People Tell Their Best "Thirsty For Revenge" Stories
13. Damage My Mental Health? Your Job Will Be Gone
“I’ve just been assigned online refresher training in preparation for reopening of the pub company I work for. It’s reminded me of my revenge a few years back so I thought I’d share. The training included sections on pest management and anti-bribery legislation.
I used to be a pub manager and due to the sale of the pub I managed, I chose to accept a new pub with my current company instead of TUPE to the new company.
For the none UK readers, I chose to move within the company instead of being “sold” with the site.
It was a big mistake! I ended up in a problem pub with an awful, micro-managing, corrupt area manager who had it in for me (many stories I could tell about how bad she was, from allowing food hygiene laws to be broken, taking bribes to make us stock certain brands, to having affairs with managers in her area and favoring them).
Eventually, it exacerbated a mental health issue I have, and I had a total mental breakdown (4 months off sick, close to being sectioned and put in a facility against my will for my own safety).
I wasn’t the 1st of her managers that ended up off with mental health issues due to her either!
I took a voluntary demotion for the sake of my own health and to get out of her area. Best decision I have ever made; money isn’t everything, and I’m in a much better place mentally now.
Shortly after I started back at work, I heard she had left our company (rumor was she was told to jump or be pushed).
Scroll on a year or so and I was out with a friend having a catch-up in another pub chain, and I saw her sitting down with someone going through paperwork at another table.
It looked to me like she was having a meeting with the pub manager, so I asked one of the floor staff who she was, saying I thought I recognized her. They said she was the area manager having a meeting with the pub manager.
Knowing her, I guessed she was probably doing the same things with the new company she worked for, so I anonymously put in a whistleblower complaint to both the Food Standards Agency and also to her head office from a throwaway email.
I basically made stuff up assuming she was doing the stuff she had done when I worked for her.
i.e., refusing to allow Rentokil call outs for pest problems (to make her maintenance budgets look good), telling staff to re-freeze unsold defrosted foods to save on stock loss, taking bribes to stock products, making managers clock staff out before they had finished cutting staff hours, etc., all stuff she had tried to make me do, and when I wouldn’t, she’d used her powers to screw me over.
She couldn’t discipline me for not breaking the law, but she could screw with my bonus and put me through a nightmare in other ways.
The pub was closed with a prohibition notice and not allowed to re-open until a multitude of faults were fixed. Usually, they will give out Improvement Notices and give the company 2 weeks to sort things out, but a prohibition notice means it was REALLY bad and dangerous.
This hit the local press in a BIG way, and they did several follow-up stories on it with her name mentioned frequently as it went to court. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find anything about the final outcome though.
Here’s hoping any future job she goes for Googles her name before employing her! Personally, I wish I could find that she was locked up or fined!”
12. Betray Me? Have Fun Paying Child Support
Give me an ounce of the patience that this man has!
“My revenge began with discovering my partner’s infidelity (let’s call her “Keri”). After fourteen years of marriage and three kids, I saw a text appear on her “work phone” for just a few seconds that would forever change my life. It was a message that was graphic and had no business being on anyone’s “work phone.” It was on the lock screen, and the sender’s name was visible (let’s call him “Perry”).
So, I married Keri when I was 25, and she was 22. I was teaching high school at the time, and she was an RN. After having our first child, Keri became a stay-at-home mom. Money was tight, so I took on an admin role in my department and coached two sports for the stipends. We made it, and after a few annual pay raises, I stopped coaching and took advantage of a program to earn an administrative credential.
Once I made the jump to administration, our last child was ready for preschool, and Keri decided she wanted to go back to work. Nursing jobs are always available, but they’re not always the best positions. Keri pretty much had to start back at the bottom, working alongside nurses that were a lot younger than she was and could work back-to-back double shifts that took a toll on Keri.
When she asked her supervisor about other positions, she was told that without a BSN, she wasn’t going to move up (at the time, Keri had only the 2-year ADN). I told her that between preschool, afterschool rec, and my retired mother (who was always willing to pick up the kids from school and watch them), I’d support her getting her BSN.
It took her three years, but eventually, she had her BSN and was promoted to a better position at the hospital.
Things were good for a while. We had plenty of money, so finally moved into our own “McMansion,” bought new cars, etc. I’d moved from school admin to the district admin, so I had more time to spend with Keri and the kids. She was working a more predictable schedule, and even with my often-long hours at work, this change allowed us to finally take vacations to all the places we’d put on a list during our honeymoon (she kept that list in our wedding album).
At some point years later, I noticed she’s carrying two phones with her.
When I asked her about it, she said that it was a phone provided by the hospital. I didn’t question her explanation because my district had also given me the option of a phone or a phone stipend (which I took instead). Again, months went by, and I thought we were a happy, “perfect” family.
I charged my phone in our den while she charged her phones in our guest bedroom that doubled as a computer room, so we could keep tabs on the kids while they surfed the web.
I was updating software on the computer when I saw a light around her work phone. She had a habit of always turning her phones face down when charging them. Out of curiosity, I reached over to the phone and flipped it over. A message had popped up on the lock screen asking her when she’d like to hook up again. I also saw that “Perry” sent it.
The world stopped around me.
I just froze. My first thoughts were, “What was that about? It’s her work phone! That kind of message gets people fired!” Then it hit me… was Keri having an affair?
It’s amazing how the brain works. I suddenly started remembering a lot of things Keri had done that seemed “odd,” but I’d either dismissed them myself or immediately accepted her explanation. She was always walking out of the room to answer a call or return a text and claimed that it would violate HIPAA if I overheard her talking about a patient.
I accepted this because education has similar privacy laws regarding students. She would sometimes come home with the faint smell of cologne on her clothes and claimed it was from helping to move male patients. Again, I accepted this at face value, but it always struck me as odd how it seemed to be the same scent of cologne.
Once the proverbial barn door was open, I started seeing a lot of things that I’d missed before.
Our love life in the bedroom had cooled off considerably, which wasn’t helped by her having to leave the house at odd hours to “fill in for other nurses that called in sick.” I also recalled where I’d seen the name “Perry” before, and a call to the hospital confirmed he was a doctor there.
For the next week or so, I was walking around in a daze trying to put all of the pieces together.
One of our kids had left a book in Keri’s car, so it was an excuse to visit the hospital (Keri had told me personal visits were frowned upon). My kid went up to get Keri’s car key (I’d “forgotten” my key to her car at home), I talked to a nurse in the lobby and “joked” about how “work phones” seem like a blessing, but all they do is put you on call 24 hours a day.
This led to her eventually telling me that the hospital was too “cheap” to give cell phones to nurses, so only high-level executives got them (which didn’t include Keri).
With pretty much everything confirmed, I took some personal time off the next day to talk to a divorce lawyer. The news she gave me was horrible. We lived in a community property state with no-fault divorce. I made more money than Keri, but she’d been the primary caretaker of the kids, and we’d been married for more than ten years.
Basically, if I filed for divorce, I’d be screwed. Lose the house, pay alimony, she’d get a huge chunk of my retirement, and I’d pay child support for the next decade unless I was lucky enough to be awarded joint custody. The worst thing she told me was that it didn’t matter that she had an affair.
It. Didn’t. Matter. I was crushed.
There was only one person I could trust with this kind of information.
She was a fellow teacher that had also made the jump to administration (but was “stuck” at a school site). Let’s call her “Anne.” Anne had been married at 19, but her marriage was annulled when he got some other woman pregnant. Since then, she’d focused on her career and we’d found we were kindred spirits in a lot of ways regarding K-12 education.
I talked to Anne.
She said something to me that changed my whole mindset: If you don’t like the hand you’re dealt, change the deck. I realized I had two problems: I made more money than Keri, and she had more time than me to be the primary caretaker of the kids.
The second issue was actually kind of easy. At every district office, there are jobs that are “fast tracks” to higher positions, and there are jobs that administrators suffer through (like Mess or KP duty in the military).
One of these dead-end regulatory positions was open again (ambitious administrators leave after a couple of years when a better position opens up). I sat down with our district superintendent and asked about being transferred to that position. At first, he was shocked, but I told him that it was “my time to take one for the team,” and it would fill a “hole” in my admin experience.
He agreed.
It was really just crunching numbers with no personnel or student interaction, so I could set my schedule, even take a laptop home, and work there. With my new free time, I began taking the kids to school, picking them up from school (not leaving them in afterschool rec or having my mother watch them), and taking them home. I’d help them with their homework, make dinner, etc.
While the end goal was to become their primary caretaker, I can’t explain how much I really, really enjoyed taking a more active role in their day-to-day lives.
My salary hadn’t been reduced, so I needed to find a way for Keri to make a lot more money than she was in her current nursing position. I remembered Keri being mad after she’d earned her BSN, and a supervisor told her, “In the future, bachelor’s degrees will be worthless, and everyone will need at least a master’s degree.” Keri had worked hard to get her BSN, and that supervisor’s comment messed all over her hard work.
