People Tell Us About Their 'It's On' Revenge Story
15. Illegally Force Me To Get A Doctor's Note? Good Thing Doc Is On My Side
A doctor who’s not only good with medical stuff but also the law.
“When I was in my early twenties, I worked at a supermarket. I should note that I was a pretty reliable employee. I was never late; in fact, I often got in early, and I rarely called in sick.
At the time this happened, I had not called in sick for 9 months, and even then, the manager had sent me home.
I had been up all night, swinging between burning hot and freezing cold, and I had been throwing up ‘at both ends’ shall we say. At one point at about 2 am, I was on the toilet, with my head in the sink, utterly miserable.
I must have passed out because the next thing I knew I was lifting my head off the sink, and it was 7 am. I was due to start work at 12 that day, but that obviously wasn’t going to happen.
So I called up the manager. Let’s call the manager Steve. Steve was known for being a real jerk. He never believed anyone who called in sick except his best buds (usually other managers, never lowly staff) but often called in sick himself (a lot of the time, we knew it was because he was hungover and not actually sick).
The conversation went as follows:
Me: Hey Steve, sorry, I can’t come in. I’m sick.
Steve: With what?
Me: I don’t know. I think it might be the flu. I’ve been up all night being sick, and I have a fever.
Steve: Don’t be stupid. If you had the flu, you’d be completely knocked out. I need you in. Come in or you’re fired.
Me: I can’t.
I just told you I can’t stop vomiting. I passed out.
Steve: (growling angrily) Either come in or bring a doctor’s note, or you’re fired!
In the UK, you are legally allowed to self-certify for 5 days. This means you can tell your employer you are sick, and you do not need a doctor’s note. If you’re sick for more than 5 days, you then need a note.
It is also illegal to demand a doctor’s note during the self-certify period.
I knew this, but I was terrified. This was during the recession. I couldn’t afford to lose my job. So I got myself dressed. Almost passed out trying to do so. Then trudged to the doctors some 25 minutes walk away.
I end up sitting in the doctor’s office for a little over an hour, which for walk-in was pretty good.
I get in to see the doctor, and she is furious at me for coming in. You’re not supposed to come to the doctors when you are ill, and of course, I knew I should be able to self-certify. She told me as such, saying I shouldn’t be here and should have stayed at home.
I then explained what had happened with Steve and how he had threatened to fire me over this, and I couldn’t afford to lose my job – I was struggling as it was.
My doctor turned her anger towards my manager. She asked if I got sick pay from the company, and I said yes.
“He wants a sick note does he,” the doctor says. “Okay. I’ll give him a sick note.”
Now, my manager just wanted a note confirming I was sick, but instead, my doctor wrote something along the lines of this:
‘(My Name) has come to the surgery because (manager name) has insisted she come in, in spite of the fact that this is illegal, and all employees are allowed to self certify.
Due to being forced to make this unnecessary and highly dangerous trip when the patient is ill and almost passed out in the waiting room, I am signing (my name) off for two full weeks to recover. Had (my name) been allowed to self-certify as is the law, they might only have needed a few days, but due to straining themselves, they now require two full weeks.
They are not to be permitted to work until (date 2 weeks later).’
The doctor said she would have signed me off longer, but this was the longest she could do without requiring further evidence. So basically, instead of just being off for a few days, I was now signed off for a full two weeks, and I’d be paid for it.
I went to my place of work, at which point one of the duty managers saw me and asked me what the heck I was doing here, go home, as I was obviously very unwell.
I explained what happened. They agreed to help me downstairs to Steve’s office and went with me inside.
I handed Steve the note. He looked worried and tried to say, ‘I wasn’t being serious about firing you.’
Well, gee, when you angrily growled it down the phone, it sure sounded like it.
The duty manager then declared that they were going to drive me home.
It was clear Steve wanted to argue but had the sense to know he shouldn’t.
The duty manager then drove me home, made sure I was okay, then went back to work where they informed our union rep of what had happened.
Steve had a disciplinary hearing where he was given a severe reprimand and a warning. Steve tried to argue he never said I’d be fired and I was lying and just decided to go to the doctors, but the duty manager said they heard him admit to it when he said to me that he really didn’t mean it.
I felt better after a few days and enjoyed my two weeks off, fully paid, and enjoyed the nice weather we had. Meanwhile, Steve was forced to work overtime because we were short-staffed. So thanks to the doctor, instead of being off for a few days, I ended up getting a nice two-week paid vacation, and Steve was given a final warning, all because he insisted I get a doctor’s note.”
14. I'll Show You How Much Of A Great Reader I Really Am
“I don’t know why, but for some reason, in middle school, the teachers and administrators who ran my strict Catholic elementary school decided that I was lying about my reading/writing abilities.
Yeah, look I don’t get it. I really don’t. Every year, I’d start the semester having to prove I was actually doing my own English homework.
They could never prove I was lying, so they eventually settled on measuring me against the smartest girl in the class, Cathy.
I hated Cathy. Here’s an example of this comparison business:
We’ve been assigned a book to read. We read the first chapter aloud in class. I like the book, so I take it home and finish it. Whoop de do. Next day, we’re supposed to read the second chapter in our designated ‘reading time.’ Given that I could usually read a book or two a day, a chapter doesn’t take long.
So, I read it. And then I was done. I start reading my own book.
Mrs. Smith: ‘OP, we’re reading Book right now. Read your book later.’
Me: ‘I read it.’
Mrs. Smith: ‘Uh-huh. Then read it again.’
So I did. She stood there and watched me and then said: ‘I said to read the chapter, OP.’
Me: ‘I did.’
Mrs. Smith: ‘I said READ.
Not skim.’
Me: ‘I DID read it.’
Mrs. Smith: ‘Cathy, what page are you on?’
Cathy: ‘Um, 15, ma’am.’
Mrs. Smith: ‘Okay OP. Cathy is the best reader in the class. If she’s not past page 15, then neither are you.’
…and that was that. I was too shy and embarrassed to really protest…so I didn’t. I’d just stare and stare at the same page until Cathy turned her page, and then I turned mine.
This was AGONIZINGLY boring, and it happened almost every day.
After about 5/6 years of this…issue, I was PRETTY ANGRY about it. Year after year, semester after semester, day after day, being told that I couldn’t read as well as Cathy? When reading was the only darn thing I was absolutely sure I was good at? It ate at me, rage and humiliation and frustration and just…a lot of self-hate, for not being able to speak up, to force the issue to the point where I could prove I was a good reader?
It stung.
And in the fifth grade, I finally saw it—Vengeance.
You see, my school did this thing called ‘Accelerated Reading,’ which was fancy talk for ‘get kids to read a book and take a quiz on it for points.’ They enforced it by making it a part of our English grade—each student had a minimum set of points they’d need to make by the end of the year.
They made it competitive by offering a pizza party to the class of the school’s ‘Top Reader.’
The top reader every single year was Cathy. Oh, whoever had Cathy in their class (my grade had four classes, so the winning class varied) oh-so-loved having Cathy in their class. The end of the year pizza party was a shoo-in to whoever had CATHY, after all.
She was so smart, so good at reading. She only needed to make a base score to pass, you know? But Cathy loved to achieve so much that she would usually make double that score…so impossible to beat her. She really LOVED reading, you know?
You might be wondering…uh, OP, if you’re so good at reading, why didn’t YOU overachieve and kick her butt?
Three reasons:
One: Apathy. I gave up trying in school a long time ago, largely because of my teachers.
Two: I was one of the students that had to be supervised to ‘make sure I didn’t copy.’ (I NEVER DID YOU IDIOT—okay, okay. Ahem.) Thanks to this, I was too embarrassed to ask to take the tests until the last semester.
Three: 1ST THROUGH 4TH GRADERS WERE LOCKED INTO TESTS ON BOOKS ON THEIR READING LEVEL.
Solid idea, in theory, preventing kids from manipulating the system and guessing their way through high point value tests instead of reading, but do you want to know how many points a Hank the Cowdog book was worth? TWO. THREE IF YOU’RE LUCKY. And that was the HIGH END of point value for those reading levels. Most were in the half-points. If I wanted to pass, I had to read about 10-15 kid books, and god, I was so far beyond that by that point.
So yeah, I’d usually wait until the last minute and then take all the tests at once and just barely scrape a pass. This probably didn’t help with my teacher’s poor impression of my reading level, come to think of it.
But fifth graders…fifth-graders had FREE REIGN to take any test they wanted…any test…any test at all.
I remember looking at my English syllabus on the first day of school and seeing that holy, blessed freedom…I looked up at the back of Cathy’s head, in the class across the hall.
I could win.
But then I realized…I could do better than win. I could DESTROY her. Destroy her and prove once and for all who the alpha reader in the school was. I could destroy her and show stupid Mrs. Smith and Mrs. James that they were dead wrong. I could read. I was the best reader. I could do it.
But I needed patience.
I couldn’t let anyone know what I was up to. I couldn’t tip my hand too early and drive the competition up.
See, at this time, Cathy’s highest score was 45 points. She fully intended to make at least 80 points for her last year, and the other kids were properly competing now that any book was game. The FINAL pizza party was on the line, after all.
I didn’t want anyone realizing a new contender was in the ring. I wanted my victory to be a landslide. I knew it could be a landslide, with the arsenal of books I’d read over the years.
So, I waited. I didn’t take any AR test, despite my teachers urging and punishing me for failing to meet my quarterly minimums. I suffered embarrassment, time-outs from recess, loss of field trips for low grades, my parents’ confusion…but nothing could move me from The Plan.
My score stayed at zero.
Cathy exceeded her own expectations, finishing the year with 92 points. I remember the last Friday, the last day to take tests, and my classmates struggling to get even half as many points as her. The next kid in line had 60 points. Me…I was still at zero.
Just as planned.
After school, instead of going to the homework room in after-school care, I went to the library with Mrs. Reilly to take my AR tests, since I still had to be supervised. This was fine.
I needed a witness.
I started taking tests. I took all of the tests. Every book I’d ever read that was available to be tested, I tested.
All of the Babysitter’s Club. All of Sweet Valley High. All the Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, the Great Illustrated Classics, the unabridged versions of those same books. Every Jack London novel. All of those Dive and Everest survival books.
