People Unfold Their Most Profound Revenge Story
16. Want Hot Peppers? Sure, Here You Go
“So I didn’t do this, but I was there when my coworker did.
I’m from New England, and my coworker (let’s call him Char) was from the south and with a don’t push your luck attitude. We both work at a store called, let’s call it, The Hen. Now the person he got this oh-so-sweet revenge on (let’s call him Grant) is an avid bar fly and would come to our store intoxicated as a skunk.
We made sandwiches there, and Grant loved the chicken salad we had.
As of late, Grant had been getting more intoxicated and acting like a jerk making a mess, and we had to move him away from the women that would come in cause he’d be a total creeper to them.
As this was getting progressively worse, he started to be mouthy to us. Telling us to shut up and make his food, etc.
Well, Char had had enough one night when Grant mouthly said, “You better put hot peppers in this freaking sandwich, or I’ll come back and beat you.
I’m not paying for this if you can’t do it freaking right, you dumb freak.”
Char: “You want hot peppers, you got it!”
Now Char pads down the bottom of this soft sub roll that we use, and he just loads it to the edge with hot peppers.
And proceeds to finish making his sandwich being careful to finish it where it won’t fall apart. This guy buys it and goes home.
Now I like the hot relish our store had cause it had heat, so a little could go a long way, and a lot could upset your stomach big time.
Well, it did with my stomach. But this guy’s sandwich had more than a cup’s worth in it.
So I finish my paperwork and go home. And came in the next day and Char was still there and was out back explaining to the store owner what had happened. Grant was well known by the entire staff and owner.
And it erupted into a lot of laughter.
Come to find out, around 6 am, Grant woke up and ran to the bathroom. And his screaming from (for lack of a better term) the flaming poops woke up everybody in the place he was staying. And that his butt had been on fire for the better part of the entire day.
I’m wondering how he ate the sub without all the peppers falling out. Also found out, Char as a kind gesture made it so he could open it from one end and unwrap it as he ate it. And Grant didn’t come in for a few days.
But he wasn’t coming completely intoxicated anymore, and he had been more polite to Char from that point on, and we had no more issues with him.”
15. Want Me To Rush The Work On Your Car? It'll Cost You
“Just some background info: I own a body and paint shop in a city with a lower cost of living than the surrounding cities.
Because of this, my prices are more reasonable than some other shops in the surrounding areas. Also, I am very picky when it comes to my work and have the mindset that regardless of what my customers are paying (within reason), I will take extra steps to make sure the end result is up to my standards, and I always include a warranty on my work.
As a result of this, most of my customers are referred to me from the other more expensive cities around because they want quality work at a lower price (my prices are not cheap, but they are lower in comparison to more high-end shops in more expensive areas for the same quality work).
This has usually been a win-win for me and my customers.
Now for the malicious compliance.
I had a guy call me and ask the usual questions, and he agreed to bring his vehicle down to my shop, so I could inspect it and give him a quote.
The following day, he brings his vehicle down to my shop, and I immediately realize that the vehicle has been previously painted (experienced painters can usually tell). In this case, it was obviously not done correctly as the paint was already beginning to fail. He wanted to do a full restoration of the vehicle to factory condition, and I explained to him that due to the fact that the vehicle had been repainted before, there could be a chance that the time frame or price could change depending on what is underneath the paint once I start sanding, for example, improper bodywork or prep work done by the previous painter.
I also tell him that if I do find any issues, that I will run them by him before continuing to make sure it still fits within his budget.
We agree to the terms and a rough time frame of 3-4 weeks so long as there are no surprises.
He leaves a deposit, and I begin work on his truck. 3 days later, I have the bed removed as well as the front end, doors, and interior, leaving the truck as basically a skeleton, and I start sanding the parts. After I start sanding and I get through the paint layers, I see that there is some previous body filler on the panels which is normal on older cars especially when they have been repainted. Most of the time, it’s no biggie when the previous repairs are done properly meaning the body filler should never exceed 1/8” thick, but I quickly find out that the cab of the truck had had a pretty severe impact before which the previous body shop had not pulled out before doing bodywork and the panel had a full 1 1/2” of body filler.
I stopped what I was doing and called up the owner to let him know. After discussing it and sending him a video of the issues, we agreed to add an extra 2 weeks to the time frame and additional repair costs, and I began the proper repairs.
About 2 weeks into the original drop-off date, I get a call from the owner of the truck, and he tells me that he needs the truck to be done by the following week because he has a buyer for it, and he doesn’t want to wait any longer.
At this point, I have the truck completely torn apart and have only finished the bodywork on the cab and front end and just started the repairs on the bed and doors and that we had agreed to an additional 2 weeks on top of the original time frame which still had not come yet for a total of 5-6 weeks.
I explained to him that it would not be possible for me to get all the remaining work done within a week without me having to hire more people, which would add to the cost of the job. He followed up by saying that he would not pay a penny more and that if his truck was not done by that date that he would be at my shop with a tow truck and law enforcement to take it, and he wouldn’t pay the remaining balance.
Now I knew that he would not be able to get away without paying the balance and that law enforcement would back that up, as in my state, I am allowed to place a lean on any vehicle that has a balance on labor already performed and agreed to by the customer which he had.
Now for the malicious compliance. At this point, the customer has begun making threats and insults, so I tell them I would get the truck done on certain conditions: the warranty would be void, I would not be responsible for any previous work done to the truck that may fail, and the outstanding balance would be paid in full on the day of pick up, and that the job would be considered complete.
He agreed to the terms and told me to do what I had to to make sure it was done.
I proceeded to finish the repairs I had started still doing them the way I should but for the remaining parts I simply sanded the paint a bit and proceeded to paint the truck, and sure enough, the paint showed issues immediately, but the truck was “finished” on time.
The owner comes to pick up his truck and is livid at the results and proceeded to call the police because he did not want to pay. The police arrive, and I show them the paperwork he signed as well as all the text messages backing my explanation.
The cops then tell him that unless he pays the balance, he would be forced to leave the truck and pay storage fees until it was. He reluctantly paid the balance and proceeded to take the truck to another shop, which the truck sat at for an additional 4 months, and he had to pay almost double the price I was charging to have them redo some of the work.
The parts I took my time on before the whole issue arose were left alone.”
14. Work Overtime? No Can Do, My Working Hours Are From 9 AM to 6 PM Exactly
Not a minute sooner or later.
“To clarify a few things: this took place in Europe. I was a salaried employee (40 hours/week). I left that job about 10 months after the “event” took place. I didn’t get into trouble, and nobody tried to fire me (my probation period was over, and we have employment laws regarding constructive dismissal, so I knew their hands were tied).
About four years back, I started a new banking job. All was well, just that the management was pretty strict with timekeeping, which was weird as we were back office (my experience was in a similar field at another bank, and we had flexible schedules and received time in lieu).
But rules are rules, so I followed them. I learned my tasks and got to know the wider team.
Anyway, about four months in, I started to realize my senior manager didn’t like me. I’m pretty assertive as a person, and I do know how to stand up for myself.
He hated it. I would speak up during the meetings, ask questions, give suggestions, and so on, while the team would stay quiet.
The week everything went south, I was working overtime, which was (obviously) unpaid. On Thursday, I did nearly two hours of overtime.
On Friday, I thought I’ll leave a few minutes early as I was done for the week. My manager was off. I left 10 minutes early.
On Monday, I come to work, and I got called into a meeting straight away. There were three of us in the room: myself, my manager, and my senior manager.
Our conversation went as follows:
My manager (MM): I heard you left work early on Friday.
Me: I did. I left 10 minutes early.
MM: Did you ask for permission to leave early?
Me: It was 10 minutes. You know I did about 4 hours of overtime last week.
Why are we having this conversation?
Senior Manager (SM): Because you left early without asking for permission. As a senior, you should be setting an example for the rest of the team.
Me: Is this a joke?
SM: Your working hours are 9 am to 6 pm, not 9 am to 5:50 pm.
You shouldn’t leave early without asking for your manager or my permission first. Is that clear?
Me: Got it. It’s perfectly clear.
I listened and started coming into the office at 9 am and leaving at 6 pm on the dot. At first, they didn’t realize what was happening, but the week after the meeting was the last week of the month.
And let’s say the last week of the month was… intense. Especially the final day. The reports had to be completed, signed off, and submitted before the month’s end. We covered multiple jurisdictions and would deal with Southeast Asia in the morning and the Americas in the evening.
Our team was “expected” to work overtime due to this.
Here comes Friday, the last day of the month. Showtime!