I talked her into starting an MSN program. I told her that since I had a much more flexible work schedule, I would keep taking care of the kids. She was reluctant at first, then I said, “You could have every evening free to study or go to class, whatever you want to do.” I saw her eyes immediately light up, probably thinking that she could spend more time with Perry.
To make sure she was actually completing her MSN courses, I paid her tuition and fees directly to her university.
It was going to take her between two and three years to finish.
Those years were rough at times. I could tell every time she was rushing off or coming back from seeing Perry. There was an excitement or sense of satisfaction in her eyes that just wasn’t there when she was doing her coursework. I had to either smile or pretend I didn’t notice. My temper got short at times, and I found myself in arguments over petty nonsense.
A couple of times, I almost blew the whole charade having to bite my tongue and apologize rather than scream insults at her that she deserved.
Anne remained my confidant through all of this. I’d recommend her for my previous “fast-track” position and she joined me at the district office. Anne was qualified, hardworking, ambitious, and only needed her foot in the door to impress the higher-ups.
I even got a few pats on the back for recommending her after she impressed everyone.
Anne and I started our own affair. It wasn’t some hot-blooded, passionate romance but two friends giving each other what they need. Without Anne, I wouldn’t have been able to maintain the charade of being the oblivious cuckold. But when Keri would come home smiling after spending time with Perry, I was able to bear it, smiling back because I had my own lover.
After three and a half years, Keri completed her MSN and was promoted at her hospital.
Her salary went up substantially and was now higher than mine. When the kids and I made her a “congratulations dinner,” I made a joke about her being the “breadwinner” for the family, and she laughed, joking back I should be a stay-at-home dad now.
A month later, I went back to the lawyer (who didn’t remember me at first) and told her the financial situation had drastically changed.
With these new facts, she drafted the petition and filed it. When the kids were with my mother, I had Keri served. The deputy knocked on our front door, and I let him in, pointing at my woman. He asked her name and then handed her a copy of the divorce petition. With the deputy standing there, I told Keri I knew all about her affair with Perry (but I didn’t tell her how long I’d known).
I told her to go be happy with her doctor lover. She screamed at me, tried to lie, and then made the mistake of rushing toward me.
The deputy stopped her and warned her that women go to jail for domestic violence, too, “now.” He suggested she pack a bag to stay somewhere else. Keri left after I promised not to tell the kids about her affair.
I didn’t tell the kids. But I told my mother, who told my sister, who told her kids, who told their cousins (my kids). It took a few days, but eventually, the kids knew that dad was divorcing mom because “she had a man on the side.”
In the end, the court granted the divorce, giving me primary custody of our kids (because I was already their primary caretaker), I kept the house with the promise I’d refinance to buy out Keri’s half, she was ordered to pay child support, and I used that fact to negotiate with her to give up any rights to my retirement if I bought her out.
I was able to refinance “my” home (it was the era when banks threw money at everyone to buy or refinance a mortgage), and with the little funds I borrowed from my parents, I bought out Keri’s community property interest in the home and in my retirement.
The day she signed all the paperwork with my lawyer finally ending any possible financial obligations to her was the happiest I’d been. I felt like I could finally breathe. I celebrated with Anne who’d been my rock through all of it. I’m not ashamed to say that through the years I’d cried many times in her arms. Anne and I would eventually marry. She got promoted to a higher position, and I was “convinced” to take back my previous position at the district when my youngest child reached high school.
Keri and I got along well after the divorce.
We took the kids to family therapy and worked out this co-parenting thing. For the next few months, she took a beating from the kids about “why she needed another man when daddy was there all along.” Between the kids and the therapist raking her over the coals, I didn’t have to say anything at all. Keri missed a lot of time with the kids because of her now legitimately busy work schedule, and I actually felt bad that my kids were missing time with their mother so encouraged them to talk to her on the phone instead.
When Keri found out that I’d proposed to Anne, she congratulated me.
I told her it’s okay for her to marry Perry, too. She got sad. She told me that Perry had started seeing another woman, a younger nurse at the hospital, because with her new position, she didn’t have time for him, and when they did get together, she wasn’t “fun” anymore. My ex-partner, the woman who’d two-timed me and destroyed our marriage, was looking to me for sympathy.
I had none to give.
What I had was years of anger and frustration. Years of knowing some other man was sleeping with my woman. I’d lost weight from not being able to eat. I’d suffered hypertension and had to confide in my doctor why it wasn’t the stress of my job. I had to listen to my dentist complain about how I was grinding and listen to him tell me I’d need dental implants if it kept up.
There were times when I had to be intimate with Keri to keep up the charade (fortunately, infrequently).
But in the end, it was all worth it. Sure, Keri got a big payout when I bought her out of the house and my retirement, which she was trickling back to me through child support, but she lost everything else. Her kids only saw her every other weekend and spent a couple of holidays with her.
Perry dumped her, and he was no great catch anyway since he was twice divorced with five kids and paying alimony and child support through the nose. I kept my kids, my house, my income, my retirement, I got Anne, and I am genuinely happy — all in a community property state with no-fault divorce.
If that’s not “pro revenge,” then I don’t know what is.”
11. Betray My On My 21st Birthday? I'll Cut Up $600 Worth Of Your Stuff
“This story occurred more than a few years ago. I am originally from the USA where the drinking age is 21. I had been working in sports bars as the front-end manager for a bit, so my 21st birthday was counted down for. I was excited to start bartending. At the time, I worked full time while in school, living in rural Washington state, so it takes 5+ hours to get to Seattle.
I’d been seeing this guy mostly long-distance for 3 months or so. He had come down from Seattle to where I live, met my family, some friends, and colleagues from the bar I worked at the time. Everything seemed to be going fine. Anywho, about three weeks before my 21st, I asked him if he thought it would be a nice idea for me to come visit him in Seattle for my birthday.
I thought it’d be nice to try out some bars and maybe go to some clubs. He seemed into the idea and agreed. I scheduled some time off work for the trip.
I confirmed with him that the trip still worked for him a couple of days before I planned on leaving; everything was a go. The day before my birthday, I drive up to see him.
He introduced me to Postmates, which I’ve never used before, coming from a small town. I paid for both of our meals, which I did think was a little weird for me to do as a guest on my birthday, but I let it slide. I hadn’t actually wanted to order in; I wanted to go out to eat, but he said he was tired. We had a bottle of wine after and called it a night, not exactly what I had pictured for the evening before my 21st, but whatever.
The next day, he suggested we get pizza.
I like pizza, but I have celiac disease and didn’t want to spend a bunch of time on the toilet that day, so I made some suggestions that offered gluten-free pizzas. He turned them all down and insisted we go to this pizza place he liked. I reluctantly agreed. We spend most of the day chilling at home, even though at this point I had voiced that I wanted to go bar hopping.
He brushed me off.
Later that same day, he said one of his friends had broken up with their girl and that he should “go be there for her.” He didn’t invite me. So, I told him the generic answer, “If that’s what you really feel like you should be doing right now,” you know, on my birthday. I was obviously getting increasingly frustrated at this point, but I figured it was better to let him go than have him spend the day with me if he didn’t want to be with me on my birthday.
I had thought he would be gone for maybe a few hours. But nah, this jerk was out all night with her, tagging his location with her at various clubs all night. He didn’t text me (even though I tried to get ahold of him multiple times), so at some point in the night, I’m livid and super sad at his apartment, alone with his roommates, whom I did not know.
Luckily, they were really nice.
They said they didn’t realize I was his girl and that he had had other girls over previously in the past couple of weeks. I ended up getting absolutely wasted with them, opened a bottle of 151 I had been saving, and took all the fancy ice cubes out of his trays in the freezer (he had Mario and various other “special” trays), and purposefully didn’t refill anything.
He never returned that night. I ended up crying myself to sleep alone that night.
The next morning, I woke up late, around 11, and he still wasn’t home. I was so upset that I had wasted my birthday with this fool who clearly didn’t care about me at all, especially when I had plenty of friends at home who would have loved to spend it going out with me.
At this point I’m sitting in the apartment alone, thinking about what I can get away with without getting in any legal trouble. My ex was someone who loved to collect Legos, expensive themed socks running up $20 a pair, gaming consoles, figurines, and he always bragged that there wasn’t a hot sauce spicy enough for him. So, he had the hottest one on the market in his fridge.
I obviously wasn’t going to throw his gaming consoles out the window because I would surely get in trouble for that.
So, I got creative. I surely wouldn’t forget the dude who ruined my 21st, so I had to give him something to remember me by. I took all his expensive “happy” socks and cut just the toes out of them, so every time he put a pair on, he would be disappointed to find his toes come out. I left Legos in the toes of all his shoes on the ground.
