People Chatter About Their Imposing Revenge Stories
16. Be A Bad Mom? Lose Your Husband, House, And Foot
“When I was a small child my mom was the coolest mom in the world in my eyes. Looking back, she didn’t make the smartest parental decisions doing ‘cool’ things, but nonetheless, there were good times I still remember fondly.
As I got older, her manipulative ways and desperate need for everyone’s attention at all times got unbearably worse. She also tried to make me into the same trashy person she was.
She taught me how to make up elaborate lies and stories so my grandma wouldn’t know where we went out (mom was a compulsive liar, so even though there was no reason for this, she did it anyway), constantly told me that school taught useless stuff and I just needed to pass and get by and then would berate me for bad grades, she blew my friendships up by either manipulating my friends or their parents, taught me the first thing to do when my grandma passed away was to take all her funds and grab her lockbox (also had money, and yes she meant before calling 911), and honestly, there are so many horrible things she told me were okay and did a lot of terrible things to me, but there’s just too many to list them all.
There was also a decent heap of mental and emotional abuse that seemed to increase with my age, but y’all aren’t here for my sob story.
When I was in college, she went full-on helicopter parent during my first year, and she still managed to ruin a few friendships because she’s really good at being an awful person.
Come to my first summer vacation, it came time to get ready to go home. I wanted to go back to my grandma’s house, where I grew up. She showed up moving day and took all my things to her and her new husband’s house (he is NOT my stepfather, I never liked him).
She demanded I get a job (she didn’t have one) to pay for my food, but I also had to do ALL of the housework while she sat on her butt and watched TV and smoked. It took me less than a week to realize she wanted me there as her personal slave, but she didn’t want to spend any more money her husband made because of my being there.
I texted a few friends out of desperation, and she took my phone in my sleep to read what I said. She then began her work to ruin my life. She messaged all of my friends slinging some nonsense about being a witness in court and said I told her a bunch of nasty stuff about them I never said and scared most of them off from ever talking to me.
She called all of our family and told them I was a heavy drinker and I was going to fail college (grades were decent, I had drank maybe 5 times ever at that point). My grandma came and got me after many tear-filled calls explaining what was going on.
After I left, she refused to sign my FAFSA (there was absolutely no way I could afford school without financial aid) and tried to get me kicked out of my school, but the financial aid Dept at my school was awesome and helped me get around that so I could continue there.
After that, she’d call the house and my job several times a day and leave harassing messages (luckily she kept up her nice act when she called work asking for me, they were unbelievably understanding at my job). My grandma and I ended up going to court to take out protection orders, she got hers with no contest, but my mother contested mine.
At that point, my anxiety was so bad I became violently sick and missed my follow-up court date.
After that, she tried to have me arrested. When the cops showed up at my house explaining to my grandma what she told them, we explained everything going on and luckily they were also understanding (they got the crazy vibe from her on the phone).
After that, I. Was. Done. I didn’t just want her to rot in the underworld, I wanted the rest of her life to be miserable.
For a while, I didn’t really tell many people what was going on as I’m the type of person that doesn’t want to be a burden to their loved ones at any cost. But after going to therapy at my college, I got a lot of my stuff worked out and was able to come to terms with a lot of the stuff that happened. So then I began my work.
I told EVERYONE she knew. Most of them she had gotten to first, but they changed alliances very quickly after my talks with them. I made sure to turn up the waterworks HARD when I retold my story every time.
Even threw in the occasional ‘I just don’t understand why she hates me so much,’ and ‘I only ever wanted my mom to love me.’ In reality, I knew she was just a compulsive liar and a narcissist and was only flipping out because I wouldn’t succumb to her will anymore.
I told my family everything including the mental and emotional abuse from my teens and up. Needless to say, they were horrified.
I wound up getting a new number and blocking her email so she couldn’t harass me anymore, but she would call my grandma’s house and leave messages every once in a while to try and slither her way back into my life.
Nope. After I contacted everyone and told them what happened, no one cared about her ‘issues.’ Eventually, she and her good-for-nothing husband wound up losing their house due to financial problems with her not working. They bought a truck and a trashy trailer to hitch to it and called it home.
She even had the nerve to call us when a hurricane was coming (yup, I’m from Florida) and asked if they could seek shelter with us. We deleted the message.
Now for the most satisfying part. A few weeks ago, after quite a long time since her last message, she calls.
Apparently, as it turns out, her unmanaged diabetes caught up to her. She was in a hospital in North Carolina about to have a foot amputated. Idiot’s husband apparently decided he was done, so he ran away with his cousin, took their truck/trailer, and left her with nothing and nowhere to go.
My grandma was literally her last possible saving grace. Everyone else turned her away, and she was going to be discharged in 3 days. With nowhere to go. She was begging my grandma to take her in, even having the gall to say ‘how could you turn me away at a time like this.’
Message deleted.
Now I’m doing much better with a job I love, great roommates, the best friends I could ask for, and a man who is so incredibly loving and understanding of all my issues. I couldn’t be happier.
And she couldn’t be more miserable. I’m a Hufflepuff at heart, but push me too hard and I can show you just how much of a Slytherin I can be.”
15. Sorry Sir, I'm Gonna Need You To Count Every Last Penny
“I used to hang out with a buddy that delivered pizzas.
I lived across the street from the store so sometime he’d pick me up and take me on deliveries because well, it’d give me something to do to cure my boredom. There was always this one rude customer that we’d always and I mean ALWAYS happen to deliver to and one night, I was in the car all wasted and tired of it.
He would literally make my friend cry. I was already wearing solid color clothing so I decided to have some fun and grabbed his hat. He always paid in change and of course: never tipped. We get to his house and I pretend to be a worker.
I put the pizza behind a chair on the far side of his porch so he couldn’t see.
‘Sir, I’m going to need you to show me the money.’ He angrily pulls out his lucky bag of coins, consisting of mostly pennies.
Obviously puzzled that there’s no pizza at hand. ‘Ok, I’m going to need you to work with me, you want your pizza? We’re gonna have to count it out first,’ I slurred. He hands me the coins, questioning why I said, ‘we’ instead of ‘me’.
I start counting and then I stop. I went quiet for what seemed like 5 minutes, ignoring all of his nasty comments. He was annoyed, raising his voice and fists, similar to a first-grader. I finally said, ‘sir, you have to sit here and count out ALL of your coins, I will not feed you until YOU do so.’ ‘What, can’t you do your JOB and count the change?’ ‘No sir, new rules.
We must prevent theft.’
His stomach started to growl knowing he had no choice. He gave me dirty looks and eventually, started to wither and count his change… he was a dollar short. He called the pizza place up, ‘IM GOING TO REPORT YOU TO YOUR MANAGER, WHO ARE YOU, WHAT’S YOUR NAME YOU SLIMY IDIOT I-.’ I told him my name and said good luck.
The manager answered and said I didn’t exist, making him look CRAZY. He slammed the door in my face, leaving some change and the pizza he couldn’t reach.
My friend and I ate the pizza in celebration and that guy stopped ordering thereafter.
The manager understood, knowing that weirdo used to stalk his wife. I’m not sure if that’s petty revenge but it sure was sweet.”
14. Bridezilla Gets An Awful Wedding Dress
“I (F48) have known ‘Pat’ (F48) for decades. As far as I can remember, she was fixated on having 5 children and a picket fence dream life. I slowly cut ties with her in college because she was an opportunist and I didn’t trust her.
She is both manipulative and forceful. Her idea of cute rubs me the wrong way. Pat likes to walk like a penguin when she wants to elicit pity, and she usually does this when she wants to evoke the underdog narrative.
I’ve never seen someone act so despicable and ridiculous at the same time.
I moved on with my life. Happily got rid of her for years. Pat eventually found me on social media. I accepted her friend request out of politeness.
Pat has become the epitome of a permissive mother. Her (5) kids do as they please and she never calls them out. She tried to force a relationship between me and her daughters and made them call me Auntie. Pat tried to drop them at my house uninvited. Her phone calls were insistent, she tried to monopolize my time and she began to show up at my job.
I created some boundaries so she tried to find loopholes. It was a nightmare.
My husband and I hosted a party for the community center’s (not the real name) new members. The community center is actually a very informal initiative and my husband and I mainly serve the homeless population.
We prefer to help strangers instead of catering to potentially narcissistic acquaintances. We don’t mind lending a hand but we have encountered truly dishonest choosing beggars.
There are other services, like one of the members who helps women get their wedding and prom dresses for free.
The community center location headquarters’ is actually a farm owned by an elderly couple. There is a barn, a venue, and a very nice green field with an artificial lake and some fowl. They charge for the use of their facilities (weddings, etc.) but not for community-oriented stuff.
Pat had always been salty at her husband for demanding that she go back to work after baby #3. In the meantime, he worked three jobs. She demanded he get her pregnant to fulfill her dream of having 5 kids. He didn’t agree, because he was already nearly 45 and felt like he might never be able to retire.
She got away with bringing new babies into this world anyway. Her fascination with being pregnant comes from all the attention she gets. She had at least one miscarriage in between each kid.
Pat latched on to our group. She never missed any of our activities.
