People Share Their Stories Of “No Mercy” Revenge

It doesn’t take much to face adversity in a way that is fair and just.  You can flag your concern by writing a letter. Opening a discussion. Calling authorities for mediation. The opportunities for civil discourse are endless – unless you’re dealing with a different kind of human. I’m sure you know the type! Those people who lack self-awareness or who feel like they have something to prove. Usually, they’ve got their own crosses to bear, which should come across as no surprise that trauma typically leads to drama! Any drama king or queen comes from experience – they know the ropes and chances are, they’ve been through this before.

You know the saying, if you can’t lick them, then join them? Not that you should stoop down to someone’s low level, but if you’ve exhausted all other options and you’re left with nothing else to do but play the same game, do it smartly. Read on for “no mercy” tall tales of revenge about people who had their backs up against the wall and who had to come up with a creative solution. These people had to prove a point in light of doing the right thing.

And they had to do it in a way where there was no room for mercy because some people just don’t listen – or learn! Ready for some goodies? You’re welcome!

13. Appearances Can Be Deceiving – Unless You Have A Sharp Eye And Good Memory

“Living in Chicago, you come across quite a few homeless. In my younger years, I’d give them spare change. Now, I won’t because I’ve realized that the vast majority are just scammers.

About 20 years ago, I passed by a very dirty looking homeless family. They had a big ratty cardboard sign explaining about him being laid off, the wife was ill, one kid had Leukemia, and the other had something else going on. Their storyboard read like an encyclopedia of the damned.

I gave them $20 and they acted like I just gave them a brick of gold.

I felt pretty good about my generosity and went on my way feeling like I’d helped people in need. While they were thanking me for the money, I noticed that the guy had a large birthmark on his cheek.

The Leukemia son had the same birthmark. I thought nothing of it and that was that.

I took my girlfriend to a fancy steakhouse for dinner hours later (or maybe the next day).

This was nowhere near where the family was. Guess who I see having dinner with his sick wife and destitute children? Yep, Birthmark Face. There he sat, shoveling crab legs and filet mignon down his throat. He was all cleaned up and wearing a watch that probably cost more than my car. My revenge wheels began turning. I didn’t think it was going to work because I’d seen it in a movie, but I formulated a plan.

This restaurant had an open dessert bar with little gourmet pastries. When I saw him head up, I took a deep breath and hoped he didn’t recognize me. He didn’t. I went to the dessert table and ‘accidentally’ bumped into him and dropped my plate. A few of his pieces fell too. I apologized and made it seem like I was super embarrassed. I picked up the spilled desserts and he stooped down to help.

He was actually very nice about it all and when I finished picking it up, I said, ‘Again, so sorry about that! I’m Myzyri, nice to meet you.’ We shook hands and he told me his name was Dennis.

I had what I needed! His name! That’s all I wanted out of this and I got it! We chatted a moment as we chose our desserts and before we went back to our respective tables, I said, ‘Thanks for understanding and helping me pick it all up (that wasn’t a planned comment, but it played into my revenge so perfectly later on.)’
We finished eating and it was time to see if I could pull it off.

My girlfriend and I stood up, got our coats on, and we’re ready to haul ass. The bill was for a little under $150.

I told our waitress that my ‘Uncle Dennis’ was going to pay for our meal and pointed to Dennis. She thought for a second and said, ‘That’ll be fine, but let me check with him.’ My heart sank.

Then, I thought of the last thing I said to him.

Before our waitress started walking over, I yelled across the restaurant, ‘HEY DENNIS! CATCH YOU LATER! THANKS FOR PICKING THAT UP!’ I laughed, he laughed, and he waved goodbye as he quietly said, ‘No problem! It’s the least I could do!’

The waitress was convinced and put our bill back in her pocket. I gave her a $100 tip assuming he’d stiff her once he got the news and I told her, ‘He’s usually pretty cheap, so I don’t want him stiffing you on the tip.’ Thankfully, she headed toward the kitchen instead of their table and my girlfriend and I took off out of there like lightning.

Once outside, we sat in the car waiting for him. I wanted to see if he was p*ssed and I wanted to see what kind of car this destitute family got into.

About an hour later, they come out, indeed,  looking p*ssed. He’s ranting and raving. The wife and kids look shocked. I have my window down, but we’re pretty far away and I can’t make out everything he’s saying, but they start walking toward us (but not directly heading for us).

As they get closer, I hear him going on about, ‘F*ck this place! I DID NOT say I was paying for someone else’s dinner! A HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS! WTF! EFF THIS PLACE!’

I definitely feel bad for the waitress, but I gave her a good tip.

So, I hope that compensated for his lunacy. Based on how he was reacting, I’m guessing they made him pay for it and the waitress was probably like, ‘Dude, he said thanks for picking up the check and you said it was the least you could do!’ Hopefully, some other guests backed up the waitress and management since I made sure the whole room heard it.

And in the end, he and his destitute family climbed into their relatively new S-Class Mercedes and drove off. Destitute my ass.

Mini update: The waitress had a very unique name and I ran into her about 5 years ago.

She now works at the Brazilian steakhouse that’s a few blocks away from where this restaurant was. I always ask for her when we go there. She doesn’t recognize me and I always leave her a huge tip.

I still feel guilty. But I also want to ask her how that all played out… But I know I never will.” Myzyri

 

12. Try To Kill My Family’s Beloved Peach Orchard? I’ll Make Sure Spend The Rest Of Your Life Paying For It

“My great grandparents planted an orchard, and it is now at least 120 years old. My grandparents and my parents were really proud of the peach trees growing in it and did their best to keep them well and in good health.

We always threw a big party when the peaches were ready to be harvested and invited all of our friends and neighbors to it.

I loved those parties.

The neighbors on the property to the south of our orchard were particularly fond of our peaches. They were a bunch of fine old people and me and the old man, Sam, were pretty good friends. He taught me a lot about woodworking with handtools only and we had some great evenings in his workshop.

We finished many good whiskeys in there together. In return, he got a lot of fine peaches, marmalade, homemade peach liqueur, etc… Sadly he died a good ten years ago, cancer sucks. His wife followed soon after, many suspected it was of a broken heart.

They had no kids, so all of their property was left to the state, except his tools and whiskey collection, which he had gifted me a few weeks before he died.

In comes Karen. The name speaks for itself. Haircut, attitude, b*tchiness. The whole deal. She bought the property of my late neighbors. We hadn’t had the kind of money to buy it at that time, as we had met some dire straits the years before and all our savings were gone. The first thing she did (before she actually moved in), was to go round and make demands of the neighbors on the surrounding properties.

When it was finally our turn to listen to her gibberish, she told us that we needed to remove half of the trees, as the leaves were blowing on her property. We told her in a polite way, that we won’t comply to her demands as the orchard is a vital part of our family heritage/tradition/life and has been there for at least 120 years. She was pretty p*ssed but did nothing for the time being.

There are some things you need to know before I continue with the story. The workshop I mentioned before was situated right at the border to our property.

It was a small timber-framed building, at least 160 to 180 years old. The regulations in my state are pretty strict concerning old structures. Every structure over 100 years is protected and you need special permission to tear it down.

Failing to get this permission can lead to a hefty fine. To get permission to build a new building, it has to be up to code and you have to ask your surrounding neighbors and if they agree, you’re good to go. Except there is one specialty in my county. You have to keep a certain distance to the border of the property to allow emergency services full access to your property.

If one of these requirements isn’t met, the building is illegal or at least only partially legal and can actually be ordered by the court to be torn down. That might come in handy later. So, back to my Karen. After our first encounter with her, she did her best to pester the whole neighborhood. She got the neighbor’s dog put down because he allegedly attacked her brat.

It later turned out she faked the attack. The dog was the sweetest and most innocent dog you could imagine. A Bernese mountain dog, big, but a real teddy bear. Anyways. She later got us to stop doing our annual peach parties, as she called the police every time for various reasons.

Noise complaints (we had a band playing there in the afternoon), arson (we lit a fire in a designated fire pit in the middle of our property), she called the ATF on us (allegedly making moonshine, my dad had a license to distill for our own consumption), in short, she was a real pain in the butt.

After three years, we decided it wasn’t worth it to deal with various officers and law enforcement agencies every time we threw the party. We decided to quit. After she had reached this goal, she resorted to pestering us to remove the orchard. We didn’t cave in and some things started to get really fishy.

Somehow the tires of our trucks got slashed, eggs got thrown on our farmhouse, our cat disappeared and surfaced a few days later in pretty rough condition.

It looked like somebody had tried to cut his tail off. Don’t worry, he healed up completely, but we actually couldn’t prove that she did all that.
Then came the day she made her biggest mistake. She had a company come in in a sort of secret operation and tear down the old woodworking workshop overnight. Two days later, they started building a big garage/recreational center/house right where the shop was, but she missed one fine detail, which got pretty important later on – she didn’t ask our permission, nor the neighbors’.

A short while after, the trees right next to her property started to get sick. The leaves turned brown in the middle of summer, and the branches started to die. We lost four trees before we figured out the cause. Somebody had driven long copper nails into them. We had a suspicion, but we couldn’t prove it. So we put up some trail cameras. Perfectly legal, as it was on our own property.

We caught her red-handed. My dad confronted her, she apologized and my dad, and being the way too nice guy he is, wanted to let her get off the hook.

But not me. The nail she drove into our oldest tree was the final nail to her coffin. I started to investigate.
I had some friends at the administration of our county and asked them to do some inquiries.

Turns out she hadn’t applied for permission to tear down the old shop, nor for permission to build a new building. I pressed further about the borderline of our property. Turns out, the old markers vanished over time and her building was about 3 feet on our property. After I had gathered all this information, I presented it to my parents. At first, they were reluctant as they didn’t want to start a neighborhood clash.

But after I recalled all the things she did to us and our neighbors, they were in.

So let the games begin. First, we called the authorities on her for tearing down a protected building and presented them with all the evidence we gathered. Then we called the building authorities on her for building a building without permission, not up to code, and not only did she not keep the required distance to the property border, but she also built on our property without our permission.

Long story short, turns out the workshop hasn’t only been protected because of its age, but also because it was a historical landmark, which played a vital role in conflict back in the 1860s.