I’m at my desk at 9 am sharp. Most of the team have already been at the office for at least an hour. I, of course, have a cup of coffee from the cafeteria because I was a bit early.
My manager looks at me and raises his eyebrow, but he doesn’t say anything.
Work work work. Break time (we had two 20 minute paid breaks and 1-hour unpaid lunch). I’m the only person to go on my break.
Lunchtime. Everyone was eating at their desks, while I go to meet my friends for lunch.
On the second break, I once again leave my workplace and go for a short stroll around.
Back to work. About a quarter to 6 pm, I get a call from one of the senior managers in the US. She needs the report amended. There were 4 of us on that call.
I’m doing the amendments as we speak and closely monitoring the time. I see it’s two minutes to 6 pm… One minute… 6 pm.
SM2: *rambling about the report*
Me: Apologies, but I have to stop you right here.
SM2: Yes?
Me: It’s 6 pm here.
My day is over.
SM2: Huh?
Me: As per my management, my working hours are 9 am to 6 pm, so I must leave now. Have a great weekend, and we’ll catch up on Monday!
I logged off, got my coat, wished everyone a great weekend, and left. It was 6:04 pm.
Both my manager and my senior manager were dumbfounded by what has happened. Looking pale and staring at me in disbelief. It was a glorious sight.
I wanted to apologize to my senior manager that I wasn’t able to leave at 6 pm on the dot, but I thought that would have been way too passive-aggressive, so I just left.
I relaxed the rule a bit after a few months. Yet, I never did more than 30 minutes of overtime. Ironically, once my stakeholders understood that I will not be available for 10+ hours, they started collaborating earlier in the month. I would have most of my reports done and submitted by the last day of the month.”
Another User Comments:
“I used to give my number out to customers out of kindness. I’d tell them if they had any problems, they could text me, but don’t expect an answer on a Saturday night. Boss wrote me up for “customer neglect” despite being hourly since I would (surprise!) get texts on a Saturday night.
This was not specifically delineated in my employment expectations.
And with my current jobs, the others are surprised when they wonder why I didn’t get an email sent after 5 pm. No, I don’t have my work email on my phone, and I won’t make the effort to check it after that time.
I have Microsoft Teams on my phone, but notifications are turned off. I only turn them on when I’m in the field and may absolutely be needed.
Kindness got me into trouble before. So now I’m doing exactly what’s told, to the letter. Get a hold of me if I’m needed at 4:45.
Not 4:58 or 5:15. I’m long gone by then.” Poolofcheddar
13. When Crows Attack
“This happened long enough ago, and the bully (let’s call him Tom) and his family have moved away, so I feel safe telling this story.
My nephew (let’s call him Ethan) went to elementary (primary) school about two blocks away from me. Since both of his parents (my sister and my brother-in-law) worked, we had an arrangement that Ethan would come stay with me after he got out of school until his parents could come to pick him up and take him home.
Since I worked from home, I was able to help Ethan with homework, make snacks, and play with him.
It was a pretty cozy arrangement. Ethan and I are pretty close, and we had lots of fun playing catch in the yard (he’s now pitching baseball), getting my butt kicked in video games, and even just relaxing with a good movie.
Overall, life was pretty good. Except for one problem.
That problem was named Tom, another kid who was across the street from me and was in the same grade as Ethan.
Beginning in maybe 4th grade, Tom decided that Ethan would make a good target and would bully him on the walk to my house.
It wasn’t unusual for Ethan to show up with tears in his eyes because of the various nonsense Tom pulled. Ethan never would fully tell us (out of fear/wanting to protect us) what was going on.
This became such a problem that Ethan’s parents and I complained to the principal and even tried asking our local police department what we should do.
Unfortunately, their advice/response was all the same: ignore him – we can’t do anything because there’s no proof/not happening on school grounds, try making friends with him, kids will be kids, etc.
Since the attacks were happening during the walk to my house, I started showing up at Ethan’s school to walk him to the nearby baseball field to practice pitching and batting.
This worked for a couple of weeks, and Tom was never a problem (probably because he saw the baseball bat I was carrying, and I’d look at him with, “I will not be afraid to use this on you if you pick on Ethan around me” glaring in my eyes).
Unfortunately… this just led to the bullying happening at school, and it was even worse this time around because “Ethan needed his auntie to help him.”
Once again, the school did nothing because they’re about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.
We even went to Tom’s parents, begging them to knock some sense into their son. I won’t go too much into that confrontation because we’ll be here forever.
But let’s just say that home environment was probably a good reason for why Tom was picking on Ethan.
During this time, Ethan was miserable. He was too afraid to go outside and play because Tom would be there to harass him and he admitted to me later that while he loved me and was happy that I’d walk him home, he wanted to be a big boy and take care of his own problems.
To say that Ethan’s parents and I were at our wit’s ends is an understatement.
We wanted to help him more than anything, but with both Ethan being withdrawn and being out of resources, it was safe to say our hands were tied.
That was until one evening in the middle of Ethan’s summer vacation (between 4th and 5th grade). I was watching the news when I came upon a special on corvids (ravens and crows). A research team did an experiment on wild crows/ravens to test their memory, and it turned out that these birds not only had a sharp memory but would attack anyone who did another crow harm.
The best part? They never forget.
Even after several weeks/months, they remembered the good/bad people.
I knew we had a local murder (a flock of crows) nearby and decided to put this little tidbit of knowledge to the test.
With only two months to go until school started again (and Tom/his family away on vacation and summer camps), I didn’t waste time.
I bought a huge bag of birdseed, and at the times Ethan would walk home, I would walk the path and drop little handfuls of birdseed in full view of the crows, always remembering to take a different route to get to the school so that way the crows wouldn’t get confused.
It took maybe a week or so before I’d notice more crows arriving, and they eventually started leaving shiny things (bottle caps, buttons, discarded gum wrappers, etc.) for me to find.
Once I was sure I had the crows knowing I was the “good” guy, I brought Ethan into this.
We’d walk the path and feed the crows.
Soon enough, the crows would start coming out, and we’d be friendly with them, giving them names, and listening to them “gossip” while sharing news of our own. We must’ve looked really weird to the neighbors, but Ethan really enjoyed it and even looked up things about corvids on his own.
He learned the shiny stuff the crows were leaving was a form of “currency/thank you presents.” Thinking this could be helpful, he started collecting other shiny things for the crows and would leave those in addition to the birdseed.
With two weeks to go until school started up again, I began phasing myself out of the afternoon feeding times, so eventually, it was Ethan who was feeding the crows/leaving gifts on the walk home.
The day before school started, I gave Ethan a bag of birdseed in addition to his shiny things and winked at him.
Sure enough, at the same time Ethan would come home, I heard the crows cawing and what I thought was a little girl screaming.
I stepped outside and saw Tom running towards his house, the crows divebombing him and pecking at him.
Further down the path, Ethan was laughing so hard at the sight of his bully running and screaming like a little girl that he fell to the ground.
Tom peeled into his house and locked the door as I walked over to Ethan and helped him up. Of course, I had to get the juicy details, so I asked what happened.
Ethan was walking home, spreading the birdseed, and leaving the shiny things as usual.
About halfway home, Tom pounced, making some nasty cracks I won’t repeat here before punching Ethan.
And that’s when a crow divebombed Tom. When he tried hitting it away, more and more showed up until the whole murder (who were watching) were ganging up on Tom.
I was smiling sweet tears of revenge at our little feathered friends, especially when I saw the whole murder crowded around Tom’s house like it was a set from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
Needless to say, Tom and his family did not have a pleasant experience for the remainder of the school year.
There was at least one crow in front of his house watching and waiting for him to come out, so he could peck/chase him around.
And every afternoon, the murder was protecting Ethan on his walk home.
Of course, Tom’s parents tried to protect their kid by swinging baseball bats and other things to keep the crows away, but we quickly learned that crows “talk” to each other, and soon, the whole murder was on them too.
They tried to take legal action against Ethan, his parents, and me for “training the crows to attack Tom,” but that got thrown out the window really quick because they had no proof of us training the birds as they had been gone all of summer break, and none of the neighbors wanted to help them (apparently, the murder of crows weren’t the only ones Tom’s family angered).
So for the rest of the year, Tom had to be driven to and from school, so he and his family wouldn’t get attacked. When summer started, they moved away, probably to be rid of the murder of crows.
Ethan has moved on to middle school, but we still visit the murder and leave shiny things for them.
Just in case.”
12. Refuse To Pay Your Staff? We'll Tell Your Woman About Your Dirty Little Secret
And just like that, she knows exactly what you’ve been doing behind your back.