The three Harry Potter books that were out. All of the Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield comics. I even took tests on freaking Goosebumps, Animorphs, the Magic Tree House, and all of those stupid Hank the Cowdog books. Those are just the series—I read loads of stand-alone books and tested on them—I can’t even freaking remember them all. Every gosh darn book I had ever read, I tested.
It took HOURS. About one hour in, Mrs. Reilly tried to stop me, but I shocked both of us when I very firmly told her: ‘No. I’m not stopping until I’m done.’
I’d never spoken to an adult-like that in my life. It doesn’t sound like much, but I was the quietest, shyest, most pathetic thing when it came to adults, especially teachers.
I barely looked up at them. Later, my father came to pick me up. I told him I had to take all of these tests. Mrs. Reilly told my dad that I’d passed, I was fine, grades-wise. He tried to make me leave.
I wasn’t having it. For the second time, I managed to speak up for myself. I ended up standing on the chair, screaming at my dad: ‘I’M NOT LEAVING UNTIL I WIN.’
I told him I had to make the highest score, I had to win. I couldn’t leave until I’d won. I think I was crying, almost hyperventilating. He’d never seen me act like this, and didn’t know what to do except to let me take the tests.
Mrs. Reilly and my dad let me take tests until about midnight. At that point, the program locked itself.
No more tests could be taken, the year’s competition was over. I could see my score, and I was laughing, and crying, and just a huge mess. Mrs. Reilly just hugged me (writing this out now, she was seriously cool to actually stay so late and let this sobbing mess of a child do this).
My (incredibly concerned, but kinda proud) dad took me home.
I couldn’t wait for Monday.
You see, they announce the winners of the AR competition over the intercoms to the whole school. I’d timed my victory perfectly. By keeping a zero, my name was never added to the school’s scoreboard. By waiting until the last day to test, the board wasn’t updated with my score. Cathy was still the victor, as far as anyone knew.
No one knew the truth…no one but Mrs. Reilly. Mrs. Reilly, who was IN CHARGE of the contest as the librarian and knew I’d won legitimately. I spent the entire morning hour with the biggest grin on my face. I grinned through prayer, through the pledge, through the unrelated announcements. I was so excited I laughed when the principal started reading the AR winners.
My classmates clearly thought I was nuts. My teacher, Mrs. Smith, who was by far and above the worst teacher I’ve ever had—kept shushing me. I could not be shushed.
Cathy was in the class across the hall. I could see her back and the confident faces of her classmates as they waited for the announcement of their inevitable victory.
And then it happened: ‘The second-place winner is Cathy in class B, with 92 points…’
My classmates gasped. The class across the hall gasped. Cathy actually jerked with shock.
‘And the winner is OP in class C, with a grand total of 458 points!’
…..
My classmates, my teacher, the class across the hall, many of whom had come to their door and were staring at my large grin, were SILENT. You could hear a pin drop. Every rustle of uniform. Sweet, GLORIOUS shock.
Six freaking years. Half of my life at that age and they all thought I was stupid. That I was SLOW. Mrs. Smith…Mrs. James, Mrs. Reilly, all wrong. I won, and none of them saw it coming. It was AMAZING.
Mrs. Smith thought I was lying of course. But I had Mrs. Reilly, and finally, my parents as a backup.
And now I need to pause because…well.
As you might assume, there’s more to this story than just a little misunderstanding about my reading level.
This petty revenge was the highlight of these years, but it was far from the only problem I had. Early puberty, childhood depression, and my shy, friendless nature made me a particularly juicy target for bullying and (in hindsight, pretty extreme) harassment from my peers and older students.
Alongside that, many of my bullies were children of the administration, who weren’t keen on their children getting in trouble. So, while I’m focusing solely on one particular problem here, just sort of remember that it’s the surface of my problems, not the meat.
Because the confidence I gained from completing this plan and earning the awe and respect of my classmates finally gave me the strength to tell my parents what was happening to me, how I was being harassed, how my teachers treated me.
They transferred me out immediately, giving me the greatest exit any bullied child could dream of—a big bang: proving once and for all that those jerks were SO SO SO wrong about me, beating Cathy (who, thinking on it now, didn’t do anything but exist to be everything I supposedly wasn’t and I kinda feel bad for ruining her moment), and blowing the whistle on my bullies.
I left behind a legacy of my passing—last I heard, it took the rest of the Harry Potter books and some serious dedication for another fifth-grader to beat my record over a decade later.
How good was that pizza party?
Never in my life has lukewarm, flat soda, and microwaved pepperoni pizza tasted so good. Not even a joke, I’ve never had a pizza that can compare.
Victory is quite a spice.”
Another User Comments:
“I’m in freaking tears reading this. Honestly, OP, I’m so freaking proud of your twerpy, fifth-grade butt. I remember those feelings of, “Yes, I CAN do this, but you just don’t believe me. I need you to believe me.”
I just… You’re a hero. You’re a little, 9-year-old freaking hero of epic proportions. I’m glad you got your moment to shove it up those teachers’ butts.
They did not deserve to have been teachers at all.
Also, all that reading did you well. You’re a phenomenal writer.” jdc53d
That's CRAZY!! Crazy d*** GOOD ;--))
Gotta tell ya, I laughed out loud when I read 'freakin' goosebumps' hahaha, but GOOD FOR YOU!! Every single book you ever read! Helluva plan for such a young'un, I'm impressed
13. Fire Me For Catching You Committing Fraud? Your Business Is Going Down
“This happened to me back in 2012 when I had my first real “grown-up” job at University.
I was a clerical assistant for a firm in my city, the firm was a small one of nine employees that also had clerks who would intern from time to time. I worked there part-time during my junior and senior years then full-time after I graduated.
I made it about four months before I was told to resign.
This was my first ever business formal job as we had lots of clients face to face.
The clients were big. The fire department, police department, etc. I was brought on by work-study from my Uni and at first, really enjoyed working for the firm.
I had an amazing mentor who taught me all there is to know about this side of the business. He pretty much kept the firm running and put in so much effort that when he interviewed me I thought he was the owner of the firm and not just the staff member above me.
Anyways, as this was my first job, I wasn’t keen on office politics or good at recognizing my surroundings with peers.
After I started working full time I began to catch on and see what was going on behind the scenes. The partners of the firm were scumbags, they treated all of the staff like monkeys and showed no appreciation. They were both male and constantly harassed the female staff and interns.
So often that the turn-over rate was so high that there were new interns every few weeks. There were cliques inside of the firm. The attorneys banded together with the office manager and HR manager – the interns stuck together and I was with my mentor.
For the most part, we were able to stick together and get our work done and turn out good work products.
But, it was hard to watch the harassment of the interns, the social gossip circles of the cliques, and blatant disregard for the staff. Soon after an intern complained to HR that one of the partners slapped her butt and called her vulgar names.
The HR manager, attorneys, and office manager gaslighted this poor intern so bad that she was an emotional wreck when she just walked out and quit.
That was the point my mentor and I had enough. After seeing this we started to take pictures, notes and gather statements of everything we could see that was going on inside the firm that was illegal.
After a huge firm event that involved many hours of overtime, close quarters, and pressure – a breaking point was hit and the staff was exploded upon by the attorneys and managers.
After the event, all of the employees went out to a local club to relax and throw back a few drinks and cool off. This was not something that you would think people in this field would do, especially when the average age of the employees in the firm was over 45.
After the attorneys started getting terribly intoxicated, the interns and my mentor took off to go home for the night.
I stayed but went to a party with my friend group that was also out for the night at the same club.
I bounced back a few times between groups and dancing but near the end of the night I came back to check on my co-workers and what I saw was shocking. They rented out a VIP stage and had bottle service all night – when I walked up to the stage I saw the two partners dancing on associate attorneys, and taking turns making out with them.
I was disgusted and started to hatch my plan.
Not only is that a conflict of interest in my state/type of law, but both partners were married with kids and so were three out of the four other female attorneys/staff. I got one of the promoters that were my roommate at the time to get the club rep to take photos of them doing this but to also send them to me.
I snapped a few on my phone and left the club.
Before we went out we all stopped at a hotel room close by that was rented out by the partners of the firm. I went back after I left the club. Since I was an employee of the firm I was able to convince the front desk to let me back into the room as I was there a few hours earlier and was working with them to pick up/drop things off for the event.
After I was let in I started to take pictures of everything that I could find. I emptied drawers, bags, and closets and was able to take pictures of many-many substances, and things like IDs that were left behind earlier.
The following Monday I go into the HR office and tell the manager that I was uncomfortable with what I saw the partners doing, what they have done in the office, and how everyone exploding on me and my mentor at the event was unacceptable.
Immediately after I left the HR office, the manager ran into the partner’s offices and closed the door. I could hear screaming coming through the door and booked it over to my mentor’s office to fill him in.
After I blurted out what happened and what kind of pictures I got, the partners and HR manager run into my mentor’s office and overhear us talking about what happened nights before.
They immediately tell us to resign and to pack our things as they were “worried about our hostile work environment and what it’s doing to the firm.”
I am on the verge of tears and don’t know what to do next.
My mentor quietly asks for our termination letters, all of our paystubs, all of our billable hour entries from when we started, and my University work-study paperwork.
The HR manager was shocked by this but legally had to produce all of these things for us upon request. After two hours of data compiling my mentor and I walked out with all of our things. We ended up going to a bar with all of the paperwork we just got and started to plan our revenge.
We compiled all of our timesheets, billed hours, and all my work-study paperwork.
Not only did I upload all the pictures to separate email accounts to send to the respective spouses of the attorneys, but we found out that the partners/managers muddled with our billable hours to change them to a higher rate to bill our clients more even though a clerical assistant and paralegal were drafting and filing pleadings.
Through my work-study, they reported that they were paying me $18 an hour total while paying me $6 an hour from their pockets and my school was fronting the other $12 as reimbursement.
Not only on my paystubs was my hourly rate $12 I nor the firm was being taxed for the other $6 – instead, it was being pocketed straight by the firm.
