People Let Us Know About Their "Nutty As A Fruitcake" Revenge
17. Make It Your Mission To Get Me Fired? YOU'RE The One Getting Fired, Buddy
“I was one of two commercial writers/producers working in the production department of a local television station.
Our department was responsible for producing both the newscasts and commercials for clients who purchased air time on our station. The department is high stress. I had to manage multiple deadlines and provide creatives for about a dozen ad campaigns every month.
That being said, I always met my deadlines and our sales department was always complimentary of my work – steering the more important clients my way.
Unfortunately, managers in my department came and went with unsettling frequency.
In the 9 years I was there, I had 6 different managers. Most often, the managers were passing through with their sights set on snagging upper-level management jobs in larger television markets.
This meant their experience actually doing the work of television production was often minimal so they had a tendency to not interfere with our work so long as clients were happy and deadlines were being met.
Given the managers were so disengaged, I told our general sales manager about my idea for saving time and coin in the department and he suggested I apply for the production manager position the next time it opened up.
So I did. I did not get the job. I was told I was too important to maintain good client relationships through my work as a producer. No big deal, I thought. I was happy as a producer. Unfortunately, the person they did hire for the position ended up being a monumental b******e of the first order.
I’ll call him Bob. The first thing Bob wanted to know was who in the department had applied for the position he now filled.
I don’t know what idiot in upper management thought it would be a good idea to tell him, but someone did. It soon became apparent he wanted to find any excuse he could to fire me because that was just the kind of insecure idiot he was.
It began with him riding me about the time I was taking to complete commercial productions. Then he accused me of undercharging clients in my billing.
He wanted me to wear a suit and tie, which he knew I hated. As the writing on the wall became clear, I began documenting every single interaction with him.
Taking notes about what was said and contradicting his accusations with the facts. All the while, he is managing to anger a whole lot of people in our department, and morale really began to tank. Bob was petty, vain, and given to things like announcing how lavish and wonderful a vacation he was planning would be.
He was going to Aruba, so he’d put up travel posters and printed out a ridiculous sign he taped to his office door that would say something like ‘My island adventure begins in 2 weeks.’ All this served to remind us that he was the only one in our department who made enough to take that kind of vacation.
Eventually, an incident occurred where I missed a deadline through no fault of my own.
The client wanted to change up the creatives at the last minute and we had to bump the film shoot. Somehow, Bob got it in his head that I should have been a mind reader and anticipated the client’s wishes before they were communicated. He calls me into his office and begins berating and threatening me.
I had had enough. I’m the kind of person who will take a lot of nonsense with patience and grace, but when I am finally pushed to my boiling point, I totally explode.
I start yelling back, ‘You’re a freaking liar, and if you think I don’t know how to handle this client, then fine.
Let me see you freaking do it because I’m out of here’…and I walked off the job. I’m so amped up by what just transpired after leaving the office I walk all the way home – a distance of more than six miles. Just as I am nearing my house, my cell phone rings.
It’s Bob. Evidently, it just dawned on him that he would, in fact, have to produce the ad campaign himself because our other producer had the week off. He hemmed and hawed and finally blurted out something that was quite revealing, ‘If we lose this client we’ll both get fired and I can’t afford to lose another job.’ Really?
So you’ve been fired from all your other jobs? What a surprise.
I tell him to go screw himself because I’m not taking his nonsense for one more minute. All the while, I’m literally trembling with the knowledge I’ve walked off the job without another job to go to and I have a wife and two kids to support.
Thankfully, the next call I get is from the general sales manager. You know, the guy who recommended I apply for Bob’s job resulting in this whole nightmare? By now, news of my blow-up evidently made it back to him.
He asks me about what happened and I fill him in and apologize for walking off the job while also telling him there’s no way I’m working for Bob.
He says, ‘Yup, leaving work wasn’t a good idea, so do me a favor and come back. Email me the details of what happened and I’ll see what I can do.’ Thanks to my copious note-taking of all my interactions with Bob, it takes me no time at all to send him the complete history of Bob’s nonsense.
So I return, hoping to avoid Bob. Thankfully, his door was closed and I keep my head down in my cubicle. A half-hour before quitting time, I notice our general manager and a security guard getting off the elevator together. I stand up to see where they are headed and am elated to see it is directly towards Bob’s office.
What transpires is even better than the revenge options I was contemplating.
Bob emerges from his office carrying a box of his belongings – including the rolled-up Aruba travel poster – and is escorted by the security guard to the escalator. Now standing up in my cubicle, he turns towards me, his face beet red with embarrassment.
As our eyes meet, I flash an ear-to-ear grin.”
16. Project Partners Want To Try To Screw Me Over? You Better Pay Up
“A couple of years ago when I was 18, I got my degree in game development.