“A few things: First, I am a security officer with a private investigator certification, which allows me to take PI (private investigator) cases as long as it doesn’t Interfere with local police investigations, and any crimes that I witness must be reported to the police asap, so they can make an arrest.
PI cases come from a few sources. We are sometimes contracted by local police to do what’s referred to as spotter work, where we are brought on active wide-area investigations to do recon work and look but not interact with anything that might be involved with the case.
Basically, we are just an extra pair of eyes. Or the local police will mix us in a surveillance operation, and we would follow low profile individuals and report their day-to-day activities. These are completely confidential.
Then there are client contracts. This is where corporate clients contract our company’s personal investigations unit to investigate their employee’s day to day activities while on the job to see if there is some hint that an employee is committing a crime and to report if there is reasonable proof that an employee is breaking the law on company time.
The job is to gather evidence to prove guilt or innocence. These aren’t confidential but we usually sign a non-disclosure agreement.
Finally, there are personal contracts. When a person wants to hire a personal investigator to do a job, it’s usually something along the lines of a woman or man suspects the spouse is two-timing them and wants some kind of proof.
Or someone is looking for a relative or lost family and is trying to reconnect with them. There is no disclosure agreement, and it’s up to the client to draw up a disclosure agreement. Most don’t, but we keep quiet as a professional courtesy.
Ok, now that the job description is done, let me tell you what happened.
About three years ago, I had been hired to do a personal contract.
The client, a rich sleazy snob, was apparently stupidly rich. He hired my unit (when I say my unit I mean the unit I work with a five-man team).
He believed his lady was two-timing him with other people, and he wanted proof of this, so he could start his divorce process with solid evidence. He contracted us in a six-month contract and was to pay the company xxxx dollars upon completion.
So, we set up surveillance cameras all over his large house and in the woman’s car with the client’s permission.
We had at least one of the team tailing her at all times.
Good times. Day in and out, we watched their lives, and in this line of work, you either get detached or emotionally invested, like watching a soap opera.
As we watched them, we quickly saw this lady was a freaking saint.
She volunteered at a soup kitchen and a children’s hospital. She helped with local churches’ canned food drives. Those kinds of things. She was the perfect definition of what a good human should be. On the other hand, the man was a total jerk.
He was the one we caught many times bringing women to his house. Sometimes, he would bring two or three girls in one day. And that is only what was recorded in the house.
We arrive at the four-month mark., which is basically where we show all the evidence and give the 3/4 report.
We show him everything that we found and have a six-hour debrief with video and audio support, showing that she hadn’t done any wrongdoing other than a speeding ticket and a few double park situations.
After we concluded the debrief, he looked stupefied. He says, “So, you didn’t catch her.
That what was the point of me hiring you?”
My boss, our captain, turns to him with a serious stare, which is perhaps in the most serious looking face I have ever seen in that man, and said, “You hired us to investigate your woman.
You’re unhappy that your partner is an honest and faithful woman?”
The snob is visibly annoyed. He stands up and is getting his jacket when my captain says, “Look, there are still two months on the contract. We will keep tailing her, and we’ll meet again after our contract is up and give you any updates.”
The snob turns to him and says, “Don’t bother. This is over. I’m ending it. Come when she is not home, and get your equipment out.”
So, a week later, we did exactly that.
Now, food for thought. When contracts like this are made, a small portion is paid upfront as a commission fee, and the rest is paid at the end of the contract’s allotted time.
In his case, it is six months. Now pay works like this: the commission is divided up between each PI as a bonus to our salary, and then the salary is what we get from the company to get us through to the completion of the contract.
The remaining balance after being paid by the client is then divided into a cut for completion for the PIs and a cut for the office. Good cash when done right.
So, fast forward to the next payday after the contract is officially over. My unit gets a call from our office to come in on the next payday as there is an emergency meeting regarding us and the last contact.
We get there and find out snob pulled the funding and refused to pay us for the work.
So, we’re getting paid, just not with the completion bonus. We all left super angry. We went to lunch and brainstormed how to get even with the jerk.
Then we remembered all the house footage of his dirty deeds. At first, we wanted to blackmail him, but that’s low, and we’re better than that. I remembered the lady, so I reached out to her.
I set a date to sit down and explain everything to her.
I showed her the videos. She cried for a good half hour. I think I broke her whole world. It was gut-wrenching. I then advised her to get a lawyer and proceeded to give her all the collected evidence and my business card.
AFTERMATH: Fast forward about six months.
I’m called into court, as my company is suing him for fraud, breach of contract, and unpaid dues. My company wins the case easily, as his lawyer’s argument was that we failed to deliver the result he wanted. But we weren’t hired to deliver a product.
We were hired to observe and report. We got paid in the end.
I was contacted by the woman who thanked me for all the evidence. She got a divorce. Because of all the evidence I gave her, she got almost everything: his huge house, both cars, and a huge cash sum.
Moral of this story: don’t try to screw over people who specialize in gathering evidence and reconnaissance.
Update as of June 17, 2019:
A lot of private messages and a few posts asked about the woman. I promised I’d look into it, and I did.
I got in touch with her. And we agreed to meet with her yesterday.
She was delighted to hear from me. We met up at a local coffee shop. And I got to meet her new partner. And she has had two kids (both girls and are cuties and so well behaved) with him and is pregnant with the third (confirmed it’s a boy).
She has been remarried for almost two years now.
After a few coffees and idle chat, she told me about her own petty revenge story.
Now keep in mind this is what she told me, so take it with a grain of salt.
She told me of how the family of the super snob demanded that they get the house back as it’s their family ancestral home and offered to buy the house from her almost immediately after her divorce hearing.
She had a realtor come and evaluate the house. The family wanted to give her $250,000. But the realtor concluded that the house value was near $1.5 million. The family kept demanding she sells over the following months.
She “told” the family about the realtor and his appraisal documents of the house are $5 million.
So she would be putting on the market up for sale for that price but would sell to them first because they were like family for a discount of $3.5 million. They bought the house with cash the next day in hand.
End the pleasant evening with them.
As I’m leaving, the lady smiles at me and grabs the sleeve of my arm.
She says, “Wait, I never got to say this, and I want to tell you. Thank you! You are a blessing that rescued me.” She then reached in her purse and get her wallet.
I think she is going to hand me cash or something. And I raise my hand to stop her. She smiles and pulls out my old business card. And says, “I tried to call you and your company a year ago to thank you. But the number on the card was disconnected. I wanted to know if you could update your contact information for me.” I ask her why she continues smiling.
“Because you’re the kind of person I like. You were looking out for me when I needed it, and I want to keep you in my back pocket just in case.” I updated my contact information for her and was invited with my family to their home for dinner on Friday.
The icing on the cake of yesterday is this morning, amazingly, I just got a call from my boss, very excited told me that “we, specifically you, have a new client who has offered you a five-year employment contract.” Apparently, the woman’s new man is a magistrate.
And has got his boss to approve a contract for the company. With the provision that I oversee as the new captain. This means the unit I will be running will be taking our job assignments directly from the court.
So thanks to everyone who asked me to check up on her.
I went to meet for coffee and a chat and gained a high-profile and paying client.”
Another User Comments:
“What did this guy think your services were? Like you said, your job is to observe and report; you’re not there to magically come up with some random footage of the guy’s woman being unfaithful to him if she’s the saint you’re describing.
I am very glad that it all worked out and that the final outcome was so good – I’m sure the payoff from all that was very sweet!” Fenrirs_Phantom
He thought he would catch her in something (because, in his mind, everyone is doing something) that would allow him to break the pre-nup.
That's why he hired them.
11. Deputy Manager Learns From His Mistakes
“Bit of background, I’ve worked in the pub trade since ’87. I’ve been a kitchen manager, a pub manager, and tested multiple new POS (point of sale) and T&A (time & attendance) systems for different companies.
For my mental health, I decided a few years back to take a drop back down to a shift manager; it just wasn’t worth the stress for the money, and it ended up causing me a full breakdown.
Basically, I kinda know what I’m talking about!
A few years back, the place I work at employed a new DM (Deputy Manager) 1 step below the PM (Pub Manager) and my line boss. Realistically, he only got the job because I refused a promotion. He was fresh out of uni with a lovely, shiny, new piece of paper showing he knew everything that it is possible to know about management, and obviously, with his years (a massive 3 years!) of experience working behind a bar, he could never be wrong…
Our company has SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) that are basically the rules you need to follow to do every task. I’ve been there since they were 1st implemented and actually helped write several of them with regards to the POS and T&A systems since like every set of rules there are exceptions in certain rare situations.
