People Disclose Their Vaunting Revenge Stories
20. I'm Not Allergic To Poison Ivy...But They Are
“So, I’m one of the few people who aren’t allergic to either Poison Ivy or Poison Oak. A super-power I once used for evil. Small evil… not the bad kind.
When I was in the Boy Scouts, it was still a quasi-paramilitary organization and we went on a camping trip for a jamboree one summer (I was about, 13 or 14 at the time).
This particular jamboree had us camping all week long with our local National Guard. They instructed us that week on shooting the M-14 and M-16 as well as the M-2 and M-249 machine guns. They also instructed us on pathfinding and had us running a 10-mile course through the Arkansas countryside.
I suppose I should mention that I absolutely HATED most of the scouts in my troop (half of them were psychopaths and the rest were a bunch of little entitled jerks… so I really didn’t have a single friend in scouts… ever… it’s one of the reasons I eventually quit).
Towards the end of the jamboree, shortly after I woke up on Saturday morning, our head scout (an Eagle Scout no less) whacked me in the forehead with the butt-end of a knife that he was using to eat peanut butter, directly from the jar. Why? I don’t know… just because I was there, and he felt like it… I guess.
Now… the day before, while we were doing some basic reconnoitering of our course, I happened upon a patch of Poison Ivy and noted its location on my pathfinding map.
After the… ‘silverware’ incident, I honestly hadn’t really thought of getting back at him or any of his other psychopathic sycophants, who thought me getting ‘thumped’ in the head was ‘funny’. However, when it came time for me to take over on our pathfinding march, we were only a couple hundred yards from that patch of Poison Ivy I found the day before. I didn’t know if anyone else knew it was there, but I had an opportunity, and if the Boy Scouts taught me anything, it was,
‘Whenever an opportunity presented itself… you be a man… and go for it!’
‘Alrighty, if you insist…’
The best part was… because it was July, we were all wearing shorts. I marched us straight through that patch, and not one. single. scout. (Tenderfoot, Life or Eagle) identified it. They were completely, beautifully… oblivious.
I had the best night I had ever had on ANY camping trip in scouts just a few, short hours later, as I listened to the cries of every single scout in my troop as they went absolutely mad from the horrible pain and itching that Poison Ivy causes.
And, the cherry on top? Not one of us… nor any of the other troops, nor even the National Guard guys… had even a single drop of Calamine Lotion.
It was the most cathartic revenge I’ve ever experienced. After all of the things and bullying I had put up with from those little ‘Lord Of The Flies’ idiots, the sweet sounds of their suffering lulled me gently to sleep that night.
We had to break camp immediately the next morning…
‘Aww, dang it! I was just starting to have fun!’
I don’t know what the National Guard guys had planned for that day, but I didn’t care. I never wanted to go on that jamboree in the first place. I got home early on Sunday, and it was one of the best days ever, as I happily returned to a wonderful shower, a clean bed, and our lovely, lovely air conditioning.
‘I love you, Air Conditioning… you’ll be my best friend, won’t you? Yeah… you never let me down, Air Conditioning. I can always count on you.'”
19. Petty Neighbor Is Afraid Of HR
“I live on a slight hill. Not enough to cause problems but enough that rainwater will roll from my yard into my neighbor’s yard.
In what was the wettest year on record, there was enough rain that our basement got slightly wet and so did our neighbor’s. We then got a letter saying we were being cited by the county for expelling all our rainwater onto her property.
We got the county inspector to come on, examine the downspouts and confirm that they were correctly configured and could not be causing her basement problems.
She then started to threaten to sue us for property damage. We took legal advice and the lawyer basically laughed at her claim. She then started sending threatening emails to my wife, which she ignored. Finally, she made a huge mistake and sent a similar email to me.
The mistake was that she used her company email and, about 10 years before, I had worked at the same company so knew that they had very strict rules on email use as it was regulated by the SEC.
At this point, I sent her an email explaining that she had no grounds to be making the threats and, more importantly, that making such threats on her company email was grounds for termination.
I included a copy of the email policy for her to review with the pertinent section highlighted. I explained that this was her last warning; we receive any kind of threat by any medium and EVERY email that she had ever sent to us would be forwarded to her HR department and to the SEC itself. Basically, she would have lost her job and would probably have never worked again.
Strangely, we never heard from her again.”
18. I Used His Obsession With Golf And Watches To Get Him Fired
“I was a young regional sales manager for a major branded consumer product. I covered the grocery class of trade in 11 Western States. My division worked out of Chicago, and I had a home office on the West coast. I had made my reputation by typically making my quota and keeping costs within budget.
I would get re-assigned to struggling markets and more often than not, I would usually make my sales number. Nothing too fancy, I just figured where the best opportunities were and concentrated on them. In those days, we had something called ‘Market Development Funds’ MDF or as we called it ‘Making Days Fun’ in the time before such things were deemed illegal, it was funds we could literally use for almost anything you could imagine: wining and dining, sending buyers to the Super Bowl, taking them on ‘market research trips’ (I once took 6 honchos for a weekend of fishing in Mexico).
As long as you had the receipts and your boss knew (except in cases where they specifically asked not to know) we were free to spend as we saw fit. This was old-school Mad Men-style slush funds. All tax-deductible!
Typically the MDF fund was 2% of your total annual gross sales and was ‘use-it-or-lose-it’, meaning it had to be spent because it wouldn’t roll over.
I always had some leftovers. As a team player, I would let my boss, Sasquatch know, so he could use it. No big deal.
Towards the end of the year, my weekly FedEx pack from the company started including sign-offs for payments to a supplier I had never heard of before, what was weird is they were for a demo company that wasn’t one of my regional suppliers (if you have ever been offered a sample or a coupon in a grocery store, that was a demo company).
I called the broker/agent in that market and learned that they had never used the company (or even heard of them).
I finally figured out that they were from Sasquatch and that he had thrown them in with my other sign-offs. I called him and asked if he knew what they were. He said that they should be assigned to my MDF and not to worry about them.
This was a little unusual because demos would normally be taken out of other monies or come down from marketing. Whatever, I signed off on them.
About 3 months later I was called into HQ for a meeting where I was told I was being transferred to a market that I had never worked before and would be required to relocate. At the time, my wife was pregnant and we just started an extensive remodel on our newly purchased house.
The company had some relocation benefits, but it was just too hectic to pull up roots and move to the Southeast. I declined the offer and was told that I could look for another job within the company or receive a severance package. I wound up taking the severance.
The truth comes to light.
Several months later, one of my ex co-workers told me that my region had been taken over by one of Sasquatch’s past work associates who he managed to get hired in my spot and that the region was tanking.
Badly. Nothing made sense. Why was I terminated and then replaced by someone who lived in another city and who couldn’t do the job?
I started to think in my naivety that I may have put a target on my back. After some research and digging (which was much harder before the internet) I learned that the ‘demo company’ billing the MDF, was based in my ex-boss’s previous city and was just a PO Box, a telephone, and a DBA registered by… THE NEW PERSON IN MY JOB (I later found out it was his significant other/mistress).
I was livid. Like most people, I tend to plan revenge in my head, but never really go through with it. Most of the time, it’s a coping mechanism and not very useful in moving on past being wronged. But, this was so egregious, so uncalled for, and so disruptive to my life that I felt I HAD to get even.
My plan evolved to take this guy down.
Whatever the time it took. Whatever the cost. I was going to get this idiot. I may have been able to rat him out to the company, but they might have dismissed my complaint as coming from a disgruntled ex-employee with an ax to grind.
I decided that I was going to approach the guy as a phony recruiter, not just a guy collecting resumes, but as a RETAINED CORPORATE HEADHUNTER, someone paid to onboard people for big jobs.
I had spent a year early in my career working for a super exclusive headhunting firm and knew exactly what transpired in the process. My subterfuge required international telexes, phony letterhead, faking English accents, and overseas friends to do my bidding.
Sasquatch was obsessed with expensive watches and golf (he played regularly and watched pro golf both on TV and live). He would incessantly chatter on about both subjects.
