People Profess Their Pleasurable Revenge Tales
18. Think You Can Handle The Hottest Hot Sauce In The World? Be My Guest
You just wait, lady.
“I work in a hot sauce store in a busy outlet mall. We’re a well-liked locally owned business and have many loyal return customers, but at this particular location, we also get a lot of tourists who are curious about our challenge items, or ‘Hot Ones’ products.
We have a large variety of samples available every day.
Literally like 100 hot sauces, 50+ bbq/wing sauces just out on the table and we can pull another 50+ bottles or so from the fridge if one’s open.
Every so often we get people who come into the store and ask to try the hottest sauce. They love jalapenos in their burritos and have eaten habaneros straight and they’re ready to enter the ring, swallow some sauce and gain the admiration of a couple of friends and bystanders at the cost of a stomach ache. We usually try to guide them to the 10th hottest sauce in the store, burn them with it, and move on to something mild or medium suited to their taste.
Today, while I was selling items to people who were actually paying for things, a 10-or-so-year-old boy enters the store. I always get wary when children enter the store alone because it is full of glass bottles. They usually dart straight for the shelves and pick something up, but this child came barreling towards me like a bullet.
While I make the change for the couple buying some sauce, he calls out to me, ‘Excuse me!’ in a horrendous whiny pitch.
I ignore the rude interruption and continue my conversation with my customers. He parrots it again twelve times or so back to back as I thank these people and get them out of the store.
Finally, I turn to him, ‘How can I help you?’ Where the heck is this kid’s parents?
‘Hi, can I try the hottest sauce in the store?’ Not this again. I am not dealing with this, not with a 10-year-old kid.
I explain to him that the hottest sauce on the table is Heckboy: Right Hand of Doom. It’s spiked with a 6.66 Million Scoville extract, and honestly, if you’re not experienced with this kind of stuff, more than just a tiny bit can really mess up a good part of your day. Take my word for it.
I explain to him he has to be 19 years old to try it and sign a waiver (which is nonsense, but I’m off in 30 minutes so screw this kid), and instead guide him to a tasty fermented habanero that he coughs his eyes out on before explaining to me that he could handle the Right Hand of Doom because his dad eats spicy peppers with him all the time.
‘Okay?’ I say. He leaves, thank God.
15 minutes later I’m interrupted by another customer. This time a gigantic woman, in a blue blouse, she’s sat next to my sample table like a giant blueberry blocking up 20% of my floor space. ‘Excuse me!’ Apple doesn’t fall far. The customers I’m with are polite and excuse me to speak to her. ‘You didn’t let my son try the sauce!’
I explain to her that it has extract in it several hundreds of times hotter than anything he has ever eaten and that it can cause him severe discomfort and that I will not let him try it in my store.
I explain that she is free to purchase the sauce and have him try it at home if she so wishes. She explains to me that she married a Mexican man and that I wouldn’t believe the things we ate in ‘New Mexico City’ where he grew up. When I asked what they had eaten there she told me ‘Things hotter than anything we have in the store.’
At this point her daughter interrupts our conversation, I kid you not, ‘Excuse me!’
‘What?’ I’m getting annoyed.
I was annoyed from the second I saw the kid and now he’s back 20 mins later with three of him.
‘Why do you sell Valentina it’s not even a hot sauce?’ OMG. Aren’t you from Mexico? It says Salsa Piquante on the darn bottle. It’s 5:50, I’m off at 6. I’ve had enough.
‘How about this, you can try the sauce and if it’s as mild as you think, I’ll let him try it.’ She agreed and grabbed her sample stick.
I reached for the Right Hand of Doom, and unscrewed the cap, its nuclear aroma sending memories of aches to my stomach. As she goes to dip the stick into the sauce, I warn her to ‘only take a small amount.’
She grins at me and dips the stick all the way into the sauce. Trap card, witch. She slaps it into her mouth. Immediately, she looks uneasy before she throws herself into pure agony.
She is coughing, swinging her head back and forth, trying desperately to speak, but she cannot muster any words. She dropped her sample stick in all the chaos. After a solid few minutes of coughing and dry heaving, she manages a single word, ‘water.’ I explain to her that water won’t help her now. My relief walks through the door just in time to witness the finish.
She tells me that the only reason she is coughing is because, ‘it went down the wrong pipe.’ She then immediately vomits into our garbage can.
She apologizes for ‘spitting up’ like she didn’t just rocket launch half a liter of barf into my trashcan and then leaves without saying anything else.
I tossed out the trash with a smile on my face and clocked out.”
Another User Comments:
“I once went into a hot sauce store and wanted to try their hottest sauce. Luckily the guy there suggested that I work my way up to it and gave me some milder stuff first. Haven’t done that since.” dummptyhummpty
17. Keep His Food Expenses Very Limited? He'll Hit The Limit Every Single Day
“So I am a business consultant, and usually during the week we are at client site and get paid for travel, meals, etc. The meal reimbursement policy is quite flexible and doesn’t limit what we can claim, like some of the other consulting companies. So we can claim lunch, drinks, whatever. The policy, however, does lay down a GUIDANCE for a daily limit for food expenses, based on the country where you’re traveling.
I capitalized the word GUIDANCE since that is exactly how it is written in the policy.
It is a guide, not a hard limit. For the UK, where my current project is, the limit is $40 per day, which is mostly ok but can be a bit low if you’re in the center of London for example.
Now I do Intermittent Fasting, so most of the days I don’t have breakfast and lunch, and just have one big meal a day, and have no problems keeping to the $40 (usually around $20).
On some days, I might go to a fancy restaurant, have a couple of drinks with a steak, and run up a 60 bill. But during the course of a 5 day week, my average meals would run about $30 a day, if not less.
I’ve never had a problem claiming these expenses in my 9 years with the firm, but recently a new project manager (read: bean counter) came on board, and he sent back a couple of my expense reports for having meal expenses in excess of the $40 for a couple of days, even though the average meal expense over the week was much less than $40.
I tried to reason with him, told him that anyway, it was a guide and not a hard limit, and I was keeping the costs down on other days, he refused to budge and said I could only claim $40 a day for food.
So guess what, I started doing exactly that. Every day, I made sure I was claiming $40 or thereabouts for food. I started buying meals for the homeless people around the train station to make sure I could make up the $40.
So now, where I was claiming less than $150 a week for meals, I now claim $200 and get some good karma for it.”
16. Just Pay The Invoice
“Many years ago (more than 15), I worked as a programmer for an Oil and Gas automation company.
This means we would design and build the computer systems for oil and gas plants, commission them, and support the operators during the day-to-day operations. Because of this, my company ran a 24/7 support phone. Every week a member of my team would get the phone and be expected to be available to answer calls 24/7.
We had enough people on the team that it would roughly equate to getting the phone twice a year. Most of the employees of this company were salaried, and the 24/7 phone was written into their contract. For every phone call they took, they could charge a minimum of 1 hour in banked time.
This was a good deal for them and made the 24/7 phone easier to handle.
I was a little different than my coworkers in that I wasn’t a salaried employee, I was an hourly contractor. My coworkers would bank their time but I was just paid out biweekly. My contract also stated that if I was being paid by the company, I had to be available exclusively to the company. This was added by their HR department because a few years before they caught an hourly contractor running side jobs for other businesses at his desk.
This also meant that if they wanted me to be available exclusively to the company, they had to pay for my time.
For two years I knew the 24/7 phone existed but had never had to take it because according to my contract if they wanted me to be available they had to pay my hourly rate after normal work hours to ensure that I was available to answer the phone when it rang.