I put hot sauce in his body wash and toothpaste. I rearranged all his figurines. I cut nipple holes in his favorite shirt he had just been bragging about. I left a hole in his new boxers big enough for him to “fall through.” Then I gathered what was mine. It was about 13:30, and I hadn’t heard from him, and I left.
Important to note that he didn’t share a bathroom with his roommates.
I had made sure what I did didn’t have any unintentional victims.
He later texted me when he got home whining I had cut up “$600 worth of socks of underwear, and don’t think I didn’t notice the other weird stuff you did.” No apology whatsoever about leaving me behind on my birthday. He never did.”
Another User Comments:
“What a loser. That friend was probably his other chick.” Smokedeggs
Reply:
“Yeah, I mean, I thought the whole thing was super weird.
He told me she was lesbian, but I don’t know many lesbians that break up with their long-term girl, then say to themselves, “You know what I need? I want to go clubbing all night with my straight male friend. That’s the only thing that will make this better,” but I dunno. Saying that is probably super loaded. Can only think about it from my point of view as a bi female.” notme_8932
10. Sales Lady Completely Ignores Me, So I Give A Big Commission To Another Sales Rep
“This happened back like 8 years ago at a high-end mall in my city, but I still remember most of the details. For the record, I have nothing against any ethnicity.
A little background, I’m Asian, and at the time, I was self-conscious and awkward and liked to avoid trouble and confrontation if I can help it. I’ve been working in the IT field for almost 10 years at that point and recently landed a job as the head IT administrator for a mid-size company, so, basically, I maintain the servers and do desktop troubleshooting along with my 2 assistants.
This along with my freelance side gigs with other companies, I was making decent money. The dress code at my main job is business casual (button-down shirt, slacks, pants, dress shoes, etc.), but as IT, our dress code was a little laxer since we sometimes have to kneel and crawl on floors and run all over the office floors to fix problems, so I and my team usually show up to work in polo shirts or t-shirts and black or dark blue sneakers.
Maybe not completely professional, but we don’t look like slobs either.
Anyway, a few months after I started my new job, it was my mother’s 50th birthday, so I wanted to do something special for her and my godmother whose birthday is in the same week. We usually celebrate both their birthdays at the same time. As luck would have it, 2 of my aunts and my younger cousins that we haven’t seen in years would be visiting us from out of town around the same time, so I thought to myself, “What the heck; let’s go nuts!” and decided to get them each something.
So after bouncing different gift ideas, I finally decided to get them each either a handbag, purse, wallet, backpack or whatever from their favorite high-end brand (I’ll call it GV). GV ain’t cheap either, so buying each a gift from GV would probably run a tab in the 5 digit range easily.
Now, my mom, god mom, both aunts are all sisters too, so I decided to get the gifts based on rank.
Mom would get the most expensive (of course) followed closely by godmother (eldest sister), then my 2 aunts, and then my cousin. After checking out GV’s website for weeks, I finally chose all the gifts I wanted to buy, and in true IT fashion, printed and coded all the items and backup items in case they didn’t have my first choices, so I can bring them to the nearby GV store and get everything done as quickly and with as little trouble as possible.
The GV store is located in a huge mall in midtown along with other major brands, so I had asked my friend to go with me after work both to help me carry some of the packages and also so I don’t feel as weird buying all the purses and stuff.
(As I said, I was still very awkward at the time). It was one of the harder days at work since the company was doing renovations, so by the time I got off work, my beige slacks and blue polo shirt had some small dust stains, and my black sneakers were scuffed from the crawling and kneeling from moving computers to different places.
I cleaned up as best as I could before I met up with my friend, and we entered the store.
The store had a dozen or so sales reps helping customers, so after a bit of “window shopping,” I went up to the counter where a white sales rep lady (WSL) was free and just cleaning the glass top.
Me: (smiling and cheerful) Hello, I would like to buy something for my…
WSL: (glances at me and my friend, doesn’t say a word, and pretty much pretends she didn’t hear me and goes to the lady that walked up to the counter after me and starts helping her instead.)
Me: (looks at my friend that was next to me, and my eyes that said, “Seriously? Did she really just do that?”)
Now, I am not confrontational by nature, but what WSL did really angered me, especially since this was a gift for my mother’s 50th.
After standing there and fuming for a good 2 minutes, I was about to complain and yell at the WSL when an Asian sales rep (ASL) came up to me, cue the petty revenge:
ASL: Hi, I’m ASL. Is there something I can help you with?
Me: (smiles when inspiration struck) Hi ASL, yes. Can you see if you have these items in stock and in these colors?
I proceed to open my messenger bag and take out the 10 pages I printed out earlier and plopped them down on the glass counter.
I still remember the small thud sound the stack of papers made when I did it.
Me: Yes, so I want this purse in this color, that handbag in this color, the backpack in this color…
ASL: (looks at me) no problem! May I take the papers, so I can make sure I get the right items for you, Mr?
Me: (with the biggest grin and loud enough for WSL to hear) Call me (my name), and sure.
Take all the time you need. I’ll wait here. Thanks!
ASL goes to their backroom to start getting my stuff together, and I turned to the right, leaned against the counter, and proceeded to stare at WSL with my best poker face while I waited for ASL to come back with my stuff. Next to me, my friend was trying her hardest to keep a straight face and not burst out laughing.
ASL comes back after 10 minutes with some of my items: Hello, Mr.
(my name). I’m sorry, but we don’t have this item or that item in stock or in that color.
Me: (Takes out the backup item list) No problem, ASL. Can you see if you have these items in lieu of the ones you don’t have?
ASL: (looks at the items I pointed to and smiles) Sure! Let me check for you right away. You can check the items here to make sure they aren’t damaged or anything while I check for you.
Me: (while waiting, I had decided to get a wallet for my dad too) Oh, I want to get this wallet as well.
ASL: No problem!
By this point, my friend couldn’t keep a straight face anymore and started giggling and laughing outright.
ASL comes back a few minutes later with the rest of the stuff I wanted to buy. After checking everything out, ASL takes everything to the back to be tallied and gift wrapped. I continued my poker face stare at WSL and am pretty sure I heard excited chatter and loud laughing coming out of the backroom where ASL went. About 20 minutes goes by, and the lady that WSL went to help instead of me still hasn’t made a decision on which keychain she wanted.
ASL comes out with all my purchases in their own gift bags and gave me and my friend a couple of fancy water bottles and chocolate bars.
ASL: The total comes out to $10,000+
WSL did a double-take when she heard the total.
Me: (hands over my credit card and points at something else in the glass display) Thank you very much.
Oh, can you tell me how much are those key chains?
ASL: Oh, all our key chains are $80.00.
Me: Great! Can you add this to my purchase? Don’t need to gift wrap it; I’m just going to give it to my friend here.
I made idle chitchat with ASL while she finalized the purchase and learned that this GV store is different than most other GV stores. I knew that GV stores usually don’t do commissions, but any sales a rep makes goes towards determining how high their annual bonus would be.
So besides meeting a sales quota, the price of each sale is also important. I learned that this GV store is one of a handful that does commissions on top of their annual salary. I originally figured since WSL didn’t want to do my business, at least I can give ASL a gold star for her making my sales. The moment I heard about the commission made my day, and seeing WSL still in shock was just the cherry on top! Afterward, my friend and I left the store with my purchases with me having the biggest grin I ever had.
Now ASL didn’t tell me what percentage her commission was, but usually, it’s anywhere between 5% to 15% in my state, and some places can even go as high as 30%.
I really hope ASL got a high double-digit commission. In any case, ASL got a well-deserved commission, never learned if WSL made the keychain sale or not since the lady she went to help instead of me was still deciding when I left.
Told my family this story at my mom and god mom’s birthday party 2 weeks later, and everyone there got a kick out of it.
Flash forward 2 months, I went back to the same mall to do some window shopping.
As I was walking I walked past the same GV store. I glanced at some of the displays outside when who do you know bursts out of the front door. I guess WSL saw and recognized me from wherever she was inside, cause the next thing I know, she was outside trying to get me inside.
Non-confrontational Me: I’m very sorry, but I’m just window shopping…”
9. Illegally Fire Me? I'll Destroy Your Company
“At the time of this story, I was 20 years old and had my first true love. We have been together for 1.5 years already, and everything was just great. Her mother really liked me, and she had her own company which traded fashion clothes for kids. She made a ton of money.
They needed someone to drive one of their 3.5 T truck, and she came up with an idea to hire me because I was unhappy with a job I had.
So as a win-win situation, I accepted her offer, and we started working together. The job was ok, even though I had to work a huge amount of overtime because she thoroughly introduced me to how the whole company worked.
She had a huge storage facility, a store, and 2 trucks: one that I drove and a big one. I worked for her for like a year, and in that time, I knew every single thing about the company because she trusted me with also the dirty secrets (this later came in handy).