To bait him, I arranged for him to be approached for an executive position with a major Swiss watch company for a position tied to pro golf (and other swanky sports) sponsorships and included a shopping list of benefits and perquisites. The job would require hobnobbing with major sports organizers and flying around the world (1st Class, natch). It was a job he could only dream of.
In the slow and methodical long con, I strung him along until the time was right to ‘close’ with an offer. The only catch was that he had to report to Switzerland for the final offer and onboarding. I deliberately scheduled it for the week of the old job’s division meetings and reporting. They were mandatory and impossible to miss without raising red flags.
Sasquatch was worried that his absence would be impossible to cover (especially if he was out of the country).
The ‘headhunting’ firm said they could move the appointment up a few days so that he would be able to attend his meeting, but that he would need to purchase an unrestricted Business Class seat and make his hotel reservations. ‘Save your receipts!’ and the ‘watch company’ will reimburse you he was told.
Sasquatch showed up at his swanky hotel suite (using his credit card for the $$$$ room) and promptly received a note from the watch company that his appointment had to be rescheduled for the following Monday because of a major corporate crisis. Sasquatch called the phony recruiter in a panic about missing the corporate meetings back in the States, it was agreed that he would call in sick and that whatever happened with the old job, he was heading to much greener fairways (hehehehe).
Enjoy your weekend in Europe, by Monday you’ll be in your dream job…
While Sasquatch was cooling his jets in Europe, I nonchalantly called his boss, the President of the division, and casually asked for a reference on Sasquatch’s work ethic and dates of employment. You’d be surprised how often this ‘mistake’ happens. The President, to his credit, didn’t tip his hand or act very surprised by the call, but like a good corporate wonk, he referred me to human resources.
I let it slip that he was in Europe finalizing his new job and that he’d already given the company notice. My bad.
Eventually, I was able to put together the aftermath from old co-workers and other people in the trade (who did not know I was the revenge ninja). When Monday came and went, Sasquatch must have been apoplectic (this is to be assumed since we had cut all communications to let him twist in the wind) because we received at least 20 calls to the exchange and multiple faxes.
Sasquatch hung around the hotel for a day or two and then finally decided to leave for home. I assume at some point he may have contacted the watch company, but I never confirmed it.
When he finally got home he found his office had been packed up and left with his wife. An HR person met him off-site to give him his severance and retrieve the car and other company property.
I heard his wife left him sometime later and his mistress was fired for theft.
I figure he spent at least 10K on travel and hotel.
I wish I could say I tipped my hand and told Sasquatch that I was the author of his demise, but it really served no purpose and in theory, may have exposed me to some retribution of my own.
By my moral lodestar, I got even with a thief who was content to steal and take my livelihood.”
17. Miss Popular Didn't Make It To Her Dream School
“There was this one girl in my high school class.
She was Miss Popular, but not someone friendly and nice, more like the mean kind of popular from the movies. She was really nasty, downright cruel for fun, loved to brag about how great and pretty she was, and sucked up to every teacher like it was her life’s goal. She manipulated everyone she could for any little reason and bragged about how much fun it was to manipulate people and get others to do her bidding.
We’re from an Ontario high school, so there were very few of us actively trying to get into top US colleges. Both of us were among them. For several years, all she could talk about was Columbia University. How perfect of a fit she was for Columbia, how much she couldn’t wait to go, how sure she was she would be accepted. She was talking to all these admissions people to secure her acceptance.
She was in the ‘know.’ Columbia was her dream, but, ‘you never know,’ she claimed, ‘I’m going to have a hard time deciding between Columbia and Harvard.’
App season comes around. She’s decided she’s too good for Columbia ED and applies to Princeton SCEA. She wants to keep her options open.
She’s deferred, unsurprisingly. I, too, was deferred from my EA school.
In the RD round, I was accepted to Columbia, two other Ivies, and a bunch of comparable universities, most on more than 50% ride (scholarships + aid). The only US college she was accepted to was NYU, with a $1K entrance scholarship.
The little brat was down for a while, but man. She could not shut up about that $1K scholarship. She was totally smug about it, too, and would mention it every time we ran into each other.
I assume she thought I didn’t get into anywhere good, either.
Decision day rolls around and I come into school wearing my Columbia tee shirt.
The look on her face was amazing.
I wore some sort of Columbia gear (whether that tee-shirt, my Columbia hat or my Columbia sweater) every single day the rest of the school year.”
16. This Is Why I Hate New Year's Eve
“New Year’s Eve sucks. Too many amateur drinkers. Too many high expectations.
I picked up three nicely dressed young women on New Year’s Eve, taking them to a downtown club for some festivities. They knew cabs would be difficult to get after midnight and so asked me for my card.
About an hour or so later I got a call from the ladies, one was already too wasted and needed a ride home. At 9:30, tsk, tsk, tsk.
I met her being held up by her friends in front of the club. What a mess! I explained that if she got sick in the cab it would be fifty bucks extra, surcharge. If she was going to get sick, tell me and I’d pull over.
We were off.
Shortly after we started, she told me she was about to get sick. I pulled over just in time for her to open the door and barf in the curb. Blah! Blaarf! I hate New Year’s Eve.
After five minutes of this display, I asked if we should continue or maybe return to the club. No, she wanted to go home.
I got her home and the fare was $18.80. She said that’s two dollars more than the trip out. I explained the meter continues to run while she was throwing up. ‘Outrageous!’ she said. She threw eighteen dollars at me. I reminded her it was eighteen and EIGHTY cents (plus tip). She then threw the change at me. Happy New Year, I said as I pulled away, not even waiting for her to get to her door.
New Year’s Eve is the worst!!!
Karma is my buddy, for just a few minutes later I heard a cell phone ring in the back seat. Hello, I answered. She said you found my phone. I said, are you the one who just threw change at me? She said, yes she was, and could I bring her phone to her home? Yeah, right. I told her, per company policy, I would drop her phone off at the taxi station’s lost and found, she could come pick it up in the morning.
For the rest of the shift that cell phone kept ringing, all her friends calling to give her wishes. My fares throughout the night would ask, Aren’t you going to answer the phone. I then would explain what happened. We’d all laugh and laugh. New Year’s Eve can be festive, too.”
15. You Don't Like The Nonexistent Smell? Let Me Fix That For You
“Early 2000s my wife and I had a nice home built in a new development that used to be a strip of farmland. The loss of farmland to housing is never a good thing, but it’s common in the US. In Pennsylvania, farmers will often sell a portion of their land because costs are driving them out of business.
Anyway, enough economics lesson. We’re in the countryside, the development is located along a small back road, there are scattered houses elsewhere but the entire township is still mostly farms.
Somehow, a proto-Karen raised a successful challenge to a nearby farmer’s cattle operations. He lost, iirc, because his facilities for manure management were old, out of compliance, etc.
Now, her chief complaint was the odor. I’m here to tell you that nasty smells were nonexistent. Yes, it smelled like a farm sometimes but that’s a natural, earthy smell. You know what isn’t a natural, earthy smell?
Treated sewage sludge.
No longer able to use cow manure from his herd to fertilize his fields, the farmer began spreading treated sewage sludge on his land. Now, the use of sludge is controversial but what is completely uncontestable is that it stinks to high heaven! It’s bad. Very bad. Once it dries, it’s not noticeable but for a day or three? Whooeee!
Proto-Karen, naturally, went to the authorities and tried everything to get him to stop.
His only response, by all accounts, was that he wouldn’t have to use the sludge if he still had his cattle operation.
Check, and mate.”
14. I Won't Do My Work In A Pest-Infested Apartment
“Two years ago, my husband got a job offer from a company. He was working for a banking client at that time. The new job was for an insurance client and the job location was in a different state.
We had our lease signed till Dec 2014 in the apartment where we were living but we had to move by Sep 2014 to the new location. So, we had to pay a total of 4 months’ rent (around 4000$ – 2 month notice period + 2-month lease breakage charges) in order to move early.
To our surprise, the manager of the apartment informed us that, if we transfer our lease to their community apartment in another state we just have to pay 500$ transfer fee.