Our pub being a 24-hour operation unit is one of those where rare situations crop up regularly.
I was on a run of close shifts following on from the DM’s shift, and the PM was on holiday so DM was in total charge. He decided to make his mark and sort things out… I received a call that he needed me in an hour earlier to discuss a few things…
When I turned up for the meeting, he has a ream of paperwork in front of him, exception reports detailing closing down and dealing with the POS & T&A, corrections I had done to his work during the day plus printouts of SOPs.
He started laying into me about how I was breaking the SOPs every night and how disappointed he was in me for not knowing or following the correct procedures like he did. How I should never correct my superior’s work. This was a formal meeting with minutes being taken and he threatened me with a full disciplinary if I didn’t follow the SOPSs exactly, emphasizing his point by pressing his finger dramatically on the printed out SOPs in front of him.
I asked him in my nicest possible voice to clarify that “he wanted me to follow those SOPs he was pointing at every night?” which he answered rather condescendingly in the affirmative.
Cue the malicious compliance! Dutifully, I took his printed-out copies and swore I’d follow them to the letter!
Every night for my closedowns, I used the printed-out copies he had given me (can any of you see where this is going yet?)
The next night was the end of the week, so all the T&A needed to be closed and the end of week procedures for the POS completed. I was on days off, and the DM was closing, so he’d have to do it all.
About 1 am, I got a call from him because none of the end-of-week processes would work and they HAD to be done before he left. He’d tried everything and had even tried to call the PM to help him. The PM’s response was to “call alightvlogging; he knows the system inside out and will tell you what you need to do.”
I took great pleasure in telling him the SOPs he had given me were for a regular pub, and we had a specific set of SOPs for 24-hour pubs detailing slight differences we needed to do; otherwise, the end of week processes would fail (altering start times of some staff by 1 minute, so they fell on the correct start day and altering the POS system start time by 1 minute, so it fell on the right day as well).
This was something I did every night on close and was why I had all the exception reports he was complaining about. Fixing it so that end of the week worked was simple but incredibly repetitive and would take an hour or so. My parting comment was, “Just follow the specific SOPs; it’s all explained in there, and if you have an issue, call me back… I know those SOPs well because I wrote them!”
Next shift, I found out that he had left work over 3 hours late that night, and the PM had given him a rather stern talking to about learning to walk before he ran and who to go to if he thought something was wrong. In the end, he became a decent DM, and I was sad to see him go when he got his own pub.
He called me the other day to help him with an issue he was having with the T&A system, which is what brought this malicious compliance memory back.”
10. Demand Us To Remake Your Pizza With Extra Sauce? Enjoy Your Pizza Soup
“This adventure involves: 16” dough, a ton of pizza sauce, a way younger me, and an angry mid-western lady.
I was working a closing shift alone at a pizza shop (minus the drivers on delivery), and I wouldn’t say that I really had developed the same sense of urgency I have as an adult now to maintain employment.
(Granted, I didn’t get fired for this.)
Lady comes in, orders a regular 14” cheese pizza with extra sauce to go.
At the little family-owned shop I worked for, the menu item “extra sauce” operationally meant that we used a larger ladle to scoop and apply the sauce, but, I would come to find that this proportion was not sufficient for this lady.
Disclaimer: at that stage of my life, human error is a POSSIBILITY, but I put gosh darn extra sauce on the first pizza. (I darn sure did on the second one too.)
After making her first pizza, I hand it over, and she opens the box to inspect it at the counter.
I can see that she’s not happy with it.
Fluently in Rude American, she says “Honey, I know you work at a pizza place, so this is probably hard for you to understand, but I ordered extra sauce on this pizza.”
She doesn’t leave me much room to speak and tells me I need to remake her pizza with “extra sauce this time” and have it delivered to her place.
I’m 100% salty, but, I decide to take her address and arrange a comped pizza. As soon as she left, I got to work on my masterpiece.
Now, the lady ordered a 14” pizza, but I instead opted for a 16” dough over a 14” screen, allocating the excess dough to the crust for reinforcement.
Next, I open a new can of pizza sauce and I pour it directly into the dough mountain I just made. It’s a freaking pond at this point.
For emphasis, as I lift this pizza puddle off of the sauce station, the pizza is noticeably very heavy, and I have to walk slowly to avoid swishing the freaking sauce everywhere.
I would guess it weighed about 4 lbs, and the sauce was 3-4” or so thick. (My estimate of 3-4” is way off. I used a single number 10 size can, which was 6 lbs of pizza sauce on her pie and far less than 3” in height.) Undoubtedly, it was a threatening and alarming amount of pizza sauce involved.
I put some cheese on top, and I have to run it through our oven about three times to even get it to cook.
It finally cooks, and I pack it up, but I can’t cut it because obviously sauce will run everywhere. I did incorrectly assume that anyone else handling this pizza would be able to make that judgment as well.
In hindsight, I had the benefit of being there when the sauce was literally dumped on it, so maybe leaving a note advising the customer not to cut the pizza would have been more “holy” or whatever.
I hand the soup to the driver; he doesn’t think it’s funny and has to hold it in his lap the whole time to keep it from spilling.
50 minutes later or so after delivery, I get a call. It’s the angry mid-western lady, and she’s really mad this time. I gather from our conversation that she made an attempt to slice that pizza, and made quite the mess for herself in the process.
I didn’t say anything funny or witty back. I just gave her the number to use for complaints, but internally, I thought it was freaking hilarious.
She sent a scathing review of my masterpiece which printed at the station next to me and was promptly shredded that evening.”
Another User Comments:
“I worked at a couple of pizza places. Once in the burbs, this lady would always order a large meat lovers with extra black olives. She would always, always complain about not enough olives on the pizza, undertip the driver, send the pizza back, ask for a discount, etc.
One night, we were sick of it, so I dumped a bunch of the juice from the giant olive jar on the pizza before I cooked it.
Crazy woman called… saying it was theeee best pizza ever. Um. Whoops.” Born-Pineapple
9. Give Me Permission To Quit During The Heat Of The Moment? I'll Actually Quit
“I never quit a job in my whole life without giving suitable notice… But not this time.
My encounter with one of the worst managers I have ever had the misfortune to work for.
My family was not rich, and I needed to get as much cash as possible after I turned legally able to work to pay for my school tuition.
I worked for a temp agency specialized in logistic and transport jobs. I took as many jobs as possible: day jobs, 2 hours paid only jobs, weekly jobs, and always made my employer satisfied. They trusted me even for the toughest jobs you can imagine.
I have one simple rule: Treat me with respect, and I will respectfully work for you.
Even doing sometimes overtime is fine by me as long as the employer is nice.
This is the story about me working for a new warehouse dealing with shipments.
We were about 10 young men, all university students, and would have to work from 3 am to 8 am from Monday to Friday.
No overtime, no extra pay on night shifts… Just the basic minimum wage and nothing else. No cash for food, nor gas.
Our job was to dispatch all kinds of parcels into different trucks.
It was summer, so it was freaking hot. So hot you could grill a steak on the pavement.
And of course, no aircon. But that makes sense as doors were always kept open.
Not only was the job tough, but the warehouse managers barely respected safety rules.
For example, parcels that exceed 55 pounds are not allowed to be carried alone.
When one of us dares to tell the main manager that it was way too heavy to lift alone, he would just say “Don’t be a wimp!
Everyone here is doing the same job! If they can lift it, you can do it! And if you are not happy about it, just leave! You’re not irreplaceable!”
He kept yelling the same things over and over in that small warehouse.
We were all assigned to a different gate, therefore we were all working alone but not too far from each other.
Days were always busy, and we could only have a 5-minute break for a quick shot in the toilets or a quick smoke.
The worst was for the people assigned at the bottom end of the warehouse. They literally had to run the whole way if they wanted to take a trip to the washroom.
Worst thing? The manager barely helped anyone on the floor. He just spent his time walking around and yelling, “Don’t forget, you’re not irreplaceable! There are plenty of people begging for a job outside willing to take your place!” And the one I hated the most was, “If you’re not happy, then leave!”
The job was already painful enough, so why did he need to make it more annoying?
Sometimes parcels could barely fit inside a truck as it was getting fully loaded. The manager would usually yell at us for being incompetent and would literally kick parcels, smashing the content to make it fit inside the truck, and proudly says, “You see?!
How can this be that complicated?!”
The icing on the cake was, one night, we arrived as always at 2:45 am, all of us nearly falling asleep and no one to open the gate for us. We waited until 3:30 until the manager arrived and straight away yelled at us: “What are you doing here?”
“Well, we are here to work…”
“The trucks have been delayed; no need for you to be here! Get back home!”