Then, as in most corporate stories, my completely awesome manager left for greener pastures and was replaced with an absolute tool. After a month of being in the office, he decided it wasn’t fair that everyone took turns on the phone except for me. He declared that I would be put in the rotation effective immediately.
I didn’t want to cost the company a ton of cash, so I tried to explain that if I’m on the 24/7 phone that means they have to pay me 24 hours a day for 7 days.
He scoffed and told me I obviously didn’t understand how the business worked. I told him he didn’t understand how my contract was laid out and that I’m an hourly contractor, not a salaried employee. He insisted that to be a team player I had better take the phone or look elsewhere for employment.
I didn’t want to seem like I wasn’t a team player, so I accepted the phone..and started my clock.
7 days later I handed the phone off to the next guy and submitted my biweekly invoice. It came out to just over $10,000, with $8,400 being just that one week of having the phone.
I waited about 15 minutes before I was pulled into the manager’s office. When I arrived the manager, the head of HR, and the manager’s boss – the head of the department – were there with my most recent invoice sitting on the desk.
The department head just looked at me and asked what the heck I was thinking when I gave them that invoice.
I explained that the new manager insisted I take the 24/7 phone even though my contract clearly stipulates that if the company wants me available 24/7, they have to pay for every minute I have the phone.
The new manager became redder with every word. When I was finished, the department manager turned to him and asked him why he didn’t know this, since it’s common knowledge that no contractors are ever put in that kind of position.
As he was stuttering for an answer, the department head dismissed me and told me to expect my cheque at the usual time.
The best part? During the entire week, I had the 24/7 phone, it only rang twice – both during work hours and both calls asking for a specific person in the department. All I had to do was give them a phone number.
Those two 3 minute phone calls cost that company $4200 each. After that, the new manager pretended I didn’t exist and refused to talk to me for 3 months until he was moved to sales in a different department. I was at the company for another 2 years and never saw that phone again.”
15. Here's Why You Don't Bully A Sick Kid
“Background: Counsellor at Scouting Camp during summer for 10 days.
The youngest kids (6-8) sleep in the building and the oldest (9-18) sleep in tents on the terrain. For breakfast and lunch, we eat sandwiches and for dinner, we eat soup and a main course. This one kid had been sick for quite a long time but could come to the summer camp. She had a feeding tube inserted into her stomach and couldn’t eat solid foods, the oldest kids (12-15 and 16-18) knew about the situation.
Her mom gave us the things for the feeding tube (I don’t know what it’s called) and some yogurt that was a little more liquid than normal yogurt so she could have that at breakfast and lunch.
She (Sick Kid) was 15-years-old and Entitled Kid was 14. Sick Kid didn’t want anybody to see she was sick.
Some days had passed and we were having breakfast, I was sitting at the table when the following conversation occurs:
Entitled Kid: ‘Why is it actually that you (Sick Kid) always get to eat yogurt, like, that’s so unfair.’
Sick Kid: ‘Yea I think it’s unfair too, I would love to be able to eat a sandwich.
But that’s life, when it gives you lemons you make lemonade because you can’t eat the actual lemon itself.’
The whole table fell silent, everybody was awkwardly looking at their plates and nothing was said while eating the rest of our breakfast.
I give Sick Kid a careful under-the-table high five and after eating, tell her that if Entitled Kid ever confronted her again, which, she probably will, Sick Kid should just show her EXACTLY what’s wrong.
I was visiting all the tents to make sure everybody was alright when I hear an angry voice. I look around and see Entitled Kid standing in front of Sick Kid:
Entitled Kid: ‘You know, you should be grateful for being able to eat special things because you’re ‘sick.’ We eat plain sandwiches ALL week. You’re probably even faking.’
Sick Kid pulled her backpack from her shoulders and put it on the ground and did just what I told her to do, and showed Entitled Kid every little bit, starting with pulling her shirt up to show where the feeding tube was inserted, then what needed to be put in, giving a detailed instruction on how, showing her medicine, emergency medicine and showing how she needed to put a NEEDLE in her own arm just to not die, also telling the exact story of how she ended up in the hospital and what kind of surgeries she had.
All while keeping a calm voice as if she was teaching a toddler what 1+1 is. I walk up to Entitled Kid and say it is time to pack her bags and I will call her mother.
That evening we had a walk of shame. It’s a tradition at summer camp for when someone leaves early due to unacceptable behavior. This almost never happens, but when it does, it’s great.
What it is is: All of the kids and staff at summer camp go wave the kid that leaves goodbye, while one is escorted out by a staff member holding a letter to the parents explaining exactly what their kid did while the kid has to carry all their bags themselves (Entitled Kid had 2 suitcases, a sports bag, two backpacks, and a purse).
That evening after dinner we all ate yogurt as dessert.
So this is the last day of camp, all the parents and families of the kids come to see what we have done that day (we told everybody how fun the days were after Entitled Kid left and made sure to take A LOT of extra pictures on those days, most of which with Sick Kid). We gave out some prizes like the one for stupidest staff and kid and told all the details of the ‘walk of shame’ after Entitled Kid was forced to apologize to Sick Kid (she didn’t).
Entitled Kid’s mom told me her punishment: She was forced to leave the club altogether by her mom, even though Sick Kid wouldn’t be in the same group the next year, and because she liked Sick Kid’s food so much, she was put on a diet. Breakfast: yogurt thinned with milk. Lunch: yogurt thinned with milk. Dinner: soup without anything in it Dessert: yogurt thinned with milk.
I asked if that wasn’t a bit harsh, but Entitled Kid’s mom told me that Entitled Kid needed to learn somehow. This is what I call: sweet, sweet revenge.”
14. Make Him Hold A Rock As Punishment? Wait Until Things Take A Turn For The Worse
“I was at a church camping trip for boys at Yosemite.
One of the guys in charge was new and a real jerk. He made it his goal in life to punish every kid. I was a real rule-follower, so he couldn’t punish me and he started getting angry about that. He would even drop comments like ‘your turn is coming,’ etc.
Now, when I was younger, I was really thin and small, but in my mind, I was like all the other kids and mentally tough, so this got me in trouble.
I would get injured on these trips and the head guy was always getting in trouble with my parents for not keeping me safe.
So one of the rules is that nobody can ever be alone. If you are caught alone at any time, you are in trouble. So, we’re getting the campfire ready for lunch, and some kid comes running up to the group and says that there’s a woman bathing in the river.
All the kids get up and run to go see.
So, to not be alone, I have to go with the group. Now, I don’t go to the edge and look, because I didn’t feel like it was right to go spy on the poor woman just trying to enjoy nature.
Anyway, jerk-leader sees his opportunity and says that since I got up and went over with the group, I was also in trouble, despite the fact that I had no other choice.
Punishment at this camp was holding a giant rock over your head.
Somehow, I was the only one that got in trouble (not everyone else that looked, proving that he didn’t care about actual rules but just that he had power over everyone). I was supposed to hold this rock over my head for 15 minutes and then come back. Of course, he was too lazy to oversee punishments, so I was supposed to do this alone (which is another problem, since there are bears around, no kid is supposed to be alone).
So finally, since I didn’t deserve this punishment, I was going to take this guy down. So I dropped the rock on my head on purpose. Then I just laid there. I could feel a large bump rising on my head. I must have laid there for about 35 minutes.
Finally, they realized that I didn’t show up for lunch and someone asked where I was and then everyone ran over to see me laying there with a rock next to my head.
I said that the last thing that I remembered is that my arms were getting weak holding the rock over my head.