She got sued for this and had to pay a fine of an equivalent of about $150,000. She further had to demolish her newly built building, costing an additional $50,000. She got fined for this too (about $83,000) and had to rebuild the workshop at on her own expense, which was another whopping $154,000, as it had to be period correct up to the smallest detail.

This means it had to be built with the correct materials with handtools only and to the correct dimensions. As you can imagine, paying professionals to build quite a large timber-framed building only by hand gets pretty expensive pretty fast.

So, all in all, it cost her an equivalent of $437,000 plus further expenses with lawyers, etc. This caused her to go bankrupt so she had to sell the property at the end, which my parents bought, by the way.

Last I heard of her was that she moved back to the big city. Yes, the Peach Parties are still on and even more lit than ever! ” gustavotherecliner

11. Won’t Apologize For Your Rude Remarks? Guess You’ll Have To Take Your Broomstick To The Airport Instead

“Thanksgiving 2015. My family gets together in a rural-ish cabin. I had agreed to give my younger sister a ride to the airport on Sunday, since she was on a short break from college, and had important classes and tests to get back to after Thanksgiving.

I’d also agreed to lock up the cabin for my parents since they had to leave on Saturday to get back to pressing work matters.

During the post-dinner hanging around on Thanksgiving, my sister decided to give me s*it about the bad couple months I’d had. A long-term girlfriend of mine and I had broken up and the company I worked for folded.

This went beyond normal sibling sh*t-flinging, including her saying something to the effect of, ‘Who’d date or hire a worthless failure loser like you anyway, b*tch? Your girlfriend was probably sleeping with your boss and dumped you both when she learned you were both failures.’

She was called out on her crude remarks by several family members but refused to apologize.

I seemingly let it slide. I had plenty of emergency funds, had a few job prospects lined up (was hired shortly after and got a nice salary bump, actually) and was okay with being single. Her vehemence was out of left field though, and uncalled for.

Sunday morning, I waited for her in the kitchen with a bottle of Jack Daniels.

‘Hey, Heather,’ I said when she entered the kitchen.

‘Wanna apologize for your awful crappy comments the other night?’

She laughed. ‘About your being a complete failure? Nope. Now let’s get going I have a flight to catch.’

‘Fair enough!’ I responded, and poured myself a double Jack Daniels, then knocked it back.
‘What the eff are you doing?; she screamed. ‘I have a plane to catch!’

‘You sure do!’ I responded, cheerfully. I paused and repeated the pour-and-slam.

‘Well, eff, it looks like I’ve had too much to drink to drive! I guess we’ll have to wait until you’re f*cking civil, won’t we?’
She pulled out her phone and messed with it for a few seconds before I said: ‘There aren’t any cab companies or Ubers around here.

I’m your only ride. So you can apologize for being a b*tch, or you can miss your flight.’

‘Eff you!’

I grinned and took another shot.

In short: I got absolutely hammered drunk, she missed her flight, missed some tests, and her GPA plummeted.
It was hilarious.

Someone asked why she didn’t drive herself to the airport and/or why someone else didn’t give her a ride. For one, the car was registered and insured in my name only. I’d locked the keys in the little keypad safe in our parent’s room and changed the combination.

As for other ride options, it was established early on that I would be giving her a ride, so we were the last two there.

I was her only option.” _sirdrinksalot

10. Want To Live Like It’s A Constant Party At Your House? My Mom Doesn’t Think So

“Let me set the scene, the year is 2017 and my family and I live in a quiet suburban street. It’s mostly retired couples and some families with very young kids.

Normal. Now earlier this year the house diagonal from us decided to move and sold it. About the day after everything’s packed away, five cars come peeling down the street, and pull into the driveway and out in the road. They’re a bunch of college-age kids, so we give them some slack and let them go for a day or two. Meanwhile, day in and day out different cars keep peeling down the street, some are over 30 miles over the speed limit.

This does not go over well with the neighbors, for most of the younger kids walk and ride their bikes down our street.

Everyone’s concerned they might hurt someone or someone’s dog. Before something serious can happen, some of the neighbors who’ve lived here 20+ years go over and meet the newbies. This includes my mom. They’re polite at first. They agreed to not go over 35, but more cars keep racing down the road.

Along with that, they seem to be having parties every other Tuesday with about 30 cars up the street.

Now the niceties are over, and the cops are called. Usually, they wouldn’t do this, but about 5 calls came in from a bunch of houses and the police department was fed-up.

Having nothing better to do, they send one of the deputies and they wait around the corner for a few hours a day.

About 2 fines are given, and then they slow down. Except they get smart, there’s only one place the deputy can hide, so they send one car to see if they’re there. If not they speed again. The deputy gives up after about 3 days and is gone.
A few months pass, and we were at a loss of what to do. Summer is almost here so my brother and I are outside more.

We have a basketball hoop at the edge of the road, right across from the house.

Our driveway is at almost a 45° angle, and all my brother’s buddies come and play, so we leave it there. There’s a problem, the cars keep parking to block the hoop. My brother’s p*ssed since that’s all he used to do in the summer. He goes over to the house and guys just shut the door on him.

Now my mom’s p*ssed. She marches over there and asks them to move their cars, sweetly, and when they refuse she hatches a plan.

This summer was a hot one, and my mom decides to cook some homemade pea soup. Now she burns this batch, by ‘accident’ of course.

Instead of chucking it out, she puts it in this big plastic jar, seals the lid, and places it out on the back porch in the middle of the sun.

Weeks pass, and she occasionally opens it. There are maggots squirming around and it’s turned a deep brown-green. There’s also this clear yellow liquid that separated itself to the top. Disgusting.
Meanwhile, my brother is determined to play basketball when there’s a little opening. About twenty minutes in, the ball bounces onto one of the cars by accident. There was no mark, but the car alarm goes off so he’s trying to leave.

I run out to see one of the regulars who lived there, a woman, yelling obscenities at my brother and how he needs to pay for her car. My mother runs out after me and starts yelling at the lady to get away from my brother. There was no damage, and it was clear, but the lady kept screaming. My brother and I run inside and watch as the woman follows my mom up the driveway, waving her arms and still yelling.

My mom yells for her to get off her property or she’ll call the cops. By now our older neighbors are watching, some walking over, and the lady realizes that she better leave it or she might actually get in trouble.

She runs across the street and slams the door.
Around 2 am on a Tuesday with one of their parties, my mom puts on a gas mask (my dad worked in pest control so he had one) and takes out the soup.

The stench was terrible. It was rotting meat and something indescribable. She takes the jar and goes over to the cars as quietly as possible. Onto almost every car she dumps the rotting pea soup onto the windshield and into that space where there are the windshield wipers. Before anything, I have to explain these were nice cars. Not sports, but Priuses and new cars, which doesn’t fit with their age.

The next morning, my mom’s out sitting in the garage, smoking a cigarette like always. It’s around 6 am and the lady that yelled at my brother comes out first. She’s obviously tired as she gets into her car. A minute or two passes and this woman has the most disgusted-looking face. She turns on the windshield wipers and a hunk of rotting ham is sent flying.

My mom’s now in tears, and I mean tears. I wake up and head downstairs to the garage to see the woman yelling and about 20ish kids heading out to their cars. Each one’s trashed.

The cops are called, but since there’s no evidence, they can’t press charges against my mom. One by one they leave in their ruined cars. They moved out 3 weeks later.” Skerivo

9. Insist On Making Subpar Ice Cream? Not After I’m Done With It

“For the past ten years, I have been working ‘back of house’ in fine dining restaurants.

I love learning, and I love all things about food. Because of this, I’ve had a variety of positions in many establishments, learning a pretty diverse set of skills. I’ve baked bread and been a line dog, pastry chef, sous chef, executive chef, all the things.

So six months ago, I decided I wanted to try something different and begin to enjoy my life. I didn’t want where I worked to define me anymore because I’m a human and I have other things that I enjoy.

So I accepted a position at a small local dairy and began to learn cheesemaking. It’s been great. I have been able to work on my house/garden and spend so much time with my dogs. But admittedly, I do miss the kitchen and so I agreed two months ago to help out a few ex-coworkers who are the respective chef and sous chef at a new restaurant with a pretty cool concept.

In the spirit of trying to maintain my new relaxed life, I agreed to only work two days a week.
Now a week in, my new boss, Le Chef, asks me to please make some ice cream, following his recipe. He’d made a small batch already and gave me a bite to try. He said: ‘It’s a bit hard, but I think that’s just because of the temp of the freezer.’ I took a bite, and while the flavor was nice, the texture was off.

Hard, icy, and chalky. He gave me his recipe and I could immediately spot the problem.

For those who haven’t made a lot of ice cream, there are a few things that make really great ice cream.

Yolks, sugar, fat, air. Yolks are tempered in and help bind the sugar/liquid/fat together. The sugar content helps lower the freezing point of the mix, preventing it from freezing into a solid block.

As it’s churning, air is added to the base and the yolks help hold that air in place, making the ice cream lighter. They also add fat and make for really rich ice cream. Commercial ice creams often skimp on the yolks and use stabilizers to help hold the air inside the ice cream.

This specific recipe had only 4 yolks and 110g of sugar per quart of liquid (milk/cream mix).

A pretty standard recipe would have at least 6 yolks and 250g sugar. I tried to point this out to Le Chef, also pointing out that his ice cream machine was a two-quart gelato spinner that inherently spins slower and therefore incorporates less air. I offered to troubleshoot the base and make a few test batches so we could really bring this ice cream home. Le Chef gives me a funny look, says the recipe is fine and instructs me to make a large batch of it, so I do.

The following week Le Chef asks me to work on a new flavor of ice cream and to just use his base recipe and add flavor until it’s right.

I’m kind of sick of watching the poor girl who has to scoop the ice cream struggle with a rock at this point, and also annoyed that the ice cream I made a week prior is hard, icy, chalky.

So I decided to just ignore him and make a base that I know will be killer. The next day we spin it up, and it is luxurious. Smooth, creamy, all the things. The owner of the restaurant makes a comment about how fantastic it is. I explain to a fellow coworker (sous) what I changed, and I guess he tried to tell Le Chef that I had made some adjustments but Le Chef refuses to believe him.