This is where things took a huge turn.
I found out that my girl two-timed me with her ex, and as a result, I broke up with her instantly. It was an ugly situation, and after it went down, I called her mother and told her what was going on and that I don’t want to mix things with business, so I will still be there for work, even though I don’t want to see her daughter again.
She said everything is alright, but of course, she sided with her daughter, and I felt like she was mad at me because of the breakup.
I went to work and acted as a professional should and took all the drama aside; however, soon after, she singled me out and started looking for mistakes, so she could discipline me.
This has been going on for months, and I realized she was just waiting for an excuse to fire me, but I wasn’t going to give that reason to her that easily. She was angry that she couldn’t find big mistakes, and the small ones she often just made up were not enough to terminate me.
So, she came up with a plan.
On the truck, we had a power generator that provided light and power for a laptop, printer, and so on. It worked in 2 ways: with fuel when we were on the road and with cable in case we were at the storage. But it was not made by a company; they just hired an electrician for that, and he made an error, so we had to flip a switch all the time if we used it with a cable connection; otherwise, it would burn down.
As I loaded the truck, she convinced a co-worker to flip the switch back, and after a few minutes, the lights were gone, and I noticed something was wrong.
It burned out, of course, but I knew I didn’t forget the switch because I loaded the truck for an hour, and it only took 5 minutes tops to burn out, so it couldn’t be me. She didn’t even hear me out, started yelling, fired me on the spot, and stated that she was gonna pay the repairs out of my last salary so don’t expect any payment from her.
I didn’t take that lightly and told her, “I don’t think you wanna go this way with me,” but she refused to listen. It took a few days for me to cool down, but I wanted to give her a last chance.
I called her and told her even though I knew what was going on; she did set me up, but if I get my payment, I would call it an end, and we wouldn’t have to see each other again.
She told me to screw off, so I came up with a plan.
First, because I knew that the store she had didn’t have a bathroom which was illegal in my country (the shop assistants had an agreement with a restaurant on the opposite side to go there if they needed), I reported this to the authorities, and the next day, they closed the shop because of this violation and told her she can’t open up until they have a bathroom.
She called me right away and asked me if I have anything to do with this. I laughed and told her:
“Didn’t I tell you that you don’t wanna go this way with me?” and hung up.
We worked so much that the other truck driver and I had so much overdrive on the tacho cards (it records how many hours you drive and how fast and when you stopped), so I called the authorities again and told them everything.
They went and checked all the records and gave the company a brutal fine. She sent me obscene text messages all day long after that. I replied, “Ain’t done yet.”
Then silence, a few hours went by, and my phone rang, she called and asked me if we could talk it over. She even said she’ll send me my last paycheck, but I shut her down immediately and told her, “Too late for that.”
And I called the fire department and told them that the wires they had in the walls of the store were outdated which caused short circuits daily and that they only have 2 fire extinguishers for the whole place when they should have like 12 to 15.
On that very day, they had to close the storage as well so she lost the last place where she could make an income for months until they get everything up to date and renew all the wires, which cost a lot. Because of the fines she got from the different authorities, she couldn’t afford these renovations of course. A few months later, she filed for bankruptcy.
I know because my ex called me with, “I hope you’re happy butthead. You made my family bankrupt.”
I never got my paycheck, but at that point, I didn’t even care anymore; I was happy with the outcome.”
Another User Comments:
“Darn, all she had to do was not be petty and stay professional. You didn’t deserve any of that treatment from either of them. She did this to herself.” kerodon
8. Throw A Tantrum Over An I.D.? I'll Give You A Hard Time At Checkout
“This happened late summer/early autumn of last year. I work at a chain clothing store (the name of which rhymes with bold gravy) which recently, has expanded our online shopping options. You can buy online and pick up in-store for no charge, but you have to present either an ID or email receipt when you pick it up. This legally covers our butts and also ensures we don’t give your package to someone who isn’t you.
All of this information will be relevant.
So I was working a closing shift, and it was about 8 pm. I’m folding clothes to the side of the store when a customer (who I will refer to as Karen, despite that not being her name) walks up to me and says she needs to pick up an order.
“No problem! I’ll take care of that for you right over here.”
I walk Karen over to our online pickup stand (section of the store where the online orders are waiting to be picked up) and ask for her name.
As we’re walking over, she mentions that she actually has two separate orders to pick up (this will also be relevant later). She gives me her name, and I grab her packages, then open prepare to check her out.
Now, company protocol is that we absolutely cannot give an order to a customer without them providing either ID or an email receipt. So, like I’ve done dozens of times before, I ask her for that without even looking up as I finish checking her package out.
“I didn’t have to provide that last time.”
I look up.
What she said is either nonsense or someone at another store ignoring policy. Either way, doesn’t matter.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. It’s company policy.”
“I left it in my car, and I don’t want to walk all the way back out there.”
“Ma’am, it’s company policy. There’s nothing I can do.”
This is the point at which Karen shows her true colors. She screams at me, and I quote, “Well, then you can shove it!” and flips me off before stomping out like a three-year-old.
I just stood there for a moment in complete shock. The combination of the rate of escalation (the situation went from 0 to nuclear in about 15 seconds), and the sheer absurdity just absolutely stunned me. Fortunately, my mask hid my open jaw.
About 30 seconds after Karen stormed out, another customer (who was an absolute delight!) came up to me, and we shared a silent moment of, what the flip just happened.
She needed to pick up an order as well, and unlike Karen, was perfectly happy to show ID. We had a nice exchange, and she went on her way.
Now, my manager, Andrea, comes over (obviously not her real name). Andrea knows me and knows I wouldn’t mess up on a galactic scale like Karen seemed to think. Anyway, after I finished with Not Butthole Customer, Andrea came up to me and asked me what had happened with Karen.
I explained and right as I was finishing, Andrea gets a call on the store phone.
Here’s where the petty revenge comes in.
It is, of course, Karen. Having not picked up her packages due to her temper tantrum, she now wants an employee to bring them out to her car (standard stuff – we do this about half a dozen times a day). So I put on the reflective vest, grab her packages, and go out to her car.
She rolls down her window and is obviously angry that it’s me delivering the packages.
“May I see your ID?” I say through my biggest smile.
She huffs and puffs enough to blow down a house but hands it over. I look at it, confirm it’s her, and then hand it back. Then, on a whim, I say,
“I’m sorry. I need to see it again.”
“What?”
“Two packages. Sorry, it’s company policy.”
Now, this is complete nonsense. I only needed to see it once. I just wanted to anger her.
“No, it’s not!”
I shrug.
“Sorry. Company policy.”
She huffs and puffs some more but hands it over. I glance down at it and then hand it back with her packages.
“Have a nice day!””
7. Treat Me Like Garbage? It'll Cost You 5 Years Of Your Salary
And it was gone, just like that.
“A bit over 6 months before the start of this story, we had a changeup at the company I worked for. The old owner was a great guy that was retiring and handing the company off to his son, a real piece of work just out of business school type. The son, with the mentality that the company is now his, went about restructuring, namely reassigning teams to different projects, and leaving those that remained in their old positions to pick up double—if not triple—the workload.
He did this all in the name of saving a bit of the company’s bank. Unfortunately, my department (safety/engineering, of which I was the team lead) was not spared from this effort. In the end, I had it out with the boss and department head, ultimately costing the company 3 months of my entire department working 80+ hour weeks, and forcing a huge year-end bonus to be paid out to us.
Unfortunately, after my initial meeting with the new boss (i.e. the son), he took a liking to me (in a really bad way). Essentially he really liked me, and wanted to go out with me, or sleep with me, or however, you want to put it. He even enlisted his friends and secretaries to help him! It went on for months, just blatant harassment. They even made comments about me losing my late husband, that I should just get back on the horse (so to speak).
I kept everything—every email, every voice mail—and went to my best friend who happens to be a really good lawyer (a contract lawyer, to be exact; so not exactly their area of expertise, but they knew enough to help). This friend drafted a letter to the boss, essentially a ‘stop or we’re going to start a big case over this’ kind of thing, and yah everything stopped.
However, I was then moved from working in-office to a work-from-home arrangement. I knew what was coming: they were going to do their best to get rid of me, so I started documenting everything. But as luck would happen I received an email chain from the bosses—a good friend of mine in the office who was in the email chain added me to the cc list.
And wouldn’t you know, it was back-and-forth communication of them discussing how they would get rid of me and pin the blame on me.
The email chain was just disgusting. They hated me so badly and wanted me gone, but because of my contract, they would have to buy me out. But being the cheapskates they are you know they wanted me gone for free, so the company bosses started a campaign to try and torment me.