“Are we still going to be paid? We showed up. No one told us not to come!”
He smugged.
“Why would you be paid?
You are not working! Now get back home, and no need to come unless we call you!”
We were stunned. And quite furious.
As the manager left, we all agreed on a few things.
Here is where the revenge starts.
No one showed at work the next day.
I received a call from an angry manager at 3:30.
“Where are you?! There is work to be done.”
“You told us not to come unless you’d call us.”
“Then what do you think I’m doing right now?! Get up and get here!”
“I’m sorry, manager, but you are not my employer.
I’m employed by (temp agency name); therefore, all shifts must be confirmed by my employer before allowing me to go on site. The office opens at 8:30, so please call them, and they will call me.”
I hung up.
At around 9 am, I received a call from my temp agency asking why all of us did not show up.
I gently explained everything and the agency asked me if I could go there now. I explained that I could not, as I have to attend some classes.
After a short conversation about the working conditions we had, the agency asked me if I could go there the day after.
I told them that I could probably finish the week (it was a weekly contract), but I would not be interested to stay longer. They understood.
We all showed up the day after, and sure enough, the manager was angry.
He starting yelling at us as always stating we were a spoiled generation that knows nothing about hard work and takes everything for granted… Etc., and we all got back to work.
Again he started the same thing, not helping but just yelling around.
“If you’re not happy, then quit! You’re not irreplaceable!”
I stopped putting parcels in the truck and said: “You’re totally right, Manager! I’m not happy! So I quit!”
“What are you talking about!
Get back to work!”
“You just told me that if I was not happy, I could quit. Then you’re right! I quit!”
“Get back to work, or I’ll…”
“Or you’ll what?” I asked gently.
“The manager is right. I quit too.” Said another staff.
And within a few minutes, the 10 of us left the warehouse, as the manager kept screaming he’ll get our butts.
It was 5:30 am, and there was a ton of work to do, but only the manager and some management staff in the office were there.
Left with a ton of work to do.
I received another call from my temp agency who asked what happened. How can 10 people decide to leave their job on the spot like that?
I explained that I simply did what the manager told me.
I’m not happy.
So I quit.
And then I added all safety procedures that were not respected at work. No safety gloves were provided. No earplugs provided, carrying heavy goods without any help, etc.
They told me they would have a meeting with the person in charge but to please never do something like this again.
And yeah, I still worked from time to time for this temp agency after that.
My conclusion and what I learned from that?
Treat people with respect, and they will respect you. Treat them like trash, and karma will simply hit you.”
8. Answer The Phone At All Times? Will Do
“A couple of years ago, I worked for a real estate company as the manager of its co-living division. Think of it as a living arrangement where the company leases the apartment from the property owner, remodels it, and then sub-leases to multiple tenants by the room (it’s legal in my country).
The owner of the company, let’s call him Jerk (last name Face), had a tendency to… misguide company funds. As such, he was constantly late on rent payments to the owners. One night, he calls me and tells me that, as manager, my responsibilities now include coordinating rent payments.
I think nothing of it because it’s a simple enough task, and it doesn’t take much time. What he didn’t tell me was that he called every single property owner and told them that he was too busy, so I was now in charge of paying their rent, and that if it was late, they should talk to me.
Fast forward a couple of weeks, and Mr. Face is still misguiding company funds, so there isn’t any cash for paying rent, even though I know for a fact we’re generating enough revenue. Owners are constantly calling me during weekends and nights, so I don’t answer the phone because it’s not working hours.
Jerk calls me on a weekend, and he’s very upset. It seems that owners can’t reach me at their convenience, so instead, they’re calling him. He tells me it’s my job to answer the phone every single time and tell them what’s going on with the rent payment, so I say, “Ok sure, sorry,” and we hang up.
Enter malicious compliance.
Next time an owner calls me up, he nicely asks, “Hey, I just wanted to know what’s going on with my rent payment. Can you please give me a date or any info?” And I pretty much say, “I’m sorry sir, we had the cash in the account, and my boss took it for unknown reasons.
Unfortunately, I don’t know when and if that cash will be back in the account, so I suggest you ask him directly.” I do the same for about 5 days with every owner that calls me as I now make sure to answer every single call that I get, even if it’s outside working hours.
By next weekend, my boss has a voicemail inbox full of angry property owners asking what he’s doing with the cash he’s supposed to pay them (apparently, he was using it to remodel his own apartment and buy a new car for his lady) and threatening to sue the company because of what I told them.
He was livid, suspended me without pay (to which I replied with my resignation), and the company went under a few months later.
Bonus note: I later found out that one of the owners showed up at his house literally wielding a big stick. When the doorman refused to let him in, he yelled on the street until neighbors came out and the police showed up.
Jerk tried to blame the whole thing on me, even telling owners that I had ran away with their coin, but pretty much no one believed him. The best part? He had promised to make me a partner but didn’t. If he had, then I would’ve been liable for all this, but he was a selfish jerk and got what he deserved.
Oh and before anyone tells me I should’ve sued or called the police on him, bear in mind this is in a third world country, so there’s literally no point.”
7. We'll Stop Clocking In Early Without Pay Since You're So Strict About Clock-In And Clock-Out Times
“I worked in the tourism sector in a museum as a hands-on historian/actor. Our job was to expand on the text and exhibitions, play games with the kids, answer questions, and be general fonts of useless knowledge.
Eight of us and we had medieval “characters,” wore costumes, and were generally well-received. It was hokey and corny but fun.
Hardly a stellar paying job, but we all loved what we did, knew a lot, and worked darn hard to make sure guests were happy.
Until our old boss had to leave due to family issues, and we got a new one. A real corporate manager.
Before she arrived our old boss was pretty lax. He didn’t have to be breathing over our shoulders as he knew that we did our jobs.
We had a clocking-in machine, and the rule was, logging out three minutes early or late didn’t affect our pay. Because we enjoyed the work, we always came in early and clocked in (not being paid) to set everything up. We had to get dressed, set up the games, make sure the activities were out, general maintenance stuff.
This took time. Occasionally, we ended up staying late if something unexpected came up. Again, no problem.
When the new boss started, she didn’t straight away start making changes, but she was watching us. Our work is obviously dependant on how much human traffic we have.
If there are no patrons, there’s nothing for us to do. The flip side was that when it was busy, we didn’t have time to blink.
She called us into a meeting and said that it wasn’t suitable that during quiet time, we were standing around talking, and we should be engaging in some kind of work like cleaning, tidying, or picking up rubbish.
Despite that, we had a team that did that. So work for work’s sake. To justify our wages as we weren’t being paid to chat. It was explained to her by our unofficial team leader that you’re not just paying for our labor but our time as well.
She did not like/understand this idea. But we made ourselves “look busy.” She also believed that she knew the job better than we did, stopped listening to our suggestions, and started making little rules of what we could and couldn’t tell people regarding the history.
Nothing too gruesome for instance. Ever met children? They love the gory details (age-appropriate of course); there’s a reason why horrible histories is so popular.
The second issue cued the malicious compliance. Again, another meeting. This time over the three minutes early clock out. That we were paid until 17:00, not 16:57.
That our hours were 10:00 to 17:00. No mention of us clocking in early. So we did just that.
No one clocked out before 17:00. But no one clocked out after 17:01 either. Nor did we clock in early anymore. More than once, she saw us standing at the clock-in machine at 09:55.
Asked us to clock in. We said no. That it wasn’t time. She tried telling us that we should be in early to prepare regardless of whether we were being paid. We told her no; working without pay is not what we’re doing. This meant that those 20-25 minutes per person set up were now being done once we were clocked in.
No longer was the museum ready when the doors opened. Early morning patrons noticed. Because of her making them work every second regardless, it also meant the team was often scarce. We would be moving rubbish, filling leaflet shelves, getting rid of cleaning instruments, and also, to be frank, hiding to get five minutes of peace.
Morale also fell, so we followed the letter but not the spirit of the job description. We frankly stopped caring as we didn’t feel valued.
I don’t know what it’s like now as the entire team left within nine months. Far as I know, she’s still there, but I don’t know how she’s running the ship.
But none of us have been back.”
6. Time To Pay This Woman What She's Worth
“In the late ’80s, I was working in manufacturing and had become a respectable prototype mechanic. Fun times!
This was early enough, and the shop was small enough for me to experience a lot of old-school ways of doing things. Paper tape, actual hand drawings, math, writing g-code manually, layout, all sorts of great skills I’ve used off and on in my life since.
But, I was pinned as far as advancement went.