In the meantime, Le Chef makes more ice cream base, and they continue to come out crappy. A mutual coworker tells me Le Chef is getting upset that he can’t make ice cream as nice as I can, and still refuses to ask me why. I try to explain ice cream science to him the next day, and am met with a wall of knowledge, ‘4 yolks are fine’ and ‘the freezer is too cold.’

At this point, I am frustrated, because I think learning and sharing is key to everyone’s success.

A better product makes for happier customers. I also don’t want to make anything that is crappy and have Le Chef be able to say that I am the responsible party.

So I go full revenge. I begin to use my favorite ice cream recipe which calls for a whopping 12 yolks per quart. I add a splash of appropriate liquor, and sub out some of the sugar for an inverted sugar, all done super low key.

I don’t tell anyone, and the results are ridiculously good.

According to a mutual coworker, it’s been driving Le Chef CRAZY. But until he decides to man up and ask for a mini-lesson on ice cream science, I’m just gonna keep improving his recipes on the down low and enjoy laughing about it to myself on my ride home.” Lakeveloute

8. This Is Why You Never Mess With The IT Guy – Especially If He’s Military

“This is a long one, but a good one.

BACKSTORY

In 2003 I was the Director of Information Technology and Communications on a project tasked with securing Saddam’s major weapons storage sites throughout Iraq, performing a comprehensive inventory of said weapons, and then destroying what we’d found.

I was based at one of the largest weapons storage sites in the country so our mission there was monumental. Blowing up 100 tons of weapons six days a week (SCUD missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, anti-shipping missiles, all varieties of rockets, grenades, and mines heavy to light) was going to take years.

In order to accomplish this, we had to first build base defenses and secure an area the size of a small county. Once that was complete, we built a major support base in the middle of the Iraqi desert from scratch and all the infrastructure to support it. We’re talking housing, cafeteria with full commercial kitchen, office buildings, electrical, water, and sewage systems, toilet/shower trailers, recreational facilities, an eight-bay full-service vehicle shop/motor pool, and most importantly IMO, IT and communication systems (radio, network infrastructure, servers, VOIP phones, all connected to the outside world via satellite uplink).

STORY

All of these facilities housed bomb/explosive technicians, engineers, base support personnel, and as we had to provide our own security, private military contractors (PMC). If you’re not sure what PMCs are, think Blackwater/mercenaries or look them up and you’ll get the picture.

Our PMCs were a mix of ex-US Special Forces (Army, Green Berets, Delta Force, Air Force Pararescue, SEALs), British SAS, French Foreign Legion, and ex-South African/Rhodesian Special Forces (Recces, Selous Scouts).

All of them were now mercenaries, and in reality, so were the rest of us to some degree. Most of the PMCs were damn good men, but when you assemble a motley crew of individuals from such disparate backgrounds, you’re bound to have a couple of bad apples in the bunch.

This story is about one of those bad apples and for the purposes of this story, we’ll call this bad apple RoidRage.

RoidRage was one of the supervisory PMCs and oversaw the night watch from 2200-0600 (10PM-6AM). I usually started my day around 0700 (7 AM) and often worked until midnight although those last few hours were generally spent surfing the Internet and catching up with folks back in the US as Iraq is nine hours ahead. You’re in the middle of the Iraqi desert so there’s not much else to do anyways and other than the daily 100-ton explosion at 1600 (4 PM) the Internet is pretty much your primary source of entertainment.

Since I was often in the office late at night, I was regularly alone in the office with RoidRage for a couple of hours.
As I previously mentioned, I managed the IT/communications infrastructure for this project and a vital component of that infrastructure were our telephones and voice over IP (VOIP) phone system. All of our sites used a satellite uplink to connect to a central VOIP server in Baghdad which in turn, connected us to the world.

You could pick up any phone and dial a five-digit extension to connect to any of our sites throughout Iraq or call any international number in the world.

It was a pretty sweet setup, but it was also ripe for abuse.

We tried locking down international dialing with various server rules and PIN schemes, but due to the inherent latency in satellite communications and the amount of bandwidth being consumed over a single satellite uplink at each site, we had trouble keeping those rules pushed to the phones on every desk.

Ultimately, we had to scrap the restrictions as they were a real headache and we went with an honor system. All international calls for business would be logged for review by the site manager each month. Anybody wanting to make a personal international call had to use an AT&T calling card which you could top up online or with a credit card.

After spending a few nights alone in the office with RoidRage, I noticed a trend.

RoidRage would start his shift, check-in with his men at their various positions/patrols on base, and then pick up the phone and talk in hushed tones for hours. It was a fairly large building and our desks were on opposite sides of the office so I couldn’t ever really make out what he was saying, but I could hear this constant murmur of him speaking to someone on the other end of the phone.

It wasn’t my business however, so I largely ignored him. This went on for a couple of months and as our site manager had to return to the US for a family emergency, the phone logs went unreviewed during that time period.

A couple of weeks after the site manager returned, I have summoned to the conference room for a meeting with him and our senior US Military and Department of Defense (DoD) advisors.

I could sense the tension in the room and as I sat down, the site manager slid a manila folder across the table to me. As I opened the folder to reveal pages upon pages of call logs, he said, ‘Freebass, we know you’re usually in the office late at night and somebody has been making hundreds of international calls during that time and racked up thousands of dollars in phone bills.

I hate to say this, but you’re our prime suspect at this point and with theft of this magnitude, we’re going to have no choice but to terminate you immediately and bar you from working on any DoD contracts in the future. Unless you have some evidence to the contrary, we’re going to have to move forward with termination and remove you from the country on the next supply convoy.’
I was shocked and sat in stunned silence for a couple of seconds and then it hit me.

Those calls were made by RoidRage! Someone hadn’t been using their calling card! I immediately protested my innocence and told them that every night, RoidRage would get on the phone at the start of his shift and would still be on the phone as I left around midnight.

They then summoned RoidRage to the conference room and confronted him with the records. He begrudgingly admitted it was him and began to spin some bullcrap story about being unable to top of his calling card with his credit cards and blah blah blah.

All the while, he’s staring at me with eyes of the fiercest degree of rage. We were short on senior PMCs at the time so a call was made to Baghdad and a decision handed down that RoidRage’s employer was to immediately settle the debt with the US government and RoidRage’s salary would be withheld until he worked off the debt with his employer.

RoidRage was also put on final warning that any future impropriety whatsoever would be met with immediate termination and removal from Iraq as well as being blacklisted from working future DoD contracts.

For an ex-US Special Forces Operator turned mercenary like RoidRage, that would forever spell the end of the DoD contracting gravy train and he didn’t take this threat to his livelihood lightly. Now, any rational person would admit they messed up, tighten up their game, and move on, but RoidRage isn’t a rational person by a long shot and the events that were about to unfold would highlight his irrational and sociopathic nature.

After the daily demolition at 1600 (4 PM), I was especially dirty so I hurried back to the base to beat the evening rush on the shower trailer so I could grab a hot shower before the limited supply of hot water ran out (our water heaters took forever to heat). Upon entering the shower/toilet trailer, I noticed that I had the entire place to myself! I savored this rare moment of solitude, used the toilet in peace, disrobed, and stepped into a much needed, hot shower.

Just as I was working a nice lather of shampoo into my hair, I hear the door to the shower trailer open…

Boots clomp across the floor to my shower stall and the shower curtain is ripped off its hanger by none other than a very p*ssed off RoidRage! Seething with rage, he grabbed me by the throat and yanked my wet, naked butt out of the shower and slammed me up against the opposite wall of the trailer choking me all the while.

Now, I’m about 5’11” and a toned 175lbs., but RoidRage stands 6’4” tall, weighs about 240lbs., and is a steroid-enhanced muscle-bound mass of a man. RoidRage’s grip on my throat put ever-increasing pressure on my windpipe and in my oxygen-deprived state, I began to panic. I thrashed about trying to loosen his grip, but in doing so I expended the limited oxygen I had and felt myself growing weaker by the moment.

RoidRage leaned in close to my face and said, ‘You think you can rat me out like a little b*tch and there wouldn’t be consequences?! Let me tell you this, Iraq is the home of unsolved mysteries and bad stuff happens to people every day out here! You better watch your f*cking back you b*tch a*s motherf*cker because I’m gonna be coming for you from every f*cking angle at every f*cking opportunity from this moment forward!’ Just as I felt myself about to blackout, he threw me to the floor and gave me a solid kick to the stomach followed by another to the kidneys and walked out leaving me cold, wet, and gasping for air.

I pulled myself up onto a nearby bench, caught my breath, and staggered back into the shower in shock. I p*ssed blood for two days after that beating. So much for a peaceful afternoon shower…
I made my way to my quarters, sat on my bed, and thought about everything that had just taken place. My immediate thought was to report him to the powers that be but given the circumstances and that he was always armed, I had to plan my next course of action carefully.

RoidRage is a steroid influenced individual and professional killer with his career on the line in the high-stress environment that is Iraq.

My fear slowly turned to caution and then evolved into anger. Yes, I’d have to plan my next course of action and ultimate revenge very carefully. For the time being, I decided against reporting him and riding on any convoys he was on. I had been procrastinating setting up a private WiFi network connection to my trailer, but I wasn’t going to be caught dead spending any late nights alone in the office with RoidRage in the near future so I got that set up that night.

The next night I left my trailer to use the bathroom and as I passed the office on the way back to my room, I saw RoidRage sitting at his desk by the window on the phone.

Why is this guy on the phone all the time and who is he talking to? Time to investigate.

INVESTIGATION

I don’t want to get off in the weeds in technical jargon so I’ll try to keep this as brief and simple as possible so you can comprehend my next course of action.

All of our phones at our site were voice over IP (VOIP) phones and connected to the local network which was connected to our satellite uplink. Every VOIP phone has a unique MAC address, a fingerprint if you will, which identifies it on the network. I had the master list of all devices and phones connected to the network so I could easily identify the phone RoidRage used every night.

Network Instruments makes a nice little program called ‘Observer’ which allows you to monitor all traffic on the network. It even has a cool little feature where you can flag a phone’s MAC address (fingerprint) and tell it to automatically begin capturing traffic on that phone from the moment the phone makes a call until the end of the call. Once the call is complete, it dumps the entire phone call to an audio file which you can then playback at your leisure.