I hated having her in my house, but it was an open invitation that included basically everyone and she was very active as an event organizer. I didn’t like the way her kids behaved. We have a designated area for parties and entertainment, but her kids ended up inside my bedroom.
We ended up having to keep watch of them and enjoyed zero of our own party.
I called her days later to get my point across (regarding their overall behavior) but she completely cut me off and began talking about herself and said her kids wanted to come visit again and use our pool.
I never answered that. I didn’t want to say ‘no, I will not have your brats over.’
She also called me as summer was approaching specifically to let me know her middle daughter was bored and wanted to spend a WEEK at our home.
I politely declined, citing that my husband and I have to work and cannot entertain guests.
Pat paid no heed. Her kid called me on the weekend, calling me ‘auntie’ and attempted to coax me by saying ‘Mom says you invited me to spend SUMMER with you.’ I quickly clarified and offered an explanation to avoid hurting a kid’s self-esteem.
Nevermind. Her daughter just hung up on me.
Pat’s social media also showed some red flags. Some cryptic rants here and there were visible, along with friends’ comments and complaints on how she asked a particular person to watch her kids only for a couple of hours and ended up leaving them all day.
Another of her friends criticized her ‘girls night out’ because Pat had just asked them to be patient and wait until she could pay back some funds that she owed them, yet she had the funds to spend on Friday night outings.
I thought those very public comments on private matters were more like a cry of lost patience.
Unpleasant things began to happen. Like the time she volunteered to wrap the Xmas presents for underprivileged kids. We all wanted to create a mix of less costly gifts with really nice ones.
Surprisingly, some nice and eye-catching toys and games went missing but turned up under her Christmas Tree (courtesy of her mother-in-law’s posts). No one could prove anything but it was hate-inducing. Or the time my daughter called me in tears to pick her up after she attended Pat’s daughter’s birthday (Casey).
My daughter had been ignored all night because she didn’t gift her the expensive gaming stuff Casey practically demanded. My daughter did ask, but I said no. We would buy her a very nice and thoughtful present according to her taste.
So when I went to pick her up my daughter was sitting alone in the living room while Casey and her friends stayed outside.
Stories about Pat and her family multiplied. The owners at the farm (community center) decided to keep their gates locked unless they had guests or events because Pat got in the habit of driving in whenever she pleased and it was either her kids screaming and disturbing ongoing weddings, throwing rocks at the koi in the lake or harassing the geese in the yard.
Or how she stiffed another soccer mom with the lunch bill and then pulled the struggling financially card. Or how other parents hated her because she created unnecessary hostile competition.
When my daughter turned 13, I allowed her to wear my grandma’s ring.
It’s not an expensive piece of jewelry, but it’s vintage and girls nowadays wanna look boho. My Granny gave it to me when I became a teenager so I passed it on to my kid so she could wear it on her birth week.
It was weird that she became quiet and distracted after that. She also didn’t want to go to school and my husband and I became suspicious. She never opened up, and my other kids had no clue.
We went to her school but her teachers assured us nothing had changed in her environment.
My husband and I suspected she was being bullied but our kid gave us no tools to support her. My kid is very sunny and very compassionate. She has never had any problems with other kids. I called her best friend’s mom.
Natalie, my kid’s BFF, told us what was going on. Casey (Pat’s eldest) and my daughter had become ‘close.’ I knew this and wasn’t too thrilled. I found the age (Casey was 17) gap not exactly inappropriate but I’d rather see my daughter spend time with friends in the same age range.
Casey is a very beautiful and gifted student. She is also very conceited. To make this story short, she asked my daughter if she could try on the ring and refused to give it back. She later claimed that she lost it but ‘would look for it’ so my daughter was distraught.
My daughter kept asking for her ring and as a result, Casey shunned her and spread the word that my kid was trying to steal HER ring. Some kids at school took Casey’s side. So now Casey just wore my kid’s jewelry to school like nothing happened. If that doesn’t qualify as taunting I don’t know what does.
My guilt comes from not being able to get my daughter to open up and feel safe telling me the truth. I talked to her and she burst into tears. I was both pained as a mother and furious that some teenage jerk was doing this under our noses.
I went straight to Pat’s car after school. I asked to talk as Casey was about to go in. So I grabbed Casey’s hand and asked to see her jewelry. Casey froze and she tried to make a fist, so I became relentless.
Casey yelled ‘Mom!’ and Pat struggled to get out of the car. I slid the ring off (Casey has tiny hands and wore the ring on her index finger). First Pat yelled at me. After I confronted her with the engraving on the band (my grandma’s maiden name), she argued it was loaned to her daughter by my kid.
Then she said she bought it. I paid no heed. I did warn them that I knew Casey had become an abusive friend to my daughter.
Pat called me to tell me off. She said she was trying to raise an assertive young woman and I had just messed that up by being ‘overbearing.’ She never apologized for her thief of a child.
Pat’s husband (Hank) is what can be described as a doormat. Pat wore him down to a knob. He had no choice but to ‘obey’ her to keep the peace. She was a bully who actively withdrew affection when he didn’t follow her wishes, even in public.
So she got kids #4 and #5 after a relentless campaign that included leaving him for two months. Her pregnancies were a nuisance because she expected to be treated like the only lady who has even been pregnant. She strolled around in a wheelchair almost immediately after getting pregnant and she would ‘get very sick’ on weekends, so her kids were often sent to friends and family so that she could ‘rest.’
Pat systematically bullied Hank. She would leave town and take the kids with her. Poor Hank would look distraught, drinking on his porch or just looking really lonely. This is how she got off the hook and was able to leave her job.
Hank had basically no voice, so he struggled to keep the marriage together. Everyone liked him but hated her equally. Hank loved to talk to other people but seemed concerned that Pat would be upset. Over time, according to my husband, Hank began to show signs of depression and mental distress.
Our friend, Lenah, runs the wedding/prom dress initiative. It’s not complicated. Dresses are sourced from donations, eBay, trunk shows, etc. Unusually beautiful dresses are retained so that more than one bride gets to wear them. In some cases, a bride will pay 50 bucks, but most of the time, the dresses are donated to the bride.
Pat was involved in this. Lenah kept her in because they never had any issues and her task was limited to just shipping the dresses out.
Pat decided to renew her vows and her bridezilla Karenzilla attitude became the icing on the cake.
For starters, she bullied another couple into giving up their wedding date at the farm because she ‘needed her renewal to match her exact wedding date.’ They were not impressed with her harassment, so they booked another venue. As a result, the farm owners were angry because Pat was already costing them after she had successfully negotiated a cut in their rate ‘because she couldn’t afford it but will repay by doing maintenance work around the venue’ (she never made good on her word).
Pat became attached to a particular dress that was already assigned to another bride. Lenah made it clear that she would need to pay for her own dress. So Pat played it cool and shipped the wrong gown instead. She was adamant that it was the right dress, despite all the notes on Lenah’s agenda.
The other bride was truly gracious about it. She was obviously disappointed but never made a scene.
What bothered me most is that I picked that dress and bought it for 40 bucks at a garage sale (not my money, Lenah’s money).
It was a vintage dress, ankle-length, white with lots of lace and a huge bargain. Again, when confronted, Pat ‘did a Casey’ and used the ‘this is mine’ strategy. We felt so bad for the other bride that we did our best to get her something nice to wear.
The other bride was a true fighter, she had pulled out of welfare, earned her high school diploma, and was working to get on her feet by trying to earn a certificate as an acrylic nail technician. So, her reward was to have some Karen steal her dress?
Pat never admitted to messing up, but just by the fact that she claimed it was her dress, we knew.
Lenah never allowed her in her warehouse again. Their last phone fight ended with Pat bringing up the other bride’s past (like it mattered) and ‘this conversation is over, it’s my dress and you are mistaken.’ That was weeks before the other bride’s wedding.
Pat went all out on her wedding decor. She spent way too much. She hired a caterer for some food (mainly mimosas and appetizers), but the wedding invitation included a request for specific dishes for her Sunday brunch wedding. Either she ran out of banquet funds or was on a complete moocher mode.
I picture the penguin walking upon practically asking everyone to supply her wedding reception grub and I cringe.
There is nothing wrong with potluck weddings. In fact, they can be a nice addition to a very cozy and family-oriented wedding reception.
But, don’t you need to at least be close to your guests in order to ask for such a thing? Even I got an invitation. I told everyone I wasn’t going because I was very uncomfortable being told what to bring and was probably expected to give them a gift on top of that.
Some of the older ladies in our group agreed. Some said they would not decline in advance because she is a bully and they didn’t want a confrontation.
Lenah called me the night before Pat’s re-wedding. Lenah was there to close the Saturday night bingo and Pat was awfully friendly, but that’s what she does whenever things are going her way.
Lenah peeked into the garment bag and saw the exact same dress while Pat was caught up supervising the wedding decoration.
The thing with Karens is that they expect everyone to suck it up, or make their dreams come true, or they simply underestimate everyone and think we are all fools.
Lenah is a very straightforward person with a ‘so sue me’ attitude. She told me she would just ruin the dress. After all, it was hers, so she could do whatever she wanted. If Pat wanted to take legal action, and should things get ugly, she needed to prove ownership.
