering machine full of random people asking about being paged.
And, yeah, we annoyed several thousand people into calling this guy by the end. But each of those people was only put out for a single call. A cost, yes, but a necessary one for justice.”
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