This offer was valid under the condition that we should have booked the apartment in the new state before moving.
I was skeptical about booking an apartment online but we didn’t have any other option as we were running out of time. Also, we had no problem with the apartment where we were living at that time. As the new apartment also belongs to the same community, we decided to go ahead.
After reaching the new place, my husband and I went to see the apartment to check whether it would be ready by the day of our move-in. We were told by the staff that they will only show the model apartment. The model unit was so good. We went back to the hotel with huge relief.
We got the keys on the day of our move-in and went to check the unit.
When I opened the door, I sensed a strong smell of insecticide or pesticide. I couldn’t bear the stench. I took a few steps forward and noticed something under my feet. It was a big cockroach. I have never seen cockroaches that big in my life.
Not only was the place infested with cockroaches but also with fleas and ticks. The patio was not cleaned and had bubble gums on the wall.
It was a very old unit and all the equipment was outdated. When I booked the apartment, I was told by the staff that the unit had a washer and dryer but it didn’t.
It was nothing like the model unit. I went to the leasing office immediately and told the staff about my concerns. To that, she replied nonchalantly that the pest treatment will be done every Tuesday and the cleaning was done already so she can’t do anything about it.
Also, she was the one who confirmed washer and dryer availability by mistake.
I consoled myself saying that this problem is temporary and it will go away after the pest treatment but it didn’t. All it did was affect my olfaction and cause breathing trouble. We were told by the pest treatment personnel that multiple rounds of treatment must be done as the infestation was severe.
We knew that we cannot stay here for one year of our lease and decided to break the lease and asked our moving company to hold our things for another month.
I confronted the leasing staff saying that the unit which we were offered was in no way similar to the model unit and also told her that we are planning to move to some other apartment.
Without explaining the issues, she demanded lease breakage charges. That annoyed me.
The next day I took my laptop along with all the study materials to the leasing office and sat in the waiting lounge. On seeing this, the staff approached me and asked what I was doing. I told her politely that I couldn’t sit in my place with all the stench so I will use the office space to prepare for my grad exam and also offered to keep the future residents occupied. Of course, that worked.
She was taken aback by my reply and went running to the manager’s office. She came back after 15 minutes and asked me to meet the manager. They told us that we could move to another apartment within the same community without lease breakage and transfer charge. We moved from there after 2 weeks to a very nice apartment.
Well, sometimes silence is not the best reaction.
You have to do what you have to do in order to make something work.”
13. Boss Gave Me A Second Chance To Get Revenge
“I’m a teacher, with a degree in advertising, and have been involved with I.T.
for the past twenty-something years, although I’ve found my love for teaching just some ten years ago. I passed through a lot of schools in the meantime, from the big ones to the smallest ones, and accumulated a bunch of experience both in the classroom and behind the scenes, designing workbooks, video courses, learning platforms, and such. So I started thinking it was past the time to migrate to a management position.
The opportunity came in a prestigious school of digital art, and I became its Teaching Manager, overseeing all the teachers and the intern learning routines. It was a hard but honest job…for a time.
Soon it became obvious that my boss was not exactly what he tried to present to students and employees. He would display bursts of anger and antagonize the team, demanding impossible results and asking about tasks that he never assigned (but somehow was our job to guess).
One time, during a meeting, he grabbed a big chair and pretended to throw it across the room. It was his idea of a joke. Nobody even flinched, cause nobody doubted for a second he was capable of actually doing the deed. Needless to say, nobody laughed as well.
In my country, employers may hold employees’ contracts for up to three months, which means that for 90 days you have no job security, and may be fired at any moment without any consequence to the company.
Which my boss reminded everyone all the time, half-joking, trying to keep everybody on their toes. He actually excused me from this treatment (he had this bad habit of treating the managers differently) and gave me constant praise for a good job till the day my temp contract ended (meaning I was then an actual employee, with full benefits and couldn’t be fired without him paying me everything the law stated).
So it really surprised me when he started the hostile treatment not 24 hours after my temporary contract ended and the full employment began. Gone were the praises and in their place came screams, bad reviews, and more and more insane demands. We paid an outside company to do maintenance on the classroom PCs every week, but somehow bugs and crashes were now my fault. One time he made me stay after hours, on a Saturday, after all students and staff had left, and prohibited me from going home before I had all computers running smoothly.
He asked me to find him a new seller, and I introduced a friend, making it clear that by no means I was asking for him to be hired, I was just making introductions and if he liked the guy after they talked, it was his own decision and responsibility to hire him or not. A few weeks later he gave me an earful for going for drinks with this friend of mine, saying that managers should stick with managers and that I should mingle with him, not the staff (cause they were ‘beneath’ us, apparently).
I said this was absurd, reminded him that I knew this guy for years already and that if he wanted to, he could join us for drinks anytime. It was not the response he expected.
The mistreatment continued and actually intensified. One day I started to feel chest pains and my left arm went completely numb. While my friend called for an ambulance, I retreated to my boss’s office, at the time being occupied by his fiance, and calmly told her, ‘Don’t mind me.
I think I’m having a heart attack, so I’ll just lay here for a few minutes so the students can’t see me.’
Of course, she went nuts after this. The good news: it wasn’t a heart attack, but an anxiety attack, and wasn’t the last one. I was 36 at the time, and it was the first time I saw my mom cry since my dad passed, more than 20 years prior (from, of course, a heart attack).
I decided enough was enough, so I gave my 30 days notice, citing health issues. I hadn’t yet completed 6 months working there. I sat down with my boss, did not blame him in any way but said the stress was making me worry about leaving my family too soon, and gave him every guarantee he needed that I would work through my entire notice period in order to complete every single project we started since my hiring.
So I finished editing the courses, finished the development of our brand new e-learning platform, finished hiring the teachers for the next semester, and even shot videos to promote every single course on the school’s menu. Less than a week left till my last day, he called me in his office to show the company’s new ‘career plans’ (I don’t know the equivalent term in English, but it’s the path planned by the company for the growth of each position).
‘So you see… That’s what you’re going to earn in a few months. That is if you stop being a coward and just do your job.’
I could not believe it. After all the mistreatment, all the toxicity, I had tried to go the higher road and end everything on a good note, and he called my health issues ‘being a coward!????’ I.
was. done. I told him to just deduce the next few days from my final payment and left.
Now for the revenge.
Remember how I introduced him to a friend and he actually hired the guy? On my final days, I announced to my boss I would open my school after leaving but failed to mention that this other employee was my business partner. So when my friend asked for HIS 30 days notice, our boss went LIVID.
He all but threw out my friend, telling him to never put his feet there again, and leave immediately. According to the law, that means he had to pay for that whole month, plus every remaining day he worked before, plus commissions. Adding to that my last payment, which came with six months of benefits, we had more than enough to start our new venture.
But that’s not the revenge.
He actually made us sign a sort of NDA with a bunch of illegal clauses (which made the whole contract invalid) preventing us from revealing any company secrets during or after our time with them, at the risk of being fined $30.000 (around U$6000, at the time). However, no contract in the world may prevent one (at least in my country) from reporting any illegal activities.
This is why I did not worry one bit when I reported him and his school for having 50+ PCs running on pirate versions of Windows, Office, the whole Adobe Suite, Revit, Cinema4D, 3DSMax, and lots of other very expensive software. Not long before this, a big and traditional chain of stores had gone bankrupt in our state for having to pay retroactively fines upon fines on Windows alone, so it’s an understatement to say that the government was taking piracy pretty seriously at the time.
It gets funnier when you realize that the reported person receives an e-mail with the whole complaint (apart from the author of the report) the minute it is filed, so he can prepare his defense. His response wasn’t at all unexpected. Some five minutes after our report, a similar e-mail came into our inbox, reporting us for 30 unlicensed copies of Windows and many other programs. My business partner still talked to the Finance Manager on our old job and, knowing that our ex-boss would probably be right beside him fuming and screaming, decided to send him a picture of our only classroom… with no computer in sight (we decided to specialize in classes about comic bookmaking, which dispensed computers, and whenever we would host a class that demanded it, we would ask our students to bring their own).