However, the dress was the same, the marks inside the hem and the tags were the same. Even the tag numbers that were punched to identify each dress for logistics purposes matched.
Pat had the dress altered, with some extra beading and dyed to a deep cream color.
But it was obviously the same garment. Lenah and I snuck in before the venue was closed for the night. All brides are allowed to stay in a small bedroom for a small charge so that they don’t need to drive in on their wedding day.
Honestly, the makeshift chapel was gorgeous, I don’t know how she paid for it but it was full of flowers and presumptuous details. I naively brought in some ink to spill on the dress, but Lenah said she wanted ‘something more awful, like a nasty surprise.’ Ink would be too obvious and if she saw it ahead, she may be able to snag another gown from somewhere.
No, the ideal thing was to have her trust the dress was fine. So Lenah locked herself in a bathroom stall and completely cut out the back panel. She patiently put it back on its hanger and zipped the bag.
We left through the emergency door with the back of the dress stuffed inside Lenah’s purse. I completely hate people who target and steal from anyone they (Pat and her kid) calculate to be in a weaker position.
The wedding was scheduled for 9 AM.
Pat called me at 7 AM, but I ignored her calls. I picked up by 8 AM, both curious and wondering if she suspected anything. Pat was frantic. She was crying that her dress was ‘missing by half.’ I purposely made her explain, being annoyingly dense continually interrupting like she does, and stalling the conversation.
She asked me if I could lend her my wedding dress. I said no, sorry. She then asked me if I would help her get a dress. I was satisfied to remind her that the town’s bridal shops were closed on Sunday and the others that would open were almost an hour away.
The farm is already almost one hour away from our town.
If Pat could get a shop to rent a dress, she would need to try the dress on, and get it steamed. Even if the dress was ready to wear, it would easily take more than two hours (roundtrip).
She tried to ask me to go pick a dress (who would pay for this??). Even if a shop were open and brought her a dress, it would add to the cost. Also, these shops open at 10 or 9:30 at the earliest. By the time they got to her, it would be time to wrap up the wedding because she needed to clear the venue by 12:00 for the next event.
She broke down and mumbled some stupid stuff I didn’t understand. So Pat hung up on me and called Lenah instead.. She asked Lenah to bring her ‘anything she had available.’ Lenah and I ended up delivering the most outdated, moss-smelling, oversized dress.
Pat’s disappointment was a mix between anger and emotional. She also tried to wear her knee-length silk bridal slip as a wedding dress but it was too obvious and it really looked cheap. She tried to get her daughter to give her her own dress to wear with an open back zipper (due to fitting issues) but Casey refused, asking if she was supposed to attend the wedding without clothes on (she’s got a point, plus Casey is petite).
The dress needed a petticoat to plump up the skirt, which wasn’t available. So it dragged all over the floor and Pat had to keep pulling it up. Pat walked down the aisle with one hand on her bouquet and another one grabbing her dress.
The dress looked limp and weird with the arrangements of pins (they didn’t show) that caused the sleeves and neckline to pucker into messy rims. She spent the ceremony looking uncomfortable and out of place. Very few people attended but that was not part of any revenge, that was just how people reacted to her entitled attitude.
The dress looked awful. The reception portion of the wedding had all this princely decoration, a very nice cake, and a bridezilla with a dress from the underworld. I didn’t stay, but I was told, she was so disappointed she spent her wedding sulking.
There was no dance, no actual speech. She had to change into a shirt and leggings because the dress was too uncomfortable. Everyone talked about how Pat put on her flip-flops and walked around aimlessly until she ordered the ushers to start folding up the chairs within one hour of the reception.
So she practically kicked everyone out and the cake was never cut.
Pat wasn’t the same after this. She was not as loud and avoided everyone. I think she was disappointed that nobody ran to her rescue, not even her family who came from out of town.
Her husband finally cracked under all the pressure and sought some help. He was slaving away and coming home to clean the house while Pat used her kids as an excuse to spend like crazy. Hank also had to do the kids’ homework because Pat never had time or never had patience.
She also refused to get a part-time job so her kids could attend an afterschool and get help with their school stuff. Therapy seemed to help Hank because the last time Pat left with her kids, he didn’t seem distraught.
He would be riding his bicycle and could be seen more relaxed while mowing his lawn. When Pat returned, he maintained the routine but was interested in going out by himself and doing things for himself. We began to see Pat alone all the time.
Hank was seen less and less in the same car and eventually moved in with his parents. He filed for divorce on the grounds of emotional cruelty and I don’t think he won. Instead (I’m not sure of this because this is what I was told) there was some sort of a settlement or agreement that she would not get close or interact with him unless it has to do with the kids).
I also don’t know if Pat even actually suspected who/what happened to her dress. She slowly pulled away from the community center and became less active in social gatherings. Pat also removed me from her social media as well as most everyone else from school and the center.”
13. I Forced My Bully To Scrub Off My Mess
“Back when I was 6 years old, this little idiot of a kid was assigned to sit next to me in class. He wasn’t the brightest bulb in the shed. Got a pencil eraser stuck in his ear, somehow managed to dislocate his shoulder by sticking it in a spin-dryer, and more.
He was well known to cause trouble and be difficult, and I was meant to be a good influence on him.
Anyway, one day this kid was being a real jerk, and tried to steal a brand new pencil my grandad gave me (British Aerospace pencil), and I tried to take it back.
Little idiot refused to give it to me, so it ended in a pulling match… When he intentionally let go with a soul-eating grin on his face, the sharpened lead of the pencil jammed RIGHT next to my eye. To this day I have a little grey scar a cm from my tear duct.
The teacher didn’t see anything so she did nothing about it.
Well, my little vengeful 6-year-old butt vowed revenge.
It was around 2 weeks later when the class was congregating at the back of the classroom, don’t fully remember why, and I saw the box of shared crayons was on my and idiot’s desk.
A petty little plan formed in my head.
I scribbled and scribbled with every color in the box, across the entire table. Layer after layer after layer. Ending a muddy greenish-brown, I got the yellow crayon and signed my artwork with idiot’s name, and ran to tell the teacher.
Of course, our ex-nun teacher was furious and yelled at the idiot as he cried and denied it. He was forced to stay indoors during lunch breaks for a week, had to scrub the table clean for the rest of the day, and was moved to a table right in front of the teacher by himself for the rest of the year.
So I got to chill by myself at the back of the class and do my own thing for the remainder of the year without some little idiot stinkbug stealing my pencils.”
12. Screw Me Out Of My Vacation? I'll Rewrite My Contract
“I work in China as an English teacher. There are hundreds of great jobs out here, but at least an equal portion of people trying to screw you in every way possible.
Each company I’ve worked with has been an education in paperwork, contract negotiations, and leverage. 6 years in, I’d like to think I’m finally getting the hang of it. 6 years working here isn’t unheard of, but it’s rare, and my level of education/job experience (plus standard white face) sells for quite a premium here.
At this private school I’m one of 3 foreign teachers, a job that carries a lot of prestige locally, and brings in a lot of students (read $$$), as only certain schools are even permitted to hire foreigners and even less can afford/find them.
During recruitment periods, parents are paraded into my classroom, and I’m sometimes given bonuses because of how often I’m complimented on my energy, teaching style, even handsomeness (this matters in China… I’m NOT handsome, but white in rural China is auto-handsome).
The other foreign teachers here are African–and yes, there’s a substantial racial bias, and they get paid much less.
I’ve chosen this school because it’s got the lowest cost of living area with the highest offered salary—but most importantly the highest amount of free time.
I work about 20 hours per week, save 70% of my salary, and spend the rest traveling. I had negotiated a VERY competitive salary. I also signed a non-standard contract that I had personally edited. I was proud of myself… at least until….
I arrived at the school and the international staff liaison immediately asked me to sign their ‘standard contract’–the earlier one was a mistake, and couldn’t be submitted for my visa. I now knew this was one of ‘those schools’ I’d heard stories about… they would do anything to screw over the foreigner.
I pulled up my big-boy britches… I needed to be prepared… I wasn’t…
Initially, I didn’t even read the ‘standard contract,’ it offered me only 2/3’s of my agreed-upon salary, so I told them to update that.
They returned (days later) and I read it–a horrific document that would lose me: my Christmas holiday (a great luxury in China), my salaried status (a shift to per/class pay with no pay for canceled classes), and even allow them to charge me if I leave without finishing my contract.
More terrifying still? ‘Additional ‘activities’ or ‘events’ could be assigned without pay or notice’ apparently at any time. The contract would also require me to locate another foreign teacher ‘replacement’ before allowing me to sever employment, and prevented me from leaving this school for any competing school in China.
‘Everyone signs it!’ was chanted at me by four separate workers (all of the English speakers in the building), each appalled that I was arguing. I informed them ‘I’m not everyone. We’ll stick to my contract.’
(I found out later, everyone apparently does sign it. They just don’t bother following it. The other foreign teachers just run away on payday. The school has lost more than 10 teachers this way.)