They first tried to say that because now I work from home they were required to install cameras in my home office to make sure I was being productive; luckily that did not work (you have to love contracts). They also tried assigning an impossible workload to me, but luckily my team and I were almost like family and they picked up the slack.
After 3 months of this nonsense, I get an email and a phone call from the HR department saying I was getting laid off indefinitely because there was just no work for me.
This was complete nonsense given that we had several dozen projects we were working on. (On a side note: in Ontario, there is no such thing as a layoff, as—in the court’s eyes—being laid off is considered an active dismissal, which is essentially the same as being fired.)
After this conversation with HR, I call my lawyer friend, almost in tears just shouting ‘look what they are doing to me! HELP!’
She calms me down and tells me ‘this is such a good thing: we have so much evidence against them.’ I had already forwarded and printed everything off that was sent to me, and it was lucky I did because a scant few hours after I was laid off my computer was remotely wiped clean; everything was gone, leaving just a blank desktop.
When I called the HR department to get copies of all my filed complaints, what do you know: everything was gone. In their place was a bunch of nonsense reprimands that never happened—that I never signed or saw—months and months back, and all signed by the new boss, even though they were dated before he ever took control of the company. It was clear they were total garbage, but I got copies of everything to add to my stack of records.
I texted all my old colleagues to let them know what was happening, and that I am basically gone. Like I said earlier, we were like family, and with me on the way out, they started looking for better employment. Not only that, but they contacted all their friends who worked for the company to do the same.
I was ‘laid off’ on a Monday, and on Thursday I walked into the office with my employment lawyer.
I swear, the main secretary was on the phone with security the second she saw me walk in, and they were at the door in a matter of a minute. My lawyer simply handed her a legal document: a summons to meet for mediation at his office the next Friday.
During the following week, I received so many calls and text messages from the bosses, friends, secretaries, and people I knew in the office to just be friendly with the owner, to just drop it, and that they wanted to bring me back and forget about everything (like I was going back to such a hostile work environment).
Friday finally comes and into my lawyer’s office my former boss walks in with a squad of 4 of his lawyers to settle the matter. And off the bat, he offers me 3 months severance to end all of this because I didn’t have any evidence to rebut the fake paperwork they had on file.
At this point, my lawyer starts to bring out all the paperwork we had, namely copies of every complaint I had ever filed which were all signed by the bosses, HR, and myself.
Luckily for our case, I had made sure to take a copy of each complaint when it was written up. They didn’t think I had anything? Oh, boy were they wrong.
My lawyer made the case that in court it’d be obvious that all the paperwork they had on their end were forgeries: nothing was signed by me, and he pointed out that there were dates with the boss’ signature where he wasn’t in the country, let alone working for the company yet.
At that point, the boss and his lawyers went to speak privately.
After about half an hour they came back with a much better offer: a full year’s salary. But my lawyer was like ‘Nah, we’ll just go with what the contract says plus go for damages in court’.
Given the recent change-over at the company, the lawyers seemed to know they couldn’t afford this going to court, not to mention it would be so bad for the company’s reputation.
So they basically rolled over and asked ‘what do you want?’ We demanded 5 years salary + the average bonus I would have made for each year + all the legal fees paid. It was a big big win. But it didn’t end there. I got a taste of blood and wanted more.
I made phone calls to several companies where I had contacts and found jobs for every member of my team (and several members of other teams).
By the end of a week, the company lost 10 of its most talented people. Not to mention most of those people had friends and colleagues that ended up following them to their new employers.
The fallout was pretty bad. Before all of this, they had the pick of the litter when new university students graduated. But now—because they lost almost all of their senior people—they had no one to mentor new employees.
Plus word got out fast how they treat workers like dirt, so no one with any talent would even think of getting near the company.
As of today, the company is just a shell of its former self. It’s still big, but it bleeds money. They also now have a problem with permanent staffing and are paying out the nose to hire subcontractors. Let’s just say they don’t earn like they used to. In fact, they have not started any new projects in something like 9 months. If something isn’t done on the side of management to improve things fast, they will likely be going bankrupt in the very near future.”
6. Think I'm Faking My Broken Wrist? Get Suspended For Discrimination
“I, (15, F) have had a long and elaborate history with injuries, especially breaking my arm. Starting from literally the day I was born, my health has been complicated. I have a few conditions but none serious enough to impact my daily life as I know it. I have a very weak immune system and somewhat easy to break bones. On top of that, I am the definition of clumsy, and I’m also a huge idiot who gets herself into dangerous situations for fun.
My mom (40, F) has obviously known me from birth and knows just the extent of my weird bad luck and health issues. I’ve broken my arms a collective 13 times over my entire life, and almost every time I got injured or sick, it seems somebody had something to say about it. I don’t know why but teachers just love to say that students that get hurt often are attention-seeking fakers, and a lot of relationships with authority figures have been harmful because of this.
Every time it’s the same. For some reason a teacher doesn’t believe me, they call me a liar in front of everyone, I get bullied for a while, and then I have to try and prove that I’m not faking. I could post so many stories about teachers doing this but this is a story about the time my mom actually managed to get revenge.
This all took place around 7th grade.
I was 12 at the time and I had broken my wrist by climbing on top of something I wasn’t supposed to and then falling off. My wrist was in a velcro cast since I’m very allergic to the regular cast material (as they figured out through many cases of trial and error). My teacher… let’s call her Mrs. Tablet since this took place while we were learning about Egyptian tablets.
She taught history and our personalities clashed a bit.
I’m more of a creative, adventurous, free thinker type and she was very conservative, by-the-book, and proper. We hadn’t had any real issues before this but we just didn’t mesh well. She was absent one day and we had a sub in. I knew the sub as one of my teacher’s friends and one of my bullies’ mom.
I didn’t like her but I was still respectful in class and just tried to get my work done. She got me in trouble for doodling on my paper once or twice but other than that everything was fine, or so I thought.
The next day I went into class like usual. We were working on an assignment about Egypt and its tables when Mrs. Tablet called me over to her desk.
I went over, thinking she’d just get onto me for drawing on the back of my homework or something, only to get bombarded with a bunch of really weird questions. The interaction went something like this:
Teacher: So, OP, do you know why I’ve called you up here?
Me: No ma’am, I can’t say that I do.
Teacher: How long have you had that cast?
Me: About a week now… why?
Teacher: Do you really need that cast?
Me: Uh… yes?
Teacher: Well the substitute told me she saw you take it off.
Me: It’s a cast, I can’t take it off, it would hurt.
Teacher: So if I asked the class they’d say you need that cast.
Me: Yes??
Teacher: And if I called your parents right now they’d say the same thing.
Me: Yes, they were the ones who took me to the hospital.
And she did this in front of the WHOLE CLASS.
I was eventually dismissed and people looked at me weird for the rest of class.
As I later learned, apparently the substitute had told Mrs. Tablet that I’d taken off my cast as soon as I left class, (I didn’t) and that I threw it in my locker like ‘hahaha, I’m getting away with doing less work.’
So basically she pretended I was a bad guy in a trashy high school movie. I don’t know why she said this but it had my teacher convinced that I was a liar and a fake.
I technically could remove my cast since it was velcro but that would’ve been extremely painful and it’s not like I could just walk around without it. I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it at the time but it turns out she was serious about calling my parents. But she made the mistake of calling my mom.
Now my mother and I don’t have a perfect relationship (she has anger issues so we don’t always get along well), but she loves me very much and doesn’t let people like this mess with me if she can stop it.
According to my mom, Mrs. Tablet called her all cocky and said things like ‘Apparently your daughter is wearing a cast, did you know that?’ And ‘Well we all know how dramatic teenage girls can be. Especially unique kids like her.’ She apparently even threatened to have me suspended before my mom stopped her and tore her to shreds for talking about her child like that.
I don’t think I’m allowed to repeat what was said but by the end, Mrs. Tablet had to retreat with her tail tucked between her legs. She started being even colder to me after that day and started giving me unfair detentions for not sitting still and doodling on the side of my worksheets.
Even then, outside of school, we went to the same art studio sometimes.
(Weird that someone who hates art so much likes to paint) and put the art director against me and got me placed into a lower class. When my mom found out about this, she started the real revenge.
My mom has never been a PTA mom. She honestly can’t stand most of the PTA members and their kids are chosen as favorites at my school and use this power to bully others, including me and my friends.
My mom is however friends with a very lovely woman on the county’s school board, which has more power than the PTA. She told her friend everything that had happened and supplied all the doctor’s notes needed to prove I needed my cast. Her friend managed to convince the rest of the board that Mrs. Tablet was discriminating against an impaired student (given her comments about me being slower at work and just wearing the cast to slack off) along with detentions related to me not sitting still when she knew I had nervous movements and slight ADHD.
At the art studio, my mother pulled me from the classes. I took it upon myself to inform the fellow kids about why, and rumors spread quickly. Soon enough kids were getting pulled left and right and my art teacher was pulling at strings to try and get the situation under control. I actually think the studio went into temporary closure before reopening again.