After a complete and thorough compilation of documents, my mentor and I set out the next day to complain to the state bar association to show that the attorneys at the firm committed malpractice, misrepresentation of funds, harassment, and conflicts of interest.
Their spouses were emailed all of the photos of the night out clubbing and what was found in the hotel rooms. My University was informed of the misuse of funds. I applied for unemployment based on their false misconduct firings.
After two weeks of job searching my mentor and I got picked up at another firm as a package deal. We became close after and we constantly see each other every other week on a personal basis.
Months into working the new job did we decide to snoop on the old firm that we set out to destroy. Not only did four of the attorneys lose their legal license, but they were also sued by the bar association and L&I for fraud, their spouses were all involved with divorce proceedings and the manager’s reputations were ruined by what was brought to light and what they covered up.
My mentor and I ended up pulling all of the Superior court submissions to read over what documents were submitted in court and they were caught lying in Declarations they submitted.
It felt really nice to be vindicated by ruining their relationships, jobs, and business. Thanks for reading.”
12. Harass Your Fellow Employees? I'll End Your Career
“A few years ago, I was working in a job I really enjoyed with a team I really gelled well with. There were about five of us working on the same portfolio of projects in different roles, and every single team member was just cream-of-the-crop, incredibly good at what they do.
I can’t overemphasize how satisfying it was to work with such an incredibly competent, likable group of people. In this job, instead of getting the Sunday night blues, I would get excited thinking about the work I would be doing the next day and planning how we would solve complex problems together.
The one downside (there’s always a downside) to this job was Steve.
Steve was not in the supervisory line for me or any of my team members, but he was about three levels above us and very senior. He’d been there for years and was tight with senior leadership. Steve was also a mega-creep.
He said extremely inappropriate things to young women in the office, and he apparently wasn’t averse to being handsy, though as far as anyone knew, that was as bad as it had gotten.
The women in the office all knew to steer clear of him. My first week on the job, the whisper network made sure I knew: Never be alone with Steve. Harassment is difficult to document, and no one wanted to risk their career and put a target on their back going after a big guy like Steve, so he just got away with it for years.
So for a couple of years, I followed this advice.
There were a few instances of Steve saying incredibly uncomfortable things to me in passing, but for the most part, I managed to avoid him. Then I found out that my teammate Rob had gotten on Steve’s radar. For context, Rob is non-neurotypical and has some minor tic-ish behavior. He’s also shy and easily spirals into social anxiety when put in uncomfortable situations.
So one evening at our team’s informal weekly happy hour after work, Rob lets it slip that Steve’s been giving him a hard time. The rest of us are like, ‘Whoa, wait, what?’ because Steve never interacts with staff at our level, except to creep on women, so we make Rob tell us everything.
Basically, for the last few weeks, Steve has been bullying Rob, making fun of his tics, and mimicking his way of speaking back to him.
He’s also been asking Rob how he can possibly be competent to do his job and implying he’s a pity hire. Steve even called him stupid. It’s clear Steve is seeking out Rob for this, because, again, there’s really no reason for him to interact with our team. Rob has been having horrible anxiety over this situation and has had bad insomnia and stomach issues since Steve started targeting him.
And not that it bears repeating, but just to reiterate, Rob is a beast at his job. And a genuinely good guy.
At this point, I’m seeing red. We all were. We tell Rob to go to HR, that his neurological issues put him in a protected ADA class, that he could get Steve in big trouble. Rob panics and says he can’t do that, begs us not to tell anyone at work, and says he wishes he hadn’t said anything.
We assure him we won’t say anything if that’s what he wants, but we’re all very distressed.
I leave the bar fuming just thinking, OK, that’s it. Screw you, Steve. You’re going down.
I can’t tell anyone about what’s happening to Rob, because I promised him as much, so I start my own paper trail.
I start baiting Steve.
And I don’t mean I behave in any suggestive manner or lead him on: I just stop avoiding him, and I even initiate contact myself.
I IM him through the company’s IM system very professionally/politely asking if a big client will be staying on through the next project cycle, and the floodgates open. He starts sending me outrageously inappropriate IMs. I mostly don’t respond, but I occasionally keep him going by sending extremely literal responses to his innuendo-laden questions or pretending not to understand something suggestive he’s saying.
Sometimes when he clarifies, I’ll outright say, ‘This isn’t appropriate’ or ‘This is making me uncomfortable,’ or ‘Please don’t say things like that, Steve,’ but he steamrolls right over me.
During this time, I’ve also been seeing him more in-person around the office, and he often says gross stuff to me in person as well, a lot of it not just inappropriate, but bizarre and nonsensical (‘Is it legal to have a jerk like that in that skirt?’ Lolwut?) Every time this happens, I immediately go back to my desk and write down what he said, the date and time, and the names of any witnesses.
After about a month of this, I compile my creep journal with printouts of the IM conversations and take them to my HR rep. I ask to file a harassment complaint against Steve.
As soon as the word ‘harassment’ leaves my mouth, my rep instantly gets the head of HR and two other reps, and they go through my evidence with me and ask me a ton of questions.
The head of HR assures me they’ll take my complaints very seriously, and asks if I know of any women around the office who have had similar issues with Steve. I’m able to give them several names.
They send me on my way, and two weeks later, my rep formally reaches out to me and lets me know Steve has been let go.
Much jubilation is had around the office!
It took a couple of months for me to piece together the whole story, but basically, after my complaint, HR started following up with the names I gave them, both the witnesses to my in-person encounters with Steve and the other women he’d harassed.
They corroborated what I’d told HR, and then through them, word started spreading around the office that HR was conducting a harassment investigation against Steve.
This emboldened at least 15 different women who’d been biting their tongues about Steve for ages to come forward and tell their own Steve stories.
During all of this, IT had been asked to go through Steve’s emails and IMs, and this had not only been used to validate my printouts as legitimate, but IT had found a ton of additional incriminating stuff in Steve’s correspondences.
Somewhat frustrating: Steve received an extremely generous severance package as part of his termination. But on the bright side, word got around the industry quickly, and Steve was poison at that point.
No company would touch him with a 10-foot pole. The last time I thought to snoop on his public social media pages, he was listing himself as an ‘independent consultant’ in our industry, which I seriously doubt he’s actually doing, and based on his public social media page, he’s doing a couple of MLMs, so that should kill off whatever savings he has in short order.
I don’t work with Rob anymore, but I did recently attend his wedding! He’s extremely happy with his new wife (who is a sweet and lovely woman) and he’s doing really well in his career.”
11. I Hope You Enjoy Having Dog Droppings On Your Roof
You can have those back, lazy.
“This is a story about my uncle’s vengeance.
My uncle is chill and friendly, but he once had the misfortune of living next to an awful neighbor. The guy actually didn’t have a ton of bad habits, but he did exactly what he wanted to do and he didn’t care who was affected. And one of the things he wanted to do was take his big dog on a daily morning walk and let the dog do his doggy business on my uncle’s lawn.
The first time my uncle caught him, he calmly confronted him and politely requested that the neighbor stop using his lawn as a dog toilet.
The neighbor calmly told my uncle to get screwed: He didn’t care what my uncle thought, there was nothing my uncle could do about it, and nothing would change.
This being 1970s southern California, my uncle couldn’t record the neighbor and shame him online or report him to the police for some litter violation, and although he is a cool uncle, he was in no way physically intimidating enough to get this guy to back down.
Every day for a week he went outside to confront the awful neighbor and his awful dog, and every day he got the exact same answer: screw off, I don’t care, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
On the eighth morning, my uncle stayed inside, watching as the neighbor yet again allowed his dog to leave a fudgy dump on his lawn.
Then, after the neighbor and his dog had continued on their walk, my uncle grabbed a shovel and went outside.
He scooped up the dog poop and, with masterful accuracy, flung it onto the roof of the neighbor’s house. As mentioned before, this being 1970s California, the neighbor’s roof (like all of the houses in that area) had a very shallow slope, and once he saw that the poop didn’t roll off, my uncle headed back inside.
He repeated the exact same procedure every morning… for the next eight months.
Not once did the neighbor notice the steadily growing pile of dog poop on his roof, baking and dehydrating in the California sun.
Not once did he smell anything off, nor did he find it suspicious that my uncle still greeted him in a friendly manner after having his lawn used as a dog loo every single morning.
Finally, after eight months, the hot and sunny weather gave way to a massive rainstorm. Within minutes, the entire crusty layer of dog poop shingles rehydrated and broke free, a reeking mudslide that sloshed down onto the neighbor’s property, splattering his lawn, his house, and his car with literal pounds of dog poop.
Over the next few days, the neighbor’s grass succumbed to the poison and died, the paint began to flake off his car, and the neighbor himself had to finally clean up after his dog once the sunny weather returned and the remnants of the dog poop began to dry up while still stubbornly stuck to every stinking corner of his house.
Tragically, my uncle didn’t take any pictures of the poo-house (I would have loved to have seen that).
From the day after the rainstorm to the day my uncle moved out of that house, he never spoke to that neighbor again… but the dog poop stopped appearing on his lawn for good.”
10. Treat Your Staff Like Garbage? We'll Cost The Company Millions Of Dollars
“I was working as an Expat oil company Senior Staff Geologist (and de facto Exploration Manager, but without the increase in pay nor authority, just increased stress levels) in the Middle East for a Southern European construction company’s oil and gas concerns.
The General Manager was a complete idiot. Full of himself because he worked for one major oil company his whole benighted career as an engineer, so obviously, he knows everything about geology, geophysics, petrophysics, etc. (He didn’t and doesn’t). His ‘management style’ (if one could grace his screaming and infantile fuming as a ‘style’) could be described variously as ‘inept micromanagement’ or ‘management by objection’.
Would berate and degrade the entire staff in meetings with partners (which made everyone terribly uncomfortable to see such a lack of decorum and professionality), scream so the whole office could hear over mundane idiocies such as lack of coffee pods in the kitchen or why 6,000 meters of pipe had never materialized even though the unpaid invoice still nestled on his desk.
In a multicultural office, he would rant and rail, at top volume, about, ‘freaking self-important and entitled Expat.’ Called the firm ‘the worst freaking oil company in the Middle East’ (at least, here we agreed).