Four individual attempts were made to rewrite the ‘standard’ contract to include what I had negotiated for.
Each new version left out new things… (I hate to ignore Hanlon’s Razor: ‘Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity’, but we were approaching the edge of Occam’s Razor here… ‘The simplest explanation is usually true.’) God, I prayed they were only stupid!
By the end, I simply wrote the contract using their format.
Except by then, we were 6 months into the school year. Operating that long without an official contract in China is dangerous, and can allow the government to seize my ‘illegal wages.’ But there were just 3 more months until summer vacation… except…
That’s when the school decided that they didn’t want to pay my summer salary. Now my paperwork clearly said that I was a salaried employee and that I was to be paid whether they had classes or not.
Summer had no classes, I pointed out, but I still get paid… I hadn’t anticipated them creating a summer school just to give me classes. But, the dates for the ‘summer holiday’ weren’t specified, so I lost three weeks of my vacation to their ‘summer classes.’ At the meeting where I debated the ambiguities in the contract, seeking some discussion, a meeting of the minds, the boss lady simply demanded, ‘Will you comply with the contract you signed or not?’ (This remains the most English and the only grammatical English she’s ever spoken within my hearing.)
Would I do what I signed up for? I would.
… but contract negotiations were already starting… for the school year (by now) beginning in only two months. I hadn’t been prepared before, but I was determined to get my 3 weeks back.
The initial plan was to set my demands so high that eventually insisting on getting 3 weeks vacation or 3 weeks extra pay would seem reasonable.
I rejected the three contracts they offered me (each one a version I had already seen and refused the year before), the foreign staff liaison (FL) suggested that I again write the contract myself, so I would be happy with it.
I sighed, and uttered, a reluctant ‘Fine.’ Don’t mind if I do!
I had three contract versions sent to them by the end of the day. (They were just modified versions of my last 3 employers)– but they were written in amateur and heavy English legalese.
Poor ESL (English Second Language) workers never had a chance. They balked.
Now, my email clearly explained that each contract offered different benefits, each a separate option I’d accept: One gave me fewer classes/week, one provided substantial penalty fees for each week my salary was delayed, one insisted that my ‘holiday’ salary for the year (3 months) be paid immediately.
Additional benefits tossed in at random: sick days, penalties for not giving notice of canceled classes/holidays, (as opposed to the less than 24 hours notice I’d heretofore received). I even added my water/electric bill, cafeteria meal card, and internet to the list.
Overwhelmed by the complexity of the documents… FL asked for the 3 to be combined into a single document.
I did, again reminding them that they contained several options and this time adding that it was really an initial negotiating position.
I’m quite certain that reminder was never read. Well, I combined the documents… every potentially reasonable request I had managed to concoct over 2 months were thrown together into the final draft.
I imagine FL having a quiet heart attack upon reading it.
That’s when they stopped paying me.
I had now agreed to work one summer month (okay, 3 weeks) ‘free’ (as it should have been a holiday), and now I had worked another month, but payday arrived without them paying my salary… my legal options were pretty unknown to me, it’s not my legal system, and I can barely parse a Chinese sentence, much less read legalese… I continued to work, and occasionally remind them about needing to be paid… as I neared two months behind in salary… we began ‘negotiations.’
These contract negotiations were more stressful than any breakup I’ve ever had: First, I would be called into the office, berated at for being ungrateful (usually) for hours, have it explained that I was being unreasonable, told precisely how much each of the workers in the office made (fractions of my salary), and then asked to make some concessions… I told them they’d receive concessions only if they made some proportionate concessions on their end.
(This is China. None of the people I was talking to were authorized to make any concessions, they were just aware the boss lady/owner (HRH– Her Royal Highness) was NOT HAPPY with my requests (or perhaps would be not happy?–I still don’t know if/when she read the contract.) But there was nothing they could do… I started playing games on my laptop while waiting for them to run out of stamina.
I wracked up 120+ hours on the game.
Wake up. Go to class. Go to meetings. Get yelled at. Lunch break, go home, nap, return in the afternoon for a repeat performance. Had this for an entire two weeks with little variation… well sometimes the meetings were before class, sometimes the meetings were after.
Variety is the spice of life!
I began to look forward to classes, as they were a reason to escape ‘meetings.’
Finally, someone must have decided I wasn’t going to budge, and the contract was sent to the boss for approval. My demands had been shuffled, reworded, and buried in paragraphs–but the content was largely unchanged.
HRH immediately made a (6+ hour) trip to the school from Beijing for our meeting. Upon her arrival HRH stood for a photo session with me, I was given chocolates, wine, the (ceremonial) position of vice-principal, and the promise of a raise.
(I hadn’t even considered a raise! I made way too much for the region as it was! But it’d been promised, so I added it into my next draft.) The meetings lasted 3 days on and off. (Although my time with her was less than 3 hours total because we were constantly interrupted by investors, new students, parents, etc.)
On the third day, I left the meeting (for lunch) with the regretful promise that I would begin looking for work elsewhere. I already had four interviews scheduled for the afternoon.
No sorry, I couldn’t possibly return to the meetings, I’ve already scheduled interviews until 4.
Yes, I know, it’s important, but I’ve already scheduled the meeting… Okay… okay… No. I have a meeting… Yes. I understand… No, I still have a meeting… I’ll come over immediately after… Oh, HRH wants to talk?… Sorry, still have an interview… No, I won’t cancel… Yes, HRH is very very busy… well, it’s very kind of you to (finally) give me that promised raise, but I have promised to have these meetings, and I keep my promises.
Buh-bye.
(Between interviews) I’m sorry. I have an interview now, and can’t answer your direct messages, but yes, some sick days is reasonable… I’ve g2g… That’d be nice… The WeChat (Chinese skype/social media) call is starting.
Buh-bye.
I arrived at a very different meeting. My boss was sitting in a room of 6 police officers with a pile of funds on the table bigger than a large suitcase. I was certain she was paying them to arrest me.
‘Oh god,’ I thought. ‘HRH is real hardcore. What was I doing?’
I was told that I wasn’t allowed to leave the school, that my contract only allowed me to work for her. I agreed that might be the case, (suddenly, I was in a very agreeable mood) and asked if I could read that part in the contract I’d signed. She picked up the contract and began scanning.
The contract said no such thing, but her face never changed as she scanned the substantially altered ‘standard’ contract. Everyone in the room pretended we weren’t paying attention to her.
She finished scanning. There was a glance at the FL.
‘Yes, you will only work for me.’ She asked me what the other schools were offering, salary-wise. I told her. She rounded up the number and tossed two wads of cash to me, and turned to continue her conversation with the police.
‘Bring his contract. We’re signing it now.’ A worker snatched the cash from my hands and counted out my (very late) salary.
The poor staff. They were still unprepared. (They brought the combined version of the contract that I’d emailed… my first ‘final draft’.) HRH didn’t even glance at it before signing.
I got everything I could have thought to ask for. I celebrated for two weeks–in Thailand.
FL has an easier job (same pay) in a different school now. We’re still not friends, but she told me she’s grateful to not work here anymore.
She won’t say it’s my fault, (that’s not Chinese culture), but I’m 99.99% sure it is. I’ve bought her gifts, (2) until she stopped accepting them.
This year I promised no new demands in my contract… I just wanted my salary… but there were still some changes…
First, since I’ve accumulated an additional 80% of my yearly salary in fines, (they failed to pay my three months holiday salary upfront). I’ve had my contract reviewed by a Chinese lawyer. It may be not eloquent, (online translated) Chinese, but it would hold up in court.
To be honest, though, I still feel bad about them signing that insane contract, so I’m holding to the stated intention in the penalties…
This year, as an addendum I added: ‘As the penalty is meant to be corrective, rather than punitive, so long as my wages, and the wages of my fellow employees, are paid on time, the missing fines from last year will not be assessed. All fines will become due, including all subsequent late fees, if any teacher can demonstrate that they have not been paid by the 15th.’ I calculate that weekly fines will have pushed my punitive figures to 200%+ of my yearly salary by that time.
They asked for one change– I was the only staff member with Christmas off, and it was breeding resentment. Instead of Christmas and Christmas Eve, could I accept instead holiday days in lieu? I wrote the addendum myself. I wrote, ‘Upon request of Party A, instead of the Christmas holiday, Party B will receive an additional 12 paid holiday days.’ 12.
The addendum was returned signed. I can only assume HRH is still not reading my contracts before signing.
I’m now up to 4 months of paid holidays, and yesterday I sent the excel spreadsheet with the complete calculations of all fines from last year.
There was panic until I restated the reminder that the fines will not be assessed so long as I can’t validate any complaints about myself or my friends/co-workers not being paid on time. I was assured (again) it wouldn’t ever happen.”
11. Mess With My Horse? I'll Make Your Family Hate You
“I have been riding for close to 20 years and love every moment of it. I was taught by a close friend, T, and still ride with her to this day.
I was over at T’s place and tacked up two of her horses. One was named Tiger and the other D. I was on Tiger at first but she was misbehaving so T switched with me and I hopped onto D.
We were going through the back hills and came across jerks 1-3. That’s where things begin.