Then the leader checked my head and found the bump. He was livid because now he had to tell my mom I got hurt again.
When asked why I was holding a rock over my head, I made sure to let them know that it was jerk-face’s punishment.
He tried to deny it, but 25 young voices called him ‘liar’ simultaneously since they had all endured the same punishment.
Jerk-leader was stripped of his power and spent the rest of the camp as just another camper. In fact, he called someone and left a day early. It was his first and last activity with the group.”
Another User Comments:
“What the heck kind of ‘camp’ was this? Did you misspell cult?” welfareloser
13. You Sure You Want Your Pizza Cooked Longer? No Problem!
“I work at a small mom-and-pop pizza place in a small town. We’re the only not-gas-station pizza place in town. Friday nights get busy. So my boss is cooking and I’m waitressing. The cook cooks and the waitress does everything else. It would be nice to have 2 of us but we manage and the people of our town expect it and respect it after all these years.
It’s busy, I’ve got several tables and the phone has been ringing off the hook with to-go orders.
I’ve got piles of dishes, someone is constantly at the register and food is constantly ready to go out. My customers are being great! Everyone is smiling and laughing and not worried that things are taking a bit longer than a Tuesday night. I was busy but not stressed yet.
Then he calls. Some guy from out of town (there was a high-school game so we had a few out of towners that night). He orders a large thin crust (our thin crust is very thin, about as thin as a cracker crust but it’s not crispy like that) pizza with pepperoni.
Easy peasy. He wants it well done…can do! He wants us to put it in the oven for an extra 5 minutes…I say ok with zero intention of doing that.
We have a brick oven, our thins go in the oven for 3-4 minutes, 4 and a half for well done. That’s total. This guy wants 5 extra minutes on top of that. He wants a 16-inch charcoal hockey puck. I assume he thinks he knows what he’s talking about and just put on the ticket ‘well done.’ We do our thing. His pizza looks beautiful.
He comes to pick it up and before paying he opens the box to inspect his pizza.
This is normal and I’m not worried.
Him: ‘I asked for my pizza well done!’
Me: ‘This is how we make our pizzas well done. Any more than this and your pizza will burn.’
Him: ‘I’m not paying for this, I’m not eating this, I want a new one and I want it how I ordered! Put it in for 5 more minutes!’
At this point, my boss taps me on the shoulder and tells me to take over the cooking while he handles the customer.
Our kitchen abuts the register counter, I’m literally making pizza 5 feet away from the interaction so I get to hear the whole thing.
My boss tries to tell the guy how long we usually cook the pizzas, what’s going to happen to his pizza etc. The customer is having none of it. He wants this pizza cooked the normal time plus an additional 5 minutes. After a few minutes, I can tell my boss has had enough of this guy.
Boss: ‘Sure you don’t just want this pizza?’ (Meaning the one we had already made)
Guy says no so my boss brings it out to one of our regulars and lets him have it. He comes back to the guy and informs him if he wants his cooked for 9 minutes he needs to pay first.
The guy seems satisfied and pays.
I hop back to waitressing and boss takes over cooking and making this guy his pizza.
It goes in the oven looking beautiful. Boss sets the timer for 9 minutes and makes sure to show the guy the timer, he just smiles and chuckles a little. I’m bussing tables and checking people out and answering the phone while we wait on this guy’s pizza.
The timer goes off for his pizza. The guy comes closer to the counter. It’s my job to cut the pizza as soon as the boss man puts it in the box.
He lifts this solid black, hard charcoal hockey puck out of the oven and sets it in the box.
You can barely tell it’s a pizza anymore. I attempt to cut it but it is so overcooked it more or less just cracks and crumbles. My back is to him so I can’t see his face but I can imagine. I close the box, turn and hand it to him with a smile on my face.
Me: ‘Enjoy your pizza sir!’
Guy: (stutters a bit) ‘I can’t eat that!’
Boss: ‘We made your pizza to order, if you want a new pizza you’ll need to order a new one and pay for that.’
The guy has this completely broken look on his face.
I was actually almost looking forward to a blow-up (my boss is a force to be reckoned with if you curse or disrespect us). He left his pizza on the counter and left. This is why I love my boss.”
12. Non-Seniors Don't Get A Senior Discount
“I worked at a pretty popular department store for years, and I have to say that the customers this store breeds are the worst of the worst.
This store is probably 90% of the reason that so many customers feel as entitled as they do. (‘The cashier had the hiccups, it was incredibly annoying, isn’t there anything you can do for me?’ Was an actual honest to God complaint one lady had for me when I was a supervisor.)
So anyway, I was covering a break up at the registers.
I was a supervisor at the time and I had also already given my two weeks’ notice. I was beyond fed up. It was like spring of my senior year all over again. I had no more cares left.
So I’m up at the registers, and this lady who couldn’t have been more than 40 comes up with a huge cart full. Anyone who has worked retail, you know this woman.
She’s got The Hair, she’s smacking her gum at me while she talks on the phone, the entire transaction is delayed because I need her to pay and she starts to ignore me because apparently, I’m the rude one for interrupting her phone call.
She proceeds to tell the person on the other end ‘give me a second,’ and finally turns to me and says, as if I’m an impatient child testing her last bit of patience, ‘Yes?’
‘Here’s your total, ma’am.
Do you have any coupons or rewards to use today?’
She nodded and here is when she drops a few clippings on the counter in front of me, ignoring my outstretched hand, and turns her attention back to her phone. As soon as I look at the coupons, I see that none of them are usable. She has one that is $10 off your menswear purchase of $50 or more.
She has all women’s clothing. The next coupon expired two months ago. Another one doesn’t start for another week, etc.
So I try again to get her attention. She’s just as lovely and accommodating as the last time.
She rolls her eyes, tells the person on the phone that she will have to call them back, and gives me another sharp ‘Yes?’
‘Sorry ma’am, this coupon is expired, this one hasn’t started, and this one is only for when you purchase $50 worth of menswear.
Do you have any other coupons or rewards?’
She stares at me as though I had just called her mother some unsavory name. ‘UH excuse me, WHAT?’
What could I do but shrug helplessly?
‘You have GOT to be kidding me! That is the entire reason I came out here today, to use those coupons! I really can’t use them?? Unbelievable. Some customer service here!’ All the while she’s packing her useless coupons back into her purse and glaring scorch marks into my soul.
Remember I said I was done? My patience before Shopzilla here was already at 0. She tipped the scales. I was officially in the negatives. I had negative care and negative patience left.
So when she said, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, being so rude to a customer.’ Something in me snapped.
I smiled sweetly at her, mustered up a bright and cheery expression that I usually reserve as my ‘waitress’ face, and said ‘I’m so sorry you feel that way, ma’am.
But on the bright side, since it’s Tuesday I can still apply your senior’s discount! So at least you aren’t losing that one, right?’
I can’t quite describe her expression. I think she was angry, but I think she was more shocked. And in that state of shock, she sputtered out ‘I’m not a senior!’
I mimicked her shock, trying to appear horrified by my ‘accidental’ faux pas, and then immediately said: ‘let me take that off of there for you, then!’ And promptly took the senior discount off, bumping her total up another $20.
‘I’m so sorry for the misunderstanding, ma’am.’
Oh boy, she was livid, but as I said, I think she was more shocked.
She seemed a little dumbfounded, she paid, she took her stuff, she left.
I will take that petty moment of satisfaction at her horrified expression to my grave. (It was even worth the write up that I did end up getting after she called the store and gave my manager a piece of her mind.)”
11. Working A Half Hour A Day
That’s what happens when there’s limited time to get any work done, Boss.