Not only a racist but a misogynist, general misanthrope, and a complete and total waste of carbon.
One day, the loggers messed over the logs, and he absolutely refused my insistence to re-log the pay zones. I was called just about every nasty name in the Oil Patch handbook, right down to the part where he told me my alma mater were a bunch of ‘freaking idiots’ for granting me my three petroleum geology degrees.
After 26 years in the Patch, I decided that no job was worth this and laid plans for a quick, early, and entirely unannounced departure.
I quietly related the fact that I was doing a ‘runner’ to some of my other Expat compatriots over drinks one Thursday evening and was greeted with the revelation that several (read: most) of the other Expats there were 1. thinking the same thing, and 2.
if I left, they were gone as well.
We carefully laid our plans.
The company ‘provided’ housing (i.e., paid a ridiculously low monthly fee so we had to live in cheap housing or sucked it up with our families and ponied up additional funds to live in decent villas), so we all gave clandestine notice to our respective landlords about our imminent departure and asked they keep quiet.
Since they were paid by check (12 per year) and were already compensated, they were both delighted that they had already been paid once and that they could rent out our abodes after we left for essentially double rent.
Cancellation of internet, water, and power were token; a quick email, print the automated response and carry it with you if the border guards gave us any trouble when we buggered off.
Since we were all Western European, Canadian, or American, we decided to book a block of Business class tickets (as was our contractual due) to London on the same British Airways flight.
In fact, with families and all, we booked the entire Business class section.
We all had been in-country for years and years, so arranging packing and shipping (or storage) of our belongings was a snap.
We were all members of the ‘move every 18 months to follow the cash’ crowd, so this was the easiest part of our master plan.
No one leaked a word of all this, but some of the locals in the company somehow sensed the change in the decorum of the company’s daily activities (when one really doesn’t give a darn, the stress levels magically evaporate down to near zero) and wondered aloud what was going on.
We confided in a few of them (these were not just colleagues, but personal friends in many cases) with the proviso that they would tell no one.
The weeks dragged on and school was about to let out for the summer (when most Expats bugger off for 1-3 months to escape the stupidly hot and humid Middle Eastern broiler season), so the usual requests for contractual time off were made (and all roundly rejected by Herr Mr. Jerkface General Manager) and life proceeded on its merry way.
Finally, Liberation Friday arrived (weekends being Friday-Saturday at this time in this country).
We contracted a local carrier and had a bus rented to pick up everyone and take us all to the airport.
Luggage tagged and schlepped off to the bowels of British Airways’ incomprehensible baggage-handling inner workings; through check-in, customs, and passport control without so much as a sideways glance. We all invaded the English Pub after hitting Duty-Free one last time, and we toasted each other on a job well done and best soon forgotten.
Sitting in Business Class waiting for takeoff (quaffing my third drink), I did a quick tally: the company was, in this one instance, losing its Sr. Staff Geologist c*m Exploration Manager, Senior Geophysicist, Sr. Petrophysicist, Sr. Geomodeller, Sr. Reservoir Engineer, Drilling Engineer, Operations Geologist, Logistics Manager, Senior Surveyor, 3 secretaries (wives of the aforementioned Senior crowd), and the HSEQ Manager.
A small company (total 50 or so total employees) could withstand the loss of 2 or maybe even 3 of their Senior-level employees, but not this mass emigration.
My good friends whom we left behind regaled us for months regarding the situation in the office come Sunday…B****y Sunday.
Once the realization of what had happened, the GM went completely ‘off the rails,’ and ‘completely berserk,’ or variations on that theme. The first glimmer of recognition of the severity of the rotund bale of jeers about to descend upon him was when all calls to various abodes were answered with ‘That number is no longer in service.
Please check blah blah blah…’
Emails went unanswered however our GSMs were still working, although we all blocked Herr Jerkface’s number, though we still allowed text messages.
Text 1: ‘Where are you? Why aren’t you at work?’ was just the beginning.
In the words of Khan Noonian Singh we ‘let him eat static.’
Text 2: ‘Where are you? If you don’t get your butts in here immediately…’ and other such impotent threats.
(‘Yes, please. I’d love another drink.’)
Rising panic ensued: Text 3: ‘This isn’t funny. Come in and we’ll act like this never happened…’
We all sat on the plane, anticipating touchdown. By the time we hit London, it was 0700 local time but 1100 back-there time.
Herr Jerkface GM called an emergency meeting of the remnants of his staff (all locals) and demanded to know what they knew about this huge display of insubordination.
‘Dunno,’ ‘Never heard a word,’ ‘Why? What happened’ and ‘Where is everybody?’ were the responses.
Herr Jerkface blows a gasket and immediately sacks everyone left in the office.
Unfortunately, all that was left were a couple of teaboys (who are always in demand) and a bunch of locals.
Due to the country’s ‘-ization’ plan, it would be easier to fly a fully loaded 747 through the hole of a bagel than it would be to dispose of a local indigenous worker.
Long story short, he couldn’t and was instantly reported to the proper ministry in charge of such matters as one of the secretaries was kin to the Minister of Employment Affairs.
Final damages: loss of 10+ senior employees.
Fines of over 5,000 riyals/day due to improper business practices (firing locals).
Loss of 2 drilling rigs due to lack of personnel and inability to provide work as per contracts; and cessation of drilling of 2 active wells (into the hole, so to speak, about US$3.5MM each) and 10 or 12 field development wells.
So long cash flow.
Loss of a 3-D seismic contract worth approximately US$3MM. Adios exploration program.
Loss of ‘A-rating,’ meaning you take a back seat to all who try and tender rigs, seismic crews, etc. Good luck sourcing oil country tubular goods, logging or completion services, and pretty much all field-related activities.
Loss of face with several ministries (no small item here, huge importance is placed on competence and perceived amiability).
Au revoir Field Development Plan acceptance or seismic contract approval.
Loss of 6 locals to the national oil company. Figured if Expats deserted this amalgamation of idiocy masquerading as an oil company, they should bail as well.
Ultimate temporary closure of the office, cessation of all field activities, payments of 150-200% on defaulted loans and contracts, and loss of several lucrative pipeline right-of-ways and transfer contracts.
They had to continue to pay the still employed locals, basically sending them a check for sitting at home playing Xbox, and loss of 25% of their acreage due to non-fulfillment of contracts with the government.
Last I heard, Herr GM Jerkface is thrashing around South Texas trying to sell some sort of jumped-up and shady oil deals with companies who have seen their own projects quashed by plummeting oil prices.
Funny thing is, he keeps running into people, now on the other side of the desk, who both know him, and in one or two cases, actually worked for him.
One receives a special gold-plated schadenfreude when you lean ever so slightly forward and tell him to ‘Screw off’ and ‘Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out; you might suffer brain damage.'”
Another User Comments:
“And this, folks, is how unions get their power and why corporations want to sell you the idea that unions are bad. A well-timed strike can have devastating effects on business, and we need to leverage our collective power to get better working conditions and fair compensation for the value provided.” Planner_Hammish
9. Want Us To Be 'Factual' About Her? Oh, We Will
Well, they weren’t wrong.
“This is a story about how my awful colleague Mindy and our manager were hit with a cold can of malicious compliance. I can’t take full credit for it; it was a team effort, as you’ll see.
Upper management decided to trial a new system where colleagues would rate each other. The rules were that all comments had to be constructive.
We couldn’t write anything spiteful, untrue, or based on gossip. So you could write stuff like, ‘(Colleague) is always supportive and offers help when I need it,’ or ‘(Colleague) communicates clearly,’ and so on. Basically, they wanted us to think about how our colleagues helped us and what they contributed to the team. They hoped it would help gauge how well the team worked together and encourage them to be positive about each other.
These reviews were to be handed to a manager, and only the manager was allowed to read them.
As you can imagine, this was tricky when it came to Mindy. Mindy fancied herself the queen bee of the office, and she tattled on everyone for petty stuff like using too many staples or being a few minutes late, and she even kept a tally of how long each of us took going to the bathroom or getting a drink.
She was overall a very toxic person. Worst of all, she was our manager’s favorite, so she basically got away with everything.
I tried to be as diplomatic as possible and wrote that her constant monitoring of our bathroom and drink breaks made me uncomfortable and that maybe she needed more training because she frequently came to me with ‘complicated’ queries that were actually pretty standard, or dumping complex cases on me because she said she ‘didn’t have time.’ Again, I wrote them in a way that wasn’t accusing, just stating plain facts.
Everyone in the team put their reviews in the box on the manager’s desk. The manager was supposed to look through them and use them to tackle issues or any areas of discord in the team discreetly.
In spite of the fact that these reviews were supposed to be anonymous, and only for the eyes of the manager, Mindy somehow found out what was on them, and she was furious.
She accused us of ganging up on her and bullying her, and you guessed it, she tattled to the manager.
He called an emergency team meeting to address it. He brushed off our concerns about how Mindy had read them at all – these were supposed to be anonymous and private.
“I need you to rewrite them all,” he said.
We all looked at each other.
One of my colleagues, who I’ll call Tom, piped up.
“We did exactly as asked. Our reports were truthful and constructive,” Tom said.
“No. You can’t write this. You need to write them again. And this time, stick to facts.” Our manager snapped, and that was that.
Mindy grinned smugly at us as we left.
Tom stepped in and suggested we go out together and figure this out.
There was no way we were going to lie and say Mindy was a great employee like our manager obviously wanted us to, but we had to do what he said. Tom had been at the company for decades and always stood by his colleagues. He was a genuinely fantastic guy and we all loved him. He suggested we go out for drinks together to discuss it away from Mindy, so we did.
At first, none of us knew what to do.
“What facts can we give about her that won’t get us in trouble? Mindy sits at desk (number)? Mindy has short hair?” I said sarcastically.
Tom’s eyes suddenly lit up.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what we’ll do.”
We worked together and came up with a plan. We re-did the forms, and we all wrote the exact same thing: Mindy has short hair.
Mindy sits at (desk number). Mindy works 9-5:30. Literally, just a laundry list of mundane facts about Mindy, and our forms were identical. We waited until the last moment to post them in the box.