She was suspended for a week to go under investigation and it turns out she treated a lot of the ‘unique’, as she put it, students, in a similar way.
She was verbally reprimanded by two different departments, and instead of getting her standard raise over the next three years, she’ll only get half of that. Not only that but she had to retake a course on how to properly treat students, and if she’s ever caught crossing this line again, she’ll lose tenure. She’ll just be getting her bonus back at the start of next school year and I’d just like to say that I hope she learned her lesson.”
5. Make My Job Difficult? I'll Deny You Everything You Want
Now your job is ridiculously difficult… if you can manage to keep it.
“I was offered a job role in mid-2019 in middle management at an aged care service. The general manager who hired me worked with me previously, and we both had similar visions and expectations. He helped me get a really good job with his reference, and he ended up moving to another organization as a general manager, which was well deserved.
A year later, he called me up, and he had a role for me and wanted me to come across to his agency.
The team I ended up managing had a senior employee we will call Karen, a woman in her 40s, who had an actual Karen hair cut and large, rectangle spectacles with the reddest lipstick and smelt like a department store fragrance section, who claimed to know everything and had been in the organization for 9 years.
She was expecting to be given the role due to her seniority and was highly agitated once she found out that the general manager had brought in an ex-colleague to fill the role. Karen was toxic and didn’t take well to not automatically getting the management role but also to me putting in KPIs and having clear expectations around the work which didn’t exist prior. Her attitude towards me was nothing but disgusting and provided me with nothing but resentment from the moment I walked through the door.
One of the first conversations I had with Karen that never left me was when she told me, “You don’t deserve this role; you haven’t earned it.”
That sat with me for a while and played with my self-confidence as this was my first management position where I was managing a large team.
Our team was mainly young and easily influenced.
Karen had been whispering rubbish into their ears and manipulating them into thinking I was out to replace them by implementing unrealistic KPIs (they were actually super easy). She was also BFFs with the state manager, Sharron, which gave her a lot of protection. But luckily, our team didn’t fall under the state manager’s department reporting line. Sharron was known as being ruthless in her department, and everyone was too scared to oppose her.
My revenge came through circumstance and a little through my own planning.
I was enjoying the role but have to admit that Karen made my job really difficult.
Having an internal ball breaker in my team hurt morale but also productivity. Karen didn’t see the need for 1 on 1 catch-up because, apparently, she knew more than me, and it was a waste of her time. Everything I discussed was met with an excuse, rebuttal, or denial.
I documented everything, and I knew she wouldn’t read it, and she blindly signed it afterward without reading it because it came back to my desk within seconds of me handing it to her.
At the time, we were introducing working from home as we were running out of space in the office. All she kept saying is she wanted to work from home because of time, public transport, and the fact she probably wanted to do nothing and have no accountability. She would be the last person I would want working from home as she is always blaming the computer for being slow, the internet, her keyboard not working, her VPNs not connecting, or her database not logging in.
She would be a nightmare. Most likely just wanted to smoke all day and think, “This is the life.”
I provided feedback in our 1 on 1 catch-up along the lines of smoke breaks are to be taken during your morning, lunch, and afternoon breaks, not every hour for 15 minutes, leaving early without notice, and about her phone metrics around picking up the phone.
We weren’t a call center, but let’s just say she had a 5% pick-up rate, and she would be getting around 40 calls a day.
Answering phones was beneath her, and the team was starting to get really annoyed because she was always smoking, never answering the phones, and always being negative. My team, God bless them, started to see her for who she was.
Historically, the company had previously given everyone “exceeds expectations” on their annual performance review to keep a happy culture which would ultimately lead to a remuneration increase, and employees having a false expectation of rewarding sub-par performance.
Because she had a 5% pick up rate on the phones, took more breaks than anyone else, did less work than anyone else, had a 50% attendance rate for team meetings, and also didn’t listen I gave her an “unsatisfactory” as an overall score which was the lowest. Karen missed out on her Rem-increase and was warned that she would be put on performance management if she didn’t start showing improvement.
I don’t think Karen had ever been spoken to like that at work and actually given hard-hitting feedback.
Karen. Was. Angry.
Karen took me to HR claiming I was bullying, saying I gave her an “unsatisfactory” out of spite. I over-enthusiastically provided the 15 odd 1 on 1 documents that we had both signed discussing her poor habits around breaks, punctuality, and KPIs.
Karen was told politely that this was not bullying but me managing and setting expectations for performance.
This wasn’t the last time she took me to HR but I would say I had about 5 different discussions from HR regarding bullying of her.
They were all her word vs mine, but that time, I had proof and could refute her bullying claims.
She read every 1 on 1 doc from that moment.
A few days later, I was in the toilet washing my hands, but I could hear people out in the foyer waiting for the elevator. It was Karen and Sharron, the state manager. Karen was mocking and tearing me to shreds, and Sharron wasn’t happy with the general manager at the time either.
I remember Karen very clearly saying, “(My name) is General Manager’s mutt,” and they all laughed. Apparently, I did all the general manager’s dirty work which I reflect on now and laugh at as all I was doing was setting expectations to which we were to work under.
Karen from that day always referred to me as Muttley behind my back. She even changed my name in her phone to Muttley.
My team was providing me feedback that they are getting sick of her bad-mouthing me which I really appreciated as they had matured a lot and we were starting to build a strong culture aside from the ball breakers.
The general manager called me into the office and advised me that my team (15 FTE) would be working from home to free up desks as we were not essential to be in the office.
The only catch is that one team member had to remain in the office in case someone walked in off the streets and needed information or other unlikely scenarios where someone administrative/intake had to be there.
Like clockwork, Karen would always take smoke breaks at around 10 and would be gone anywhere from 15-30 minutes and would always be late or miss meetings if they were scheduled in that time as it was her time to have a break with Sharron the state manager.
From our 1 on 1 catch-ups, the only thing she ever contributed positively to her development or future goals was the fact that she wanted to work from home. I came up with the perfect plan relying on her behaviors for this to work.
I scheduled a meeting at 10 am via email and requested all my team that it be compulsory to attend due to important changes and CC’d everyone important from our department into this email and invite.
The day comes.
10 am, the meeting has started, and you guessed, she was out having a smoke. I asked everyone, “Who would like to work from home?” and everyone put up their hand. I advised that there needs to be one person who does remain working from the office and asked if anyone wanted to volunteer? No one volunteered. I smiled with joy as I had given forewarning that this was an important meeting, and the general manager and another general manager of a brother department were also in attendance giving Karen no hope of arguing.
She came in 15 minutes late with a coffee in her hand just as we were wrapping up and was wondering why everyone was so happy. One of the team said we get to work from home. She smiled and was like, “Great, when do we start working from home?” I looked up and grinned, “Because you didn’t attend the meeting, all the available working from home spots were allocated, and you’ll be required to still come into the office.” She was livid and even threw her pen that was tucked behind her ear at the ground.
“Why didn’t you come and get me?! You knew I wanted to work from home,” she spat. I discussed in front of the team, the general managers, and Karen that it was compulsory to attend this meeting which was clearly stated and I’m not responsible for the time management of your day as you’re an adult.
Her BFF Sharron also received some bad news: her position was made redundant and was demoted to another department and office, which meant Karen’s biggest ally was no longer around to support her.
The team transitioned into working from home, and I still came into the office.
Why did I come into work? Because I wanted to keep Karen accountable by sitting next to her every day. The team took to working from home so well, and productivity went through the roof. I still remember sitting next to her and saying good morning in a nice loud voice to her. Karen had no one to manipulate, no one to whine to, and no one to whisper poison to about me anymore.
Well, no one that cared. As I mentioned earlier, she used to call me Muttley behind my back. So on my 3 screens, I put the background as Muttley, and my work mobile ringtone was now Muttley’s laugh. She would have heard Muttley’s laugh 20 times per day.
As expected, I saw her on a job website looking for jobs and blatantly not caring if I saw.
I got a phone call from my previous employer Megan who I was still on good speaking terms with and Megan asked if I worked with a “Karen.” I said I did, and Megan told me Karen had applied for a role at Happy Care (not real name). She asked me to speak about Karen’s character and wondered why I wasn’t listed as a reference. We actually caught up for a drink, and I told Megan the whole story of how Karen was lazy, a manipulator, and just not a nice person.
Karen was applying for a management position, and I advised heavily against hiring Karen. Megan called Karen right there and then and asked about her references and her current supervisor. She discussed that her manager was her BFF Sharon the former state manager and was a great mentor, but she was outgrowing the role, and the opportunity to grow was limited. Megan told her that she is not going to offer her an interview, let alone, the role as she was not transparent about her work history and falsifying referees.
I can just imagine how confused Karen would have been.