“Years ago one of my employer’s clients decided to set up a new office in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and I got chosen to spend three weeks there getting the new space set up.
Also chosen for the job was a guy from another division’s Chicago office, Dave.
I’d never worked with Dave before, but from the start, I didn’t like him much.
He was never less than fifteen minutes late, he lumbered like a zombie, and I caught him dozing off more than a few times during the first week on site.
Still, he was the closest thing I had to a friend in Fort Wayne, so I invited him out to the bar on Friday for all the company-funded booze we could drink.
‘I wish!’ he says. ‘I’m going home and passing out until Monday, the commute has been killing me.’
Wait, what?
It seems Dave’s boss had been a jerk, and, instead of paying for a plane ticket, hotel and rental car like my boss had, he’d instructed Dave to drive.
From Chicago, almost three hours away.
Me: ‘Dude. That is like, totally no bueno. Six hours a day just driving?!?’
Dave: ‘Yeah, it sucks.’
Me: ‘Still, it’ll be killer dough. That puts you at what, like 70 hours this week? Jeez. Make sure you put in for your gas and tolls quick though, the last time I had to get reimbursed for expenses it took ’em over a month.’
I could see what little light Dave’s eyes held fade.
Dave: ‘They’re not paying for any of that.’
Hearing that I put in a call to my boss, who was as puzzled as I was. If he’d worked for our division, he’d be paid for his drive time and expenses at least, and we were both pretty sure it was corporate edict and not something individual divisions could choose not to obey.
Unfortunately, neither I nor my boss had any say in the matter and neither of us was familiar with Illinois or Indiana labor law, so all we could do was advise Dave to save his receipts for the IRS and complain to HR.
On Monday Dave was late again. After an hour I was worried and called his cell phone.
Dave: ‘I just passed Portage, making pretty good time all things considered. I should be there in about two hours.’
Dave sounded perfectly happy about it, so I figured he’d been required to stop into his office before heading out for some reason.
Me: ‘Okay, Dave. I’ll see you then.’
When Dave arrived a little after eleven, the first thing he did was take a 15-minute break.
Long drive, I understood. There was still most of the day ahead of us, and after the break, Dave finally got down to business booting up his computer.
He had barely logged in when he stood up and announced he was taking his lunch.
Oooookay. Something was going on, but I hadn’t the foggiest idea what.
After lunch Dave finally got around to some work, putting in a good twenty minutes reading an email before stopping by to see me.
Dave: ‘I’m gonna take my second 15 now, then I’m heading home.’
Me: ‘Uh, what?’
Dave, grinning like a nut: ‘Don’t worry, I spoke to HR over the weekend.’
I didn’t see Dave on Tuesday, his cellphone was going unanswered, and neither my boss nor I had any luck finding out why.
We didn’t try hard; Not our zoo and not our monkey, after all. Ditto for Wednesday but whatever, he’s probably just sick.
And then on Thursday, I see Dave. Before work. At the hotel breakfast buffet.
Me: ‘Dave! I was getting worried when you were no-show the last two days.’
Dave laughed a little and after we’d piled our plates with bad scrambled eggs and burned sausage, told me a story.
On Monday the client had noticed him coming in late, doing no work, and leaving early and called our company to complain.
Dave, in turn, was called into a disciplinary meeting with his boss and local HR who were prepared to terminate him over putting in for 32 hours of un-earned overtime the previous week and not working at all the day before.
Dave said they were serious, too. One of the guys from building security interrupted the meeting to deliver a box containing the personal effects from his desk.
Dave had an ace though. Well, three aces.
An email from his boss instructing him to drive to Fort Wayne every day at his own expense as a ‘change in work location’ (1), an email from Corporate HR telling him that while he wasn’t required to work overtime, he was required to report any overtime worked, including driving to or from a client (2), and a page from his division’s employee manual (3) which covered paid breaks off-site.
He then informed them that he was not working any more overtime and, after 3 hours of driving in, 1.5 hours of breaks, and 3 hours home it left him with just a half an hour a day to do actual work. Less, actually, if the traffic was bad.
Oh, and that Corporate HR was willing to stand behind him on it. He’d just spoken to them before the meeting.
Dave: It took them about three seconds to realize they were screwed, and well, here I am, back in action. And, since everything was booked last minute, I’m in a suite with a Jacuzzi and my rental is a damn Cadillac!”
10. Don't Tell This Woman "No"
“When I worked as a case manager as an MHMR, we had a new department supervisor come in and she was the worst.
Every single person but myself and another case manager quit within the month of this woman starting. I really liked my job and it was also my internship site for my master’s degree so I needed to stay employed there.
Since so many people quit, this lady got permission to hire and it soon became obvious that she wanted to get rid of anyone she hadn’t hired and have a department full of people she had personally chosen (surprise surprise, most of her hires were awful just like her).
On top of being an awful human, she also had very little background in mental health and gave truly awful ‘supervision’ when it came to clients and getting them the services they needed.
Since I wasn’t a part of the people she had hired, I knew she would try to get rid of me so I made sure to document everything. Any time I staffed a client with her, I would document her advice in that person’s chart as well as the actions I took due to her advice.
I also kept a detailed paper trail and would email her questions about policy so that I’d have a record of her answers which usually were the opposite of what our policy actually was. She even started walking to my desk to verbally give me answers to the questions I sent via email and I’d have to make up some excuse as to why I needed her to answer in an email.
Like I would tell her a parent or client had asked and I wanted to be able to give them a verbatim answer.
I could tell she hated it.
Anyway, several months later, I staffed a client with her who I believed needed to be hospitalized and wanted to run it by her first as she demanded. She disagreed that this kid needed hospitalization and told me to refer the client to another agency because apparently the client was too high risk for us but didn’t need to be hospitalized? I tried to get her to agree to just calling a crisis to assess her but she denied that as well.
I documented what she told me to do and referred out. Well literally a day later, this kid gets his hands on a gun before going to school and gets in a ton of trouble obviously (thankfully he was stopped as soon as he stepped through the metal detectors). Mom is livid that my agency just referred him out and didn’t get him the help he needed.
My supervisor’s supervisor is angry as this is a PR nightmare and comes down on my supervisor but since I was the direct care staff assigned to this client, my supervisor blamed it all on me.
I ended up getting fired for my ‘negligence.’ However, the higher up of course carefully went through this kid’s records and saw all of my documentation regarding the awful decisions my supervisor had made which led the higher up to investigate even more.
Basically, there was Medicaid fraud being committed, this lady was lying about her mileage and being reimbursed way more than she should, and all this other lovely stuff. So she was fired as well. I was asked to come back but screw that place and its corruption.”
9. This Professor Just Lost His Job
“When I was in University, I did a six-month exchange program in Spain.
I took 4 classes while I was there and all had equivalent credit at my university in Canada. I was getting As in all of my classes except one class where I was really struggling.
Getting a failing grade on an assignment in that class finally broke me. The prof for this class was the worst.
It was an intermediate Spanish class and he was marking us like he thought we should all be writing Shakespeare.
Not only that but how he told us to complete assignments versus how he marked them would be completely incongruent. He expected us to be doing things that he never taught us and that he should not have been expecting in the first place from an intermediate Spanish class.
I realized it wasn’t just my problem when the girl from France, whose Spanish was far better than anyone else in the class, started crying one day after she got an assignment back and begged to understand why she was marked so poorly.
He just pointed at her assignment like that was the only explanation required and then ignored her after that. There was no way to drop the class or switch into another because of the way it was built into the exchange program so I decided I would start emailing the teacher constantly after he gave us assignments, clarifying every little point, coming back with follow up questions to try and figure out what he actually wanted from us, spending way more time on assignments than they deserved.