Pretty neat! Time to observe!

ANALYSIS

Over the next month, I amassed hours and hours of calls that RoidRage made and I finally found out who he was talking to! We already know that RoidRage is a huge waste of space, but the conversations I listened to took it to a whole other level of douchebaggery.

I sat at my desk every day with my headphones in pretending to be listening to music, but in reality, I was digesting each and every call, taking notes, and marking timestamps of the ‘good”’stuff.

Here’s what I found:

RoidRage is married and has three kids. RoidRage also has a mistress in the US who is a stripper and by the sounds of it, she’s a world-class gold digger.

RoidRage spoke to his wife and kids about twice a week on average, but always kept the conversations brief because he was ‘busy running the show in a very dangerous Iraq.’
As soon as RoidRage would hang up with his family, he’d immediately call his stripper mistress.

Let’s call her SM. RoidRage made it a point to call and talk to SM for hours every night. A douchebag has to have priorities, right? Most of the conversations were pretty nasty and naughty phone chatting, but others were sprinkled with bits of gold like, ‘Yeah, of course, I f*cking hate my wife. She’s a dumb b*ch and I regret marrying her in the first place.

The reason my kids are so f*cking stupid is because of her sh*t genes.’ ‘Yes, baby, I promise as soon as I get home, I’m going to divorce her and marry you. Promise!’

Another memorable conversation involved RoidRage calling his wife and telling her that he’d have to cut his next vacation leave to the US short because he was so critical to the operations in Iraq, they wouldn’t be able to run the place without him.

This conversation was followed by an immediate call to SM telling her, ‘Yeah, the old lady bought the story hook line and sinker. Yeah (chuckle), I told you, she’s a dumb b*tch! Yeah, baby, I’ll book the tickets and this time we’re going to Paris. We’re gonna do it big.’
While these conversations were certainly deplorable, other conversations with SM were more dangerous in nature and severe violations of operational security.

Given RoidRage’s foul nature, I can kinda understand why he felt it necessary to brag about operations, but man, you’re talking to a stripper in the US who has no idea about any of this Iraq stuff anyways.

Make it up if you must, but DON’T ACTUALLY DISCUSS THE SPECIFICS OF OUR OPERATIONS AND MOVEMENTS TO INFLATE YOUR PATHETIC EGO!

Some of these calls went like this, ‘Yeah, I’m the convoy commander tomorrow.

Yep, large and in charge. I’m running a 20-vehicle convoy of flatbed trucks loaded with big SCUD missiles from Karbalah to Amarrah tomorrow morning at 0900 (9AM) and all 40 of the guys on the convoy report to ME.’ And, ‘These missiles are pretty volatile and sensitive and we’d be a prime target for the bad guys so I came up with a plan to cover everything with these huge canvas tents we stole off some local idiots so we can disguise everything.

Hell yeah, I’m smart, baby!’
This is just ONE of the many calls of this nature and the growing frequency of these calls ultimately forced me to cut my investigation short and move to the next phase of my plan.

PHASE 1 ACTION

I started studying RoidRage’s movements and which convoys he was on and where they were going. If I was going to pull this off, I had to be pretty spot on with my timing.

I edited all the calls down to the ‘good’ stuff and burned two CDs for two different audiences. RoidRage ran a weekly supply convoy to Baghdad and one of these CDs needed to be shipped to the US within a week’s time.

The only way to make that happen was to drop off one of them to DHL at Baghdad International Airport. The convoy always stopped by there on their way back to our site to pick up beer and booze at the Duty-Free (which was the only thing open in the airport terminal at that time) so I packaged one CD up and asked a buddy on the convoy to drop it off at DHL for me and told him I’d pay him back when he returned.

Once the convoy returned to our base, my buddy handed me the receipt and tracking information.

Done! Phase one is complete, now it’s time for phase two!

PHASE 2 ACTION

The following week, I packaged the other CD up and asked the same buddy on the supply convoy to drop that off to the DoD Country Director’s office at the project headquarters. By this time, the first CD was out for delivery in the US and the second CD would be delivered to Baghdad HQ in four hours.

Perfect! Not to pat myself on the back, but the disaster that was about to unfold for RoidRage was the product of patience, dedication, meticulous planning, and flawless execution. The convoy made its way to Baghdad and the second CD was delivered to headquarters.

RoidRage made the usual pass by the airport for the booze run and then returned later that night.

REACTION

The following morning the entire base awoke to an unusual sound.

That unmistakable sound of the whirring of helicopter blades! The only time we’d ever had a chopper land was for a medevac (medical evacuation)!

So this Blackhawk helicopter, with overhead Apache escorts, lands and these guys come running out asking for RoidRage and the head of the PMC at our base. They unceremoniously roust RoidRage out of bed along with the head of security and told them they needed to leave immediately for Baghdad.

With just the clothes on their back and their body armor, they were whisked away within minutes. As soon as they left, the camp manager approached me and said we needed to have a ‘chat’ with Baghdad in the conference room.

We made our way to the conference room and got on a call with our local DoD advisors and the DoD Country Director in Baghdad. He had listened to the CD and wanted to commend me for blowing the whistle on RoidRage.

He also scolded me a bit for not blowing the whistle sooner on the first violation of operation security I had heard, but when I told him the entire story and the brutal assault I endured at the hands of RoidRage in the bathroom, he softened his tone a bit.

He concluded the call with assurances that RoidRage would be ‘dealt with’ swiftly and thanked me for my vigilance.

FALLOUT

What follows was relayed to me by the head of security who traveled with RoidRage on the helicopter to Baghdad:

Upon arrival at the helipad at headquarters, a US Army security detail led the two individuals into the DoD Country Director’s office and RoidRage was confronted with the evidence. The Director sat there with the senior advisors present and played the entire CD in front of RoidRage and his superior.

It was a heated one-sided conversation and RoidRage got ripped up one side and down the other.

He was ordered to leave the country immediately and would be taken under escort to the US Air Force PAX terminal at Baghdad International Airport upon the conclusion of the meeting. He was also notified that he would no longer be eligible to work DoD contracts in the future. The head of the PMC was also excoriated for allowing this behavior to happen on his watch and notified that their security company would now be under investigation for any other possible violations.

If the investigation unearthed additional violations, they’d be found in breach of contract which would be terminated upon transition to a new PMC company.

That company lasted another seven months in Iran.

As RoidRage left the meeting under escort, the Director turned to him and said, ‘AND TELL YOUR F*CKING WIFE TO STOP CALLING HERE AND BLOWING UP THE PHONES! SHE’S P*SSED OFF ABOUT SOMETHING, BUT THAT’S YOUR F*CKING PROBLEM TO DEAL WITH! YOU NEED TO CALL HER WHEN YOU GET TO THE AIRPORT AND TELL HER TO KNOCK THAT CRAP OFF!’ Moral of the story? Don’t mess with your IT guy.” freebass

 

7. Harass Your Fellow Employees? You Won’t Get Away With It Much Longer

“A few years ago, I was working in a job I really enjoyed with a team I really gelled well with.

There were about five of us working on the same portfolio of projects in different roles, and every single team member was just cream-of-the-crop, incredibly good at what they do.

I can’t overemphasize how satisfying it was to work with such an incredibly competent, likable group of people. In this job, instead of getting the Sunday night blues, I would get excited thinking about the work I would be doing the next day and planning how we would solve complex problems together.

The one downside (there’s always a downside) to this job was Steve. Steve was not in the supervisory line for me or any of my team members, but he was about three levels above us and very senior. He’d been there for years and was tight with senior leadership. Steve was also a mega-creep.

He said extremely inappropriate things to young women in the office, and he apparently wasn’t averse to being handsy, though as far as anyone knew, that was as bad as it had gotten.

The women in the office all knew to steer clear of him. My first week on the job, the whisper network made sure I knew: Never be alone with Steve. Sexual harassment is difficult to document, and no one wanted to risk their career and put a target on their back going after a big guy like Steve, so he just got away with it for years.

So for a couple of years, I followed this advice.

There were a few instances of Steve saying incredibly uncomfortable things to me in passing, but for the most part, I managed to avoid him. Then I found out that my teammate Rob had gotten on Steve’s radar. For context, Rob is non-neurotypical and has some minor tic-ish behavior. He’s also shy and easily spirals into social anxiety when put in uncomfortable situations.

So one evening at our team’s informal weekly happy hour after work, Rob lets it slip that Steve’s been giving him a hard time. The rest of us are like, ‘Whoa, wait, what?’ because Steve never interacts with staff at our level, except to creep on women, so we make Rob tell us everything.

Basically, for the last few weeks, Steve has been bullying Rob, making fun of his tics, and mimicking his way of speaking back to him.

He’s also been asking Rob how he can possibly be competent to do his job and implying he’s a pity hire. Steve even called him a ‘r*tard.’ It’s clear Steve is seeking out Rob for this, because, again, there’s really no reason for him to interact with our team. Rob has been having horrible anxiety over this situation and has had bad insomnia and stomach issues since Steve started targeting him.

And not that it bears repeating, but just to reiterate, Rob is a beast at his job.

And a genuinely good guy.
At this point, I’m seeing red. We all were. We tell Rob to go to HR, that his neurological issues put him in a protected ADA class, that he could get Steve in big trouble. Rob panics and says he can’t do that, begs us not to tell anyone at work, and says he wishes he hadn’t said anything.

We assure him we won’t say anything if that’s what he wants, but we’re all very distressed.

I leave the bar fuming just thinking, OK, that’s it. F*ck you, Steve. You’re going down.

I can’t tell anyone about what’s happening to Rob, because I promised him as much, so I start my own paper trail.

I start baiting Steve. And I don’t mean I behave in any suggestive manner or lead him on: I just stop avoiding him, and I even initiate contact myself.

I IM him through the company’s IM system very professionally/politely asking if a big client will be staying on through the next project cycle, and the floodgates open. He starts sending me outrageously sexual IMs. I mostly don’t respond, but I occasionally keep him going by sending extremely literal responses to his innuendo-laden questions or pretending not to understand something suggestive he’s saying. Sometimes when he clarifies, I’ll outright say, ‘This isn’t appropriate’ or ‘This is making me uncomfortable,’ or ‘Please don’t say things like that, Steve,’ but he steamrolls right over me.