Plenty of senior people with lots of time remaining in their careers left me in a good place, but it didn’t pay what I needed, and it was going to be the same place for a long while…
Enter a good friend who took an opportunity to clean up a rough shop. He wanted help, and I would be hired right into the next position I wanted.
Deal!
This place was like a backward time machine! The people were the worst. Well, most of them were.
Company practices were a mess! Many of the people in the shop were arrogant, not particularly skilled, and many were bigots, haters out and proud. That was hard to bear, but I got some important lessons about what it takes to stand up for other people, along with slashed tires, some pretty egregious abuse, and the occasional leave early before ‘they’ get out to the parking lot!
This was flat-out crazy!
To top the rough experience off, most of the equipment was old, abused, and poorly serviced. But none of that is central to the story, just some setup.
I noticed fairly early on that all of the women worked in one place.
Found out they all made within a dime of one another, and it was all basically minimum wage, despite some of these women having considerable skill and experience. I became good friends with one of them like we’ve all had happen at the workplace.
We both were married and would joke sometimes about ‘work spouse’ due to the richness of the friendship. Let’s call her Tara, for the purpose of this story.
Being young, we had a lot of fun despite the oppressive environment. Part of my job was to improve this company.
Clean up the equipment, establish better practices, modernize where possible and practical. I was in my 20’s and most of the changes impacted people in their 50’s.
Yeah, those arrogant haters were very set in their ways. Let me just say there were sparks.
Along the way, the company had purchased some computer equipment and an MRP system.
They didn’t do a network, opting for a serial terminal VT 100 type setup instead. I helped set all that up and got my first sysadmin experience on that system. It was a lot of fun, despite being old school dated from the moment it was delivered.
I managed to do various automations, including using PCs for some of the terminals so I could run scripting software that would streamline input and capture information for reports without having to drudge through the software interfaces to do it, but I digress.
Here’s the key thing: I made a book.
In that book was this company. All the systems, equipment, docs on the automations… everything! And I’m good at that kind of thing. Trust me, if you were just dropped into place and were tech-literate on any level that book was all you needed.
One day I walked in to find my desk having been moved, and it was facing Tara! She grinned and said, ‘well look at this! Looks like we are working together now.’ Truth is, we both thought it was strange but cool as we did have a lot of fun.
I asked why, and they said Tara needed to learn some job cost aspects of the system for accounting, and I was fine with that. She had little manufacturing experience but was tech literate, so off we went.
I took her through the shop, and again that time capsule.
If she wore anything but a bag, the leers were obvious and intense! We both felt pretty bad about that, but the rest of the training was just fine.
I taught her everything because I had a plan.
See, all the women making the same money, forced into one room, one role basically, didn’t sit well.
We both were married, and we both were looking to start families, and we both needed more to make life happen as we needed it to do. I was denied a wage increase, and she was stuck at the pittance women were paid in that company.
Neither of us was going to be happy there, and the longer it went on, the higher the overall life impact too, and we both knew it.
I had finished the hard improvement work with my good friend. Quality was up, new work came in the building, and we both learned a lot, both grew considerably for the experience.
But in most other ways the environment was actually bad for me personally. Toxic.
I also wanted to move out of manufacturing due to the massive outsourcing going on, and she wanted to get out of accounting and into more tech/management-type work. So it was settled, and soon the day came where I was going to leave.
We had a little party, both realizing the playful, close times were coming to an end, but life was out there and we both were going to go live it large too!
We discussed the plan: ‘Tara, take this book home and just camp on it.’ Many knew about ‘the book’ but nobody knew about the expanded edition Tara had.
I knew they would be calling me within a week, and I was going to refer them to Tara and say I was busy otherwise. She was going to say she can do the work and would expect to get paid what that work was worth.
If we were successful, she would nearly double her income and we both would advance our careers and stick it right to misogynistic haters, bigots, and theocrats who really deserved it.
Took two weeks. And I got a phone call: ‘They paid me!’ YES!! Oh, that felt super good on basically all fronts.
Do some good for someone else? Check. Stick it to jerks? Double-check.
We kept in touch for a year or two after that, and the place slowly spiraled out of control again. She left soon afterward taking her new experience and skill into a great opportunity same as I did.
There was a bit more brain drain and it reached a point where one of the owners’ sons showed up angry and literally cut EVERY wire in the building. Strangest thing I have ever heard of.
All the wires. Not just cut but cut good, many with long sections missing.
It all sold at auction a few months after that. The building still stands today, old, decrepit, but somehow still hosting some business or other.
It should be condemned.
I put the setup into this answer to hopefully convey just how painful it was for those people to actually pay a woman what she’s worth.
And to convey just how delicious it was to have been part of making all that happen! The calls I got! One was literally screaming, ‘you know we can’t pay HER!!’ (yeah you can, snicker.)
The best part, over and above the gratification I got out of seeing our plan work so well, is I realized I am the sort who will stand for others who deserve it.
Those couple of years had a big impact on me and I took many painful lessons into what has been a great career so far.”
Another User Comments:
“I worked in a shop that was like that. Old guys would go slower than snails for overtime.
They sabotaged new machines. I was only doing summers, and I was in trouble because I was putting out too much product. I wound up having to only work 1/2 a day and then hide. The place finally went under, and these dudes were old and had no real skills.
I have no idea what any of them did for a job. Of course, it was the company’s fault.” Adlai Armundsen
5. Cause Unnecessary Drama At Your Party? No More TV Remotes For You
“This happened probably a good 8 years ago on Halloween. I went to a house party with some friends of mine hosted by some people I did not know. Pretty much everyone there was cool… except the guy who lived there. If I had to compare his demeanor to anything, it was that of an 80’s high school movie villain.
It was casual enough where I asked about his costume (he was a dog, I think), and for whatever reason, he got very offended when I said my mom had a dog.
What followed next was a series of events I still laugh about to this day (due to my pettiness).
The first thing that happened was the line to the bathroom. This was an old row home with 2 bathrooms, one on the main level and one in the basement. The line to the main level bathroom was lengthy so I decided to see about the basement.
Here I run into this jerk and he yells at me that I am not allowed to use this bathroom.
Cool, it’s your house no biggie. As I leave I hear that bathroom door open and someone exits it. Whatever I keep it pushing.
A little while later nature calls again. This time I make my way to the main floor bathroom where I have my second run-in with this dude. Now from my point of view, he is not waiting for the bathroom as he is on his phone.
As I go to open the bathroom door he reaches across the hall and blocks me from trying. Says he’s next. I apologize and try to make some small talk. He is not having it and I’m noticing a pattern of unnecessary aggressiveness.
Following the bathroom incidents are what I would call the final straw. A bunch of us are in the kitchen drinking, talking, and having a good time.
This dude comes in out of nowhere and punches me in the nuts. I go down like a ton of bricks and my friends I came with are taken back.
I guess fortunately one of the jerkhead’s friends then punches him in the nuts. Had that guy not done that I think there may have been a fight. I collect myself and my friend is like ‘that dude hates you.’ At this point it is clear, I need to do something.
I’m older now and not proud of my first move but I’d been drinking. I went into his private basement bathroom sneakily and did a 360 pee all over this bathroom. I could’ve left it there but as I am leaving I see a remote for his basement tv.
Then it hits me, I’m going to steal every remote I can find. Spoiler alert I did just that.
I took the cable box remotes, tv remotes, DVD/Bluray remotes, surround sound, anything I could find. I was wearing a suit for my costume and there were plenty of pockets in this jacket.
I signal to my friends it’s time to go and we leave. As we’re walking out I notice he lives right next to an alley entrance. What better way to punctuate this than by smashing every remote I’d stollen right next to his house.
I smashed the LIFE out of these and made sure when he found them, they would not work. I’d say I succeeded. To the jerkhead in Baltimore from Halloween, good luck with your tv.”
4. Cold-Hearted Karen Has No Place In A Coffee Shop
“I used to work as a reluctant supervisor at a Seattle’s Best Coffee, the kind that was attached to Borders back in the day.
Although we were connected to the bookstore, we were definitely our own entity, something that the Borders management was quick to remind me of all the time.
One of our customers, who we called Silvers, was a certified nutball. She came in almost every day and spent hours sitting in the cafe writing on scrap pieces of paper and talking to herself and drinking cup after cup of coffee.
She ate lunch with us almost every day, too, which I never understood, because our sandwiches were basically soggy pieces of bread with meat on them. Because she was there ALL THE TIME, we were also privy to her crazy conspiracy theories.