That way if I failed I would have this record showing how hard I was working in the class to bring to administration if I needed to fight it and all the discrepancies between how he provided assignments versus how he marked them. A couple of days before the final exam, teacher evaluation forms came around and I could tell by how long it took all of us to turn them in that I wasn’t the only one in the class unloading on this guy.
This was his first-semester teaching at the university so if his teacher evaluations didn’t go well he wouldn’t be invited back. If I failed this class then at least that butthole wouldn’t be doing this to someone else next semester.
We get our final marks a week later and I’ve managed to pull a C- out of my butt. Great, just squeaked by. Then with final marks dispersed he’s allowed to see his teacher evaluations.
He sent an email to the entire class that night and lost his freaking mind.
We’re talking sections with all caps, multiple exclamation marks, telling us how freaking stupid we all are and how we don’t know what we’re talking about. He’s the greatest teacher alive and we’re all just bad students. Complete meltdown. The next morning I found another email, from the university this time, stating that professor butthole is no longer with the university and will not be welcome back again followed by numerous apologies regarding his behavior.
I inquired about our grades in light of what happened but I guess they weren’t that apologetic because they refused to change them.
Go figure.”
8. Act Like A Jerk On The Golf Course? I'll Steal Your Ball And Have You Search For It In A Patch Of Nettle
“I was out golfing today because, heck yeah, summer. I was on the green putting with my group. I was lining up to putt for birdie (a good score on a hole, one under par) when I hear a golf ball land close. Very close. Like, three feet away close. That would have hurt, and the guy who hit it didn’t even yell ‘FORE’ (to warn other golfers that a small white projectile might be heading their way).
The golf ball rolled down a small embankment and into a sand trap next to the green.
Whatever. Stuff happens. Then the guy shows up, decked head to toe in LaCoste gear, chewing a massive wad of gum and wearing jersey shore type sunglasses. My buddy is about to putt, and this guy strolls up to the edge of the green and just yells out ‘EY. I HIT A BALL THIS WAY.
WHERE IS IT?’ right in the middle of my friend’s backswing (a big no-no in golf etiquette). No apology, refusing to wait until the player playing has hit his shot and demanding to know where his ball was. Like we’re gonna help you.
‘Yeah, it went into those trees over there.’ I say, pointing at a thick copse of trees about 40 yards to the right of where we’re standing.
Long grass, not a lot of room to move, and plenty of thistle bushes.
Jerk turns on his heel and stalks off towards the trees and starts rooting around in them for his ball. I hear the occasional ‘Shoot!’ and ‘Ow!’ coming from his general direction, presumably when he jabs himself on some thistle.
While he’s rooting around in there, I casually stroll over to the bunker (sand trap) and pick up his ball.
It’s a Titleist Pro V1 (the priciest golf ball you can find that skilled golfers use to play good and that awful golfers use to look good). I pocket the ball and proceed on my merry way to the joyous cacophony of cursing from the trees and thistle.
I used that ball for the rest of the round, and am debating keeping it for posterity’s sake.”
7. Keep Asking Me To Work When I Take Time Off? A Permanent Vacation Doesn't Sound Bad
And it was the best decision they ever made.
“This is the story of my former employer. I work in the northeast US and my employer at the time was a very small company (boss and 5 employees) in a very specific industry where 90% of our work was on construction sites and finding a well-qualified person in this very specific industry is a very very hard thing to do.
My boss was the kind of boss that every employee hates. Corners were cut every possible way in order to keep overhead costs down. On top of that, he would constantly overbook on jobs (like signing contracts for 6 projects during the same week knowing full well that he only has 5 employees) which would result in the employees often working 14 hour days or more, which really sucks when you’re on salary (no overtime).
His worst attribute by far was approving time off and then during your time off calling or texting you asking if you would be willing to work a day or cut your vacation short.
Sometimes he’d even ask you to move your time off to the next week or next month ‘when the workload lightens up’ (hint: it never lightened up due to his constant overbooking).
After working at this company for 6 years, I got used to all the aforementioned annoyances.
But then things changed, my son was born. In the months leading up to his birth, I made it very clear that I would be taking a 5-week unpaid leave of absence once he arrives. The state we’re in allows new parents to take up to 8 weeks of unpaid leave. I told my boss that I know 8 weeks would be a huge strain on such a small company so I was willing to take 5 weeks but those 5 weeks would be completely ‘off the grid’ meaning don’t call me, don’t text me, if you’re going to ask me to do anything work-related the answer will be no so don’t bother.
I’m going to be spending time with my family. He 100% agreed.
Fast-forward to my son’s birth. He was born on a Friday and after a short stay in the NICU (don’t worry, he’s fine) was released on Monday and we took him home. Tuesday morning (yeah…the next day) I wake up to a missed call, an email, and 3 texts all from my boss asking me to call him back ASAP.
For reasons still unknown to me to this day I call him back and he tells me there’s a slight emergency (code speak for he screwed up the scheduling and has a job with no employee at it) and asks if I could maybe come into work that day and maybe work a couple more days that week until he finds someone to cover it.
I lost it.
I literally felt something in my neck snap and unleashed a verbal assault on him that I still feel bad about now, a year later. I ended my rant with an apology…as much of a jerk move it was for him to be calling me in that situation it was still completely unprofessional of me to say what I said to him. Obviously, he wasn’t a big fan of what I said and after a small rant of his own ended with the sentences that made this whole story possible.
He said, ‘You’ve got a pretty good gig at this company that most people your age would be thankful for. I’d be impressed if you could find a better job in this field because I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I know how small this industry is and trust me, good jobs like yours don’t come along very often. Think about that.’
So we ended the call and I did what he said.
I thought about it. After thinking about it for about 30 seconds I got out of bed, sat down in front of my computer, and started looking at job postings.
5 weeks later my time off came to an end and on my first day back I came into work, walked into my boss’s office, and handed him a piece of paper.
Boss: ‘What’s this?’
Me: ‘I thought about what you said about how you’d be really impressed if I could find a better job than the one I have here.
…so I did.’
My boss reads over what I handed him…a job offer from a competitor for the exact same job I was performing but at a 25% higher salary, an extra week of paid vacation compared to what I had, AND a stipulation that company policy was that work hours are capped at 8 per day meaning that once I hit 8 hours on a job I pack up and leave it until tomorrow.
No exceptions.
Boss: ‘Well then…ummm…can I have the day to crunch some numbers to come up with a counter-offer?’
Me: ‘No, don’t bother. I just wanted you to see it because I know you wouldn’t have believed me otherwise.’
Gave my two-week notice and left for whatever job site I was on that day. That was a year ago and I could not be happier with my new job.
I get to spend lots of time with my boy and that’s the best job perk there is.
For all you bosses and managers out there. Don’t mess with your employees…especially the good ones. Treat them how you’d want to be treated.”
Another User Comments:
“My company has a line in my contract that if anyone calls me and asks me to work on a scheduled day off, I am to be paid for 8 hours that day, and I keep my day off.
I assume to curb nonsense like this.” blackjesushiphop
6. Getting Verbal With My Ex's Narcissistic Mom
“My ex’s mother is a real piece of work. I’m talking about the kind of narcissist who believes she’s perfect and infallible, and anyone who doesn’t fall in line with her will is a ‘sponge’ or ‘useless.’
Important to the story is that she had a Maltese that died back in the early 2000s. She carries the dog’s ashes with her. That dog is so well-traveled post-mortem.