T and I came up over a hill and we could see a small group of guys that were shooting at targets. We stopped and waited for them to motion us to pass, which is polite with horses, and they didn’t stop.
Tiger is really laid back while D is a good girl she’s just young so she gets nervous but she’s a sweet little thing. She’s a pony technically but still a good girl. T whistled to them and they looked over and we motioned that we wanted to go by.
They flipped us off and ignored us after that. Now T has gotten feistier with age so she looked at me and I’m visibly boiling so we decided to wait and show them that we weren’t backing down.
I was in the left of T and after a few minutes, we were considering walking behind them since we have permission to walk through the land owner’s property, now called LO.
We were about to move when I looked up and one of the guys had shifted his stance and shot off a couple of rounds.
I heard one ricocheted off the metal around the targets and we heard it and then saw it hit the ground a couple of feet away. I stared for a second and was wheeling D around as the men laughed and T let loose with a few choice words and we took off.
Little pony can run when needed. Tiger was fat at the time but she was up D’s tail as we fled.
We stopped halfway up the next hill and I could tell T was livid. I was trying to calm D as Tiger panted and I was raging once we all calmed. T was on her phone and jumped off.
She gave me Tiger’s reins while she walked the half/quarter mile back to take photos of jerks 1-3. She stomped back and we went a different direction to go around them and finish our ride.
We got back to her house and she asked if I was okay with tacking out Tiger while she made a few calls.
I told her I’m fine and she walked off. I could hear shouting from her house all the way to the barn but I didn’t say anything since it was better that I didn’t call about it.
She came out after a half-hour or so. She called LO and he was furious. His nephew was watching the property and he asked if he could go shooting on his little DIY shooting range. LO told him to always yield to the horse riders in the area since he didn’t want us hurt.
T went to talk to him to show him the photos of jerks 1-3 and he confirmed jerk 1 was the one with the rifle. LO had cut his vacation short to come back and get it sorted out. I didn’t see what happened but according to T, the nephew got his butt kicked by LO and his family shunned him for about 6 months due to the danger he put us and our horses in.
If one of the horses had been hit we would have ended up on the ground at the least.
He was banned from LO’s property for the rest of his life. Jerk’s family brought us apology gifts of wine and a few gift cards to the local tack shop.
I went to get a new halter for my horse since he broke it, again. And the gift card had 200$ on it.”
10. Be A Jerk Customer? Here's Your Change
“I used to work in a bar, in the VIP area. We’d get our fair share of big-headed types.
The ones that wouldn’t even glance in your direction, lots of money, etc. I usually serve in a clockwise manner, swerving from left to right and returning to the left to go around again, not just picking and choosing those who flashed cash (which is also an incredibly annoying thing for someone to do).
I was walking along the bar and your typical valley-girl type actually reached over the bar and touched me, shouting her order. I said I’ll serve her when it was her turn and continued getting drinks for the other customer.
One of the barmen told me she gave me the finger behind my back, so I told her out straight I wouldn’t serve her.
I served another girl and told her it would be €12. She pointed towards the girl who gave me the finger and she had the biggest smug smile on her face and the money in her hand.
So I say ‘alright’. Take the money, that’s fine. She gave me €20. I don’t know if she realized something was up because I took so long to get her change but I gave it back to her, €8 in 5 cent coins.
Just dumped it in her hand and said ‘there ya go’, and she just had a look of pure disbelief, shock, and anger.”
9. Unfaithful Ex Gets Karma In Her New Relationship
“So I am in the Army and I was married. I was approaching my first deployment to Iraq.
It was very stressful and it had my wife wanting me to find a way to stay and not deploy. Obvious things any wife would try to talk about. Anyways so we have no kids but both want them. So we talk about getting out of debt while I’m gone.
She talks to her best friend back home in another state where we are both from. Her friend agrees to let her move in and charge a modest 300 in rent so that we can get out of debt and start a family when I come back.
A plan I was actually very pleased with.
I deploy, she is there crying her eyes out saying she will miss me and loves me and we will start a family when we get back.
Fast forward 2 months. She starts acting distant.
Not wanting to talk much on our scheduled calls or texts back one or two-word answers. We’ve been together 6 years she is never at a loss for words.
Anyway one day she says she needs some space… she asked someone who is 10,000 miles away for space.
I say why, she says she just needs space. She wants to ‘find herself.’ So I remember back when we lived at home she had a guy who was always being borderline inappropriate. I’m not a very jealous person and I trust her.
So I start seeing said guy in basically all her pictures she posts with a group. Every time he is in the picture. Everyone else changes but never him.
So for the first time, I’m very jealous and uneasy about everything.
So I clone her phone so I receive every text she receives as well as every text she sends. I’ll never forget the first text I saw after cloning her phone.
‘Hey babe, I’ll see you after work want me to save you any of my leftovers?’
From her to him. It destroyed me. I lost 35 pounds in a week. I didn’t eat or sleep. I stared at the phone watching every conversation. Watching them talk about trying to have a baby. It was literally everything a married person fears.
I ask her if she is seeing someone and she says no she isn’t. She is taking care of herself and she loves me blah blah. I don’t say anything about receiving her texts for 2 months. Over this time she finally admits to having an affair and that he is so much better than me in bed, treating her right, and he does what she wants.
During this time she pays our debt off, gets tattoos with him (matching I love you tattoos), goes to shows with him, buys clothes, etc. with the money I’m making. So this is where revenge starts.
I put a freeze on the account for a month.
In that time I change every password to every account to things she won’t guess (Army jargon slang terms). I block her on social media and my phone so she has no way to contact me. She lost her car to repo a few months later, got kicked out of her place, had to sell her prized shoes and purses just to stay alive.
I then find out she got a job at her old restaurant. So I post all the text conversations I have with her and the guy talking about having babies that have time stamps on them as well as post conversations we had with the matching timestamps showing all of our friends what she has done.
I then have friends call and complain at her job constantly on both him and her. They work at a restaurant so I also have friends dine and dash. They both get fired.
So she tries to call my command and tell them that I am abandoning her and she can’t provide for herself.
My commander knows what is going on. He does nothing because he had something similar happen. Then about a month before I come back she calls me from another number to tell me she is pregnant with his kid. Mind you I’m still gone so we cannot get divorced yet.
She moved away with him. 10 hours from me.
April 24, 2018. She calls me 5 months pregnant crying uncontrollably asking me where she should go. Apparently, they had a giant blow-up fight and she told him she is leaving. She says she doesn’t know where to go and I simply say ‘Sorry not my problem anymore.’
Fast forward to January of this year. She calls me from a mutual friend’s phone.
Her: ‘He hit me. Idk what to do.’
Me: ‘Maybe, don’t lie to your husband when he is deployed for some guy who talks a big game.’
Her: ‘Well I guess you are happy about this?’
Me: ‘No but I’m glad I know I’m not the bad guy in this story.’
AND THEN THE NEXT MONTH
Her: ‘He is having an affair with 2 girls.
I’m sorry. I regret everything I did. I messed it all up.’
Me: ‘Yea you did.’
All in all this woman destroyed my life. Put me into a deep depression I’m still dealing with. But I do feel a little better having proof that I wasn’t the problem.
To think if this happened even 10 or 5 years ago I would have come back to an empty bank account, an empty house, as well as seeing my then-wife pregnant with another man’s baby. She actually hit me up yesterday to ask for some funds to help cover rent…”
8. I Didn't Know How Influential My Dad Was
“My parents live with my brother in an apartment that is only rented to people working for the city in the sewage plant next door.
The only other apartment is rented to his boss (Further referred to as N – for Neighbor). For the next couple of 100m, there is nothing but forest and rails.
My parents were on holiday in Egypt. When they came back my brother (22) told them he was sleeping with his girl in the living room when in the middle of the night he woke up to her screaming.
N had broken into the apartment and touched her hip. (She was certain since he was more than 2m in height and has a very peculiar stench to him.) The following days he tried to get in contact with my parents and asked them not to tell anyone.
Needless to say, they did. Since this wasn’t the first time N was a terrible Neighbor they decided to act while they could. In the past, he had broken into the apartment with a stolen spare key, told his guests to park in front of my parents’ garage, and other things.
They offered N to report himself to the police before they did. To make sure he did, my Dad went to the local police and asked if he did. Surprisingly enough he did, even if he downplayed what had happened.
My Dad made sure to tell this story to whomever it concerned. First of all, he pushed for the City Council (he is part of the Council) to fire him immediately which at first they didn’t want to. After the whole story became known, they changed their minds very fast. My brother’s SO was a trainee in a facility owned by the city.
That made N her boss as well. Since he had violated his protection duty, they decided to fire him immediately with no vote against it. Would have been a pity if that was everything.
My dad talked about the story to the head of all sewage plants of our state and made sure he would not get a government job anywhere near, no matter how the police investigation turned out.
He also happened to run into a few old friends of his that work(ed) in high positions throughout Police, Firefighters, red cross, and his colleagues at the school he teaches at from time to time. At this time N was already screwed since he couldn’t get a job or a new apartment in a 100km radius for sure.