During this time, I’ve also been seeing him more in-person around the office, and he often says gross stuff to me in person as well, a lot of it not just inappropriate, but bizarre and nonsensical (‘Is it legal to have an a*s like that in that skirt?’ Lolwut?) Every time this happens, I immediately go back to my desk and write down what he said, the date and time, and the names of any witnesses.

After about a month of this, I compile my creep journal with printouts of the IM conversations and take them to my HR rep. I ask to file a sexual harassment complaint against Steve.

As soon as the words ‘sexual harassment’ leave my mouth, my rep instantly gets the head of HR and two other reps, and they go through my evidence with me and ask me a ton of questions.

The head of HR assures me they’ll take my complaints very seriously, and asks if I know of any women around the office who have had similar issues with Steve. I’m able to give them several names.

They send me on my way, and two weeks later, my rep formally reaches out to me and lets me know Steve has been let go. Much jubilation is had around the office!
It took a couple of months for me to piece together the whole story, but basically, after my complaint, HR started following up with the names I gave them, both the witnesses to my in-person encounters with Steve and the other women he’d harassed.

They corroborated what I’d told HR, and then through them, word started spreading around the office that HR was conducting a sexual harassment investigation against Steve. This emboldened at least 15 different women who’d been biting their tongues about Steve for ages to come forward and tell their own Steve stories. The worst story was from a junior staff member who Steve had sexually assaulted at a company party the year prior.

During all of this, IT had been asked to go through Steve’s emails and IMs, and this had not only been used to validate my print outs as legitimate, but IT had found a ton of additional incriminating stuff in Steve’s correspondences.

Somewhat frustrating: Steve received an extremely generous severance package as part of his termination. But on the bright side, word got around the industry quickly, and Steve was poison at that point.

No company would touch him with a 10-foot pole. The last time I thought to snoop on his public social media pages, he was listing himself as an ‘independent consultant’ in our industry, which I seriously doubt he’s actually doing and based on his public Facebook page, he’s doing a couple of MLMs, so that should kill off whatever savings he has in short order.

I don’t work with Rob anymore, but I did recently attend his wedding! He’s extremely happy with his new wife (who is a sweet and lovely woman) and he’s doing really well in his career.” Quixxlez

 

6. Rant And Rave Negatively About Your Employees? Operation Plan B Goes Into Full Effect

“I was working as an Expat oil company Senior Staff Geologist (and de facto Exploration Manager, but without the increase in pay nor authority, just increased stress levels) in the Middle East for a Southern European construction company’s oil and gas concerns.

The General Manager was a complete idiot. Full of himself because he worked for one major oil company his whole benighted career as an engineer, so obviously, he knows everything about geology, geophysics, petrophysics, etc. (He didn’t and doesn’t). His ‘management style’ (if one could grace his screaming and infantile fuming as a ‘style’) could be described variously as ‘inept micromanagement’ or ‘management by objection’. Would berate and degrade the entire staff in meetings with partners (which made everyone terribly uncomfortable to see such a lack of decorum and professionality), scream so the whole office could hear over mundane idiocies such as lack of coffee pods in the kitchen or why 6,000 meters of pipe had never materialized even though the unpaid invoice still nestled on his desk.

In a multicultural office, he would rant and rail, at top volume, about, ‘f*cking self-important and entitled Expat’ and ‘goddamn f*cking [insert racial slur here].’ Called the firm ‘the worst f*cking oil company in the Middle East’ (at least, here we agreed). Not only a racist but a sexist, misogynist, general misanthrope and a complete and total waste of carbon.

One day, the loggers messed over the logs, and he absolutely refused my insistence to re-log the pay zones.

I was called just about every nasty name in the Oil Patch handbook, right down to the part where he told me my alma mater were a bunch of ‘f*cking idiots’ for granting me my three petroleum geology degrees.

After 26 years in the Patch, I decided that no job was worth this and laid plans for a quick, early and entirely unannounced departure.
I quietly related the fact that I was doing a ‘runner’ to some of my other Expat compatriots over drinks one Thursday evening and was greeted with the revelation that several (read: most) of the other Expats there were 1.

thinking the same thing, and 2. if I left, they were gone as well.

We carefully laid our plans.

The company ‘provided’ housing (i.e., paid a ridiculously low monthly fee so we had to live in cheap-a*s housing or sucked it up with our families and ponied up additional funds to live in decent villas), so we all gave clandestine notice to our respective landlords about our imminent departure and asked they keep quiet.

Since they were paid by check (12 per year) and were already compensated, they were both delighted that they had already been paid once and that they could rent out our abodes after we left for essentially double rent.
Cancellation of internet, water, and power were token; a quick email, print the automated response and carry it with you if the border guards gave us any crap when we buggered off.

Since we were all Western European, Canadian, or American, we decided to book a block of Business class tickets (as was our contractual due) to London on the same British Airways flight.

In fact, with families and all, we booked the entire Business class section.

We all had been in-country for years and years, so arranging packing and shipping (or storage) of our belongings was a snap. We were all members of the ‘move every 18 months to follow the money’ crowd, so this was the easiest part of our master plan.

No one leaked a word of all this, but some of the locals in the company somehow sensed the change in the decorum of the company’s daily activities (when one really doesn’t give a damn, the stress levels magically evaporate down to near zero) and wondered aloud what was going on.

We confided in a few of them (these were not just colleagues, but personal friends in many cases) with the proviso that they would tell no one.

The weeks dragged on and school was about to let out for the summer (when most Expats bugger off for 1-3 months to escape the stupidly hot and humid Middle Eastern broiler season), so the usual requests for contractual time off were made (and all roundly rejected by Herr Mr. Jerkface General Manager) and life proceeded on its merry way.

Finally, Liberation Friday arrived (weekends being Friday-Saturday at this time in this country).

We contracted a local carrier and had a bus rented to pick up everyone and take us all to the airport.

Luggage tagged and schlepped off to the bowels of British Airways’ incomprehensible baggage-handling inner workings; through check-in, customs, and passport control without so much as a sideways glance. We all invaded the English Pub after hitting Duty-Free one last time, and we toasted each other on a job well done and best soon forgotten.

Sitting in Business Class waiting for takeoff (quaffing my third double vodka and Bitter Lemon), I did a quick tally: the company was, in this one instance, losing its Sr. Staff Geologist cum Exploration Manager, Senior Geophysicist, Sr. Petrophysicist, Sr. Geomodeller, Sr. Reservoir Engineer, Drilling Engineer, Operations Geologist, Logistics Manager, Senior Surveyor, 3 secretaries (wives of the aforementioned Senior crowd), and the HSEQ Manager.

A small company (total 50 or so total employees) could withstand the loss of 2 or maybe even 3 of their Senior-level employees, but not this mass emigration.

My good friends whom we left behind regaled us for months regarding the situation in the office come Sunday…Bloody Sunday.

Once the realization of what had happened, the GM went completely ‘off the rails,” ‘totally sh*thoused’ and ‘completely berserk,’ or variations on that theme. The first glimmer of recognition of the severity of the rotund bale of jeers about to descend upon him was when all calls to various abodes were answered with ‘That number is no longer in service.

Please check blah blah blah…’
Emails went unanswered however our GSMs were still working, although we all blocked Herr Jerkface’s number, though we still allowed text messages.

Text 1: ‘Where are you? Why aren’t you at work?’ was just the beginning.

In the words of Khan Noonian Singh we ‘let him eat static.’

Text 2: ‘Where the f*ck are you? If you don’t get your a*ses in here immediately…’ and other such impotent threats.

(‘Yes, please. I’d love another drink.’)

Rising panic ensued: Text 3: ‘This isn’t funny. Come in and we’ll act like this never happened…’

We all sat on the plane, anticipating touchdown.
By the time we hit London, it was 0700 local time but 1100 back-there time.

Herr Jerkface GM called an emergency meeting of the remnants of his staff (all locals) and demanded to know what they knew about this huge display of insubordination.

‘Dunno,’ ‘Never heard a word,’ ‘Why? What happened’ and ‘Where is everybody?’ were the responses.

Herr Jerkface blows a gasket and immediately sacks everyone left in the office.

Unfortunately, all that were left were a couple of teaboys (who are always in demand) and a bunch of locals.

Due to the country’s ‘-ization’ plan, it would be easier to fly a fully loaded 747 through the hole of a bagel than it would be to dispose of a local indigenous worker.

Long story short, he couldn’t and was instantly reported to the proper ministry in charge of such matters as one of the secretaries was kin to the Minister of Employment Affairs (it’s all ‘wasta’ (nepotism) in this part of the worlds).

Final damages: loss of 10+ senior employees.

Fines of over 5,000 riyals/day due to improper business practices (firing locals).

Loss of 2 drilling rigs due to lack of personnel and inability to provide work as per contracts; and cessation of drilling of 2 active wells (into the hole, so to speak, about US$3.5MM each) and 10 or 12 field development wells.

So long cash flow.

Loss of a 3-D seismic contract worth approximately US$3MM. Adios exploration program.

Loss of ‘A-rating,’ meaning you take a back seat to all who try and tender rigs, seismic crews, etc. Good luck sourcing oil country tubular goods, logging or completion services, and pretty much all field related activities.

Loss of face with several ministries (no small item here, huge importance is placed on competence and perceived amiability).

Au revoir Field Development Plan acceptance or seismic contract approval.

Loss of 6 locals to the national oil company. Figured if Expats deserted this amalgamation of idiocy masquerading as an oil company, they should bail as well.

Ultimate temporary closure of the office, cessation of all field activities, payments of 150-200% on defaulted loans and contracts and loss of several lucrative pipeline right-of-ways and transfer contracts. They had to continue to pay the still employed locals, basically sending them a check for sitting at home playing Xbox, and loss of 25% of their acreage due to non-fulfillment of contracts with the government.

Last I heard, Herr GM Jerkface is thrashing around South Texas trying to sell some sort of jumped-up and shady oil deals with companies who have seen their own projects quashed by plummeting oil prices. Funny thing is, he keeps running into people, now on the other side of the desk, who both know him, and in one or two cases, actually worked for him.