In the three years that I was with my ex, that dog went to Jamaica three times, Mexico twice, and on various road trips from Gananoque to Ottawa, Gananoque to Toronto, Gananoque to Niagara Falls… I digress, but again, pertinent to the story.
New Years 2015, I had been on stress leave from my job, heavily medicated (Welbutrin, Cymbalta, and Seroquel), and was mentally drowning. She got fairly intoxicated and decided this would be a perfect opportunity to verbally attack me and tell me all the reasons why I’m a terrible person and don’t deserve her son.
‘You know, dante_, when I first met you I thought, ‘She’s not that pretty, but at least she’s smart.’ Beauty fades. I’m actually very happy with myself, so is her son, and I value intelligence over beauty any day.
She spent two hours going at me, attacking my issues with depression, my chronic near full-body eczema, my family (even though she’s never met them), anything she could think of to try to get under my skin.
All the while her son is sitting between us, occasionally defending me. Eventually, she tells him: ‘Robert, switch places with me, so I can sit next to her and continue.’ ‘No, Mom, I’m not moving.’
She got up and sat on my other side, just to get even more in my face. This whole time I’ve kept polite, no swearing, no attacks, just listening.
Eventually, she takes a breath, and I pull out one of my proudest lines ever.
Me: ‘That’s great, Edith, but I still think it’s a shame you love your dead dog more than your only son.’
Her: ‘… You witch.’
The icing on the cake was when my ex jumped in: ‘Oh Mom, you know it’s true.'”
5. Hope You Like Your Car Being All Icey
Gotta love the winter revenge stories!
“I went to a boarding school in Pennsylvania for sophomore through senior year of high school. One of the dorm monitor guys was a ROYAL butthole. Any day he was on duty was a nightmare. He would stick you with ‘on campus only’ (a.k.a. grounded) for the littlest thing, and complaining about it got you ‘in sight’ (have to be visible, can’t hide in your room even to do homework, etc) until bedtime.
Typical ‘I’m in charge’ bullying nonsense.
One year he got bad news right after we got back from Thanksgiving: A family member on the other side of the country was in bad shape, so he had to go take care of them (we never got the exact details).
He lived in a bad neighborhood and didn’t trust his car to be in one piece when he got back, so he asked the school administrators if he could leave his car at the school while he was away for six weeks.
They let him, the only stipulation being that he had to leave the keys with Maintenance so they could move the car if the parking area needed plowing.
He parked his car on the grass around the side of our dorm the second week of December and left. He didn’t get back until the end of January.
Because the dorm was full of teenagers with bad ideas, the spigots didn’t have regular handles on them.
Instead, they used a strange square key that was kept in the ‘office’ and was only used with permission from the dorm monitors.
However, a pair of flat-ended pliers worked well to turn the water on.
We hid a hose in the bedroom closest to the car, which was also right next to a spigot. The kid who was supposed to be in that room slept elsewhere so he wouldn’t get woken by someone coming in every 20-30 minutes, unrolling the hose, hooking it up, turning on the water, giving the car a good misting, and rolling up the hose again.
Every day, from the minute we got back from classes to the minute we had to leave the next morning, that car got misted.
We even got help from a couple of kids in our classes who lived close enough to bike over during Christmas vacation. One even showed up with a lawn chair and a book so he could just stay there and mist it again as soon as the last layer had frozen over (no staff was in any of the school buildings during vacations, so he didn’t get caught).
In the middle of the night two days after we got back from Christmas vacation, I was one of the 2 people ‘on duty’ with the hose when the monitor for that night comes outside for a smoke (we didn’t know he smoked, so we thought he was in the office, which was on the other end of the building).
He sees me with the pliers in hand and asks, ‘Did you forget something?’ and holds out the spigot key.
That’s when we realized just how much butthole was disliked. That monitor actually offered to help ice butthole’s car during the day while we were in classes!!!
By the time butthole got back, the car was ENCASED in a block of ice. It had to be at least 3 inches thick.
When he complained to the administrators, they told him that because he hadn’t dropped off the keys, everyone had assumed he had changed his mind about leaving the car there.
When he went to try to get his car out of the ice, he couldn’t just attack it with a hammer; doing so would break every window and destroy the paint job.
The only way to get rid of the ice was the same way it went on: slowly. He tried using a small blowtorch, but that didn’t work because he got too impatient and tried to put the torch right against the ice, which kept putting it out.
He got the smart idea of hooking a hose to the dorm’s hot water heater.
It was stalled at first because all the hoses on campus ‘miraculously’ disappeared (who needs a hose in Pennsylvania in the middle of January?) Then he was told he could only do it while we were in class because we needed the hot water for showers in the morning and evening, plus the dishwasher.
That didn’t work too well because he had a regular job he had to be at Monday through Friday, 9-5. Weekends were out because we had to do our laundry.
The line, ‘The tank can barely keep up!’ was our favorite.
He ended up running back and forth with a couple of teakettles, melting channels so he could chisel out the ice between them. We kept turning the burner off when he left the kitchen.
He stopped working for the school at the end of June.
Answering some questions:
Why was this so easy for us to do and hard for him to undo? He put the car on the north side of the building. Almost zero sun compounded by bitter cold. We couldn’t have asked for a better setup.
How long did it take him to release his car? He would pour warm water so that it would melt a channel, pour some more to melt another, then chisel out the stuff in between with a screwdriver (maintenance wouldn’t lend him a chisel and he was too cheap to buy one just for this).
Depending on where he was working, it would come off in big flakes – about the size of a playing card but no more than 1/3 the thickness of a deck.
He could only work on it when he wasn’t on shift, which was 10-15 minutes in the morning (after we went to class, but before he went to his other job) and another half hour or so at night (after we were supposed to be in bed but before he had to go home to get some sleep) so around Valentine’s day, he finally got it to the point that he could get it towed to a local car wash that could keep it indoors long enough for all the ice to melt (we had made damn sure to freeze it to the ground).
He had no friends who would do it for him (big surprise!) and he didn’t trust us any farther than he could throw us.
When did he quit? When the school semester was over in June. He had a contract with the school – he couldn’t quit early without a good reason and they didn’t really want to fire him. If he had left, they would have had to get other dorm monitors to cover his shifts (which means paying overtime hours) or get someone new (finding someone, full background check, certain minimum training requirements, etc.). It would be expensive no matter what.
Why no salt, heaters, etc? Cheap jerk. ‘Nuff said.
Did we get in any trouble? Pfft. NOPE. All, and I mean all the staff vouched for us (one gave us the spigot key!)!”
4. Nearly Make Me Lose My Life? I'll Take Off In Your Car And Leave You Stranded In The Middle Of Nowhere
“I have to preface this by saying I am not proud of what happened. It was incredibly mean. Also, don’t drink and drive, kids.
I used to go to college in New England, and coming from California, I learned very quickly there is very little to do on a weeknight besides drink and get into trouble. One night, we decided to do just that.
Five of us piled into the car of a friend of a friend.
Let’s call him Steve.
Steve was the first encounter I had ever had with a WASP. He was old-wealthy, and hipster scum to boot. He was an all-around nasty guy who never thought of anybody besides himself, but he had a car, and we were getting stir-crazy in our dorms.
We decided to drive along an old path behind our school and eventually found a cornfield (apparently, New England produces corn), which we deemed the perfect place to start drinking.
Of course, Steve starts dipping into the Jameson as well, but none of us thought this was a big deal.
We finish off two bottles of Jameson and proceeded to drive around the backwoods, each taking turns sitting out of Steve’s car’s sunroof with our legs locked around the edge.