Our manager hit the roof, but there was nothing he could do about it. We did what he asked, and there was no time for him to make us do another.
So he just submitted them.
The scheme was soon dropped because it created too much work, and was replaced instead with a system where colleagues could nominate each other for awards. Guess who never got nominated for any awards…?”
8. Block My Promotion? I'll Screw You Over
“So, I’m a software engineer at a medium healthcare company. Let’s call it Arcade Health. (AH). The team I was joining had like 5-6 offshore people on it before.
Now, they were dumping all of them for two onshore resources (to save monetary capital). As such, we had Dingbat (my lead), myself, and an older guy named Tim.
Dingbat was my lead for the Content Management side. Though, I ended up having Angel also be another lead when Grim (dingbat and me’s functional manager) assigned me to another project.
After about 6 months, it was apparent I was excelling in my role, but to assert her dominance, Dingbat, called me on my personal number and yelled at me.
So, I tell Grim, and he assures me it would be handled. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t. Now Grim and Dingbat have worked together for almost half a decade and had a positive relationship.
Grim came back and said it didn’t happen. Well. Fast forward a month, Dingbat has laid off and instead taken to harassing Tim. Tim wasn’t a Software Engineer, but he was forced into being one.
So, Tim had a steep learning curve. So, she questioned his intelligence multiple times. Finally, he had enough, and we had a meeting with Dingbat and Grim to say this isn’t cool. So, Grim has to accept that Dingbat isn’t actually the person they portray.
Well, things simmer down and Dingbat actually gets to be moderately okay to work with. Meanwhile, my project with Angel ramps up, and I have less time to devote to Dingbat’s project.
Well, Dingbat forced me to do her project like I had nothing else going and assigned me an asinine amount of tickets. Angel can’t actually devote much time to the one we have because she’s the lone engineer on another. In total, so, I have Dingbat’s project and Angel’s project. So, I sit down with Grim and explain I have worked 80 hour weeks for a month.
Grim… Takes me off Dingbat’s project temporarily. He tells Dingbat she can only give me a handful of non-taxing tickets. Dingbat is mad but complies. At the yearly end where our leads report to our managers, Angel basically gives me a glowing recommendation to get promoted.
I created a solution that would indicate the KEY JSON values are intact for all models. Basically, if these screw up, the entire functionality is broken.
So, the user wouldn’t be able to send data to the server as fields would need to be changed in the code. In total, this was a 2-month effort taking about 80 hours a week on its own. Dingbat… Calls me incompetent and says I have demonstrated a bad attitude. Mostly, Dingbat always had negative comments, so after a while, yeah, you get annoyed.
So, Dingbat’s heavy criticism blocked the promotion that I was promised would come by Grim.
Angel lobbied hard every meeting she could insert it to make it clear to Grim that I worked hard, had a good attitude, and deserved an upgrade. In the end though, Grim and Dingbat were closer friends or whatever.
Fast forward three months, I’m back on Dingbat’s project. While I was away, she harassed Tim multiple times every day. She has nitpicked and criticized me at least twice literally every day since the new year when I was put back on the project.
So, I told Dingbat in a chat that how she acted was completely disrespectful to Tim and me. She didn’t do something she was supposed to do, so I didn’t know I needed to do a few tickets. Well, she added Grim the next day to the chat. Grim sets up a meeting and I outline what Dingbat has been doing since starting.
Grim: I think you have been really disgruntled since being taken off Angel’s project, and you’re taking it out on Dingbat.
Me: NO. Dingbat is harassing me every day as a verbal punching bag, has called me twice and cursed at me, and creates an overall hostile work environment. None of this is new.
Grim: You need to really see how others perceive you. This attitude comes off as negative.
So, Grim gets his Boss, ‘Cherry.’ Cherry and Grim put me on a performance plan.
In this plan, I have to create a survey targeting the issues outlined in this plan and I have to find a new area to work under within 6 months.
In that meeting, they say:
“You should really evaluate how you are seen by our team and decide if you wish to remain at this company and follow this PIP to a T. ONE TOE OUT OF PLACE AND YOU’RE GONE.”
I said, “I didn’t even think that was really that inappropriate. She brought it to that point anyway. If you look, I gave pretty clear indications not to bring it to that level, but she pressed the issue.”
Them: ‘I guess this is an exercise in learning how to speak to others and watch our words.’
Strike 1: So, Grim REALLY harps on my forced survey.
They are targeting as guiding that response. So, I just let Grim write it for me. Basically, every survey comes back:
“OP has a really great attitude, is a pleasure to work with, and is never negative at all. They focus on the issue and find a resolution.”
Strike 2: Grim and Dingbat pretty much just assume I’m going to be there until the plan is up.
They don’t talk about my replacement. Meanwhile, I approach the Manager of another team we work closely with on Dingbat’s team, and he did not have something. Yet, another team did. Within 2 months, he set me up for an interview with this team. However, my POSITIVE reputation preceded me. So, I was given the job. I had to put in a notice on my old position with the same company (again weird corporate HR rules).
Up to this point, Grim just ignored my emails about a possible transition. Passes off that I would get another position. Basically, no planning on me leaving for a few months.
In my notice period, I had no new tickets. Though, I set up a system Dingbat claimed she wanted. Well, Dingbat gets all up in arms and I just use the Webex quote feature for her own words.
I said “I’m following the schematics you laid out. You said you wanted to press only a single button. You don’t even have to press it if you don’t want.”
Dingbat: I DON’T CARE. IT’S. NOT. USEFUL.
Grim: Dingbat, why are you fighting this? It’s very helpful.
Dingbat: FINE. I’ll look at it. OP HAS JUST NEVER MADE ANYTHING USEFUL FOR US. They aren’t even technical.
My new job is actually way more technical than she has ever had to be.
Grim: Just try it. OP. Book the meeting.
Dingbat: IT HAS TO BE A WEDNESDAY BECAUSE I’M SOOOO BUSY.
Me: Sends it out for Wednesday.
Later on:
Grim: Can you do it later or earlier? I have 3 hours of meetings already and this is my only slot of a break.
Me: Nope. Sorry, Dingbat insisted Wednesday, and this is the only time I have until I leave.
Grim: Oh. Okay.
Cherry hears about it and is LIVID. Though, she can’t touch me. I’m on my notice, and I’ve only done what I was asked.
And it went like that for the next two weeks.
On the way out, my incoming manager was like, “Why are you wearing such nice clothes in the office?”
Me: Tells the truth “I was told to by Grim whenever we came back. I was told slacks and a solid pilot with a tie.”
Grim: A week ago Why did I get asked by HR why I was forcing you to wear business casual?
Me: You said that to ANY OFFICE, I wear that.
I know by their tone, he meant it as a guideline but I followed it to a T.
Grim: I GOT REPRIMANDED FOR IT.
Me: ‘I guess this is an exercise in learning how to speak to others and watch our words.’
Grim: No comment
Strike 3: I told Tim on my way out that the way Dingbat is running the show is unsustainable. So, with my absence entirely, he’ll be expected to learn more. Keep in mind, Tim is a Senior Citizen.
So, none of this is ideal. I hear the anguish in his voice. I told him to see and apply around to another team at the company. Well, that weekend, Tim’s lady dies. May she rest in peace. Well, on his way out, Tim mentioned my comments and his woman passing as a reason that Tim has decided to retire.
Now, Dingbat has zero help, has a system that basically does Tim’s job she was expecting him to use, and has to work on two other systems for her migration project alone while she waits 2-3 months for the whole corporate bureaucracy to replace us both.
Meanwhile, I have a front-row seat to see Dingbat’s incompetence come back to bite her in the butt.”
7. Think You're So Smart? I'll Destroy Your Lawn
“A few years ago, I worked as a full-time volunteer for a disaster relief organization building houses in a Midwestern town in the US that had recently been decimated by a large tornado.
I was a site supervisor, essentially a general contractor and overseeing volunteers for a single project, beginning to end. Above me, I had a project manager (PM) who would oversee several houses, make sure we had what we needed, make sure we met deadlines, etc.
So one day as I’m wrapping up my current house, my PM calls to tell me that one of the other supervisors has been having kind of a hard time with their volunteers and asked me to go help out on their site for a few days.
As I show up to the house, currently just a foundation and frame, a supply truck is pulling out of the backyard. It has apparently been late getting there because there’s a crowd of bored-looking volunteers sitting out front, and the site sup is looking pretty antsy. I go up and introduce myself to everyone and start game-planning with the other sup when a very angry lady starts screaming at us from next door.
We go ask her what’s up, and she is absolutely spitting, because we drove all over her lawn, killing all her grass.
Now, you have to understand that when I say this town was decimated, I mean that not a single house, not a single tree in this entire part of the town had been left standing. Enough time had passed that many houses had been rebuilt, but my point is that as far as you could see in any direction was still an ugly mess, and her grass wasn’t making a lick of difference.
Admittedly, when she pointed out where the edge of her giant double lot was, it did look like the truck had left some light tire tracks. Another site sup said he really needed to get back to the volunteers and so I told him I would take care of this. I apologized and explained that it was the only way that we could get to the backyard but that it wouldn’t happen again.
Then tried to change the subject, talking about how awesome it was that all these kind volunteers had driven hours and were given an entire week to help build her neighbor a free house, and weren’t people just beautiful, and wouldn’t it be great to have the area property value go back up. None of my diversions worked, and she just kept frothing herself up.
She eventually said that she wanted “to speak to my manager.”
Luckily he was only a few blocks away, and when he got there, I explained the situation. He seemed pretty irritated and told the lady flat out that we were a volunteer organization, building her neighbor a house and that it was pretty petty to get so upset about us driving along the edge of her property.
Well, you can imagine how that went over, and she said, “I demand that you completely reseed and mulch my yard.”
I smiled and said, “How about we use straw?”
For those who don’t know, this is me offering an out. Mulch is used in landscaping to prevent grass from growing. Strawing after seeding protects the seed and doesn’t prevent growth.
My PM looked at me deadpan and said, “don’t be a cheapskate, Anon.
She said mulch.”
The self-satisfied smile she gave me is something I will treasure for all my life. We spent the rest of the day seeding, then mulching her entire double lot. PM even made a call and got someone who supported our noble goal to donate several truckloads of mulch.