A few weeks later I heard that the whole remaining staff abandoned ship, leaving him with only an intern and a few teachers without permanent contracts. My former boss actually kept tabs on us and, learning that some of his teachers were contacting us to host special classes, started to blackmail them, threatening to terminate their contracts if they insisted on doing business with us (even though there was no exclusivity clause in their contracts).
Some of them called on the bluff, and he had to pay another huge amount on breach of contracts alone.
Time went by and I hear the guy is counting his pennies and struggling to keep afloat. He used to open full classes every six months, occupying every date and time available. Now he hardly can fill a turn, started holding only night classes and not even every day – half the week he closes his doors, not having enough students nor the funds to pay employees on these days.
Before I left he had paid $40.000 on the architectural project alone to expand the business within a year, but now I hear he was considering closing his door and offering only online courses.
And now for part two: Where, years after my revenge, I made my ex-boss again pay a bunch, this time on legal fees.
First of all, I need to say that my school has closed its doors.
I and my friend were not a good fit, as business partners at least, and now we’re not even friends. That’s life. We sold out, sold what could be sold and each went with our lives.
Some months later I found out our ex-boss was SUING us. Our school, that is. Which, as I mentioned, didn’t even exist anymore. My (ex) friend’s sister, who is also his lawyer, contacted me and told me about it.
I couldn’t find anything on the public records, since the lawsuit was running on a court-ordered sigil. I talked to my lawyer and she said: ‘If they didn’t cite you directly, pretend you know nothing about the matter.’
And so I ignored the issue for a few years. In 2020, the appointed official finally found me at home and served me. That also gave me access to my boss’s claims, since I had 15 days to prepare my defense.
My wife found me laughing out loud in front of the computer. His claims were absolutely ridiculous. He claimed I stole his courses, and used as proof a print from our (now offline) site, side by side with his own, saying something in the lines of ‘it becomes obvious that both schools have the same courses’. However, he presented no explanation of the similarities besides the names, which weren’t even the same.
We had a SEGMENT of pieces of training under the umbrella ‘Graphic Design’, but no class with that specific name, for example, and no other class on any of his main subjects.
Also, most of our classes were on the topic of Comic Books, which he NEVER worked with. He also called us ‘cynical’ for daring to compete with him on the same market, even if it was my own previous experience in the learning sector that landed me the job in his firm in the first place.
At one point, the documents cited a statement from our site where we said that we took our previous experiences as a way to learn from our mistakes and do differently, and call it a ‘confession of plagiarism’. I asked my lawyer to let me write my defense, leaving to her the task to translate it to ‘lawyers’. She actually copy-pasted my full statement, saying she couldn’t have argued better.
I put on paper all the repulse I felt, cited all my experience with teaching, and rebuked every single one of his claims with facts and actual proofs, attaching printed conversations, saved emails, and bringing attention to his lack of proof.
The judge tossed the case and made him pay all the legal fees, including my lawyer’s (he could have avoided it if he had entered the lawsuit on small claims court, but since he wanted the 30k from the NDA plus damages and sigil, he had it coming).
Just another shove of dirt on his coffin.”
12. Torture A Student? Lose Your Whole Career
“I work in a healthcare facility with different disciplines and we have the main clinicians and assistants as well that do the treatment.
For the longest time before 2020, clinicians would take students from schools because they need to have some hands-on experience before they graduate and get to take their state exams.
So I am the supervisor of the health clinic and am in charge of all clinicians, even though they’re fairly independent they have to report to me, and I in turn report for the whole clinic.
This starts with Dory. She has a lot of friends in one of the prominent universities here. She’s very well connected with them, she graduated from there. She’s involved with their activities and just active in the school in general. I have known Dory for years and have worked with her before, but she was never directly under my management because her home clinic was at another location, so she would just help out.
I would hear things about her. The way she treated the assistants that worked under her, rudeness towards other clinicians, and some sketchy stuff about basic fraud of billing for services not rendered. This is a big NO in healthcare but it happens more than you think. Anyway, I had no proof of this and all the patients at my clinic had not voiced any complaints.
Anyway…..Dory had started taking students in and she was moved to my clinic. When she came there she was still helping at another clinic not too far away. Dory accepted a student from her university to follow her and learn from her and slowly integrate into clinical treatment. This is where Hannah enters into the picture. She’s a very shy girl, did everything you asked of her, but because she was shy and also being a new student she’s unsure if the treatment she is administering is the appropriate one.
That’s why you have people like Dory to be next to you and counsel and guide you.
After the first few weeks, I started noticing Hannah would be in the clinic and would be doing treatments without Dory being around for a few hours. This isn’t allowed because the instructor should be around at all times to supervise their students. After a few times of noticing this, I brought Dory and Hannah into my office and said this cannot happen and is not allowed. If it happens again I would have to report it and this was not something I wanted to do.
If I did report it the student would lose their clinical placement and would have to wait 6 months until the next placement which pushes back the graduating date.
A few weeks go by and things had been fairly normal. The student would be in the clinic sooner but would not be performing the treatment. She would however shadow other clinicians. But Dory was still coming in later than usual. One day as I’m walking by Hannah I see that she’s on the billing menu.
In order to be on that screen, you would have to be clocked in otherwise the system won’t allow you to do it. I call her to my office again and I sternly tell her that I had specifically said she couldn’t treat patients and she doesn’t have a ‘clock in’ username and password. Hannah proceeded to tell me that Dory had told her to clock in for her and start billing patients before services were rendered. Continues to state, this had been going on for the whole time she had been a student.
(Now I don’t see the billing until the next day but I don’t have a clock of when the billing was submitted). I tell Hannah that this was strictly not allowed but I need more information before I make a decision. I call Casey and the other clinicians into my office and she proceeds to tell me that Hannah goes home crying and bawling every single night due to Dory threatening to ‘fail’ her as a student if she didn’t do all these things for her.
Dory had used her leverage in her school to strong-arm Hannah into doing all her work while she wasn’t even there. I asked Hannah if this was true and she said yes it was. Hannah then goes on to tell me that after the first meeting with me on what they shouldn’t be doing, Dory brought Hannah to the side and told her, ‘he’s cool he knows what’s really going on but he has to say that as a manager so keep doing it.’
At this point, I ask the student if any of her evaluations or letters of progress had been submitted to her school so they know she has been making progress. Hannah says that Dory has never submitted the necessary paperwork to the school and has gotten away with it because of her connections to the school.
So if I fired Dory, she would in turn take revenge on the student and fail at her clinical. She would be 6 months to a year from being placed into another clinic meaning she would be either very late or just fail and not be able to graduate.
I called my regional manager Katie and reported everything to her, told her my fear for the student and the constant trauma she was going through every day, crying, being threatened, and retaliated against.
Katie was also fearful of this but also worried about the liability this put on the company, also how long it had been going on. So she didn’t have an answer on how to handle the situation without harming the student.
So here was my revenge, I started watching everything Dory did, treatments, time and complaints, etc… One weekend Dory had to work without her student on a Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. When I come in on Monday I notice a patient has been to the hospital since Friday but she had still been billed for services. I check the clinician… it was Dory. How was she able to treat a person that wasn’t even in the clinic and also is able to bill her… so I had my reasons to fire her.
I had the evidence I needed but I still wanted a bit more. I texted Dory and asked if she had seen said patient, she reported yes she had. But also asked if she had billed less than what she should have because she would be able to bill more if I wanted. I told her that wasn’t necessary and there was no way to bill more due to the patient being in the hospital the whole weekend she had billed. She knew from that moment what was going to happen.
The next day OP and Katie waited for Dory and she was fired on the spot, just for the fraud. The student thing never came up in conversation and she had no idea we had known for a while.
I had another clinician write up a whole letter on what the student was doing and that she was a good clinician and has completed the necessary work to be able to graduate.
Dory was unable to get any more work after that because the incident had been reported to the government and had that on her license wherever she went. Her new employers would look at the license and not want to hire someone with that on their record.