When it got to my turn, Steve thought it would be funny to see how I’d react if he tried to flip my legs out of the sunroof, making me lose my grip.
He got one leg out, but somehow I managed to kick him enough to get him to stop. It was honestly one of the scariest moments of my life, riding forty miles an hour in backwood roads hanging out of a sunroof with only one leg holding me in.
He eventually slowed down to trade-off positions (although surprisingly enough, the next person didn’t want to try it), and I got back into the car, angrier than I had ever been in my life.
Everybody sort of laughed it off, so I didn’t make a big deal about it. I sat in the back of the car, fuming, plotting what I was going to do.
We proceeded to generally be massive jerks, committing minor crimes including but not limited to attempting to steal a goat from a Christmas-themed amusement park. We had rotated seats in the car, so when it became time to head back to the dorms, I was sitting in the passenger’s seat, with Steve still driving.
About halfway home, Steve pulled over to take a pee on some unlit one-lane road. Still fuming from the thought of almost being flung out of a moving vehicle at fairly high speeds, I take the opportunity to jump over into the driver’s seat, put the car into gear, and floored it.
I left Steve in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, with no lights or sense of direction.
I drove the rest of the way back to school (about 25-30 miles away), with everybody else in the car completely silent. I dropped people off, parked his car, went to my dorm, and got into bed.
I realized the severity of what I had done. I got the car and went back and got him. When I found him, he had peed himself. He looked terrified. He got in the car and didn’t say a word. I drove us back, dropped him off, and parked his car.
I don’t think we’ve talked about that since.”
3. We Only Speak English In America, You Say? You Won't Be Keeping Your Dream Job
“This story begins when I was a freshman in high school. After school on most weekdays, I would walk to my uncle’s house to babysit my little cousin. My cousin was about 2 or 3 years old at the time and liked to go to the public park that was directly in front of my uncle’s house.
It was a simple park, about the size of a football field with a playground in one corner and the rest was all grass.
One particular day, my cousin is begging me to go to the park so I take him.
For a while, we were the only ones there. My cousin was too scared to go down the slide from the top by himself so I was picking him up and letting him slide from about halfway. He was having a great time and laughing.
Soon a lady comes up with her daughter and they start playing on the swing set.
Well, the lady was sitting on the bench and her daughter was trying to play on the swing set.
Now here’s an important point to the story. When I speak with my little cousin I speak in our native language. He can understand English, but I’m just so used to speaking my native language with my family that it just happens naturally. So I’m speaking to my cousin trying to encourage him to go up to the top of the slide and he’s on his way up psyching himself up.
Then I hear the lady yell out:
Lady: ‘Hey you need to speak English when you’re around me.’
Me: ‘Huh? I’m just telling him to –’ She cuts me off.
Lady: ‘THIS IS AMERICA WE SPEAK ENGLISH HERE.’
Me: ‘Uhhhh, I’m just trying to play with my cousin, he doesn’t speak English too well…’ (I lied he understood English)
Lady: ‘I don’t care! You speak English when you’re around me and my daughter.’
So, I’m mad.
I’ve had my experience with racism especially post 9/11. I’m just here with a child and he was visibly having an awesome time playing at the playground.
There was no reason for this lady to impose her nonsense on me. So I decided to screw it. If she wants me to speak English, here have it.
Me to my cousin: ‘Hey let’s ignore the witch,’ and continue to speak in my native language to tell him to slide down
Her: ‘WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME?!?!’
Me: ‘Oh, I called you a witch because that’s what you’re being.’
Her: ‘OMG I’M CALLING MY HUSBAND HE’S GONNA KICK YOUR BUTT!!!’
At this point, I feel the need to try and get out of there so I start telling my cousin to go.
While I’m trying to leave she keeps yelling and screaming at me about how her husband is on her way and he’s gonna kick my butt blah blah blah and even says she’s gonna call the cops. Anyway, I leave and get home.
I was paranoid for a few weeks after that incident, thinking the cops were going to want to talk to me or something. I avoided the park for a while.
I told my uncle what happened and he agreed that I should avoid the park for a while too.
Now we’re in the present and it’s been over 10 years. I’ve graduated from high school and got a job at this plant. The thing about this plant is that it’s one of the few places in my city that pays well over minimum wage. A lot of the people in my city try super hard to get into this plant, but few do.
Most people end up moving out of my city or commuting over an hour where all the good jobs are at.
Another important note and I’m not trying to brag or anything, but through a series of promotions I got due to actually having computer skills and being at the right place at the right time when certain key people retired, I ended up becoming the #2 at the plant.
I have a really good plant manager who has a lot of faith in me and he’s taken me under his wing.
So one of my job responsibilities is hiring people and making sure they get trained properly. A couple of weeks ago we had to let go of one of our office ladies because of reasons. So I called up the placement agency I use and let them know I need an office administrator type person on Monday.
Monday comes around and guess who shows up? Yup, you guessed it. It’s the outspoken lady from the park. She, for whatever reason, doesn’t recognize me but be assured I recognize that evil woman.
Her face is ingrained into my brain. I go through the typical introductions and pass her off to Human Resources for a bit to make sure she fills out some paperwork. After all that I give her a tour of the plant and let her know which areas she’s allowed to go to and which areas she’s not, etc.
I pass her off to the ladies in the office and let them start training her. That’s most of my interaction with her.
I’d pop by the office throughout the week to see how she was doing and get any updates on her performance. I start to think about what I’m going to do. Do I want to keep this lady on staff? Is it even worth taking any revenge? If yes, what should I do?
I finally made my decision on Thursday.
See, through my conversations with her, I’ve found out she’s been wanting to get into this plant for a LONG time. This was like a dream job for her. The placement agency was sending her over an hour away to commute and she’d end up quitting and letting the agency know she preferred a shorter commute. I decided I’m going to lead her on and make it seem like she’s going to be staying with the company before letting her go unexpectedly.
So on Thursday, I set up an appointment with her to finish up some training. I just had a PowerPoint presentation I went over with new employees. In the training, I get to talk to her a little more and ask her if she’s been living in the city for a while.
She says yes and I ask her what part? She mentioned she lives near the park near my uncle’s house.
I let her know, ‘Oh! I used to go to that park all the time!! I used to take my little cousin, but I stopped because I ran into this awful lady one day who threatened to have her husband beat me up because she wanted me to speak English.’
Her face changed. It’s a weird thing I noticed. Her face went from kinda happy to straight scared.
I think she finally remembered me. I concluded the training and didn’t say anything else. Friday came and she showed up to work. When she went to lunch, I called the placement agency and told them to call her and let her know not to show up after lunch, we won’t be needing her anymore. I could do this because she wasn’t an actual employee, we just had a contract through the agency and didn’t need any valid reason to let her go.
There was also just something very satisfying about firing someone while they were at lunch. I’m sure the office ladies aren’t too happy with me because they’re going to have to retrain a new person starting Monday, but it’ll be okay. Bye Felicia.”
2. Living Well Is The Best Revenge
“A girl I was seeing had previously been in an off-and-on abusive relationship with a guy who got wasted and beat her up, and he had moments of unfaithfulness to her all the time. After telling me how horrible he was, she two-timed me with the guy and texted me at 4 AM from his place to dump me. I took it as a challenge and managed to lure her back to me, but she kept going back to this guy.
The worst part was that he was a little, bald Uncle Fester-looking toad of a guy. I could never figure out how he lured her anyway. Nobody else could either. I was pretty sure I was better in every way, but I honestly think she was addicted to the abuse.