One receives a special gold-plated schadenfreude when you lean ever so slightly forward and tell him to ‘F*ck off’ and ‘Don’t let the door hit you in the a*s on the way out, you might suffer brain damage.’ randomstudman

5. He Came Up With The Coldest Course Of Action For Divorce

“Started a few years ago. I thought we were happy.

We were your usual suburban professional couple. Financially secure, healthy, good love life, two kids (14f and 9m at the time). I thought we had a healthy social life.

We were going through one of your typical married couple rough patches. Both of us were working long hours, not spending enough time together, we were going through some developmental problems with my son and tensions in the house were running a little high.

I noticed that she was spending a lot more time on her phone texting with her ‘girlfriends.’ I didn’t think much of it. I started making a much more concerted effort to get out of work when I could, help around the house and be more emotionally available. But over the course of a few weeks, the gulf just kept getting wider.
I ended up accidentally finding some messages when I charged up an old iPad for my son to use.

Her FB messenger was still logged in and there were a lot of highly questionable messages with a guy from her hometown who I will call JimBobCooter or JBC for short.

The messages weren’t completely inappropriate, but I could tell there were quite a few missing based on the times and context of the messages. I made a mental note to keep an eye on this and went about trying to fix things up.

The next day, after I took the day off to knock out some projects that I thought would make her happy, and left her some sweet notes reminding her how much I appreciated her. She was once again in the corner of the living room ‘texting her girlfriends.’

I took the boys’ iPad to the office, opened up FB messenger and watched in real-time as my wife tore me down.

She and JBC were making fun of me. All of my flaws, insecurities, and secrets I entrusted to my partner were now fodder for her and JBC. Not only that, but while there wasn’t outright sexting there was a sexual undertone to the whole conversation, especially when she was bashing my performance in the sack.
I managed to take some screenshots but missed a good bit of the messages because as the conversation was unfolding she was deleting them.

I wasn’t emotionally capable of confronting her. I stayed in the office until she was asleep and had a few drinks.

I took off the next day and spent some time soul searching, drinking and trying to figure out what to do.

The wife came home and wanted to know what was wrong. I just copped out and told her I had a bad day. A couple of minutes later, I was watching the iPad as the train wreck kept unfolding.

So began a couple of solid weeks of taking screenshots, drinking and detaching myself from the relationship. I knew there was no going back from this. The messages were now overtly sexual with my wife completely into it, and JBC was sprinkling in ‘I love you’s.’

I consulted a lawyer, got my options, and started moving forward.

Here’s where everything got absolutely surreal. Watching the messages, I found out JBC was coming to town to spend a weekend of quality time with my wife in a pretty nice hotel.

I was missing a good bit of the info, they must have had a phone conversation about it at some point, but I was able to infer enough to get the when and where.

The next day, the wife is buttering me up and wanting to take a spa weekend with the girls to relax and when she gets back, we can really focus on our marriage.

I go with it all the way. It’s the greatest idea she’s ever had, and I’ll do anything to get us back on track.

I get with the lawyer and have him draft a strong separation agreement stating that she would move out, she would get weekend visitation, no child support in the interim until the divorce is final.

Then I sit through the most agonizing two weeks of my life.

After all this, most of my feelings for her are completely gone, and I’m just seething with anger as I’ve never felt before.

D-day arrives. I take the day off work. I withdraw half of any money in any accounts we are joint on, leave her half alone. I had already redirected my paycheck to a new bank. I close our money market account and get a cashier’s check for her half and deposit my half in my new account.

I stop at Office Max and print out about 75 pages of FB messenger screenshots, and I kill time because I don’t want to be at home.

She texts me that she’s taking off and that she loves me. I tell her to have fun.

I show up at the hotel at about 8:30 and call the wife’s phone from the lobby. It goes straight to voicemail. They are probably already at it, whatever.

I walk up to the front desk and ask if I can use the phone to be connected to JBC’s room. It rings three times and he picks up.

JBC: ‘Hello?’

Me: ‘JBC, can you send my wife down to the lobby, please?’

JBC: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, bro.’

Me: ‘Ok then. I guess I’ll have to call Mrs.

JBC and get her down here (totally a bluff – I knew he was married, and I knew her first name but that was it)’

JBC: (Inaudible, shuffling, panic)

Me: ‘You got five minutes.

Click.’

Not even two minutes later my wife comes walking out of the elevator looking a little flustered. I sit her down in the corner of the lobby.

Her: *Starts spewing bullsh*t saying it’s not what it seems, etc.*

Me: ‘I’m not here to argue. The things that are said in this pile of papers are what’s going on. The only way I’m not giving a copy of this to our daughter, your parents and emailing it to everyone we know, is if you move out immediately.’

(Wife was very prideful.

Our daughter was going through a rebellious teen phase and her knowing probably would have forever killed their relationship. Wife was also her parent’s golden child and she always worried about what they thought of her. I didn’t have much leverage and shame was my only card to play. Also, her professional life is built up around her image, so I knew she would protect that at all costs.)

Her: Sniffle, mumble, inaudible

Me: ‘This is a check for half of the money market account.

I’ve withdrawn my half of the money from all the other joint accounts. You should have more than enough to get a place.’

She starts to cry a little.

I could almost see the different thoughts and waves of emotions going through her, but now was the time to keep pressing.

Me: ‘Here is a separation agreement that I think is more than fair considering what’s going on. I’m going to need you to look this over, sign it, and leave it at the house when you get your stuff.

Do you want to look through these screenshots?’

Her: ‘No.’

Me: ‘Ok. Go have fun with JBC. Do not come back to the house or I’m going to send this (holds up a ream of screenshots) to everyone.’

I bounce out of the lobby, and I can hear her start to have a breakdown.

I get to the car, drive off to a parking lot and have my own crying rage fit.

Previously, I would have cried in front of her and yelled and whatnot but I managed to get my crap together enough to pull it off.
I don’t know what she did that night or over the weekend. She texted and called over and over wanting to talk. I just turned the phone off and by the time Monday afternoon rolled around, there were movers getting her stuff and she delivered the agreement.

I let her have a talk with the kiddos basically saying mommy and daddy need some time apart, we still love you, etc, etc.

Standard divorce talk.

After a week, she wants to have a real talk for the first time. I oblige because I’ve already got my sh*t together and I’ve got an idea of what I want, but I should hear her out.

She’s so sorry. She wants another chance.

She wants her family back. She’ll do anything. She’s on her knees crying into my lap. I have no intention of ever taking her back.

I tell her she needs to set up marriage counseling on her own at a time that works for me. I tell her that I can’t live with her, but she should be around the children to try to maintain a relationship with them.

So, starts our new normal of her coming over the house, cooking and having dinner with the kids three nights a week (she always saved me a plate, I made myself scarce), her cleaning the house and doing the kids laundry then heading back to her place.

We went to counseling. It consisted of her working through her issues with the therapist trying to figure out why she did it, her begging for forgiveness, and me stoically playing the victim.

I was never going to give her another chance. All I wanted to do was kill time, establish myself as the primary caregiver to the kids, and establish her as not having residency in the house.

After a few months, I go to my own therapist and get diagnosed with depression and PTSD. I ask my work if it’s possible to go to part-time for the foreseeable future to deal with personal issues, and it’s no big deal.

After six months of therapy, I told her that I couldn’t forgive her right now and that I wanted an amicable divorce, but she is still the love of my life and maybe someday we could give it another try. She was devastated but agreed to the divorce if I promised to try again someday.

Once the divorce was filed I needed the kids to want to stay with me.

I left a google search for ‘How to survive your wife’s infidelity’ up on the shared PC at home, and I left some printed out infidelity articles not so hidden in the kitchen. My daughter found them and came to me crying. I told her she wasn’t supposed to find those, that mom made a mistake, that mom still loves her, and that I would always be here for her.

My daughter who used to hold my wife in such high regard now wouldn’t talk to her without screaming, and it crushed her.

Not surprisingly when the court needed statements from the kids a few months later, little brother followed big sisters lead and they both wanted to stay with Dad in the house they grew up in.

When the divorce was finalized, I got the house (had to buy out some of her equity, but that’s ok).

I got primary custody of the kids. I got awarded generous child support due to the difference in our incomes due to me working part-time.

Now for the last two years, I’ve gotten to live in the house with my kids, work part-time, get the now ex to subsidize it for me, and when she takes the kids over the weekends I get to have my fun with potentials and some FWBs I’ve cultivated.

In the eyes of my kids, I’m the patron saint of fatherhood for taking the high road and always being there.

In the eyes of my ex, I’m the one that got away, the one that she will always pine for, and I get the bonus of having her come over for sex whenever I want it by dangling that carrot of maybe getting back together.

But that is never going to happen.” [deleted]

4. He Walked In On Something He Wasn’t Meant To Walk In On – On His Birthday

“So there I was, on my birthday at the stroke of midnight, just given a 3/4 day of paid time off from my eternally crappy job working 3rd shift at a factory.

I think to myself, ‘Awesome! I’ll go home and maybe get a little bow chicka bow owwww…” I mean, I’ve been dating her for the past 6 years, and I always get a little birthday lovin’. But there’s always the chance I won’t. No big deal.

I walk in the door, all is quiet, which instantly strikes me as kind of strange.  She usually watches TV at this time of night.

Maybe she just passed out? I think nothing of it.

So I am walking back to our bedroom when I hear it. The unmistakable headboard against the wall with slight, barely audible womanly moans coming from the bedroom.

I promptly freeze. After a few seconds, I quietly sit down on the cold linoleum floor and think to myself, ‘she’s cheating on me, on my birthday, in OUR bed, in the house that I pay rent! WTF?!’

But, there’s one thing that everyone who knows me, knows about me.

I don’t act rashly. Ever. I think things through, and you REALLY don’t want to get on my revenge side. It’s cold, and it’s calculating. I have been referred to as Spock on a number of occasions. So the plan is hatched for instant revenge. She only likes to make love in the dark.

I have a really good dark vision. She does not. The house is pitch black.

‘I’ve got this,’ I mutter to myself.

I quietly enter the bedroom, and proceed to head to the always open closet across from the bed, and proceed to grab our wooden studded paddle. It is everything in my power to hold back my infuriation with the situation. I grab the paddle, and a box that was on top of it falls, making a very loud noise. I crouch down to stay hidden and think to myself, ‘Crap, here I am catching her cheating on me and I’m about to be the one that gets caught…’

But…

They don’t stop.