We worked next to her for the next two months, all of her grass died, and she never said a word about it.”
6. Check The Legalities If I Don't Believe You? Oh, I Will
“About 10 years ago, I had my first real job working in a fast-food chain for minimum wage. It was a bad job, but it was only to fill a gap between me dropping out of 6th form in February and starting my college course in September.
After being there several months, the regional manager came over to visit and said about there being a few incidents regarding cash missing from the registers that were never resolved. We’re not exactly talking about the heist of the century here; it would be a few pence or at most $7 out, and this had only happened on a handful of occasions.
Most were resolved to being mistaken orders on the registers or card receipts dropping behind the registers. Because of this, there was a new policy that they implemented where the staff members would each be personally responsible for their registers, meaning they required everybody to come in 15 minutes before their shift and stay 15 minutes after their shift to count the money in the registers. All of this time was unpaid.
We were also told if the registers were short, we had to pay it back out of our own pockets on the same day – no exceptions. Of course, if the registers were up, they’d just call that a win for them and pocket the extra cash. The staff always lose.
Naturally, everybody was angry about this except for one brown-nose who said it was great that people have to take responsibility for their mistakes (I guess unpaid overtime will teach us a lesson, right?).
I’m usually very quiet and introverted, but I will absolutely speak out from something I truly believe in or protest against something I don’t. I was first to speak out against these new policies and questioned their legalities to which the area manager responded with something along the lines of, “Feel free to check their legality. I assure you that we aren’t breaking any laws.”
So I did exactly that. Later that night, I went home and checked our laws, and unsurprisingly, everything they were enforcing was illegal here. The area manager is based in Ireland, which more than likely has different employment laws, but his ignorance of our different laws and situation was painfully obvious. I called up the equivalent of a union (they don’t exist here either), and they confirmed that it was illegal and advised me not to adhere to the policies.
The next shift comes around, and I roll in at 11 am (my start time), and immediately the other staff starts kicking off. I went upstairs, counted my float in the 15 minutes they expected it to take, and then actually started working at 11:15. I explain myself to the rest of the staff and showed them evidence, and they all decided to follow suit. Everybody except for brown-nose.
She insisted that we all “needed to do our part for the company” (that pays us minimum wage, don’t forget) and that we “should be grateful for the jobs” (still minimum wage). None of us took that on board and left her to carry on working for free if that’s her choice. I think she was expecting something from the boss for her “dedication.”
The local manager was also on our side, but he did have to tell the regional manager what was happening.
On the regional manager’s next visit about a month later, he started having meetings with the staff to investigate what this was all about and why we weren’t sticking to the policy and they all pointed towards me telling them not to. When he got round to the meeting with me, he was livid and started kicking off at me and asking why I was so determined to overrule him, to which I replied, “You told me to check the legalities of the policies, so I did” and showed him the evidence in the form of our local employment laws on my phone.
Defeated, he left and decided to withdraw all the policies, including the ones where we had to waste time counting the floats and pay back any shortages. The rest of the staff there liked me for it, except for brown-nose, but nobody liked her anyway.”
5. Make Me Work My Tail Feathers Off Without Help? You Can Deal With All These Angry Customers
“I worked at a Toyota Service Department for a few months and it was terrible, but today was the worst day I have ever had at any dealership. The layout is really horrible. It’s in South Carolina where it’s 95F outside in February with 90% humidity.
We do not have AC in the Service Drive (where I work and customers arrive). They removed our desk fans since they looked bad and put one big fan in the center of the room. It doesn’t help us at all but it looks nice.
We usually have 100+ appointments a day split between 6-9 advisors depending on staff. We had 6 who knew what to do and 3 newbies who are just learning that OIL and 710 are the same fluid.
If a customer comes in, we greet them, get the info from the car then figure out what their concern is. You also try to sell them on stuff based on their past declined services at the pop-ups saying: ‘Add engine oil change’ to the Plug-In electric-only car, so it’s got issues. You need to get a customer in and out quickly without issues and with the most stuff to get paid.
I was hired by an old manager of mine at his new position when he saw on social media that my fiancee and I moved back into town. We’re paid based on labor hours sold, % of parts profit we sell, bonuses for CSI (customer service), bonuses for selling the most of the monthly item (air filter, battery, brakes, etc.), and no minimum pay. No hourly, daily, anything.
Coming from my old job with my numbers from there, I should be making twice as much. One of the conditions of my hire is I’m not to drive customers’ cars as their insurance wouldn’t cover me. During my first two weeks of learning their programs, my old manager gets an offer to move to another store and is replaced by this guy named Chad.
Chad was this hotshot who was going to set us up to really be a top-tier service department and help us manage flow much better. Well, Chad came from a store that worked with a program which is basically Windows 1998BC. He knew nothing about the programs we were using or, honestly, what an Emoji is. Wanting to help Chad out, I showed him some options for programs that would help us keep track of notes, reduce away time from desks for us and also keep our technicians at their bay.
He got us licensed to used them and I set everything up.
I set up our new programs and also started changing our old ones. I really wanted to make things easier day-to-day. I hated wasting paper and walking to parts to tell them something or to ask my technician for an update.
One of the programs was a flagging system showing only profiles you are assigned or create.
Certain flags show priority, etc., and you can see all notes on all cars. Message parts and flag to your parts person. I basically re-wrote the program to be very user-friendly, brief but detailed, and all with just a few clicks.
Instead of having to type “Customer State: Vehicle is vibrating at speeds of 45mph and above. Please inspect.” Then a new line “Customer requests Oil Change.” A new line “Customer would like vacuum but no wash” and so on.
I made it so we could click “Vibration; Front Left; 45mph” “LoF” “Suck no Wash” and it would automatically add the text and print with correct part numbers for Oil Filters, right the oil Spec & Capacity, and everything out nicely. I did this for about everything I could think of and kept adding more and more. I had it auto-send just part numbers, ticket info, and book lines for Internal/Customer/Warranty/Extended Warranty out correctly to save time for everyone.
I made sure current recalls would also always print based on VIN so they weren’t forgotten.
I also made sure our Loaner vehicles could be checked in or out easier and be able to have instant access to all of past agreements if something is found in the car or damage is found.
Skip 6 months, no raise, no uniform I was supposed to be provided. Also, I was coming in on my days off to help with the programs. It’s Monday and this week I had a nail go straight through my foot at work.
I Ubered to the hospital down the road making sure to not remove the nail. Got it bandaged up but still went in every day for my 12+ hour shifts while walking around all day. From my desk, it’s probably 100 yards to the car wash and 40 yards to the shop. People still don’t always use the system and porters aren’t bringing cars up. I’m not insured by them but still have customers asking politely, ‘Where is my Prius?!
I was here for 26 minutes!”‘ So I hobble down to the car wash where it most likely is and drive it through and up.
My team for Saturday (4 people) had 1 person quit on Wednesday and 1 person had a funeral to leave early for. The other guy was new so he was slow to get stuff done. Chad says he’ll come in and help.
Wednesday we lock it at 60 appointments since we have short staff up front and back.
Saturdays are staffed with half the amount of technicians and are no diagnosis days. We take walk-ins too. Thursday it’s at 80 appointments, and we tell our boss to lock it. Again, on Friday, before closing, we see 110 appointments. He never locked it and took Friday off. Come Saturday morning we had 130 appointments from 7 am-4 pm.
I’m having to walk around a lot and am in a lot of pain.
I had to chase down about 80% of our customers’ cars because our porters who showed up were goofing off.
I had 53 opened tickets at 12 pm. We had a 4-hour wait for walk-ins, and 2 with appointments. Usually, it would take us 30 minutes for an oil change from ticket printed to the customer paying – just for reference. I haven’t had lunch or a snack since they banned food/drinks at our desks.
My friend is about to leave for the funeral so I cover his remaining tickets telling him not to worry about me. Then my boss leaves for lunch throwing his 20ish tickets on my desk.
So I’m now 110 tickets deep, helping the new guy with stuff, moving cars, and trying not to pass out. Oh and it’s 95F outside, no AC in our covered area (not inside), and 90% humidity.
We didn’t even get a breeze. I would stop by the water fountain near the car wash and dream about running through with the windows down and mouth open to cool off.
It gets to 3 pm and I’m rescheduling people who come in, trying to get everyone out when their cars are done but have to limp them down to pull them in front to leave after they pay.
My boss still isn’t back and the new guy quits. He wasn’t doing much, but it’s his first week, and today SUCKS!
I end up getting in one car and b***d from my sock/shoe drips onto our paper mats in the car. I cleaned everything out, vacuumed the car, washed it, and pulled it up. The customer went wild that she saw b***d on the disposable paper mat, about the wait, not getting a discount for her non-appointment service, and demanded to speak to my manager.
That was it because I wanted to talk to him too.
I called him up and was sent to voicemail. I explained it to his mailbox, also texted him a brief summary. I then called the GM to explain that I have been alone for about 3 hours dealing with an un-capped amount of customers, 5 technicians walked out, I’m still not recovered from my workplace injury, and that I’m finishing my paperwork to take my lunch break at 4:00 PM with at least 50 customers still waiting.
Boss shows up when I’m about to leave to eat my lunch I brought knowing their ‘provided lunch’ would be gone before I could set my foot in the break room. He told me that in our state, I’m not legally allowed a lunch break during a shift and that I have to stay to finish out the customers on my tickets. It’s after our regular hours at this point.
I mentioned being here since 6 am to open shop and pre-printing everything saying I just need to relax and he said: ‘You didn’t even clock in this morning so unless you do what I say, you aren’t getting paid.’ Once again I’m paid commission here, and % of parts profit for stuff sold. I don’t even get $0.01 an hour.
So I walked to my station, removed all of everyone’s login copies of my permissions, deleted all of my notes, deleted all of the warranty macros I set, all the spreadsheets, and reset every custom line I added to our programs since I was the original profile.
This reset EVERYTHING for EVERYONE. When I walked out, I got a call when I got to my car asking, ‘Why isn’t your login able to collect credit cards?’ Sounds like a problem, good luck with that.