Last I heard she was working at an Amazon warehouse as a manager. From a doctorate to warehouse manager, after many years I’m sure of fraud…
The best part is that the student has graduated, gotten her degree, and is working in the field, she’s a great clinician, has done great work in her field, and I still keep in contact with her. She is very thankful for being pulled out of that situation.”
11. Inconsiderate Roomie Gets A Taste Of How To Live With Noisy Roomies
“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 wastedness (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 beer 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 what 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 who 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 man 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 that guy 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.
You know, this was not my go-to #1 solution.
We talked to him since day one. As I mentioned he had a party as soon as he moved in. After my partner 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.”
10. I Paid My Debt In Coins
“A few years back, I had a roommate. Let’s call that person V. V and I got along well at first but then her meanness started increasing exponentially towards me. I must have done something to irk her for sure but I am a pacifist: I believe in talking about problems amicably rather than giving someone a cold shoulder.
Fast forward to a day when V fired up pretty bad over a harmless prank, screaming and hurling threats at me.
I was done being patient at that point: I fired back as well. It was pretty much the worst argument I ever had in my life.
The next day, a Sunday, I wrote V an email asking them to just forget everything; we had had great days of friendship and nothing should affect that. I apologized as well, said I missed her. No response.
The next day, the cultural association serving my community summoned me, since V had asked for ‘justice’.
At the meeting, she accused me of inappropriate, physical, and emotional mistreatment at which point I started wondering if she had lost her mind completely (I hadn’t even touched V or said any of those words V mentioned I did. The third roommate verified that). V wanted a ‘public’ apology in front of the community, else ‘call the cops’ and have me thrown out of the academic program I was enrolled in.
I lack a good enough vocabulary to express how I felt.
In the end, the committee asked me to settle all financial transactions with V and she could move out to find new accommodation. I forgot exactly how much I owed her, but pretty sure it was in triple digits.
I was pretty mad at this point. More so because V would rather appease her ego about a very petty matter rather than continue our friendship.
I felt fooled, disappointed, and somewhat bullied.
I went around asking all of my friends for coin change. They were quite happy and obliging. Who wouldn’t want to make their purses lighter? I went to my bank as well and picked up all the coins I could.
I paid the balance I owed V in cents, dimes, nickels, and quarters. A big Kroger bag filled with jingling coins and the words ‘Keep the change’.
Listening to V grunt in frustration and cuss under her breath over the next hour or so, counting them out was quite satisfying!”
9. Force Me To Fill In For You? Lose Your Precious Speaker
“So this is a story about an old manager of mine, and he was put in charge of the pizzeria I work at due to our previous managers quitting.
They have stories of their own, faults of their own. But this isn’t about them.
We will call this guy, Christie. Now Christie thought that he knew best in the restaurant, and to some extent he did. He understood that food and ingredient production needed to be completed at a certain hour which was 4. He was scheduled to come in at 10, yet always came in around 12:00-12:30.
He was clueless on how we worked production-wise, and whenever he messed up he’d waste the product. Never bothered to learn either, always did things his way. Whatever he truly did in those hours was beyond a mystery, but every day he’d still be behind on production. Always doing a batch of dough at around the untimely hour of 4 PM. He talked more than he ever worked. Whenever he worked, it was always half-baked. My father caught onto him, and so did my boss.
This is was what the problem was: All orders that came in were incredibly stagnant. He could’ve gotten at least some things done, but all he threw out were excuses. There was at the very least 30 minutes of solid production time. This caused a couple of rifts between my father and him, which one day ended with him storming out of the restaurant after he questioned who he thought my dad was.
Keep in mind, this was after he had done nothing all day and was starting to do dough with a smile on his face. Because he left during a pretty busy hour as well, I had to come in and fill his spot.
Which royally angered me considering it was my day off. Looking back, I’m not sure if my actions were exactly moral here, but I wanted to spit in this man’s face.
He was a manager, who got kicked out of his own restaurant by a delivery driver who made better pizzas than him. He should’ve had a sense of authority over himself and the crew, not crackdown at the slightest sign of confrontation.
I saw him leave behind his bright blue JBL speaker in the office. It’s this room that is about as big as a standard walk-in closet.
This is where things may delve into immorality. I grab hold of his speaker and think first to trash it. But only another dirtbag would do something like that. So in the upper right corner, there was the stereo equipment that plays music that broadcasts outside. I simply just stashed it up there, out of sight and out of mind. Hopefully, he’d find it, considering that he’s a giant of a man as well.
It’s within his eye level. Nobody else but him could find it up there.
And I was absolutely wrong. He believed that someone had stolen his speaker and that nothing could be done about it with the cops. He went on and on about it. Complaining about it profusely, like he had always done. All the while, it was sitting in the room right next to him: hidden where it’s supposed to be.
Right next to the stereo equipment.
It didn’t stop the fact that he was still poor at his job. It didn’t stop his obsessive talking during work. It didn’t even stop him from ‘accidentally bleeding all over the pizza dough.’ While I admit that I do have regrets about the ordeal, they are plenty sparse. He quit a month afterward.
We still have that speaker in the restaurant today.”
8. Keep Shoving Me And I'll Block Your View
“I went to a rock concert for the European metal band ‘Epica’, and the venue was pretty small. The opening acts were great, and there was some downtime between sets while they set up the stage for Epica. Like most concerts, it was free-standing, and since a lot of people were heading back to check out merchandise or grab a beer, I took the chance to move up a bit in the crowd to get closer to the stage- after all, Epica was one of my favorite bands and with the venue being small, I wanted to be as close as possible to get good pictures on my phone.
I’d been slowly moving up all night without a problem, much like I would at an American concert.
One woman didn’t like me moving in front of her. Now in Luxembourg, you come across 3 languages: French, German, and Luxembourgish. I had studied French but I don’t speak German very well or Luxembourgish at all. This woman was speaking one of the latter two languages.
All I could translate was ‘before me’ said in a very nasty tone.
So I ignored her and got out my phone for pictures when the band came out.
That’s when she started elbowing me and jabbing her knee into the back of mine, knocking me off balance. Every time I pressed my finger for a picture, she would bump into me so it blurred.
At first, I thought maybe it was an accident. It was pretty crowded, and she was standing close behind me. So I looked over my shoulder to indicate she was hitting me, hoping she would readjust and stop.
Instead, she said something in either German or Luxembourgish and just knocked me harder. She started yelling at me but 1) I didn’t speak her language and 2) we were right underneath the speakers so even if I did, I couldn’t hear her with the music playing.
For a moment, I thought about pushing her back, but I didn’t want to start a fight and risk getting kicked out of the venue (or worse since I was only there on a student visa). Instead, I noticed the guy standing next to me appeared to be by himself. So when the next song ended I tapped him on the shoulder and asked (praying he spoke English) if he wouldn’t mind trading places with me.
He more than happily obliged, and after we switched he made sure that I could see the stage alright from my new spot.
The woman went from having a slender, 5′4″ girl in front of her, to having a 6′2+, broad, stocky man with long, voluminous, curly hair blocking her view. She couldn’t see anything around him. She gave me the dirtiest look, but with this tough, beefy metal guy between us, she couldn’t do anything.
And because of how tightly packed the crowd had become, she had no way to move to see around this guy.
In other words, she screwed up my photos, and I screwed over her entire concert viewing experience. And I got an even better spot in the crowd to see the band.”
7. Thieving Manager Tries To Frame Me For Theft But Failed
“This story happened around 6 years ago when I worked for a retail company I will call no-op.
Jay was well known to be a thief by the base staff and some of the lower levels of management. Unfortunately, she was a golden girl to Mo and Travis, and we never had any solid proof; we also didn’t get pay docked, etc. unless it was over a certain amount (which it never was,) so staff never had a real incentive to try and find proof.
One of Jay’s favorite things to steal were vouchers for shopping because you were just supposed to rip them up and put them in the safe; there was no official way of counting these to return them to the company, so she could use them again in a different store and get away with it.
This particular day was Halloween, and I was on ’till 4′ – the only till with no cameras on it.