It’s a 4-year track with the last year being 4 months internship and 4 months to work on a ‘test of skill.’ This is a project that you can think up yourself to prove that you’re capable of game development.
I had my internship at a very small game studio run by two women, named B and C. They both specialized in 3D model making and 2D art (textures, graphics, that sorta stuff). Neither of them was a programmer so they got interns to program stuff for them. I was disappointed as I had no experienced programmer to learn from or guide me.
But this was my only option since I started looking for an internship too late. B and C were abusive and condescending in their language use. I didn’t stand up for myself much. I was always a fat nerd and had no self-confidence coming out of high school or college. What WAS cool is that they were located in an incubator, which is like a large office building that rents desks for €50 a month instead of floors.
Great for start-ups and single-person companies. As the cherry on top, it was also an incubator that specialized in game companies. So lots of contacts and opportunities to meet people in the industry.
I had fun there, at first. They already started on a project and I asked them what system they wanted me to make (like inventory, menus, or gameplay elements).
They had an idea of what they wanted. It was a game for kids that used augmented reality (AR).
AR is quite difficult to make, AND they didn’t want to use APIs from companies that had already made the AR system because that would cost too much. So for 3 out of the 4 months I was there, I build my own AR system.
It was really tough and I had no help (other than Stack Overflow) because the other developers there had their own stuff to work on.
The best way to learn programming is to be good with Google and just jump in the deep end and figure it all out.
I finished the AR system that worked with 2D image recognition.
Perfect for what they wanted. But it turned out they didn’t have a game design document, which is a plan of the sorts of the stuff you want in your game. They also didn’t have a ‘to do’ wall or anything. So I spend my last month making inventory systems and stuff that was always not the way they wanted after all.
They just said we need an inventory system but didn’t know what it all had to do.
So basically my time was wasted there.
Skip forward 5 months. I got my degree and decided I wanted to check out the industry some more. I got all my savings out and decided I could spend a year making games and maybe it would lead to something.
So I rented a desk at the incubator and thought about what game I was gonna make.
B and C believed that if you are technical, you’re not creative. They saw programmers as tools used to achieve their vision. Two things annoying about that: 1) just cause I like programming doesn’t mean I’m incapable of imagining worlds and stories, and 2) game developers and game designers need each other.
Two disciplines of equal importance that make a game work. So this is what happened when they approached me:
B: ‘Hey OP, are you busy?’
Me: ‘I’m just thinking what kinda game I wanna make.’
B: ‘C! Come over he’s not busy.’
C: ‘Hi OP, could you help us out with something?’
Me: ‘Uh ye sure what can I do for you?’
B: ‘We need you to make a menu for Unity (the engine I was working in) for the AR system you made.’
Now I’ll admit. The AR system was not the easiest to work with. It had a lot of settings and a series of steps needed to make it work with an image.
And they wanted me to simplify it, even though I had made an extensive manual on how to make it work. But I learned so much in those 8 months and was positive I could improve the system a lot, which was good cause the current code belonged to them. But I could use the same architecture of code and rework it to make it mine.
Me: ‘Alright, I guess I can rework the system and make it more user-friendly.’
C: ‘Nice let us know when you’re finished.’
I spend about a month making my AR system better and the finished system shared only ~10% code with the old system.
I told them I was finished and showed it off.
Me: ‘This 2.0 version had better tracking in all light conditions, it can cover more angles, needs less detail, and now has a very user-friendly user interface along with tooltips.’
What I also did is change the standard script Unity gives you when you make a new script. I put MY name and copyright in the code so I could prove it was mine.
B and C were very happy with it and even asked me to join their project as a partner.
Me: ‘Yeah I would love to join, I’ll even give you a discount on the AR system.’
C, with a kinda smug face: ‘Yea we won’t be paying you, the code was already ours and you just improved it. Besides we didn’t sign a contract or anything. Just be happy with the opportunity we just gave you. And if you didn’t intern with us, you wouldn’t be here to begin with.’
Me: ‘Are you serious? I spent a month working on this…’
B: ‘Yeah but you’ll make plenty with the project…’
There was nothing I could do about it so I just sucked it up and agreed to join the project. Maybe I agreed more out of FOMO rather than excitement to work with them.
I did learn a lesson though: ALWAYS HAVE A CONTRACT. And boy, did I draw something up. For the contract, I had a right to 25% of the finished product’s income, basic stuff.
But because I didn’t trust B and C and was determined not to be burned again, I drew up a general conditions contract, which is basically the policy and restrictions of working with my one-man studio.
It has all the basic rights and stuff, but it also had 2 clauses that make me laugh to this day;
Any and all code developed by me belongs to me in perpetuity, and may not be copied, modified, or used in any way without my express permission. And under no condition can I be forced to release the code files.
Fine on breach is €1000 per script file (the AR system had more than 20 scripts in it).
When I get fired for a shared project, I am entitled to €50 an hour I spend working on the project. No exceptions.