She would go back and forth between us, all the while lying to me about it. She claimed she got into a fight with a chick at a bar and later admitted it was Uncle Fester again kicking her butt.
Every time he would do something to humiliate her, be unfaithful, beat her up, she would come back to me. I was stupid to let her keep coming back. I admit that. It was self-abuse to let her come back.
One night, she took me out to a nice restaurant to make up for the things she had done, and we got a little intoxicated and started talking about getting back together.
She got pulled over and taken to jail for DUI. I coordinated with inmate services to help get her a PR bond, then picked her up from the jail in the morning. She said she wanted to go home and take a shower and go to bed but said it was okay if I came by to see her later that night. When I did, she didn’t answer the door, so I tapped on the window and heard Uncle Fester’s voice.
Then her neighbor came out and yelled at me. Then this girl I had been seeing called the police on me, so I left as they were driving up. It was a close call.
After that, she told me she was moving away to another city to live with her mother, and initially, I was relieved. I thought that was the end of it, and things would go back to normal.
Then she started visiting me on weekends, and we would get a hotel room (on me) or some other stupid romantic thing. In between, she would talk to me on webcam. Months later, I found out she hadn’t moved away to live with her mother. She had moved somewhere actually not that far from my part of town and was back to being with Uncle Fester and lying to me about it.
How did I find out? She got wasted downtown at a bar with him and got upset with him and called me demanding that I come down there, then got caught. Then she ran off. I tried to follow but lost her in a large crowd and gave up. Later, I got a call from her cell phone, but it wasn’t her. She had left it at a bar, and they wanted someone to pick it up for her.
I picked it up. Then I sent a text message to her entire list of friends and family about how she’s always screwing me and lying about it and how she’s an addict. Then I smashed it and threw it away.
I threatened to reveal everything to him again. I kept getting sucked back in, then fooled again with her lying nonsense. Every time I thought the cycle would end, it continued.
She left me two days before my birthday to go be with him again and wasn’t secretive about it at all. I was livid. Worse yet, this nonsense had ruined my relationship with my best friend and roommate, so I was being kicked out. I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to be a witness to that drama. All my friends tried to help me, tried to get me away from her, and I kept going back.
Then she called me from the place he had taken her to (in another city) and said she caught him going behind her back again by checking his cell phone and said she would do whatever I wanted. She just wanted to get out of there. She got back to town on my birthday and swore she was through with this drama and offered to let me move into her place with her.
So, of course, I agreed… cuz I was insane.
I got her pregnant that night. I gave her all my dough that I was going to use to get a new place because I wanted to pay my share of the bills in her place. She spent it pretty much right away. A couple of weeks later, she went to visit her mother, then started giving me the vibe that I was about to get dumped again.
I got angry and deleted her from social media. She got her mother to threaten me, so I ended up leaving and unfortunately leaving all my stuff there. I knew she would be going back to Uncle Fester. I ended up couch surfing for a while. I slowly ran out of the last of my moolah, but my family ended up taking me in.
Later she contacted me about the fact that she was pregnant, and she wasn’t sure whether it was mine or his.
At first, she wasn’t sure if she wanted the baby, but I took her to a clinic, and she heard the heartbeat and gave up on that idea. She insisted that I be the one to let her use my DNA for a prenatal paternity test but refused to let me sign the form or put my address on it to receive the results. She promised to tell me right away whose baby it was…
then wouldn’t take my phone calls for months. I always knew it was mine, but apparently, Uncle Fester told her not to tell me. She even tried calling and telling me that it wasn’t mine before she even got the results from the test. The company wouldn’t release them to me because I wasn’t on the form.
Then he went to jail and I thought my prayers were answered.
He would be out of the picture, and I could at least try to be involved in my child’s birth! No, apparently not. When I would see her she would whine to me about how she felt so sorry for this jerk because he was apparently depressed in jail, and she was trying to get him out! I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I couldn’t win.
It was infuriating! I was about to just freaking lose it! My son was about to be born, and she was crying for this troll who lied to her and went behind her back and beat her.
He got out, and she convinced her mother to take him in! He was then living with her and my unborn child. I was so furious, I honestly could have killed him.
A good friend of mine talked me down when I found out what was going on. I couldn’t believe how awful these people were.
To take my revenge, I printed up a flyer with pictures of both of them on it and described his crimes, and that they were both dangerous wasted driving addicts and chronic drinkers. I described how I was being kept from being involved in my own child’s development and birth by a beater who had previously kicked her in the stomach while she was pregnant (yes, he did this).
I put their address and telephone number on it, then papered the neighborhood with the flyers. Everyone in the area would know what was going on and that there were dangerous criminals in the area.
Following that, I made a similar flyer and put it on all the cars reserved for doctors where she worked as a receptionist. She was fired.
She sent a fax to my workplace with similar allegations and I got a paid suspension.
Later, I was invited to return to work but already had another job.
I found out later that my son had been born, so my aunt knitted a blanket for him and took it over there as a peace offering at Christmastime. Later she got a very nasty call telling her to stay away, and they tried telling her the baby looked just like the other guy and couldn’t be mine (a lie).
I told them that just because he was fat, short, bald, and didn’t know anything that didn’t make him Uncle Fester’s baby. That’s just how babies are.
Then my ex came to my home with police in tow to tell me to stay away from her home and to keep my family away from her home! I don’t see how it’s legal for her to come onto my property just because police are with her to get at me, then tell me not to go to her home when I didn’t in the first place.
Police are so often stupid it’s sickening.
She left the handmade blanket. I said, “I want to see my son!” and she said, “You don’t have a son.” Then she left.
Even knowing that he was my baby, she had convinced Uncle Fester to sign the birth certificate and an acknowledgment of paternity form. It says on the form that it’s felony fraud to knowingly falsify that document, but guess what– the police won’t do smack about it, and neither will the attorney general.
Once that form is signed, they wash their hands of it.
I ended up suing for custody and for damages, but I ran out of moolah for legal fees. Lawyers are just too dang expensive!
I felt defeated. I lost the girl. I lost my son. I lost all my moolah. I decided to give up and move on. I started seeing women again. That woman did so much more to me and worse to me than I could list here, but this is essentially the story.
However, the best revenge is living well. I met someone else and got married, and we have a beautiful baby girl.
After my son was about a year and a half old, I contacted the ex again and asked to see my son. She met with me cautiously at first, and when she saw me with my daughter, she realized I was a good father. Not long after that, Uncle Fester’s free ride came to an end.
He had been sponging off her for way too long. She told him he had to get a job or go to school or something, but she wouldn’t be supporting him anymore otherwise. The next day, he was in the bed of the mother of one of his actual children. When the free ride was over, he was gone.
She started letting me see my son after that.
Eventually, she started demanding it. She doesn’t want him to have Uncle Fester’s surname anymore. Not only that, she wishes she could take back all the messed-up things she did to me, and if she could, she would steal me away from my lady. She wants me back badly, and now my son loves me more than anyone in the world. He calls me Daddy now, like he should, and he’ll never even remember that other jerk.
So I guess in the end, I won. Funny how things work out.”
1. The Woman Gets Messed Over In The 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 ‘girls.’ 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 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 girls.’
I took the iPad to the office, opened up 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 dirty texting, there was an inappropriate 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 inappropriate 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 in any accounts we are joint on, leave her half alone. I had already redirected my paycheck to a new bank. I close our 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 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 nonsense 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 market account.
I’ve withdrawn my half 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 myself 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 life 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 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.
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 whenever I want by dangling that carrot of maybe getting back together.
But that is never going to happen.”
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