Mo came up and paid for her shopping with some gift vouchers she had received at a store manager’s meeting because the store was doing really well. I served her and no one else touched my till all day because I was the main person on the tills for this shift. We closed up for the night and Jay took the registers to be cashed up, I went out to the pub with friends and had a good night not knowing what was coming.
The next shift I’m on, Mo calls me into the office and tells me that the vouchers she used were not in the safe and she knew that it was my till. She wanted me to return the vouchers and would not press charges or put anything on my file if I just returned them immediately, I of course did not have them and testified as such, but she didn’t believe me.
I went looking everywhere, the bin under till 4 and the bins outside, under the tills, and on the floors around the tills – just in case I had dropped them or put them somewhere dumb while trying to sort out cash. etc. Roughly an hour later, Jay comes in, hears what’s going on, and offers to look as well. She ‘finds’ them in 30 seconds flat, somewhere I had already looked. I essentially hissed out, “What a coincidence that as soon as Jay looks there, she finds it immediately, how coincidental,” seething with white fury as I knew she was now framing me for her own theft. She could have ‘found’ them in the office and made it a simple mistake but no, she made me the fall guy for her own idiocy.
I tried to plead my case to Mo and Travis, stating that I wouldn’t be dumb enough to steal vouchers that I knew were Mo’s because I was the one who served her; one of the other Team Leaders (Paul) knew fine and well it was Jay and tried to tell Mo and Travis that I was being set up, but… She was the golden girl and could do no wrong while my name was mud as far as they were concerned – heck, they thought Jay had caught me in the act.
This meant war.
Over the next few months, I got really friendly with Jay, flirting outrageously with her and basically pretending like I really respected her and that we were good buddies. It took me a while to work my way into her trust, but once I was there, I knew I could catch her stealing and prove it. We wasted off a load of Christmas chocolate products that hadn’t sold, and I put them in a bag to be put in the bin.
Jay said we should take them home (against company policy and seen as stealing) because they were just going to waste otherwise. We were stood underneath a camera, just outside of its range, so I said, “I don’t want any, but if you want them, you can have them” and put them on a trolley just inside of the camera’s range (I had studied the camera angles in great detail preparing for a moment exactly like this), I saw her look at the camera, down at the trolley and back to the camera before walking off to get her stuff.
I warned my colleagues not to take any of the chocolate even if offered and had an evil grin on my face which my colleagues commented on. When Jay came down she nonchalantly picked up the bag as if it was her shopping, offered chocolate to everyone, and walked out the door with it.
Gotcha.
The next morning I arrived for my shift and put on the most somber face possible as I approached Travis, “You should check the cameras on the back door at approximately 22:21; I think you’ll find what you see very interesting.” He asked me to explain further and I looked over towards where Jay was (not even 5 meters away) and looked back, “I can’t go into further detail right now, but I would strongly suggest you go and look at the cameras for that time now.”
Travis begrudgingly walked off to do just that, and within 10 minutes, Jay was called into the office and her bag was searched, within the hour she was suspended pending investigation and within the week she was fired and barred from the store.
I got a full apology from the managers who didn’t believe me, who explained they genuinely believed it was me and had no idea Jay could have possibly been a thief.
Their jaws hit the floor after I explained that every member of staff knew she was a thief but that we didn’t feel like we could do anything about it. After going around asking people if this was true, I got another apology. Six months later, I was offered training to become a Team Leader myself. I took it but ended up quitting for a white-collar role in a different company before I finished my training.”
6. Try To Stiff Me? Get A Mechanics Lien
“I was starting my side business doing IT work for businesses and had some successful jobs for a few companies.
I found word of mouth was the best way to gain new clients because entrepreneurs tend to network with other business owners. Tony was one such client who had heard I had done some work for a client and called to see if I could help. His companies needs were to stop using a semi-accounting service that they had been paying a percentage of their profit to process payments, purchase orders, and billings/receivables.
He brought in an accountant to work on a new product (pretty well known). They wanted a server to be accessed remotely, and had already paid their ISP for a static IP for the server but needed the actual server, redundancy UPS, and firewall device. I explained that for the product they had we could probably set up a workstation and not a server and it would run approximately $3500 total and would be easy but no the owner wanted a full-blown server system with all the bells and whistles.
He explained that he would likely be using the server for a CRM and a few other systems later on.
Overall the entire cost for the system would be $8000 not including a few other services that needed annual billing (VPN/Remote service). The equipment cost was $7,500, my labor charge was $500. UPS was $1500, Server was $3800, and “refurbed” firewall (CISCO ASA) with programming by a 3rd party specialist was $1800, and a spare rack was $400.
I got my contract signed, put an order with my distributor (I have net 45 setups with them) and the firewall specialist and got to work 1.5 weeks later when the firewall came in last. I finished the job on a single weekend, and got everything up and going after a call to the ISP who did not like the firewall appliance I installed, for some reason they had to tweak things on their end and finally allowed the traffic to go through once more.
I confirmed the function with the owner who verbally approved and was happy.
I sent my invoice promptly on Monday. Left it as in, they had 1 week to pay. When I saw no reply, or payment after 4 days I messaged Tony and asked if they had received my invoice. To my surprise, he replied the server was not working and proceeded to call me and tell me that the whole thing was a total waste of funds, and I should have never done the job.
I of course apologized and informed him I would be on the way to fix whatever the problem was. When I got there, they refused to let me in to see the server claiming they had someone coming over to fix my mishaps. At that point, I informed them they still needed to pay for the equipment, and we could maybe discuss my labor after I figure out what’s going on.
Tony refused to let me in, and was pretty upset.
At this time, I was pretty upset. 2.5 weeks had passed since I ordered my equipment and my distributor was needing to get paid within 45 days. I was getting very nervous and was thinking of taking it to small claims court until talking with a friend he informed me I could pull a mechanics lien. I informed him this was for IT, and he stated that mechanics lien where I live can actually be pulled on various industries and IT was one of them.
So I started the process to fill out and file a mechanics lien on Tony’s company. Much to my surprise, there was no court date. All I needed to do was provide considerable proof to clerks, and later to the constable.
After filling out the mechanic’s lien and serving him notice, I once again gave him the opportunity to pay the $8,000 owed. By this time, I had spoken with my distributor and he switched my account from Net 45 to Net 90.
He refused via phone call and got him on text. I took the information I had and went to the local constables who after seeing the mechanics lien, and proof set up an appointment to meet me at the place of business to take back my server, ups, and firewall. I went in on Tuesday which I had learned was the day the accountant came in to start the week00.
Constable and I arrived at 7:30 am right on opening time. At first, they refused entry until Tony came by and was informed I was enforcing my mechanics lien and would be taking back my equipment. He immediately got riled up and claimed I could not take the equipment because a new person had replaced it all. The constable asked if I had serial numbers and models for the equipment which I did.
We go in and find my server, UPS, and firewall all in the exact same way I left it. The server showed it had been online for the entire time, no real changes were noticed and as far as I could tell no one had worked on it. Tony began to chuckle when I shut the server down and says “how are you going to take the system when it’s BOLTED TO THE GROUND?!
Bet you didn’t think about that did you, you idiot!”. He did not realize that rack-mounted equipment is not permanently attached to the mount. I guess he thought he had me beat because it was all one system that you cannot take apart and not something that was put together. His jaw dropped the moment I removed the server loaded it onto the cart after removing a couple of bolts.
He started panicking and started telling the constable that he would sue him if he didn’t stop me, the constable simply stayed calm and ignored the owner. I guess after a bit he informed Tony that he needed to get out of his face and step back but when Tony refused to back down the constable undid his holster’s safety harness and put his hand on his firearm.
Tony’s face was exquisite. Full of fear, and eventually a dawning sensation that this was going to happen one way or another. At first, I did not understand why he was so riled up and now had a panicked face like his world just collapsed until a bit later. I wrapped up my server/ups/firewall and left the rack. True to Tony’s word undoing the bolts proved difficult to impossible with the tools I had, so I told Tony he could keep IT for the new server he tries to set up.