Here is where I come into play. N learned to be a Chemist. Since I myself work in a big company that is in the chemical industry, I dropped some not-so-subtle hints to someone searching for a job in that field with his description and what happened. Needless to say, it spread out through other companies in the region as well through some friends of mine.
So no job for N here as well. I’m pretty sure N has to start somewhere else from 0.”
7. Bully Learns The Hard Way Never To Mess With A Mailbox
“When I was a kid my dad was in the service, U.S. Navy, and so we moved around a lot. Because of this, I was always the new kid over and over again, meaning I was constantly the target of would-be bullies and this made me fairly introverted and distrusting of other people by nature.
In the waning years of my father’s military career, he decided he would take his family back to his hometown and do some recruiting until he retired. So away we went to the family farm built by my great grandfather.
If anyone has ever found themselves moving to a small town suddenly then you are well aware of what I mean when I say that the locals were very small-town-minded. For those of you who don’t know, the small town mentality is basically thus, ‘if you’re not from there, born and raised, then you don’t belong there.’ A lot of small-town citizens are closed off and want nothing to do with outsiders.
So there I was, not only the new kid but introverted and an outsider… bully magnet. For the most part, I tried not to let it get to me but I did have some bad days and got into a few fights, always in self-defense though.
And eventually, as people grew up most of the other kids matured out of trying to be a bully and began to just leave me alone. Especially once they found out who my great grandfather was… something about one of the four founding families… I don’t know… I never really cared that much and besides those people had shown their true colors by treating me like crap for years by that point… but that’s a different story.
This story is about a kid we’ll call Mike.
You see Mike was the only one who never seemed to grow out of trying to be a bully. He would daily track me down and tell me how worthless I was.
That I was just some dumb farm boy who would never amount to anything and would always be a loser. He had some issues. At one point I arrived at school to find he had painted the combination on my locker with toothpaste.
A lot of weird stuff like that.
Anyways we get into our senior year of high school and I’ve long since been doing my best to ignore him. His not being able to get a reaction out of me seemed to really upset him and even his friends started saying his seeming need to find me every day to simply be a jerk was bordering on the creepy and obsessive.
And then all of a sudden the verbal abuse stopped one day a couple of months from graduation. I assumed he had finally just given up but that wasn’t the case.
A couple of weeks later I walked to the end of our LONG driveway to catch the bus and found that our mailbox had been run over.
I didn’t think anything of it at the time other than that it must have been some idiot. I get home later that afternoon, take some photos of the damage just in case, and then fix the mailbox, new wooden post buried into the ground.
I finish my other chores and homework and relax the rest of the evening. The next morning I go to catch the school bus and the mailbox has again been run over. I get home, photos, repair it, do chores, do homework, relax.
It happened again the next day and again the day after that… this went on for two weeks only stopping on the weekend. My parents had reported the smashing of the mailbox but there was no evidence as to who the culprit even was so nothing was done about it.
I finally have enough of digging out the broken post and replacing them and so…The Revenge
I get up early on a Saturday and head to the end of the driveway. I dig a 2 feet by two feet wide hole 6 feet straight down and filled the hole with fresh cement and in the center placed a ten-foot section of the old farm house’s original cast iron water pipes, sunk 6 feet into the concrete.
I filled the rest of the 10ft cast iron pipe with concrete as well and mounted the mailbox on the top. Mind you I looked into how far from the road the mailbox needed to be for safety reasons and attached ample amounts of reflectors.
Monday morning comes and I notice the mailbox post has all sorts of scratches on it but otherwise it’s fine. I get to my final class of the day, creative writing, and am in the middle of a story outline for that week’s project when a friend of Mike’s comes in, we’ll call him Steve.
Steve sees me and freaks out.
Steve: Do you have any idea what you did to Mike’s car?!
OP: I didn’t do anything to Mike’s car?? I don’t even know what it looks like.
Steve: Your little stunt with the mailbox totaled it!
He had to get it towed into town at 5 this morning! (small town. The auto garage is DEFINITELY closed at 5 AM)
Steve: He’s gonna sue the life out of you!
OP: OK but you are aware that deliberately hitting and/or damaging a mailbox is a federal offense right?
Steve: What are you talking about?
OP: You don’t actually own your mailbox. Legally it belongs to the Post Office so destroying a mailbox is destroying government property making it a federal offense.
Steve: So what? He’ll get a little fine, but you’re gonna pay!
OP: Oh No… hahaha. It’s actually a $250,000.00 fine or up to 3 years in prison per offense for vandalizing a mailbox, and since it’s happened 10 times in the last two weeks that translates to either a 2.5 million dollar fine or up to 30 years in prison.
Steve just stares at me for a moment and storms out. At that point I pull up the federal statute on the computer I was working on and Mike comes in insisting that I’m making the whole thing up.
So I show him the law and he freezes.
OP: You can take me to court and I might have to pay a small fine and maybe even tear down the mailbox… but your life would be over.
Mike: Maybe but you can’t prove I did it ten times!
OP: Actually I took photos of the damages so I can prove it was at least ten times… But even if I couldn’t $250,000.00 is still A LOT… much more than your car is worth I’m sure. Would you really bankrupt yourself or even get yourself sent to prison to force me to pay you a grand or two for the car?
Mike stormed out of the classroom and never bothered me again.
The best part was actually the domino effect this created. You see Mike didn’t have enough credits to graduate on time. Wasted too much time trying to be a Dr. Phil case I guess.
I heard through that small town grapevine that he was eventually shunted over to adult programs by the school. Without his car, which was totaled, and unable to afford another (his mother bought the 1st one and refused to buy a second when she found out how he totaled it) he couldn’t get to his classes and was eventually tossed out of school due to attendance problems. Without a diploma or GED, he couldn’t get into even a community college nor find proper work.
Not having access to gainful employment left him living with his mother in a trailer, living off her and the occasional odd job he gets.
Meanwhile, I’m now married with a child and living in a beautiful subtropical Algarve in the south of Portugal in Europe.”
6. Betray Me? Good Luck Getting To Work
“Ex sneaked behind my back, so I blocked the gas card I was fronting for her (since she had credit issues) and waited. She calls me, frantic, wanting to know why she can’t gas up her car. I tell her I’ll call the gas company and find out.
I wait ten minutes, satanically giggling to myself, and then call her again.
I lie to her and say the gas company wants her to pay up her bills since they’ve been on the card for a long time. But, after those are paid, they’ll enable the card again.
So, she calls her ‘just a friend’ and has him give her a ride home. Then she pays the outstanding fees on the card. And this is important to her because, without her car, she can’t get to work. And she has nothing because she’s a stupid witch.
So, a few days later and she’s panicking seriously hard because her employer started giving her fewer hours because she’s been late more than once. I call the gas company and get confirmation that they’ve received the payment, then I tell them to cancel the card.
I then go over to her the same evening and tell her that she’s a dumb witch for lying and I thank her for paying her bills. She incredulously asks me ‘WAIT! Does that mean the gas card thing was a lie?’
I just laugh sinisterly and walk out of her apartment.
So, the aftermath was that she became seriously unpopular with her employer, she was transferred to another location where she now has to work in an awful place. She commutes every single day for three hours or so.
She’s depressed and her economy is even worse than before since she isn’t getting enough hours anymore.
Somewhere down that line, I thought to myself ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have done that…’ Then I remembered she lied to my face and slept with several guys behind my back.
Nope, she deserved it.”
5. I Just Want To Play On The Monkey Bars
“When I was in elementary school our playground had an old set of monkey bars that were away from the newer jungle gyms. Not many people cared for it because it was just four log posts with metal rods.
I loved it though and spent many recesses before sitting on top of it with my best friend.
One day I was at the monkey bars as usual. A few other kids were there as well, one of them was a girl I considered my friend.
She was with another boy who decided it would be funny to push people. People asked them to stop and they would just laugh and do it again. I was mad that my friend was pushing me even when I asked her to stop.
I wasn’t physically hurt, but my feelings were.
Growing up I wasn’t usually confrontational with others. Half of me was upset, but the other half just wanted to fit in and thought if that’s how they want to play, then I’ll do it too.
I went up behind the boy and pushed him. He fell but was okay. Instead of laughing, he was angry at me. That’s when it changed from trying to fit in, to getting my ‘revenge’. It wasn’t fair that they could push others but didn’t like to be pushed themselves.
I was going to stick up for myself and show them both what it felt like.
Next was the girl. That’s where things went horribly wrong. I pushed her just like I did the boy. She fell a lot harder than I thought she would, but unlike the boy, she didn’t get up.
She cried and cried but wouldn’t get up. What happened next is a blur. Teachers ran over and surrounded her. We were told to stay back.
Another teacher took my class to her room. She tried to distract us by reading a story but that didn’t cover up the sounds of the ambulance.
I could hear the kids whispering, trying to find out what happened. I felt like everybody was talking about me. I wanted to tell them it was an accident. I didn’t mean for things to happen this way. Instead, I just sat there quietly, full of guilt, wondering what was going to happen next.
When I went home that day my mother asked me how school was. That’s the first time I ever lied to her. To this day I don’t know if the school ever called her to let her know what happened.