In our communications logbook, we referred to her ramblings as “The Silvers Saga.” Among her more notable pieces of conversation: Oprah stole her idea for a magazine, Jennifer Aniston stole her haircut, her ex-man was awful (we suspect that he was making her take her medication), sandals were a conspiracy so that people could hurt your feet and blame it on you, the Pope was part of the Illuminati, witches had cursed her, etc.
Like I said, foolish.
As part of her insanity, she also used to regularly call corporate and make false accusations against us. Two or three times a day, she would use our payphone (I really wanted to rip that thing out of the wall) to complain that we were putting poison in her food and her coffee.
She would act all nice to your face and then three minutes later would be on that phone telling someone that her coffee smelled like arsenic and she was probably going to die and she wanted us all fired.
And then she would come back the next day and do it all again.
Everyone in the corporate office knew who she was and completely disregarded whatever she said. When I tried to get her banned from the store, I was informed that I didn’t have the authority — only the Borders could do that. Since the bookstore management never had to deal with her, they weren’t at all concerned about it.
That is, until the day she complained and a new employee at corporate, who didn’t know anything about this lunatic’s ramblings, raked the Borders HR manager, Bob, over the coals.
“There is a whole file on this woman. Why haven’t you done anything about this?
We are going to have to send someone to investigate because these are serious accusations. Your cafe staffs’ jobs are on the line. Your job is on the line.” Well, now the management cared. Silvers was, as usual, sitting in the cafe eating a sandwich and drinking her coffee and pretending like she hadn’t just called corporate to complain about us for the hundredth time.
With the woman on corporate still on the line, Bob marched over to Silvers and the following exchange happened:
Bob: Get up.
Silvers: (smiling) Are you talking to me?
Bob: Yes, get up.
Silvers: (with a look of righteous smugness) I guess you’re finally going to take me seriously now?
Bob: Yup. Get out of my store. Now.
Silvers: (smile gone) What?
Bob: What word didn’t you understand? Get? Out? Now? You are not welcome back here. No one wants to poison you, because no one cares about you. No one. Get. Out. Now.
And then my favorite part: Bob put the phone to his ear and asked the lady on the line, “Was that handled to your satisfaction?”
Coincidentally, after this incident, management was a lot more open to employee complaints concerning foolish customers.”
3. Won't Stop Calling? Get Prosecuted By My Company For Harassment At Work
“The best revenge is to walk away. Seriously, anyone messed up enough to screw me over will fall flat on their face if I step away.
I have only had a few people in my life ‘worthy of revenge’ and it always paid out to let them do what they did with maximum force. Once you start doing revenge fantasies like a Kurosawa film, lone samurai on a horse and all, you’ll look like a dang fool, because that’s only for the movies.
I have come close to temptation. Buddy, I came darn close.
Years and years ago, back in the BBS days, there were these guys on a rival BBS who decided to mess with me. I never knew why, but they harassed me with phone calls, stole my mail, bothered me at work, and so on.
Their hinge belief was that I was a liar, and they were gonna prove it.
Sadly, I worked for a company that had some serious security policies, and when they started messing with me at work, the law got involved. We settled out of court, and part of the settlement was to drop the whole thing, which is why I won’t go into it, although one lost his job and another lost his security clearance as a result.
I guess that was kind of revenge…but again, I did nothing; my company was the one who prosecuted because ‘someone is harassing one of our prime security targets.’
But what I wanted to do was insidious. I was a telecom programmer. I had access to some of the largest call centers in the world.
Here’s what I wanted to do, and let’s say two of the people were named ‘Dave’ and ‘Jane.’
Disclaimer: This is 1990s technology. This might not work anymore.
I had Dave’s and Jane’s phone numbers. I had access to a huge call center in Jacksonville where calls were routed by a complex formula of call priorities, agent groups, and contracts of so many calls that had to be answered in X time.
What I would have done is taken one of the trunks, and program one of the phone numbers, let’s say Jane’s, as part of the outgoing group.
Given the time of day and percentages, Jane’s number would be selected and forwarded about 2-3 times an hour during peak call times (and possibly none during non-peak).
But since this was not assigned to an agent, there was no code for pickup, so the call would be passed. There would be no response since Jane was not a call center, and when she hung up, the call would die.
The caller to the call center would get the menu, get forwarded to Jacksonville, and then go to what sounded like dead space.
Eventually, the customer would get angry, hang up, and call back. Jane, on the other hand, would get 2-3 calls an hour around lunchtime, and then from about 5 pm to 1 am. She’d pick up the phone, and then hear dead space. Then, I assume, hang up.
But it gets better. I could program the ANI (caller display) to anything I wanted. So I’d put Dave’s number there. Dave was married, and so was Jane, but to different people. Dave and Jane used to be together years prior, and were still ‘good friends.’ She’d probably call Dave back and go, ‘WHAT?’ Dave would deny he was calling her, of course.
After a few nights of this, either Dave or Jane would call their phone company because, dammit, Dave is not calling her! She can’t block the number, either, because Dave’s number is really not calling her: that’s just what shows up in her caller display (it was really some untraceable 888 number).
Dave and Jane’s relative spouses might also be suspicious.
The phone company probably would think they were lunatics.
They would have NO RECORD of them calling one another. Of course, eventually, they’d find out someone was calling Jane, but phone companies are notorious for not caring.
But suppose they did. Suppose they were hot on the case because Jane was a very important customer (pfft). They would eventually trace the calls to a trunk in Florida. Then if they still cared, they’d find out that it was a call center, and would call the mainline there, and get some of the most incompetent techs that still were able to function as adults without nursing care.
I doubt they’d care, either. But maybe one would, and he’d have a telecom technician take a look at it.
Guess who that was?
I’d get a call, ‘Bell Atlantic says that one of our outbound trunks is dialing someone. Can you look into this?’
Of course, I can. Then I’d move it to Ogden. Or Phoenix. Or Oklahoma. Or even the Philippines. I had 13 call centers to choose from.
The end result was Jane would have to get a new phone number, which back then was costly and a pain in the butt.
If I made it her cell number, this was before you could transfer numbers, so she’d probably have to break the contract and get a new carrier.
But I thought about it and decided not to, given the 0.01% chance I would have been found out (then, buddy, I’d be in trouble) and I didn’t want to stoop to their level.
Eventually, ‘Jane’ was one of the ones canned from her work for her antics against ‘punkwalrus and his company.’ And that was good enough for me.”
2. Fire Her For No Reason? Get Fired, Divorced, And Put Under Investigation
The ultimate act of revenge!
“The subject of this story is my mother (for the sake of this story, I’ll call her Amber).
She’s in her late 70s and works for a women’s clothing store which caters specifically to an older clientele. She’s been working for this particular company for some 20 years now.
The manager of the store is the absolute epitome of a Karen, so let’s call her Karen.
Extremely entitled, short-haired, chubby, and a blatant backstabber. Because the store is staffed by mostly older women, cliques tend to form (it’s basically high school; yes, older women can be that petty), and naturally Karen has her own group.
During periods where no one is in the store, there also tends to be a ton of gossip (important for later).
The assistant manager, let’s call her Jackie, is also one of Karen’s lackeys and she has her head way up of Karen’s behind; if Karen does something, then Jackie isn’t far behind, etc.
Amber is a bit of a ballbuster, and she has zero tolerance for garbage in her personal life.
Over the years, she has tried to stay impartial when it comes to her work; however, because to her, it’s “all about professionalism.” It also helps that she has been the top seller for her district for some 10 years running despite working part-time.
Karen and Jackie absolutely hate her for it – so much so that Karen routinely schedules her for hours that are not especially good.
Despite this though, Amber still has her loyal clientele, and she always comes out on top against the other sales associates in total sales every quarter. As expected, this naturally feeds the horrible feedback loop with Karen and Jackie.
2020 came along, and the company decided to cut all commissions for sales associates.
The commission was one of the main reasons why Amber endured Karen and Jackie’s shenanigans. While she only made slightly above the state’s minimum wage, with the commission, she could double or even triple that amount on good days. According to her, no other retailer in the area offers this kind of system, and it’s pretty unlikely that the company will reinstate it.
Along with the cut in wages, the store was also forced to decrease the number of hours that they could offer to their associates.
Karen took this as a way to essentially bar Amber from working at the store.
While other associates were getting 8-10 hours a week, Amber would see maybe 6 if she was lucky, and they would be during times of low customer traffic.
Karen could get away with this because the district manager is also in her pocket.
Amber refused to rock the boat; however, she would do her best to stay as far away from these people as possible.
During this period in time, a friend of the family and a good friend of Amber’s passed away.
The funeral was set for a time when Amber was scheduled to work, so she called out that day. Karen and Jackie attacked Amber and the deceased.