It didn’t take more than 2 hours before I got a call from him stating that he had talked to his attorney and he would be suing me for damages and I would be going to jail for trespassing. I informed him he did not pay for the equipment, his equipment was repoed thus there was nothing to sue for. As far as trespassing, I was servicing a mechanics lien with a law enforcement officer thus it is not trespassing.
He then starts hemming and hawing about how he needs to bill clients because he hasn’t had revenue in a week but his accountant can’t do anything because she has no access to the accounting software and they have no copies. I informed him it was not my problem, I would NOT be giving access to the server nor data contained and he should have paid for the equipment instead of trying to screw me over for $8,0000.
He then offered to pay me if I could install the server back the same day, but that ONLY if I did it that same day otherwise he’d find someone else. I informed him that our original contract was null and void. I would be returning the equipment to my distributor but first I had to wipe the storage by DOD standards, which means 0% chance of recovering files unless he somehow had NSA-level funds.
He starts freaking out, and resorts back to what he usually did: threatens me to a lawsuit, make my life a living heck, etc. So I hang up and text him I am going to proceed to delete his data that evening and that I was NO longer interested in working with him.
He called me at least 50 times, I just silenced my phone and had a talk to my friend later that night, the friend who had given me the advice.
He then tells me why I was returning the equipment, if I had the ONLY copy that has EVERYTHING from client names, contacts, phone numbers, billings, receivables, etc. He asked me how much revenue did the company generate, I informed him I was taking a wild guess but it was somewhere in the ballpark of $58,678.21 for the last month. He laughs and tells me, why don’t you charge them double the price to get his equipment back, and have him pay you before you start?
He was right, I was taking my petty revenge and walking out with $1,800 in a firewall I had to pay in advance, and a $500 unpaid labor charge. Why not take it a step further get sweeter revenge and get paid a fat stack of bills.
The following day I messaged Tony, I apologize for the way I behaved yesterday, it was not professional. Unfortunately, your horrible attitude and attempts to screw me over got the better of me.
The server has not been wiped yet. I would like to reconsider a new arrangement so we can salvage this sour experience and turn it into sweet honey. Are you interested in working with me to get your equipment back, I must warn you it will be extra since I would be doing double the work. Let me know.
Tony immediately called me and immediately his AH ways came up.
I knew you would change your mind and come crawling back, yes I want everything back but I am only paying $8050 and not a dime more. The $50 is me being generous to give you a 2nd chance to do things right.
I immediately informed him that I still have all the equipment, and in fact, it would only take maybe 20 minutes to complete the job however I had a different idea in terms of the price.
The new price was $15,000. He immediately starts yelling and hollering. I keep talking and inform him he has 2 weeks to decide if being able to get paid by his clients was worth it if not the equipment was going back and that would be that. No hard feelings. I hang up.
About 2 days later I get a call from Tony informing me he agreed to a new arrangement to please set it up and install it asap.
I tell him I can go Friday but I would need to be paid $15,000 in BILLS before I even unload a single bolt from my vehicle. He agreed. I could hear a lady talking tell him he needs to get this resolved because they had not had revenue in nearly 2 weeks. This was on Wednesday. On Thursday I get a call from his daughter, who is apparently the accountant and the lady who was telling him to resolve it!
She is cutting a check and needs to know my name. I inform her I would not be accepting checks, and I had told Tony specifically it would be in bills. She says ok and tells me if the amount of $12,000 was correct. I once again correct her and inform her the correct amount was $15,000. She said in satire “Of course it’s $15,000. I will go make the withdrawal and have it ready tomorrow.”
Sure enough Friday morning true to her words she and Tony were there with $15,000 in bills. I counted it in front of her and Tony. She makes a comment saying that I was a lifesaver because they could not go back to the service they used before to get paid, and they urgently needed to get some PO’s sent out. I placed it in my vehicle, locked the glovebox, and unloaded the equipment.
True to my word it took me 20 minutes to place the server, firewall, and UPS inside the rack mount. Connect the cables. Power on the server and asked them to test it out when they get a chance. If anything was wrong, to not contact me and to have a good day. (I actually had tested it out already before I left their “server” room, despite my pettiness at times I am still a professional).”
5. Steal The Old Tube? I'll Get A New One
“A colleague of mine is a high-functioning narcissist and manipulator. She is magical at weaving sob stories and lies about her situation, in order to get what she wants, exactly how she wants it. I’ve suffered years of being forced to hand in my ideas, papers, and work materials to her by my superior, who seems to be really charmed by her.
So anyway, our friend here loves new shiny things.
She has to have the best and newest working materials in her possession. Whether she has to use them or not is another story altogether. She will create stories to get the materials from others, and sometimes steal the items when my colleagues are not around.
My superior once gave us both almost similar projects, and adequate materials to each of us, to be used for the project.
On Monday, the first day of the project, I went to retrieve a tube of chemicals from the materials provided to me. Everything was ready; I just needed the tube of chemicals to start my essay. Lo and behold, it was not there. Mysteriously disappeared. Mind you the tube was in the box when I did a final check on Friday the week before.
Naturally, I called my colleague, as she has the same item, and I would like to borrow some of the chemicals from her.
She did not pick up her calls; in fact, she did her best to stay out of my way on that particular day. I finally requested my superior to ask for the material on my behalf (it was urgent), and he said that she did not have the chemical anymore.
So I ordered a new tube of the chemical and wasted two months of my life waiting for the item to arrive.
My student, who was performing the project with me, was incensed at the whole situation, as she had to complete the project as soon as possible.
One fine day, the chemical arrived at the lab. Bright, shiny, and spanking new.
Within a few hours, my colleague approached me, looking all sweaty and pale, with my old chemical tube in her hand, and mentioned the following:
‘Ranjetta, I accidentally found the old tube in the fridge as I was sorting out my things. Wouldn’t it be better if we store the new tube of chemical for safekeeping, and try to finish up the chemical in the old tube first?’
I said, ‘Thank you for your kind offer, but I think I’ll stick with the new tube.’
She left her work halfway and went back home early that day, with a pinched look on her face.”
4. Company's Trashy Proposal Is Worth Rejecting
“In my young 20s, I moved to a new city to try to start my career and life. I wasn’t very well off, but I was confident I would get things up and running.
In my job search, I came across a promising opportunity at a small firm. Instead of offering me the job, the owner said he would like me to come in for two days and work.
If it was a fit, they would hire me, and if not, they would pay for the two days.
I figured taking the bus to and from the job was a luxury I could not afford and walked an hour each way to get there.
I did good work both days and worked very hard, but it was not a fit. The owner then tells me, “I know we said we would pay you, but it’s just too complicated to set you up for just two days, so you will just have to be happy you got the experience with us.” The way he acted really rubbed me the wrong way.
I was mad, but as I was trying to find another job, I figured it was not in my best interest to make waves as word may get around I was ‘difficult.’ I did however decide that someday, someway I would get my revenge on the owner.
I did find a good job that led to a great career. But I always kept tabs on the owner looking for the time and place to get some revenge and even a few times considered some more juvenile methods.
Just short of twenty years passed… and now I was very senior in my chosen profession, but instead of working for a small firm, I was a leader in a very large national company that hired firms. As it turns out, we had a large contract come up that I was the lead executive on the procurement team in the area the firm operated in.
Things have changed a bit over the years, but bidding on these contracts was at the firm’s expense at the time. However, to safeguard them, the bidding would be in stages. Well, sure enough, the owner and his firm put in an exploratory bid. They were not perfect for the job, but they could actually do it, so I assisted in them moving to the next stage, and the next stage, and then the final stage.
The easiest thing I could have done was shut them down right away and got a bit of revenge, but there would be no fun in that. There was some risk to letting them go through to the end though. Though I was the lead, it was a team decision, and to be honest, if they had the best proposal despite my thirst for revenge, I would vote for them.
The proposals and presentation came in and luckily the other firm was a bit better, and we went with them. Normally the executive lead didn’t deliver the bad news in the bid process, but I volunteered to take on the call.
It was fun to call the owner (who had no idea we met 20 years ago) and tell him, “We were impressed with your proposal, but it is just not the right fit.