Later that week we made ‘get well soon’ cards. It was February and I had special heart-shaped confetti that I glued onto mine. When someone asked if they could use them too I told them no. Mine had to be extra special. She has to know that I’m sorry and didn’t mean it.
What felt like an eternity later, she finally returned to school. Everybody wanted to talk to her to find out what happened. She told them how she hurt her neck and spent time in the hospital. When I couldn’t avoid her anymore she told me that I was going to pay for what happened and her parents were going to sue me.
So screw that. Nobody else was even intervening when she was pushing other kids. Screw sitting in a room wondering if she was going to be okay. Screw me for feeling like I had to lie to my mother about school that day.
Screw using my favorite heart confetti for her get-well card. Kids can be mean and accidents happen.
The monkey bars are now long gone and now that girl and I talk about which kind of apple juice we give our own kids.
The incident hasn’t been brought up since elementary school and we have grown up and moved on. She didn’t deserve to get hurt and I didn’t deserve live in guilt over an accident.”
4. Be Unfaithful? Say Goodbye To Your Other Woman And Your Social Life
“This took place when I was 15-16 years old.
I had met this guy at a Christian youth gathering thing in the summer, where we were both serving as worship leaders in the band. We’ll call him Z.
It really was love at first sight for Z and me, and we were constantly together.
We rehearsed the music together, we performed together, and just spent all of our free time together. You get the picture.
The gathering ends, and Z and I start going out towards the end of July. And everything was peachy-keen, up until the next February, when I noticed that things were, well, different.
So being that we were both teens, we were both in high school. But we did not go to the same high school, and our circle was mostly contained within the church. This is important later.
So, February was when it starts getting chaotic.
Z was canceling plans on me more often, making more excuses, not posting anything about me on social media anymore, and just acting… different. He was also super secretive about his school life, and he had never introduced me to any of his friends at school.
And this was because, in February, Z started going out with this other girl who went to his school! And because he kept so much of his school life to himself, I didn’t find out about this until MUCH later.
So now it’s June, and I’m really sad at this point. Z didn’t include me in his birthday plans, he almost never talked to me unless I initiated it first, and I was super fed up. So, I decided to do some investigating.
I started by going through his social media and checking his followers. I was just scrolling and scrolling, and scrolling, until I saw a familiar face, with an unfamiliar face as the profile picture. The profile pic was of a girl, we’ll call P, and Z, kissing.
My. Heart. Started. Pounding.
I tap on her profile, and I was absolutely mortified. There were dozens of pictures on P’s profile of her and Z, doing all sorts of coupley-things, kissing, going out, etc. I checked some of the posts, the captions were stuff about how much she loved him, he would comment something just as sappy back, and HE.
WAS. A. TWO-TIMER.
Heartbroken and fed up, I just simply screenshot a couple of the posts, send them to him, and block him on everything. I spent the next week or so crying, removing everything that reminded me of him from my life, and planning.
And oh, did I plan.
Now, I’m NOT a person who normally starts drama, but two-time me after we were together for 11 months? You deserve the drama.
I started by gathering up evidence of Z and I’s relationship, screenshots of texts, pictures, and videos of us together.
Because after all, he didn’t just lie to me, he was lying to her as well by continuing to stay with me. So I gather my arsenal, find P’s account, and send alllllll of the evidence to her, along with a text that was apologizing for the news.
And it. Was. Glorious.
Now of course I felt extremely sorry for the girl, as she was kinda in the same situation that I was in, and she had no idea that I existed, or that this was going on.
I just kept comforting her and saying that it was gonna be okay. P then asks for my number which I give her, and we end up talking on the phone for 2 hours, crying together as she breaks up with him over text.
She was sending me a live-screenshot feed of what he was responding to, and he was basically begging for her to stay as she told him to go screw himself. I wish that I could’ve seen it unfold in person.
We talked for a while, both super annoyed, and discovered how Z would use a lot of the same things on P and me. Like calling us the same pet names, using certain romantic gestures, and having the same songs and/or movies that reminded him of us.
It felt super awful to discover that. But, this just added fuel to the revenge to come.
So because of this situation, I planned to make P my new best friend. And best friends, we were. We started hanging out all the time, posting pictures of us together constantly, really making sure to rub it in Z’s face.
And lucky for me, P and Z happened to be in the same friend group before and during the time they were going out.
So through P, I got to know allllll of Z’s friends and casually told every single one of them about what he did to me.
I didn’t make up anything preposterous, I just told the story of how Z lied, as is. Also, P happened to be a pretty popular girl at their school, so my story didn’t just reach Z’s friends, but their.
Entire. School. And the results were amazing.
I managed to turn every single one of Z’s friends against him, and I didn’t just inform them on how much of a piece of trash Z was, I actually befriended them all myself, me taking Z’s place in the friend group.
All of us became best friends, leaving Z to be exiled all alone for the rest of his high school career.
During that following school year, all of us would go to all sorts of their school’s events, have a blast, and by the lucky chance we saw Z show up, watch the shameful and sad look on his face as I partied with all of his old friends.
All of us are still close to this day.”
3. Don't Pay Me? I'll Mess Up Your Essay
“There was a guy in hs who sucked at English (I was living in Denmark at the time) and since I was American, he’d ask for help on his essays, mostly correcting mistakes.
Once he asked to help write one out, to help him learn more. We did it once and sat next to each other in front of the computer to type it out together. Then he asked a second time, and 20 min in he suddenly remembered he had to be somewhere and offered me some funds to finish it for him (after I said no to do it pro bono).
We had already written the outline and I wanted the extra funds, so I did it and he got his highest grade yet. Then he was flakey about the payment and always had an excuse for why he didn’t have it.
He then asked me to write an English essay again and offered twice the amount from last time + what he owed me, promising he’d pay up this time. I warned him not to mess around with me this time, he promised he wouldn’t.
The same thing happened ofc, promising to get me the payment tomorrow. When he asked me to write one a third time, I still hadn’t received any payment. But I said yes anyway. I had noticed he hadn’t been reading them through and saw my chance for payback.
I wrote it, but in the middle, I wrote a bunch of nonsense including a sentence where I called his teacher a witch for making him write the essay. Sure enough, the idiot just turned it in without reading it first. He got into a lot of trouble, and couldn’t blame it on me or he’d get in even bigger trouble for having me write his essays.
He was mad at me and never asked me to write his essays again. I explained why I did it, and he admitted that he deserved it. He even paid me for the first essay I did (not the rest though, the cheapskate).”
2. Irritating Classmate Fails Her Class
“When I was in college a girl I knew was just a horrible person all around. She constantly played the victim in every aspect of life. She was trying to switch into my major because she was convinced that psychology was an easy major.
News flash no major is easy if you don’t put in the work and Psychology isn’t an inherently easy major anyway. It’s not premed but it’s not basket weaving. We were in the same 200 level psychology course and she needed to pass the class in order to get into the major.
All semester she wouldn’t take notes or study and then copy my notes and I was sick of it. Especially since she was rude and meanwhile I was carrying her grade. For our midterm exam, she asked to borrow my notes and I told her no. She went to all of our friends and spun a sob story about how she was ‘lightly’ struggling and I refused to help her even a little.
I got ostracized over this because she painted me as a heartless witch who just flat-out refused to help her.
We had to work together on a final research paper worth half our grade and she decided to do none of it.
So I left her name off the paper. We were encouraged to do this in this class if we could prove to the professor ahead of time that our partners were not contributing. She failed the class and subsequently got kicked out of school.
I thought she needed to pass the class just to get into the major turns out she was on academic probation and needed to pass in order to stay in school. I don’t really feel bad because there’s no way she could have hacked it in the higher courses but I don’t know if I should have been the one to cause her to get kicked out.
My professor said it was technically his fault since it was his policy and he doesn’t feel bad in the slightest.”
1. Yell At Me For Skating? I'll Show Your Video To The Cops
“Yesterday, June 21st, was national go skate day. As such a lot of skateparks around the states were hosting competitions for various reasons. Parks were overcrowded, people who don’t normally skate were getting out. Typical holiday stuff.
This shop I’ve been trying to get to carry my skateboards happened to be hosting one such contest, at one such skate park. I was going to tell you guys which but then I thought someone might go to the park and look for the kid I’m writing about.
Anyways this park has some of the notoriously worst skaters. Absolute jerks. They cut each other off, yell at each other, fight, and if the shop I wanted to see was not there I would never skate this park.
So being me, I decided to arrive early, maybe it wouldn’t be too busy and I could skate around for a bit without any trouble?
I was so terribly wrong. I had collisions with four different skaters. Maybe those were my fault, maybe I wasn’t paying attention very well. Maybe it was their fault? I’m ready to let it go, but I’m on edge.
I decide to drop into the pool because it is one of very few spots at a skatepark you go one at a time. So I get in there, I started skating in circles just trying to get the feel for this pool.
Warming up too. Then this kid, who we’ll call Kyle starts yelling at me from the top of the pool. Whatever I’ve only been in the pool for a moment I know it’s still my turn.
Still though, this kid I can clearly make out every word he’s yelling.