He’s a madman on a mission to finish which he’s obviously very close to doing. I get to the end of the bed, and stand there in full batter’s swing, ready, waiting for the right moment. It was quite an ETERNITY waiting for a man that is with my girlfriend of six years, in my bed, in my house, on my birthday, to finish up.

And then it happens.

He’s done, I instantly realize she’s doing this – without protection! I spring out the full swing, now with the added hatred of her not using protection and WWWWWWHHHHHHAAAAAACKKKKKKK.

That blood-curdling wince and then the eventual cry was absolute MUSIC to my ears.

It was a direct hit to the backside.

She asks, ‘What in the hell just happened??!?’ His reply is, ‘Something just smacked my bottom so hard I think I’m bleeding….’

This is when I personally think it hit her.

She frantically rushes to the side of the bed to flick on the bedside lamp.

Click. And there I am, standing there tall and proud. Safety glasses still on, holding what I have now dubbed the meat grinder in hand. Staring down at the both of them with an unholy, unflinching gaze. I am staring a stare of psychic withdrawal inducing soul destruction, unwavering in its intensity.

And then I focus my gaze directly into his eyes. Calm as a statue, and officially shut down all emotions at this point. It is now that I realize that he was a man that I’ve known for years. Not necessarily a friend, but someone who I trusted, and knew I trusted.

I have never seen a man get his clothes together and get out the door so fast in my life.

Ever. He was gone in an instant.

She looks at me. I look at her. And I say the inevitable truth. ‘You know that every single one of my past girlfriends has cheated on me, and you know EXACTLY what that means…’

‘I’m dead to you huh…’ She replies in a dejected, monotone voice of humility.

‘After you leave tonight, I will not recognize either of your existences if we meet again… I will more than likely never speak to you.’

While standing there, staring at her the whole time, she gets up, head hanging in shame.

Gathers clothes. Gets in her car, and leaves. That’s when everything in me just collapses. My heart, my soul, my emotions, my ego, and pride… everything. I proceed to go to the living room, crack a drink, and cry for 8 hours. I’m a man, but I’m only human.

The next day her mom calls me up and asks, ‘What in the hell happened last night?’ So I tell her.

She bursts out laughing at her daughter’s stupidity, and my retaliation, and heads on over for a little bit more of talk instead of on the phone.” [deleted]

3. He Likes His Food Hot, So Hot, He Almost Got Fired For It

“So I like to bring my own food into the office and we have a fridge to put things into, and I have my food in tubs with my name on them.

A coworker would sometimes ‘not see’ people’s names on food and think it was theirs, so would heat it up and eat it and then apologize.

They did this enough for it to be an annoyance but not enough for our employers to really care. This has been happening with my food for once or twice a month.

Last month I had enough and I like spicy food, but don’t bring it into the office as sometimes I’ll let people try some of my food and my cooking.

I ordered a bag of ‘Ghost Chili Peppers’ and put the full bag into a big pot of chili that would last for several days. I took this into the office and had it for lunch every day.

Midweek my lunch went missing and I was waiting for the person who was stealing my lunch get a shock when they ate my lunch. What happened, in reality, was someone got sent home sick, and the next day they were off and I was told they went to the doctors for stomach pains.

Two weeks went by and the coworker who was off refused to talk about it and said HR was involved so I knew they were going to try to get me fired. I went home and ordered another bag of Ghost Chili’s and made another batch of my chili, this time with only one chili in a single tub.

I put this in the freezer and the following Monday I was told I had an HR meeting that day.

I refused and said they need to give me 24 hours to find someone to come into the meeting with me and the next day I had my manager come into the meeting and brought in my (now heated) Ghost Chili infused Chili.

The long and short is I was told I could be fired for trying to poison the person who was stealing my lunch, and I asked if they admitted to stealing people’s lunch, which they did.

I then said I have a batch of the chili in question with me, and I like spicy food. My liking spicy food shouldn’t stop me from having it at work since it doesn’t smell when heated (like fish) and my manager agreed it was on the person who took my lunch without knowing how spicy it was, and I should not be held liable if they eat something of someone else’s that doesn’t agree with them.

My manager and I then ate some of the chili and offered it to the other people in the meeting, some of which tried it and agreed while it was spicy it was clearly what I liked as I was fine eating it. The meeting ended and nothing happened. I wasn’t taken into another meeting and my lunch wasn’t taken anymore, but the person who had stolen our lunch got a slap on the wrist and was allowed to stay at work.

Lunches started to go missing again so my manager went to HR to say that lunch’s we’re going missing and he knew who was taking it and had proof this time, and when they asked for the proof he presented the meeting record with the line highlighted where they admitted they had stolen lunch and the line where HR had said this was not what the meeting was about.

They were fired the next day for ‘Theft of property’ and told they would not be given a reference.” jamesjaceable

2. Steal My Late Wife’s Photos? I’ll Be The One Who’s Doing The Catfishing

“My first wife passed away about 20 years ago and I created a memorial website for her on Geocities with a number of photos of her including some glamour photos from a chain of photo studios.

A bit of a long story, but details will become apparent.

A few years after my wife passes, I get an email out of the blue from an old friend telling me that he saw my late wife’s photos on a swingers dating site (I didn’t judge him for being on this particular type of site) and he sent me the link to the profile. On this website (like many others) you could read the profile and see one or two photos, but you could not email the person unless you were a premium member.

Since I could not reach the person, I asked my friend to contact the person and demand they take the photos down. She did not reply to his request, I contacted the website’s support and told them my story. The website administrator told me that they could not take down the photos and only a DMCA copyright claim could get the photos removed. I could not submit a copyright claim (I did not take photos), so there was no remedy to getting my late wife’s photos off this person’s profile.

Enter the Pro Revenge: I decided to join the site as a premium member, but not as myself. I set up a profile as a couple looking for a single female to join us on vacations and on our boat. The reason for this was because that is what the offending person was looking for. on their profile. Our intention was to catfish the Gold Digger.

So I guess it is time to introduce the characters:

You have the Gold Digger (GD)

My friend’s wife posing as my wife (FW) (not same friend that found the profile)

and Me

Here is how it went down: First we befriend GD online

FW sent a message to the GD (who listed in her profile that she was in the same Province as us) and asked GD what city or town she was in, as we have an RV and a Boat that we like to travel around the Province with and take mini-vacations on different lakes.

A few days later she replies and asks for photos. I sent a few photos of me and my friend’s wife on his boss’s boat from the previous summer. (yes they gave me permission to use the photos and some others from their other vacations that did not include him in the photos).

After about two weeks of back and forth messages, FW asks for any sexy photos, to which GD sent some sexy photos without her face (because that would give her away as not being the person in the photos on her profile).

This went on for another two days until FW asked her to do some facetime video, GD quickly replied that she had a microphone, but her web camera was broken. She had a PO box that she had people send her gifts to, so we sent her an old webcam that I had (we were getting right into exposing her)

FW agreed to come over to my place and use my photo studio and do the video/audio chat in front of my Green Screen (that I put a photo of a large house interior onto with Green Screen software).

The conversation goes like this:

FW: ‘Hey did you get that webcam we sent to your post office box?’

GW: ‘(audio only) Yes, thank you, but I am really camera shy so I did not set it up yet.’

FW: ‘Why would you be shy around us, (As I walk into frame behind her)’

GD: ‘Oh, both of you are there?’

Me: ‘Yes, I just wanted to say hi and let you two talk, but I am still curious why you are shy around us.’

GD: ‘Well the photos on my profile are a little old and I have put on a few pounds since they were taken.’

FW: ‘I understand, It took me a long time to get back to this size after fighting with it for years.

We promise we will not judge you based on your size, besides hubby likes plus size girls. (we almost had our catfisher hooked)’

GD: ‘Hold on, give me ten minutes and I will change and put the webcam on.’

About 15 minutes later, we get a video call from GD. She is only lit by her computer screen and not easy to make out.

FW: ‘See, that was not hard was it?’

GD: ‘No, but I really did not think you would like me as I look now.

(but we know she never looked like those photos because they were of my late wife)’

FW: ‘You look very beautiful, do you have more light?’

GD walks away from the camera and turns on some serious lighting (like what you might see on a cam girl site) and the camera quality was much better than the cheap old one that I had sent.

FW That is much better, let me call Martin (not my real name) over.

Me: ‘She is stunning, just what we have been looking for (the hook is starting to catch) Again, I should let you two talk an I have some planning to do for our next vacation.’

I walk away from the camera and go to my pc that is recording the video call and capturing screenshots. I suspect that this GD is not just looking for some suckers to take her on expensive vacations, but that she also does cam model work as BBW cam models can make a lot of money because some dudes see them as being easy.

After about an hour and a half of talking, FW has got lots of personal info about GD, including her real first name and that she works at a private camp for girls in the summer. She also admitted to doing BBW cam work for extra cash.

After a second video call, we told her about our upcoming vacation to Hedonism (which we found on the web as a popular swingers resort) and we would need her full name and a photocopy of her passport to make the reservations and arrange air travel.

She fell for it and we had everything we needed. With a little help from Google maps, we found the camp that she worked for and the contact information. We contacted the camp office looking for a job reference for GD and sure enough, we contacted the right camp.

When I contacted her with all our information and asked her to remove the photos of my late wife from her profile on the swingers site and any other site she might be using them on, this was her reply via PM.

GD: ‘You b*stard, you catfish’d me!’

Me: ‘NO, I just wanted you to stop using my late wife’s photos for your single and swinger profiles.’

GD: ‘Those are my photos.’

Me: ‘No they are not, I have your real photo and you do not even look like my late wife.’

GD: ‘Even if I found then on the web, so they are free to use because they are public.’

Me: ‘So by that logic, the images I have of you in your underwear on cam are public too?’

GD: ‘NO, NO, NO, those are my photos and I can prove it.’

Me: ‘Do you have the original copyright on them? Since I took them from the web, I have the copyright (I know this is not how copyright works, but I am stirring the pot).’

Me: ‘Hello.’

Me: ‘Hello are you still there?’

She blocked me.