I know you must be disappointed to not get the contract, but at least you got great exposure to our process.” (I know I should have used his own words from 20 years ago, but I could not bring myself to do it.)
The firm must have done about 200 hours of work on their proposal, so I figured that was payback for my 16 hours with 20 years of interest.”
Another User Comments:
“Same thing happened to my wife at a bakery production. ‘Yeah, sure, just come these three days to this location and we’ll see if it fits.’ We’re (too) nice people, so we were okay with the obvious prospect of unpaid work given how he practically guaranteed her the job if she didn’t mess up enormously.
Did I mention it was around Easter, which is when people here love to buy, gift, and eat baked goods?
So, obviously, things went down, my wife works her butt off, the co-workers are really nice and welcoming immediately (which is far from always the case in that business…) and everyone basically welcomed her to her new workplace because she’s great at what she does.
The two days of the weekend rush are over and we wait for the call asking to sign the paperwork.
A week later, nothing. We call and give a friendly hint that we haven’t gotten an appointment to sign the papers (which, again, it was made very clear was a formality if she wasn’t entirely incompetent) and they said they were in the process of dealing with the paperwork and call back.
A couple of days later we receive an email (not 100% sure but I think I remember those idiots were too scared to personally talk) that unfortunately there were no open positions in the business but they’d gladly consider her once one opens.
At this point, I’d like to add that besides being very welcoming, the employees at the joint she worked at told my wife that they were glad to finally get another worker as they’d been missing at least two for months at that point.
Obviously, we weren’t going to fight for this garbage human being’s employment (the guy that offered the job was the actual owner of this relatively small bakery chain and seemed nice in person, as business people so often do when they want something from you – it’s why they’re where they are, they’re good at manipulating people), so we simply wrote a mail back that this is perfectly fine but we’d like to receive a bank transfer to the following account for the hours worked (which she also did mention in the job interview, the expectation of payment if it doesn’t work out, he, of course, said not to worry).
A mail comes back stating that her trial days were officially an unpaid internship and therefore not paid, which supposedly had been made clear ahead of said internship. Double wrong, bud, he said trial days and unpaid internships are only legal for high school students in a specific time frame where they’re part of the curriculum (lasts two weeks and no proper labor is being done, you just get to experience work-life for a bit and then present about your experience) where we live, made very clear in labor laws.
We write back stating the above very explicitly mentioning we’d be forced to take up legal measures should he not pay up within a week. The idiot ignored the mail and thought he was done with the annoying matter.
Lucky for us, there’s a labor law court system here where you need no lawyer, no fees, you fill out some paperwork (didn’t even require proof) and then an official demand letter is sent by the state required to pay up in order to avoid fees and a trial. Again we were way too hesitant and asked for local minimum wage +20% +1.5x overtime worked +double rate for the Sunday and night-time hours.
Literally, two or three days later the amount was paid in full to our account.” Com_BEPFA
3. Grandfather Gets Busted For Placing A Dirty Apple On The Altar
“In India, where I come from, every year there is a festival of ‘Ganesha’ celebrated by the Hindus (one of our many personifications of God). Many of us bring a clay idol of the Lord in our home for five days. We visit families to see their idols/pay respects and give a food offering to the Lord.
There’s also a lot of food offered to the guests. On one eventful day of the festival, a relative of mine came to our house to pay respects to the deity. Now before I divulge any further details of the story, let me just begin by stating this – this particular relative is a complete jerk in general – condescending towards everyone, has lied to his wife and has a separate family with another woman, doesn’t give his wife any money (she is a housewife) and manipulates her to the extreme and literally treats her like a servant (she’s an old lady.
Additionally she has many health issues).
We see very little of him, but when we do my family is cordial towards him because of certain reasons (that’s a whole other story). So on that particular day of the festival, he came to our house saying, ‘my wife wanted to come and pay respects to the Lord but she’s sick so I’m here on behalf of her.’ (WE ALL KNOW HE WAS THERE FOR THE FREE FOOD).
Anyway, my mom lets him in and the old relative does some small talk for 5 minutes, after which he is served some food. Following this, my mom gives him a cotton bedsheet (covering for our mattress) as a gift (it is normal to give simple gifts such as handkerchiefs, bedsheets, reusable grocery bags, etc). It wasn’t a very expensive bedsheet but it wasn’t cheap either.
In fact, it was really good for his financial standard. When he received it, he says to my mother, ‘Did you just wash your own bedsheet and give it to me as a gift? It seems so used.’
Understandably, my mother gets upset because of such a comment but remains cordial. I was watching this whole episode since I was sitting right in front of the relative the whole time and of course, I’m furious.
I have always been very protective of my family, and at the time I was 15 and feeling VERY BRAVE (And also had a huge temper). I was furious that he insulted my mother when she had gifted him a rather nice present, but I didn’t know how to make him feel bad about the situation. I was almost ready to just curse him (even though I knew my mother would reprimand me later for cursing in general and being disrespectful towards an adult, but he had messed with my mom, so I wanted to really hurt him.)
I decided to yell a really bad Indian word at him right when he would leave, and even practiced it in my head a few times. However, I didn’t have to resort to cursing. Since he had come to pay respects to the Lord, he had brought something as an offering. After his remarks about the bedsheet, he stated that he would pray to Ganesha and then leave.
I was watching his every move, and just as he was about to place the apple he had brought as a food offering,
I said, ‘Stop grandfather!’
He looks at me, rather confused.
And then I say it.
‘Are you sure you didn’t pick the apple from the gutter (open sewage system in India)? It is not good to keep dirty fruit in front of the Lord.’
He’s furious. He tells my mom how big a menace I am and I have no respect towards elders. My mom tells me to go inside.
Five minutes on, I am updated that he didn’t keep the apple in front of the Lord and left soon after (After asking for some more food to be packed).
He’s never stepped in my house ever since (it has been 7 years since the incident) AND my whole family thanks me for it, haha!”
2. I Wasn't Aware The Poop Is Supposed To Smell Like Roses
“I’m lactose intolerant, but this doesn’t stop me from eating things. Usually, it takes very little to stop me from eating dairy. I’ll continue.
One morning I got up to do my grocery shopping, and, not feeling well (I’m lactose intolerant, I ate something with dairy), I walked to Target because their public bathrooms are usually pristine at this hour. But when I got there, to the bathroom I mean, I was baffled by what was going on.
There was a group of women trying on swimsuits they had already purchased and getting ready for the beach, in a Target bathroom of all places. I mean they’re in there washing and primping and preening in this public bathroom. And they were in the largest stall, all three of them, so when I meandered in with my partially full cart, I was unsure of how I’d be able to watch my groceries as I used the bathroom.
After waiting for another woman to leave a reasonably sized stall, I went in, nervous. But…
‘Oh my god, is someone taking a dump? Why here? Why now?!’
‘Oh my god, it smells so bad!’
‘I wasn’t aware that it was supposed to smell like roses,’ I say.”
1. Customers Thought They Could Get Away With Their Payment Lies
“I used to be a cashier at a supermarket where I lived. In that particular area, people had a habit of buying meaningless stuff (like a pack of gum) and paying with large bills (over €50).
They did this because, for some reason, going to the bank was beneath them (someone said this to a colleague). This usually happened at the beginning of the month. Sometimes I would ask them if they didn’t have a smaller amount and they would nod ‘no’ while I could hear the change in their pockets.
They also used to think that we had an unlimited supply of coins.
Usually, we would receive them every Thursday so when we were short, we would ask customers for spare change to make it easier (if the total was 11,80 and the person paid €20 we would ask for 1,80 and then the change would only be €10.
That day, my supervisor had told me that we were running very low and it was almost closing time. Two guys bought a small item and paid with a 100€ bill.
I asked them if they had a smaller amount. They said no. I explained that I would have to give their change in small coins. They insisted.
When I started counting the money they realized they would leave with handfuls of small change and said that they could pay with a smaller amount. Unfortunately for them, company policy prevented me from accepting payment after the till was open (to prevent scams).
The look on their faces when I deposited the mountain of change on their hands was priceless.”
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