One day during a shift, Amber was working with a customer in the back and some woman came into the store and stole a couple of items of clothing, probably totaling out to be a hundred dollars at most. Now it’s company policy that during all shifts, there always be at least two employees in the store, and during this particular stretch of time, Jackie was the only other person in the store.
According to the video cameras, Jackie was up in the front of the store playing with her phone when this woman came in.
Normally, if someone steals items from the store, the protocol is to avoid confronting them and instead just call security after they’ve left the store.
This is mainly to avoid lawsuits and to protect the employees should these people choose to get violent (it has happened in the past).
That evening, Amber received a call from Karen telling her that she was on probation pending an investigation for allowing this woman to steal from the store.
Given the company’s policy regarding theft, this really made no sense. It was at this point that Amber truly decided she had had enough. Eventually, this “probation” led to Amber’s dismissal, and the official reasoning was fairly vague.
One thing that I forgot to mention, a few years ago, Amber asked me to teach her how to record things on her phone, and luckily, we live in a single consent state.
As such, Amber had recordings of these women backstabbing her and gossiping about rather scandalous things from years back. She had gathered quite the collection because “you never know when you need to cover your own butt.”
Over the years, Amber has gone to HR to no real avail (even with her recordings).
Whether it be because they are also in the pocket of Karen or that they just don’t care, remains to be seen (the HR department works directly under the district manager). Amber is also very good at keeping any paperwork and proof of these visits (including some recordings).
She also recorded the call where she was fired.
Amber has a ton of very loyal clients who were pretty distraught when they learned of her dismissal. One client, in particular, runs a column at one of the major newspapers for the nearby city (we will call her Casey).
Since Amber was a part-time worker, she didn’t really have much of a leg to stand on legally when it came to claiming a wrongful dismissal claim by legal means. However, that didn’t mean that she didn’t have any kind of recourse.
She decided to attack the problem from multiple fronts.
Amber compiled some of the greatest hits from her recording collection and had me email them off to the corporate offices of the company. Specifically, the CEO, CTO, and basically every member of the board of directors (I fired a couple of bursts off to anyone who had any power that I could find).
Casey then put Amber in touch with a columnist for the newspaper, and they got copies of the recordings, the text messages, and the dismissal phone call.
They also did an interview which was for an article and a TV slot on the local news.
Amber discussed the commission cuts, clear favoritism, lack of any intervention by HR, forged documents, company policy, the incident, etc., basically anything relevant to paint these women in a terrible light.
Among some of these recordings were bits of gossip that included conversations regarding Karen’s various flings over the years (she was in a long-term, committed relationship), so Amber also wrote an anonymous email to her partner that included some of these recordings.
Poop hit the fan pretty fast as you can probably imagine.
After the article and TV slot ran on the local news, the CEO reached out to Amber to formally apologize for the behavior of HR, the district manager, Karen, and Jackie. She even went so far as to offer Amber a raise but Amber declined because she found a job that actually paid a fair wage and let her work on her own time.
Karen’s man seems to have separated from her after finding out about her infidelity. Whether or not this will lead to divorce remains to be seen.
The best part for Amber was that many of her clients started coming to her new store, and again, she’s kicking butt as one of the best sales associates.
Here’s some more information about this story that I left out:
-
Yeah, my mom is in her 70s, and she still works. She does it for a few reasons: she’s on a fixed income (and the extra income helps), and she likes to be active and enjoys working with customers.
My brother and I do give her extra income, but she will only take so much because she’s very prideful. She’s also one of the most active people I know and has a more prolific social life than I or any of my friends/family members do.
-
The contract my mother was under is classified as “at-will” employment; basically, this means that the employer or the employee can terminate the contract at any time for any reasons outside of the usual suspects (hate crimes, racial issues, etc). We did talk with a lawyer, and this particular aspect would make it difficult to fight the company and the termination since they gave such vague reasons for the firing.
My mother also just didn’t want to deal with a lengthy legal battle just to get back at a few idiots.
-
The manager had it out for my mom from the beginning. I think it was due to their differing political and social views.
-
The way I worded things must have been vague regarding the conversations in the recordings. With single consent laws, you can record a conversation if one party is aware of the recording; in this case, that party would be my mother. These women were so egotistical that they would often gossip about stuff right out on the store floor while talking with my mother as almost an aside.
These recordings originally were for documenting all of the abuse that my mother endured.
-
My mom was approached for a promotion multiple times while working for this company, she just didn’t want the extra responsibility nor did she want to work full-time. Instead, they did give her raises, but because the state was also raising their minimum wage for the past couple of years, these raises have become almost irrelevant.
-
One thing I should also note is that my mom never really harbored any lasting ill will against Karen or Jackie (or really any of the others) until this past year. The reason was primarily that she could see that they had some kind of humanity in there.
Obviously, even the Karens of the world have shades of grey, and my mom can be forgiving to a fault when it comes to people she has known for a long time.”
1. Cause Me To Lose A Night's Worth Of Sleep? Don't Worry, Your Time Will Be Coming Soon
Now you can enjoy what they went through.
“I live in an apartment complex in which people can lease a room in a four-room apartment and share the kitchen and living room with the other tenants, which they may or may not have met previously.
I moved in with two friends but for a long time, there was an empty room in our apartment. Until out of the blue someone opens our front door.
There was our new roommate, an Australian international student who was going to attend our university for a semester.
Although surprised we decided to be nice. After all, we are international students as well and we knew it can be difficult the first days. It turns out that for him it was not difficult at all, since the first night he asked if he could have ‘some friends over.’ We complied because we were trying to be nice and because when we have some friends over we usually just chat for a while and do not bother anyone.
However, this was not the case; his ‘friends,’ which he had only met that day, and himself got wasted and loud. At some point, my roommate went out to retrieve the tv from the living room since we feared they would break it in their wasted state (the tv belonged to my friends and me).
The next day everything was a mess. He tried to ‘clean’ it, but you do not clean spilled booze with only towel paper unless you like the smell of a cheap bar.
My roommate and I had to clean everything because he was too busy in the pool area.
Anyhow, this must give an idea of how living with him felt like.
One day he had one of his usual ‘surprise’ parties, in which he just invited people over to trash the apartment without asking for permission or anything. I was in my room, annoyed as usual and I decided I would take revenge.
I could not sleep that day because of the noise.
The next day I woke up earlier than usual and connected my pc to the tv in the living room, which was conveniently just in front of his room. I searched for one of my favorite anime, ‘fairy tail.’ If you know the original Japanese voices, you may know where this is going.
I began making breakfast with my friends, which unlike me are early birds.
While making breakfast, what is more satisfying than turning the volume all the way up and listening to the sweet voice of ‘Happy,’ the high-pitched talking cat from fairy tail?
Imagine waking up hung-over, after having slept probably two hours to something like that.
Oh God, he was annoyed. He woke up and came out telling me to turn the volume down. I said: ‘why?’ but my pronunciation must have sounded like ‘what?’ for him.
He said: ‘Why is this so loud? You cannot even hear me! Turn it down!’
I answered: ‘why?’ again smiling a little bit.
He screamed the same thing and I turned the volume down a little bit to hear better what he was saying, to which he turned away and proceeded to walk to his room probably believing it was over.
I turned the volume even louder as soon as he did this.
He came back and said: ‘didn’t you hear what I said? I cannot sleep with that noise!’
I laughed and said: ‘well, I did not sleep yesterday either.’
He looked at me with a frown: ‘So because I did not let you sleep yesterday, you are not going to let ME sleep today?’
I smiled once more: ‘Oh, I did not say that. I just want to hear my tv show.’ He went back to his room frustrated.
Why didn’t he do anything? My two roommates, one of which is my significant other was standing there without saying a word.
They both are quiet and really passive people who have probably stood up for themselves a handful of times in their lives. However, they both work out… a lot. I am, on the other hand, a little 1.50 m girl who is very less passive and much more aggressive.
I could say this is the most ‘passive’ thing I have done when someone was actively messing with me. However, I only said something because my roommates were there since it looked like the only thing that prevented him from smashing my face on the countertop was their presence.
He was frustrated, but I was utterly satisfied.
To clarify: This was not my go-to #1 solution.
We talked to him from day one. As I mentioned he had a party as soon as he moved in. After my significant other and I cleaned his mess, we talked directly to him and told him that we did not like what he did and he said that he would ask us next time.
He never asked us. We talked to him countless times after this. He just ignored our words even after my roommates and I talked to the manager to change apartments just to run away from him. We did not change apartments because by the time our infinite patience was over it was November and he was moving out in December, so we just counted the days.”
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