Since I had already created a fake profile and paid the annual yearly fee, I decided not to let it go to waste. I changed the profile to include her images and links to the private video chats, along with her personal information and named the girl’s summer camp that she worked at.

A few months later, I got a message from the administrator of the site that two of the photos had been removed due to a copyright claim by “Blank Blank Camp for girls” because of a copyrighted logo on a shirt she wore during a private video call that I screenshot.

I figured by this, they knew who she was and that she had been exposed.

When I called the camp office again for a job reference, the said they could not discuss this person, as she is no longer associated with the camp.” CreatedByIan

1. Nobody Has Time For A Helicopter HOA President – Especially A Fake One

“This happened when my wife and I got first got married; My grandfather had passed just a couple months before and left me a very sizeable inheritance with a note to make sure I use it smartly to start a good life for my wife and I.

My father in law downs a real estate company that buys foreclosed houses and rehabs them and he knew of a great starter home for my wife and I and agreed to pay to have it rehabbed with the understanding that we would pay him back when we were better established or after two years when we sold the house. So we bought the house and it took about 90 days to rehab it before we moved in (this is an important fact later on.)

So we finally move into our house and had been there about 2 weeks when someone came and knocked on our door stating that they were the Homeowners Association (HOA) President and asked for my landlord’s contact information, I explained that we didn’t rent the home and that we were the owners, and then they followed that up by asking to speak with my parents.

I reiterated again, that I was the homeowner and asked them what they wanted. They explained that there was an HOA for the neighborhood and that I needed to sign the HOA Rules and that I owed $90 pro-rated for my dues but that they would give me 30 days to pay as a courtesy, however, they needed me to sign the rules right then. I told them I wanted to read and review them first before I agreed to sign anything and they were extremely pushy about signing them right then.

I refused and they told me that I had 7 days to sign them and explained that they have the legal power to fine me if I do not turn in a signed copy at that time. I called my in-laws because I didn’t know anything about HOAs and asked them for their advice, my father in law got p*ssed saying that it should have been disclosed prior to the sale but sometimes with HUD houses that get missed, we agreed that the $30/month fee wasn’t horrible especially because they did provide a really nice playground for the neighborhood.

So I agreed and signed the rules, there were a couple that seemed a little over the top to me but I agreed anyway because, from my understanding at the time, I really didn’t have any choice.

It seemed fine enough until about a month passed and we had a small house warming party with a couple of friends; literally, there were less than 8 people there including my wife and I.

The house was small but it had a nice deck so we were out back having a small fire using a fire pit one of our friends had just given us when I heard someone knocking at the door. No, pounding, like a freaking cop. I just went around the house and there was the HOA President, with his car in front of my house, with a yellow police light on top.

Yes, I’m serious. I asked him how I could help him, and he very sternly told me that I was in violation of the HOA rules by throwing a party outside of approved hours (10 pm curfew) and that I needed to send my friends home or quietly take it inside, I checked my watch and it was 10:05 pm. I was amazed, but we took it inside regardless.

The next day, THEY VERY NEXT DAY, I had a letter from the HOA stating that it was my official warning for violation of the HOA rules by throwing a, and I quote, “Wild bonfire” that was a safety hazard while drinking (I literally hadn’t drunk at all). Whatever, I brush it off and figured it was a no-bid deal.

Flash Forward 6-9 months; we were hosting a Teen Group devotional for our church one afternoon and we were playing a game of football in the street.

We lived on a connecting street that got virtually no traffic, and only had two houses on it, ours and the family across from us, who’s kids were also playing in the game. All a sudden I hear a police siren, and see the yellow light flashing; HOA President gets out and tells us that we have to break it up immediately as it’s a safety hazard because one of the kids could run over.

I was fed up with him and told him that they were fine and that we’ve been watching for cars and that he was literally the first car we’ve seen and we had been playing for over an hour at that point. He insists and asks what would happen if an ambulance or police officer needed to come down that street to save someone’s life (this was stupid because literally both streets we were connected to have entrances from the main road); I gave in and we went inside.

The next day, I get a letter explaining that I was being fined $60 (the maximum fine allowed for a 1st offense) and that if I wanted to protest it, I could attend the next HOA meeting. I decide that I want to protest the fine but noticed that the fine was due in 30 days and the next HOA meeting wasn’t for 35 days. I opted not to pay until after the hearing and wrote a letter back to the HOA President stating as such; I go to the meeting and it’s literally myself, the HOA President, the HOA Secretary (President’s wife), Vice President (President’s neighbor), and Treasurer (Vice President’s wife).

My protest was immediately overruled, and I was also charged a $30 late fee for not paying on time, despite notifying him.

I was fed up, I couldn’t take it any longer, but realized I really didn’t have any recourse. About 4-5 months later, we gave birth to our first child and about a month after that I was driving home one night (I was working a second job in retail at the time) and my buddy in the military called me.

He had been deployed when my daughter was born and was calling to congratulate me; when I got home, I didn’t want to risk waking up my sleeping newborn daughter so I just sat in my car with the engine running as it was a little chilly outside. I sat there for about half an hour when I heard the police siren, and saw the yellow lights.

Now keep in mind, police sirens aren’t quiet and this was right in front of my house; his stupid yellow light was flashing everywhere including into my daughter’s bedroom. I got out of the car, and rather rudely told him to turn off the light as to not wake my daughter. He explained that I “looked suspicious” sitting in my car with it running outside of my house, I explained the situation and he told me I had to go inside and that my “history of being a trouble maker” wouldn’t grant me any leniency.

I basically told him where I thought he could go and proceeded to sit on the hood of my car. He sat there for another 15 minutes telling me I needed to go in and at one point touched my shoulder, I explained to him that if he touched me again I would take it as a sign of aggression and defend myself, which he responded by getting in his car and leaving.

He circled the block about 4 times the next thirty minutes which was when I got too cold to stay out and finally went inside.

The next day, I get a hand-delivered letter from him and the Vice President, and he also asks me to step outside to “Talk about last night’s incident”. He explains that he was “being nice” by not calling the police on me after I ‘threatened’ him, at which point I cut him off and told him that he needed to get off my property before I called the police on him for trespassing.

I read the letter and saw that he was giving me 2 different fines for $180 each which were the maximum amounts. One for violating curfew, and one for “disobeying the night watchman”. I was done, I had reached my breaking point.

This is where the revenge comes in; I start looking into HOA laws and regulations regarding fines and how to protest them because I felt like this was clearly abuse.

I find that the law states that you must be notified of an HOA 10 days prior to closing on a house and must be served with the HOA rules within 45 days of PURCHASE or you are not subject to being forced to participate in the HOA. I remember that we weren’t served until after we moved in which was close to 90 days after we closed.

So I called my real estate agent who is a very close family friend (my in-laws have bought literally thousands of houses from her over the past 35 years) and asked if she had the paperwork still and she said she can get me a copy. I looked and it was over 90 days after purchase that we were notified AND there was no disclosure statement at closing.

Relator says she must have misplaced it because it’s required by law to be provided prior to the sale and basically that she wouldn’t miss something like that because it comes to her when they do a title inspect on the house whether or not there is a registered HOA. She does a little digging and calls me back two days later and says that my neighborhood doesn’t have an HOA registered with the city or county which is required.

I end up calling the county office in charge of registering and give them the neighborhood name and she says that our neighborhood is registered in the other city and not in our city, and that if we wanted to start an HOA we would have to follow these certain steps, and that without those, the HOA wouldn’t be allowed to collect any money or have any authority.

Apparently what had happened was our neighborhood was originally all in one city, but when the city lines change the neighborhood was split in half. The other neighborhood kept the HOA that was registered and our “HOA President” was supposed to register with the state, but didn’t feel like jumping through all of the hoops that it required.

I was ready to walk down to the President’s house and rip into him but decided to be smart for a minute.

I talked to my neighbor across the street, who also hated the HOA, and told him what I found out. He was furious about it as well, we talked to a few more and get a group of about 10 of us together that agree we need to show up at the next HOA meeting, word had apparently spread because there ended up being more people than the library meeting room could host.

I had specifically asked to be the speaker for the group, which they were nice enough to let me do, the President tried to prevent me from speaking due to being overdue on my fines (At this point, I’m about 3 weeks late on my last set of fines with a $30/week penalty on each fine, so my current bill is set to about $540), but I spoke anyway.

I explained to them that I had contacted my in-law’s attorney (also a family friend) who had drafted together a lawsuit regarding the fact they were impersonating a registered HOA in order to collect money from us which was fraud. The President dismissed me and said I had no idea what I was talking about and that he had “had enough of my antics”; the staff members all left immediately while the rest of us stayed and talked.

A month later we served them formally, myself and 20 other homeowners, suing them for all fines and HOA dues we had paid, to the tune of approximately $50k as some of these families had been there over 10 years. The President and Vice President got their own attorney who attempted to legitimatize the HOA but it required the signature of like 90% of the homeowners.

They got 3 signatures, including the two of themselves (some other old bitter hag signed). After that failed they tried to settle by agreeing to abolish the HOA and showed that they hadn’t financially gained from it and that all funds had been used for the park upkeep, snow removal, and other neighborhood events. We took a vote and this was turned down in overwhelming fashion (I was surprised, I actually voted to accept this), then about a week later one of the other families calls and mentions something about the park maintenance and snow removal.

Apparently, he had given a quote to do the landscaping for the park (cutting the grass, mulching, etc.) and his quote had been a couple of hundred bucks cheaper than what they were paying and that it had always bothered him because the person that did those jobs was the Vice President’s son, and that what they were paying him was pretty outrageous in terms of what’s standard.

Eventually, it went to court, where the judge looked at everything and mandated that they pay $21,000 ($1000 per homeowner), plus attorney and court fees which were like another $2000 for a total of $23,000 in damages. Additionally, they were fined by the city’s governing body after it was reported; I don’t know how much that fine was though. We ended up selling the house that following summer, but I talked to a couple of friends that still lived there about a year after it and they said that the President and Vice President both sold their houses and moved away because they were pretty much hated by everyone in the neighborhood and that they had an informal HOA that people donated to for upkeep of the park.” GFTRGC

Ouch! That stings.

Ever been in a situation where you’ve had to resort to some pretty low ways of getting your point across? Or maybe you’ve been on the receiving end? Tell us everything, let us know!