The next morning, I sat down and told Karen, “Megan from Happy Care says hello.” Karen just stared at her keyboard wide-eyed and not saying a word.
Karen ended up finding another job. They never called me for a reference check.
For her departing gift, I made a Muttley, We will miss you, card that the whole team signed.
I wanted to make one where you open it up, and he laughs, but Karen was not worth the $45 it required to create. No one actually wrote anything meaningful other than, “All the best in your new role.” We had cake and drinks for Karen’s goodbye. Karen and I were sitting next to each other Zooming the rest of the team, and Karen left about 10 minutes in.
I walked her out, took her pass, and wished her all the best.
I started working from home the very next day and still am to this day.
The most satisfying part of this saga is that her new job was made redundant, and she re-applied for her old job back. We were not actually hiring, but I made an exception and made Karen interview via Zoom with my 2IC who happened to be one of the young staff she used to talk trash to about me and clued on early that Karen was vile.
We started the interview and she couldn’t have been more sweet, nice, and two-faced. Her face was still as antagonizing as ever. I could smell her perfume through the computer. It was still as offensive as it was in person. The interview was over in 5 minutes. I waited an hour and called Karen.
“You don’t deserve this role; you haven’t earned it.””
Another User Comments:
“I managed that woman.
It was horrendous. She walked on water, and I swam through sewers. She spent more time trying to find ways to get out of work than actually doing her job. She trashed me so many times that my SVP asked if I wanted to leave and get a mega-payout, and I took it.
Less than a month later, the guy who took my place couldn’t stand her anymore and had her fired. She immediately sued because she’s an entitled, middle-aged, horrible human being who happens to believe everything bad happens to her solely because she’s a woman.” DustyBottles
4. Think You Can Be A Jerk For No Reason? Too Bad Your Man Is A Felon
“One of the managers at my local firearm store is a loud, ex-marine who has a short temper. He’s exactly the kind of guy you’re thinking of, conservative, brash, forward, conspiratorial, in your face. The kind of guy who if you asked the question “How was your morning?” he’d respond, “Well there’s new construction on my street which made it hard to get to work probably because the Democrats want to make it impossible for me to sell firearms.” Yeah, that guy.
He’s loud, political, and annoying, but he is never boring.
So the manager is at the firearm store, and this customer calls up in a rage. This customer is furious because she ordered a firearm online, and there is some problem with the firearm being shipped from the manufacturer to the store. He tried to get the necessary information from her to contact the manufacturer, but in her rage, she refuses to give it to him.
Finally, after half an hour of going back and forth, she relents and gives him the information he needs. He gets ahold of the manufacturer, and the firearm is shipped in.
As you can imagine, when she came to pick up the firearm, she wasn’t any nicer. In return, the manager wasn’t nice back. Firearm store employees generally aren’t nice in the first place. In America, when you want to buy a firearm from a store, you have to fill out a long government form called a 4473 with lots of questions to answer and dates to mark and signatures to make, etc.
Usually when you fill one out store employees will usually guide you through each question to make sure everything is filled in appropriately. Instead, the manager watched her fill out the form going “that’s wrong,” “you missed that,” “you didn’t do that right,” just to make her even madder. After angering her even more, she finishes the form.
When it comes time to pay she walks up to the front counter but instead of her paying, her man takes out his credit card.
That is a problem. You see, in filling out that 4473, you put yourself as the owner of the firearm, however, if her man was paying, it could be construed that he would be the actual owner of the firearm, which would be illegal since he wasn’t the one that filled out the form. Sometimes firearm store employees won’t care about this if it’s the same party; they were married after all, but the manager decided to be a jerk about it.
He told her that her partner could not pay because that would be a straw purchase. She throws a fit but after getting nothing out of the manager. She relents and pulls out her own credit card.
Just as she is about to make the purchase, the manager asks the couple, “If he was going to buy it, why isn’t he the one filling out the form and taking ownership of the firearm?” “Oh, I’m a felon,” the man said.
Yeah, that’s right, the partner, who tried to pay for the firearm, had been convicted of a felony in the past. As you may have guessed, felons cannot buy firearms. The manager lights up and says that it’s pretty obvious that the man, a convicted felon, is going to be the recipient of the firearm, and that this was a straw purchase. So the manager goes to cancel the sale.
The partner says, “Oh, it was just a minor thing; I was only in for three years.” The manager said it didn’t matter; a felony is a felony, and he could not buy the firearm. The lady goes ballistic, but there’s nothing she could do. They ended up leaving the store empty-handed, and the firearm had to be sent back to the manufacturer.
Don’t be a jerk if you don’t have to.”
3. Avoid My Questions? You'll Be Calling Me Soon
You could’ve just listened, answered, and compromised.
“I’m currently trying to buy a house and was given the loan agreement with the fee sheet and all that.
They were overpriced by around 6k more than all their competitors.
I originally was dealing with one guy who was nice, but it turns out, he’s not the one who does the loans.
It’s another guy who is the biggest loser. I didn’t like him from the first time I spoke to him because he asked me for a number to call for my employment, and I said, “Who are you going to call?” so I can give him that number.
And he tells me, “Whoever picks up the phone.”
Yeah, no kidding.
Anyways, he wants me to pay him 9k in a lending fee upfront.
Most places add it on to the loan, so you pay it over the life of the loan, and it only adds about $20 to your monthly payment which makes a lot more sense than having to pay this one guy 9k plus another 11k to his company for paperwork and stuff.
I called him about the fees and that wasn’t even the one I was questioning.
I was questioning a $200 CREDIT REPORT.
They’re usually around $30, at most $80.
I said I’m not going to pay $200 for a credit report.
So, he said, “Yeah, it could be $30.
It could be $80. It could be $200. I don’t know, so I have to estimate high.”
I said, “I’m not going to sign something that says I agree to pay $200 for a credit report.”
In a scoffing jerk voice, he said, “Don’t sign it then.”
Obviously, I’m not signing it, and that’s why I’m calling you because if I don’t sign it we can’t do the loan.
So, I just said, “Ok.”
And we got off the phone.
I immediately start getting calls from the owner of the place who was the original one I dealt with saying, “Oh my God, what happened??? I was next to him and heard the whole thing. No, no, he didn’t mean it like that,” and I hear him in the background trying to explain himself.
Anyways, I got another guy to do it within minutes of getting off the phone with them.
He is wonderful and sweet and nothing like that, and I love it, and I don’t have to pay him 9k upfront, so my total costs will be less than half of the other people, and he’s nice!
The other place is still harassing me because I dropped the deal with them, and they’re begging me to sign the papers.
Anyways, now they owe me my 5k deposit, and I can’t wait to send them the cancellation of the contract and have them give it back to me.”
2. Leave If I'm Not Happy? I'll Take Your Advice
“Back when I was still working in HR, I got a great job offer. This was a publicly funded company with HUGE cultural impact, really the definition of an institution. Everyone who learned I worked there couldn’t help but feel slightly amazed at the discovery. Some people even rudely implied I had ‘friends’ in the right places. Never mind, I was a recent graduate, clueless, young man with nothing to my name.
This was my first ‘real’ job too. Not counting internships or smaller summer jobs. As such, I really tried my best to be helpful and kind to everyone during my first year there, and maybe that’s why I became a target.
After I secured a permanent contract with them (with incredibly garbage pay and no benefits at all, I might add), one particular coworker got pretty salty about my position in the office (although, for all intents and purposes, I was still beneath pretty much everyone there).
This culminated in getting a call from this person, 30 minutes after I had left work, asking about a pile of papers she couldn’t find. I remembered I had actually kept those papers on my desk and told her to look there. I apologize profusely and ask her if she wants me to go back to help her deal with it. She simply says ‘no’ and that everything is ‘alright.’
Now, this was the type of coworker that always did the bare minimum and still whine about it at every chance she had.
I never thought much of it. After all, she was a mom and as such, she probably was pretty tired all the time. But I never thought she would turn on me because she had to stay at work for 30 more minutes looking for a pile of papers. Half the time, I would have to stay 1 or 2 hours after work to deal with my workload, so I thought it was no big deal.
The next day, I again apologized to my coworker but immediately noticed something wasn’t quite right about the way she was acting with me.
Throughout the day, I noticed her going out of the office with coworkers, sending them messages, and letting out these poisonous little laughs to herself every time I opened my mouth to say anything.
From that day on, this was one of the people that decided to make my life a living nightmare.
I made some friends in this place too, some of them became really great friends that I still hang out with and treasure to this day.
But for the most part, it was an absolute nightmare. Here are some of the things that I experienced over my 3-year stay:
– One of the most important people in the company publicly shamed me for participating in an interview wearing sneakers. (Keep in mind that no dress code was defined for interviews or any other corporate event, and I had always worn sneakers.)