Kyle: ‘Get out of the pool you idiot! This park is for good skaters! I need to warm up so I can win the contest that Local Board Shop is hosting! You suck! You clearly can’t do any tricks!
You have no shot at winning!’
Whatever I think. I hate it here. Time to stop skating and just socialize. I pop out of the bowl by Kyle and he pushes me.
Kyle: ‘Locals only, stupid. Don’t let me see you step on that board again in my park.’
Me: ‘Whatever kid I’ll leave you to it.’
I go to put my board away when my revenge plan kicks into gear. I own a skate company, and everyone seems to think skate companies sponsor anyone who can kickflip.
So I figure, I’m going to let it leak around the park that I’m here scouting talent to recruit to my team.
I go and cheer a few kids as they do their super basic tricks. Call them over one at a time to tell them I’m here scouting talent.
Sure enough, within half an hour kids all over the park are coming to me to introduce themselves. Asking me to pay special attention, what company I represent, what sponsorship requirements are, that kind of stuff. At this point even if my plan fails I’ve just created a ton of buzz at this contest and everyone is talking about me and my company.
Somewhere in the mix though, Kyle comes to talk to me.
Kyle: ‘Hey look, man, I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to yell at you. I was excited that’s all.’
Me: ‘Look I get it, so I’m going to give you another chance.
You said you’re competing right?’
Kyle: ‘Yeah I’m here to destroy these losers.’
Me: ‘Alright listen, I saw you skating around a bit while I was talking to people. You’re really good, exactly the level of skating we need for someone on our team.
I plan on keeping an eye on you, don’t disappoint me. What’s your name by the way?’
Kyle: ‘My name is Kyle, and heck yeah bro. You know I got this on lock!’
Kyle actually was a very talented skater in case you’re wondering.
I had no plans of actually recruiting him or anybody, but he was good.
A little time goes by and the contest starts. We start by doing ‘Best Trick’ on the A-Frame.
There is absolutely no coordination on who goes when, the guys from the shop just tell them to go and start calling out tricks they see on their megaphone.
I start closely filming Kyle. Sure enough, he’s skating the contest like the jerk he was being earlier. Yelling at people, pushing people out of the way, and he even hit a guy with his board. I get every single confrontation on video.
I thought about sharing the video, but again we don’t need a witch hunt.
Kyle ends up doing pretty well, landing 3rd place with a big flip over the A-frame. A big flip is a kickflip with a 360-degree board rotation and a 180-degree body rotation.
It’s an impressive trick. Somehow he got beat by a kid that did a tailslide, and someone who did a kickflip into a boardslide with a shuv out.
Me: ‘Hey Kyle, I saw your big flip over the A-Frame.
That’s a hard trick and I’m impressed. You got anything special planned for the next contest?’
Kyle: ‘LOL, it’s called S.K.A.T.E. you idiot. It’s like H.O.R.S.E. but for skateboarding.
Yeah, I got something.’
Me (Annoyed because I know exactly what a game of S.K.A.T.E. is) ‘Yeah… Anyways I’m excited to see what you can do.’
The rounds of S.K.A.T.E.
start and we do a single-elimination bracket. I’m still aggressively watching and filming everything Kyle does. Every time his competitor misses a trick he makes fun of them, every time they go to throw a trick he yells something totally obscene to throw off their concentration.
Every time he makes a trick he does a mini-celebration, and every time he misses a trick he blames his competitor and pushes them. You know, because it’s their fault he couldn’t land it.
He ends up getting knocked out in the third round.
He throws his board across the park, and it almost hits someone, and storms off for a bit. When he comes back I congratulate him on getting so far.
Me: ‘Good job getting to the third round. I really liked some of those tricks you had.
I got a lot of them on camera, I’ll edit all the film from the day and show you later.’
Kyle: ‘Whatever that idiot that beat me didn’t play fair. Everybody knows you’re not allowed to do body varials.’
Me: ‘Get him in the next event.’
Kyle: ‘Oh yeah bro. I got that freaking race on lock.’
It seriously irritates me when people use cuss words as filler for normal conversation. I just want to say I’m annoyed with him and how he speaks.
I’m sure he chalked up my visible frustration to him losing though because that’s how Kyles are.
The next event is a race around the park, simple. Best time wins. Kyle isn’t even close to being a contender on this one.
He’s slow, he isn’t hitting obstacles correctly, and it seems like all this pressure I’m putting on him is really getting to him. He shoved some people out of the way so he could be one of the first to go too, so he has to watch as 10-15 people just crush his time.
Every time someone looks like they’re going to be doing better than him, he starts yelling at them and screaming. He even threw sand on the course. Probably so people would slide on it. I’m not really sure what his goal was but it failed. I decide I’m going to make an excuse for him on this one so he has an easy cop-out, but also thinks I’m on his side.
Me: ‘Bro, looks like you need some new bearings. You kept losing all the speed, but your form was great.’
Kyle: ‘Yeah bro, but my mom is being a jerk and won’t replace these ugly bearings. Screw her!’
Me: ‘Well listen, man, I gotta go grab something real quick, company emergency, will you be here in like an hour when I get back?’
Kyle: ‘Of course dog.’
There’s one more event, I didn’t bother to watch I already had what I wanted. So I start going through all these videos of Kyle, and I make an edit of every time he screamed at someone, was unfair in an event, or had poor sportsmanship.
There are like 10 minutes of him yelling at people and being a jerk all edited into one super edit. I also grab lunch, because of food.
I get back to the park and I grab a brand new deck out of my car.
Just a prop. As I walk into it, I wave Kyle to come over to me. Looks like all the events are over, and the shop I came to see is just socializing with skaters.
Kyle: ‘Oh no way. Is that for me?
I got the spot!?! I got the spot!’
Me: ‘Hey yeah so come check out this video. I want to show you exactly what I was paying attention to the entire time you were skating.’
I show Kyle the video, it opens with his bigger flip, then it proceeds to show him just being a jerk.
He makes excuses throughout the whole video. He tells me at several points he didn’t mean it. It was a mistake. Typical loser stuff.
Me: ‘Here’s the deal. I love how you skate. but I expect better behavior out of any rider that might come ride for DJ Skate.
If you go find all of these skaters and make up with them before I leave, we have a spot on the team for you.’
Kyle: ‘These losers worship me. They’ll all be ecstatic to see me on your team.’
Me: ‘Alright well, when you make up with them tell them to come see me. I want to hear it from them that they’re cool with you.’
I go hang out with the shop owners for a bit, I point out everyone at the contest riding one of my boards and how they should carry my deck because their audience is skating them.
After a few minutes, Kyle comes up holding this little kid by his ear.
Kyle: ‘Tell him we’re cool right now or I rip your ear off.’
Poor kid: ‘Yeah what he said. We’re cool. We’re cool.’
I wave him off and he goes back out, but now I’m watching him bully all these kids into coming over and saying we’re cool. The shop asks me what it’s about and I tell them how I said we couldn’t sponsor anyone that behaves that way, and he wanted to be sponsored. They agree, and we just watch in awe as Kyle gets worse and worse.
Finally, one of the kids bigger than him seems to refuse the apology and a fight breaks out. I rush over to break it up, but Kyle has already had his face beaten in by this kid. The kid yells about how no one likes him and how there is no way he would ever tell anybody for any reason to sponsor him.
Kyle (Crying and sniffling): ‘Look DJ Skate, I tried to apologize and he beat me up. I didn’t do anything wrong to him.’
Me: ‘Oh don’t worry I saw the whole thing. The guys at the shop saw too.
We know exactly what happened.’
I didn’t know yet, but that very familiar sound of sirens goes off in the background. I didn’t think anything of it until police rushed passed me and start pinning guys to the ground.
Police officer: ‘What happened. One at a time.’
Kyle (Lying): ‘I was just skating minding my own business and this guy beat me up. I didn’t do anything to deserve it.’
The kid who beat up Kyle: ‘Not even you came over here shoving us, telling us how we have to apologize to you for playing unfair in the contest and go tell that guy we’re cool so you can get sponsored.’
They go back and forth and the police finally come to me.
Police: ‘Is that true? Did you tell him you’d sponsor him if he made up with everybody here?’
Me: ‘Oh boy do I have a video for you guys…’
I show the police how he’s been pushing people and yelling at everyone all day, and I explain how this kid just decided he had enough and fought back to protect himself. They walk Kyle out in cuffs, and I don’t even need to tell him he didn’t get the sponsorship.
The police checked with everybody who came to tell me they were cool with Kyle to make sure he didn’t hurt them too badly. They also check with some people in the video and get everyone’s contact info.
They start asking people older than 18 if they want to push charges, and start calling the parents of the younger kids to ask the same thing. A few people let it go, but at least 10 people want to push charges on Kyle.
The police asks for my video, as well as the raw footage, and I email it all to them. He also spends a painstaking amount of time recording my phone while the video plays using his chest cam. Took like an hour of me just waiting to get my phone back.
At this point the shop is packed up and heading out, promising once again to answer my email with whether or not they want to buy.
I’m not going to bother to keep up with Kyle, but I’m sure he’ll be getting some jail time for that fight.
The kid that beat him up seemed to be in trouble too.”
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