I have never taken substances but that drive home was as good as I imagine it to be. To make things better I had two cars there so I had to go back to pick one up while my fiancee is saying how I should burn the place to the ground and how happy she is that I won’t be working for Chad anymore.
We see that the lights are still on in my GM’s office and the service department with both of them there. I got in my car wanting to do a huge burnout but I got a phone call.
My GM asked me to come back at a pay raise and fewer hours but I knew it was cheap talk. He wanted to know what went wrong with that day and if I would come inside to discuss it with Chad and him.
I just hung up and went home.
Chad ended up getting let go the following month since he couldn’t get things back up to speed. My good friend ended up getting moved to Service Manager for a bit then ultimately moved to Mercedes as a parts person now Director. I ended up going to BMW for a bit after that and got promoted past Chad’s position.”
4. Nearly Run Me Over? I'll Get You Fired
“Ok, so, to begin, I should state that when I go into a store of any type, I am respectful and friendly to the workers, especially because of the awful positions that they are put in and know their pain. But every now and then, you run across that one employee who is just a jerk. In general, you don’t know what someone is going through, and it is understandable when someone who works a terrible job is not happy with you complaining to them about chips and soda that have been moved. Yet there are some people who just are rude to everyone around them, and some of them end up in these positions.
For anonymity, AE = awful employee, F = my friend
With this cleared up, let me begin.
To set the scene, I find myself in an American supermarket that I frequent. It’s a partially crowded day there, with the produce section bustling in everywhere but the organic section and the wall of garden variety bulk snacks. I make my way down the less crowded organic area of the store, browsing and looking for nothing in particular.
Now the store in question had recently introduced a mobile shopper system, I don’t know the exact name, but basically, an employee gets saddled with a big cart with individualized containers. These employees basically do the shopping for customers to come pick their groceries. Anywho, I’m walking along and minding my own business in the mostly empty aisle, when I hear a loud ‘EXCUSE ME’ from behind.
Enter AE who is hauling one of the mobile shopper carts, mowing me down from the back end faster than a horse stampede. I literally have to jump out of the way to avoid having my feet crushed under the clattering, vulcanized ABS wheels. I laugh at first, thinking he might be playing with me somehow, but looking in his direction, I find he has not bothered to look back or indicate this was a joke at all.
But instead pulls the cart down the aisle, forcing other innocent bystanders to move out of his wake like a wave breaking at the bow of a blue-clad, skin-head battleship with stubble and diamond stud earrings. “Excuse me,” I say with emphasis but to no avail.
After he is out of sight, I decide it is time for some payback for me and the souls shoved aside by the speedy foot crusher.
So waiting for him to return, I take my sweet time moving up and down the produce aisles, looking at every fruit and vegetable, but in my normally empty head, I was formulating a devious plan. For you see, when I was a kid, I was a little brat who would unlock the wheels of rolling displays and push them around for something to do as my parents shopped. I knew the wheels on this industrial cart were likely no different, so I moved discreetly to the floral section to watch and wait for my moment to pounce.
The petty revenge gods were with me that day, I suppose, because AE returned and parked the cart in front of the blueberries, just adjacent to me, as I stalked the mass of grey metal from the lilies. In my rare moment of testosterone and guile, I locked the brake on the bottom, outward-facing side of the cart. I then retreated to the depths of the floral section, just out of sight.
When AE returned, he went to push the cart as hard as he could, which of course veered off to the right, for which he over-corrected and rammed the blueberries. These promptly fell all over the floor, and the customer’s whose products he was collecting. He gave an angry growl and started the task of picking up the fallen berries, and I left in what I hoped was a non-obvious fashion.
As I left, I saw someone who was presumably a manager due to their vest and button-down shirt come walking up to the scene, clearly not happy, and I thought that was the end of the story as I would know it. I would, however, learn more a little later.
Now, I met a fellow automotive enthusiast (F) who worked at the store, and over the course of the next few weeks, I would see him working in that store and stop to chat about cars and engines.
Later, I helped him change the shocks on his Ford, and during this casual conversation, I bought up AE and if F had met him. As of recent, I had not been seeing AE at all, and F confirmed that he had been fired. He was apparently a general jerk and was let go for being careless and reckless. Now, I don’t know that my little jerk move there was what caused him to be fired directly, but I defiantly set the wheels in motion if anything.
In short, you don’t have to be bubbly and friendly all the time, especially if your heart isn’t in it, but don’t be a piece of trash to other people.”
3. Attempt To Steal My Business? Face Legal Trouble
“This happened back when I was in sophomore year and was a bit of a nerd but in a weird phase where I was actually starting to get some confidence.
I spent the last 2 years thinking about launching an online business (back when Shopify wasn’t as popular and prominent) and finally started to keep on track.
So I spend several weeks going to whole-sale websites, gathering products, designing the websites, etc.
Once it launches, I decide to start small and only use my school district as the target market; of course, there is mistrust with this system because no one takes a high school kid with an Amazon-esque website seriously.
But after a while and some small purchases, I had a decent customer base with around 10-25 orders per week.
This was first when the school found out about it and the AP (Assistant Principal, the person designated to watch our specific graduation class for all 4 years we are there) calls me down to his office and basically lectures me on the importance of the legality and on how I need to change the name of the website.
Basically, I named it after the school which was named after a well-known politician’s family, and they didn’t want legal issues. I did a lot of homework involving this and legally checked everything, especially since I was a minor and I didn’t wanna cause any issues for my own fam.
I didn’t care that much, I had been meaning to reboot the site and make it more lighter and modern anyway.
I changed the name and moved on.
Now EK was a highly manipulative kid; he was one of those unlikeable and bratty people who made up stories to attract girls and popularity. He always bragged he was gonna be rich because of how rich his parents were, girls would be obsessed with him, he was gonna be in movies; basically all sorts of delusional claims. I started out being uneasy “friends” with him meaning I just talked to him in class but I slowly drifted away from him because he would constantly flirt and harass these two girls, even though they told him not to and I tried to stop him.
Most of our entire grade didn’t like this kid, but then he claims he owned the websites and ran it, and if anyone knows marketing, an unsavory person with ownership is bad for business. So I confront him and he apologizes saying that he’ll retract his claims and say the truth.
The next day he did the exact opposite and spread rumors of how the situation happened in the opposite manner.
This angered me and he forced my hand, I went straight to the site and made a notification post and email to all my customers saying that (Due to several circulating rumors about our business, we would like to remind our customers that EK does not own the website nor is he connected with us in any shape or form. Thank you for your service!
Please be sure to check out our Easter Sale!)
Embarrassed, EK makes the most insane claim that I have ever heard…that I’m using the website to launder and sell substances and weapons through school.
This was taken very seriously and I was called down to the office where I found my AP and 3 police officers waiting for me. They questioned me, the website, etc., while patting me down and searching for my backpack, jacket, and belongings.
They freaked out when they saw a credit card knife (yeah it’s my own darn fault for having a blade at school but I was an EDC guy who never did anything wrong).
Honestly, I wasn’t as embarrassed as I was worried about the optics on this.
They considered this plausible intent and cause and I was handcuffed and put into a police cruiser (a pretty comfy Dodge Charger to be honest) as they headed over to my house and called my mom telling them the situation.
They asked to let them search my room (and only my room) and my mom obliges; with us being immigrants, she didn’t want any trouble and she probably couldn’t think straight from seeing her son in handcuffs.
It angered me for a cop to hold me against the wall while I’m restrained, while two more turned my room upside down looking for something that didn’t exist while my mother cried her eyes ours at all this happening.
They didn’t find anything of interest except this out-of-school project I was working on (JLaservideo’s fire gloves). I had three of them and parts for at least 3 more.
The officers asked me what it was and how it worked, I told them the basics and it was for the science fair. They took them in as evidence and questioned the legality of the gloves while taking pictures along with the single canister of butane fuel.
I get a suspension for 3.5 days (the rest of my school day was In-School-Suspension AKA isolation) but no criminal charges since there was no evidence.
WELL, NO KIDDING!
I checked the office’s sign-in sheet (whenever we talk to an AP, they keep a record of the time, name, and date of when someone comes in. As I signed out, I see one name before my own…EKP’s.
My anger doubles as all I can think of is ways to kill him but I calm myself, saying that his time will come.
The next 3 days allow me to plan for my revenge…
- One of my friends had a recording of how EK said he wanted to PUSH A GIRL OFF A BALCONY at a party they both were at BECAUSE SHE REJECTED HIM!
Maybe somehow that recording was emailed to the police department, teachers, and several students through a throwaway email…
- I recorded him stalking this girl from school and all the way to her house and peeking in through her window. This didn’t happen once, twice but four times! This was edited almost like a montage and emailed as well.
- Once every 5 weeks, the school brought in dogs.
I saw a K9 police car in the parking lot and quickly texted my friend who liked smoking and told him to bring a “special” brownie and put it in EK’s bag during 2nd period (which was at the other side of the school so he wouldn’t get caught). This went swimmingly as hallway banter was filled with EK being caught with substances in school.
EK was expelled, had a restraining order filed on him by the girl along with two others who came forward and had a court case the next month. The second girl had a partner who was a classmate of mine and I let him know what he was doing. Somehow the guy found out where he lived and he and his friends keyed his car, slashed his tires, stole his shoes, and jumped him.
He was found guilty for possession of substances (idk the real charge but the state I live in is very strict; this resulted in several months of juvenile detention where he was beaten up even more. Where he is now, I don’t know but I doubt he succeeded like how he bragged he would.
I spent the rest of the year in a very peaceful mindset.”
2. Towing Company Gets Shut Down For Not Paying Their Employees Right
“Several years back I went to work for a towing company. It’s about all I know how to do other than paint cars which were drastically affecting my health.
The pay was pretty decent, but we had to share trucks and the boss felt that he knew where we needed to sit in order to get the best calls. This is important for later.
Several months in, I realized I was not making the type of moolah that I should be making. So I took the opportunity while I was sitting in a parking lot one evening to start researching the laws pertaining to employees in similar positions. He was kind of a jerk and the trucks had transponders so that he could see if we had them idling with the air conditioner on a hot day, or idling with the heat on a cold day.