– A Sadistic manager who, on good days, would talk trash about everyone she had to work with, and on bad days, would downright bully and verbally assault me in front of other coworkers;
– A coworker who would often raise rumors about me based on nothing (the same who turned on me because of 30 extra minutes on the job);
– A coworker who, for no good reason, sprayed me and my friends with a fire extinguisher and HR who refused to do anything about it;
– et cetera.
I don’t pretend that I was the perfect worker.
I mean, it was my first job; I made a ton of mistakes and probably angered a lot of people. But I’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who could deal with this toxic workplace and keep their mental stability.
All of this pushed me to a point of a near nervous breakdown, and one day… I just couldn’t take it anymore.
It’s a day just like any other.
At some point after lunch, I come back into the office to find my coworker sitting at her desk all by herself. ‘Weird’ I thought; she usually came back from lunch way after I did. Obviously sulking, she acknowledges my presence by immediately accusing me of hiding papers to prevent her from doing her job.
Keep in mind, it’s been almost 3 years since she called me after work hours, and our relationship soured.
This day would be the climax of that seething hatred we had both cultivated for one another.
I shrug and tell her I have no idea what she’s talking about. Never seen such papers and certainly have nothing to do with the situation. I sit down, also angry now but ready to move on and not waste any more time on this subject. My manager comes in and notices something has happened; the tension is palpable.
Before she has the chance to ask what’s up, my coworker pipes up.
‘Well, you see, what’s happening is that OP is a liar’.
What?
In all of my 3 years there, I never raised my voice, never talked back, never shown a hint of defiance until that very. exact. moment.
I can’t deal with anyone calling me a liar; it’s one of the things that makes me go absolutely insane with rage.
I immediately cut her off and tell her how much of a toxic witch she is. I wasn’t nice or even professional about it, and I really don’t regret it. I didn’t use any swear words, but I was definitely very personal about the way I responded.
I can see their surprise. They never thought I would fight back. They expected me to take it and shut up forever.
Things go downhill from here for me.
My jerk of a coworker gets transferred somewhere else, but I’m told I have to undergo ‘behavioral training.’ For the first time in years, I’m not taking nonsense, and I let my manager know I’m not interested. I had been humiliated for 3 years and finally stood up for myself. I wasn’t going to be punished for that.
My boss calls me to her office. Began asking weird questions like, ‘Are you happy here?’ and ‘What do you want to do in the future?’ I told her about my grievances and how toxic this work culture is.
In no uncertain terms, she tells me:
‘You know…
we have to renew your contract soon. But if you’re not happy here… I would find a job somewhere else…’
What?
I had given this company some of the best years of my youth. I worked for them day and night, going the extra mile even when they didn’t ask me to for what amounted to be a little more than minimum wage. Their payback? Punishing me for standing up for myself once.
Well…
The problem (for them) is…
I had been learning how to program while working. I would get off work late in the evening, go home, and drag my exhausted body to my laptop to study up to 4 or 5 hours of coding. I realized I really liked coding. Like, a lot. Unbeknownst to them, I had begun taking small coding projects for no pay (as having other paid jobs was forbidden in this company), and soon, I was thinking of launching a career as a web developer.
My contract ended, and I expected to receive a call in one or two weeks to come by and sign the new contract.
This was the usual process for workers like me.
Weeks go by, and I honestly believe they just decided to not hire me back. Didn’t bother me. After all, I was already looking for a new job before my contract was even over.
3 months later. I get a call from my manager.
“Hi OP!! How are you?? Listen, we got your new contract here. Why don’t you come by to sign it? If you sign it today, we can have you back by Monday!”
She goes on to tell me how much work there’s been lately and how they really need me back ASAP.
All the projects I had worked on were halted because no one else wanted to work on them. A quarter of a year after they dropped me with no word of hiring me back.
At this point, however, I was getting plenty of interviews for IT companies that were genuinely interested in my skills and portfolio.
“Thank you. I’m not coming back.”
The silence on the other end of the call was so, so, so sweet.
My manager asks me to pass by anyway. She would like a word with me, and I still had my personal belongings at my desk. I agreed, figuring this was the only chance I’d have to stick it back to them, after 3 years of abuse.
She sat me down with a disgustingly saccharine attitude that she would seldom display while I was working for them. The whole meeting was essentially a desperate attempt to bring me back into the company and me refusing it at each turn.
“That’s okay,” she said.
“What are you going to do, then?”
I told her I’d work as a programmer.
My reply is met with laughter. I remain silent.
“That’s good,” she continued. “I’m sure you can do it. But you know, I would seriously consider staying with us.”
I reiterate I’m not interested and even let her know I’m moving away in a couple of months.
Again, she laughs at me. Apparently, my plans for the future were so extraordinarily out of my reach in her opinion, that she just couldn’t help but laugh.
Just a last little slap on my face.
Finally, she asks, “Why would you want to leave us?”
I shrugged, unable to contain my smile.
“You people told me to get a job if I wasn’t happy here. I’m just following your suggestion.”
Much to my manager’s chagrin, I did land a job in web development, and after I left this job because I wanted to immigrate, my employer liked my work so much he asked me to keep working for them remotely until I found another job in my destination.
I’ve been working as a web developer for 3 years now, and every single day, I look back at my previous career and wipe the sweat off my forehead knowing I dodged a lifetime of misery and abuse.
As for my previous workplace, they’re still going strong. After all, it is a huge institution, and my part in it wasn’t that important, but my team was pretty badly hit.
Without me, they couldn’t perform interviews and keep some of their projects going, for a couple of months, the whole thing was hot garbage until they, unfortunately, hired another clueless recent graduate. But honestly, knowing those people have to wake up and go to work in the nightmare they have personally created, feels like enough of a punishment for me. Hope they find the inner peace they want so badly.”
1. Demand Immediate Service? We'll Let You Waste Your Own Time
“This is a story that takes place during my retail days in the big blue box. A lady comes up to our counter and says she wanted RAM installed. I quoted her the price for the RAM and the install (don’t remember the price of the hardware but likely expensive since it was DDR, and the service was $40). First, she has a hissy fit over the fact that we had the audacity to charge for our labor.
The usual “bUt It’S sO eAsY fOr YoU gUyS” and whatnot. I explain to her that while cumbersome, her laptop is designed to be opened, and she can easily do it herself if she wanted, but either way, it takes time (this being aside from the fact that if we screw up and break something, we’re basically going to have to give her a new machine, so she had better pay something to us).
Either way, she was going to have to pay.
I guess once she heard the term “time,” she decided to complain about something else and wanted to know how long it would take us. Even though I can have it installed and tested in under ten minutes, there were other people in line and other people that had “quick” work ahead of her, so I quoted within an hour (standard at the time was 24 hours, but I was being realistic).
She pitched yet another hissy fit about how “she can’t wait for that” and “she has to catch a plane.” I offered to let her come back later next week, and I’d make sure she was priced the same price for the RAM should it be marked a different price when she got back, and she started going on about how she needed it before she left.
I told her we couldn’t do it that moment; we have a line that once we clear it down, we’ll be able to get it done. Evidently, that was the wrong answer.
She finally demands the manager. I told her that’s fine, but until paperwork and payment are rendered, I can’t start, so it will only increase the wait time. She was fuming when the manager came by, so he took her to customer service to yell.
At this point, she had to already wait five minutes for him just to get there. After about twenty minutes, we get the line down, and I spend another fifteen minutes getting simple hardware installs done (I think it was a network card and two other RAM installs, so nothing difficult, but if drivers fight or a case is designed to take 587 screws to access the slot, it can take a bit).
Since I’ve already finished what needed my immediate attention, I decide to take care of other duties while my coworkers handle the other machines.
I go over to customer service to pick up returns to be tested, and lo and behold, she’s STILL there reaming out the manager. I get a deliciously petty idea in my head, and now that it took root, I had to do it.
I pass by him, make sure to tell him quite audibly, “Hey, I finished off with the front counter machines. I’m going to grab and start testing these since there isn’t anything else for me to do right now.” She MAY have been smart enough to know what I was alluding to. While she’s glaring at me, I look her straight in the eye and say in my most concerned-and-clearly-unable-to-pick-up-on-social-cues-customer-service-voice (If you’ve been there, you know what I’m talking about), “What are you still doing here? Didn’t you have to go catch a plane?” The look she gave the manager could have melted stone, and he looked at me like Wile E.
Coyote right before he gets hit by a train. He later told me about how much he wishes he could throw me into a volcano, and we all had a good laugh. He also mentioned how she just kept going on about missing her flight for this. You know, the one over the service she didn’t want to pay for, to install the hardware she didn’t buy, that she waited for the manager to complain about, then willingly opted to complain about for forty minutes instead of actually catching her flight. All of which of course automatically made him not believe a word she said given there was nothing holding her there, and she could have left at any time.”
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