He was always calling complaining about something if the wheels were not turning.
During my research, I discovered that if he was requiring us to sit in a certain parking lot, street, or any location of his choosing, then we were entitled to be paid an hourly wage, not just our commission. The technical term was ‘engaged to wait,’ however, if he allowed us to freely roam about while we waited for calls we were not entitled to hourly wages and we were therefore considered ‘waiting to be engaged.’ I never mentioned this to him, but I did start taking note of my time.
Another month or so goes by and he decided to start coming down on me for tiny little things that ordinarily wouldn’t even matter, such as I forgot a pop can in the cupholder. He actually had a screaming fit about that. At this point, I was tired of working there and had already found another job so I decided it was time to put my plan into motion.
I called him up, told him that we needed to have a conversation about my final wages and that we could meet at his convenience. Upon entering the office I laid out my argument, explained the state law, and told him I expected to be paid for the hours that I was on the clock but not freely allowed to roam looking for work or able to do things of my choosing.
He told me in no uncertain terms I would not be paid for that time, as that was agreed to upon my employment. I did not bother to argue, as I already had my next step planned, so I took my final check and I left.
The following Monday, I made a phone call to the state labor board, where I laid out my case to them.
Needless to say, they were very interested in what was going on. In the end, they came to review his employment records and speak to the drivers still working. When he got the bill of what he had to pay us all, it was too much for him to afford, so he sold the trucks, his boat, and lot and went out of business.
I never got the money owed to me in full, only a fraction.
But the satisfaction of knowing the law just a little bit better than he did and watching it all burn was pure bliss.”
1. Give Me 12 Hours Of Pain? Lose Your Job And Get Blacklisted
He’ll regret it for life.
“In my teens, I had to have numerous operations.
Therefore, I always ended up at one particular hospital that specialized in my condition. Now, the hospital was high quality, with staff that was very caring, and looked out for the patients they had. They gave you essentially the 5-star treatment. After all, they were charging our insurance an INCREDIBLE amount of cash, so that probably had something to do with it.
But one particular operation I had……..it was a nightmare…….
It wasn’t like this type of procedure wasn’t something I had not done in the past, it was about the third time I needed to have it done. No pressure whatsoever. Essentially it entailed placing rods into your legs to put them back into the “proper place” so they would end up growing correctly. They would be in for a few months to heal, and then they were taken out.
During that time, I would have to turn small little handles to “reposition” my bones according to a preprinted schedule given to me by my doctor.
It really hurt, but it was worth it in the end.
Despite how often I had done it, it was still extremely painful, especially for the first few weeks after the procedure was done. ANY vibrations would send shockwaves of pain throughout your entire body regardless of how doped up you were on painkillers.
So the doctors took extra care to ensure that ANY trip back home was as smooth as possible. Literally. They all understood that without a jet back to your home city (for anyone more than 40 minutes away from the hospital), it was MEDICALLY REQUIRED that you travel back home in a med jet. Imagine every single bump you experience when driving for any period of time, now imagine being sent into shockwaves of 10/10 pain every single time you went over that bump….you get the idea.
Now, MOST hospitals offer individuals a liaison to individuals within the hospital to deal with their insurance. Just have that individual talk to the doctor, and right away they would work out what the doctor wanted with the company, no hassle. We didn’t take UP that offer because we understood how everything worked, and it was never an issue. But, the hospital always offered us one anyway.
And yes, these Liaisons were not employees of the insurance company, but of the HOSPITAL. They were designed to look after the best interests of the PATIENTS, and justify it to the insurance company.
Then……our “designated liaison” decided that our request to not have one was unacceptable, and thus he would intentionally intervene at every chance he could. He even went as far as to deny our nurse requests for extra pillows, because, “the hospital only allows X number of pillows her person”, despite the nurse literally stating it was fine.
But nope, since he was at a “higher level” he apparently had the final say.
When it was nearing our time to leave the hospital, like always, the doctor wanted to bill the insurance for the medical jet, because it was medically required. Same old same old. However……our jerk Liaison disagreed with the doctor’s assessment that it was “medically required,” justifying his opinion based upon our insurance company’s “definition” of medically required. Naturally, the doctor flipped his lid, and verbally curb-stomped the idiot.
Liaison: “Listen, simply avoiding pain isn’t something that the insurance will cover. It’s not medically required to avoid pain”.
Dr: “Are you kidding me? You realize this patient would have to drive 12 hours in a cramped ambulance in excruciating pain if they didn’t fly? It’s absolutely unheard of. You literally would have to have two EMTs escort them back home just in case anything happened. The cost is only marginally smaller than the d**n jet.
Plus, there is a small chance the rods could become disrupted if anything happens in the car, that’s the justification.”
Liaison: “The odds of any crash happening are not high enough for the company to justify it. This would hurt the company if they keep doing this.”
Dr: “Listen, I don’t know why on God’s green earth you are even arguing with me. This isn’t freaking up to you.
You are not a doctor, you have no medical training. You were given a gosh darn list of the insurance company’s policies, and now you think you can properly diagnose what is or is not medically required? I’ve done this for thousands of patients with this very company. Now get your butt back to your office, bill the freaking insurance company properly, and shut up.
You work for us, not for them.” (I was in earshot of this entire conversion.)
A week later……on the day of departure….we learned what happened when he went back to his office…….
He had called the insurance company, and began going through the proper channels to get the jet approved….However…..he began dropping small hints to the rep that in his opinion…..driving would also be fine….So naturally, on the day before our departure….we got a call from the insurance company DENYING the request.
I was FURIOUS. There wasn’t TIME to appeal the decision. There wasn’t ANYTHING ANY OF US could do. Even my DOCTOR was stuck, because the Liaison worked for a different department, and he couldn’t even fire the guy. He apologized time and time again, and ensured the 12 HOUR AMBULANCE RIDE would be as comfortable as possible, and even told the driver to keep me as medicated as possible to ensure it went well.
Naturally….it did NOTHING, and it was the most nightmarish 12-hour EXPERIENCE of my life. I was screaming, THE.ENTIRE.12.HOURS. The ambulance wasn’t even outfitted with a bed, it only had some type of “hammock” type thing. Two EMTs had to endure nonstop screaming from someone who didn’t even belong in the ambulance in the first place. EVERYONE was furious. EVERYONE blamed that one man.
EVERYONE wanted him fired, but they had no medical reason to fire him because according to the union’s policies, he technically did what he was supposed to do.
The only way for him to be let go was for him to have caused the patient some type of harm that the doctor warned about.
So days after my trip, my doctor insisted that I see a medical professional in my hometown.
You know, ensure nothing happened on the trip. This was like the 3rd time I had this done, so it was a pretty common request I was familiar with.
As I was still fuming….this is when I hatched my plan….
I knew….I was the only one with control over the rods’ proper position. I knew…..having the rods not properly “dialed in” for a few days wouldn’t do any long-term harm….and would only result in a lot of pain to dial it back in afterward….I knew…my doctor would be furious if anything happened out of the ordinary (his reputation is on the line and such)…..
and I knew… no medical professional had checked my rods to confirm their current setting after the trip …..
So………….
I popped three pain pills, waited for them to kick in….and unscrewed every single rod to the lowest setting possible.
(Just for reference, after the procedure, they end up setting the “starting point” for these rods somewhere in the mid-range of their settings.)
Worst pain of my freaking life…
I was wheeled into my local doctor with the “adjustment” notebook in hand. I kept playing dumb, saying I believed everything was going fine! But my legs just felt AWFUL!!!! And if it was possible he could make sure everything was going okay.
He began his inspection….and his face went white when he realized where the screws were set.
He asked me what setting they had been on when I left the hospital, and I told him.
Again…he did not look happy……
He told me that something must have happened on the trip….and he would need to properly adjust them back into place…and it would really hurt….but it needed to be done……..
The screaming at that appointment was…. let’s just say……..disruptive……I didn’t even have to fake it, it was genuinely one of the most painful things I have ever experienced in my life.
My doctor was FURIOUS, as he was up to date on the entire “liaison” situation. He excused himself after the “readjustment” of the rods to a back room. I assume he thought it was out of earshot. He was wrong.
He phoned my doctor out of state, and he had a few choice words for him.
“How could you freaking let this happen, do you know how dangerous this could have been?
If he hadn’t got an appointment with me this fast, his freaking bones would have permanently grown in the wrong place, and he would need ANOTHER surgery to fix this freaking mess. I don’t know what kind of freaking operation you have over there, but there is 0 chance I will EVER refer ANYONE in my clinic to you. Do you hear me? How hard is it to control your FREAKING insurance handlers?”
Fast forward to my operation to remove my rods, back in that specialist hospital out of state.
The liaison was not just terminated. Oh no. The liaison got accused of INTENTIONALLY TRYING TO ENDANGER THE LIFE OF A PATIENT + LYING TO THE INSURANCE COMPANY + LYING ABOUT A DOCTOR’S MEDICAL ASSESSMENT FOR HIS OWN BENEFIT (no idea where this last accusation came from. Maybe it was lodged as additional justification to fire him?)
I don’t quite know ALL the consequences of his actions. I only could muster up a few details from my doctor.
From what my doctor described, the hospital put out a notice to every hospital in the STATE, to not hire this man. THOSE HOSPITALS, apparently ALSO sent out a notice to all The hospitals in THEIR surrounding areas to not hire this man.
This ended up resulting in a domino effect that barred him from working in almost EVERY HOSPITAL IN THE COUNTRY.
I wanted him fired…..I didn’t plan on getting him blacklisted.
Nevertheless, I was freaking giddy. Especially after my doctor informed me that there was no lasting damage to the “mistake” he caused.
Fast forward about 4 years, and I hear through the g*******e that he ended up having to change professions because of the accusations. Ended up doing some waste management job or something (No idea if it’s literal garbage man status, or working in a waste management company in a desk job).
Note: There are certain parts of my medical condition I had to leave out to stay anonymous. But it’s extremely rare and extremely difficult to treat. Most of my doctors need to walk on eggshells to ensure I get properly treated. One of the main reasons my doctors are so passionate/concerned about my treatments.”