They signed both contracts without even reading them. And didn’t have a contract for me in return.
The first contract was what bound me to the project.
And here comes the good part.
I learned pretty early on that I was just there to listen and make whatever they wanted. They did not want my input on anything. Even if they had dumb, impractical, or just impossible ideas about what the game should have, I could not protest or suggest something else.
Even though I tried.
Fast forward 6 months, it’s winter now and the project is just not going very well. I constantly have to revisit finished components because they wanted more functionality in them. I was not happy and went over to their desks to complain and demand a final document I could work off of.
B and C: ‘It’s called feature creep and a real game developer should know how to deal with that.’
Me: ‘It’s not alright, I am wasting my time because you two can’t make up your minds and get a final idea in your heads.’
B and C dismissed me and later send me an email: ‘Dearest OP, we regret to inform you that our partnership is not working out and we have decided to let you go from the project.
We hope there aren’t any hard feelings.’
I was quite angry, but I remembered the clauses so at least I would get paid a lot.
I went over to their desks with the meanest grin on my face: ‘Hey guys I read your email. That sucks but I understand. We have different creative ideas and we’re just not on the same page.’
C: ‘We’re so happy you understand. Are you sure there are no hard feelings?’
Me: ‘No not at all, I learned a lot and had fun. I can recycle the components to make other games.’
B: ‘Just remember you can’t do anything similar to our game.’ (They referred to the competition clause in my internship contract which I apparently was still under because that project wasn’t finished).
Me: ‘OH, yeah no worries, I got something else in mind…’ After which I returned to my desk and sent them an invoice of 26 weeks 40 hours a week for €50 an hour on the project with my log to back it up. Total cost? €50,000 (around $60,000 at the time).
They freaked out. They had nowhere near this amount as they were both working second jobs and were both saving up wanting to start a family with their respective partners.
C: ‘There is no way we’re paying this much. We understand some compensation is warranted but this is too much!’
Me: ‘I lost 6 months of income on this project and you signed these terms.’
I had a copy of the general conditions and pointed out the clauses.
Me: ‘But fine, I’ll take it to court and we’ll see what the judge has to say.’
The court proceedings took around 8 months. The judge had decided I was in the right (thanks to my logs and copyright lines in the code) but also asking for too much as it would utterly bankrupt B and C. So I would get €20.000 and be reimbursed for legal costs, totaling about €35.000. For B and C, it was a massive blow.
B had to sell her car and couldn’t get a mortgage for the house she wanted to buy.
They also had to use home offices as the others working at the incubator wouldn’t even talk with them anymore since I made sure everyone there knew what happened and how they tried to screw me over.
I also told the entire story to my old teachers and no interns will be coming to them from my old college.
The last time I heard from them was a year or so later, asking me for the code I made for the project. A drive bugged out and they didn’t have backups (this shows their level of professionalism).
I laughed my butt off over the phone and pointed them to the 1) clause of the general conditions.
‘You can’t claim the code, it’s in the general conditions. You can’t even work with anything I made because you don’t have my permission to use my code. If you DID, you owe me another €20.000.
Tell you what though, I’ll sell it to you.’
B & C: ‘Well how much do you want?’
Me: ‘€52,000’
Silence on the other side of the phone… click.
As of now, their studio is out of business and I am to graduate next year with no study debt at all. I lost weight and have a lot more self-confidence.
This story makes me feel powerful and good about myself.
I stood up, and it got rewarded. Don’t mess with the fat programming nerd.”
15. Try To Get Me Fired Just 'Cause? You'll Be Losing Your Job
A taste of their own medicine.
“So, in 2012, I found myself working as an overnight maintenance laborer for a family-owned collection of properties. Two shopping complexes, a winery, a few warehouses, etc. But most of the time, I was working keeping a grocery store built in the late 60s functioning.
Worked my way up to night maintenance manager and loved my job.
I was getting the kind of education you can’t buy; hands-on electrical one night, plumbing the next, welding after that. All taught to me by 3 men that could build a house, up to code, single-handedly. And we all got along great! It was the first time in my adult life I had real responsibilities and I was respecting myself because I respected the job I was doing.
The owners were all people that truly cared about their employees and they proved this when, in 2017, they sold the Main grocery store; one of the many things they included in the sale was all current employees had to be offered a new position at their current pay level.
The company that bought us (I won’t say their name but think the opposite of “dangerous path”) does not employ an in-house maintenance team.
Something breaks, they outsource the fixing of it.
So they really didn’t have a ready-made place for me to fit into like the other department managers. The store manager also did not like that I was making $18 an hour, 6 bucks over a new hire rate. Thus began the systematic (what I saw as) harassment and what has been later confirmed to me as the standard operating procedure for legally getting rid of someone at this company.
Some of my favs include:
Making my 35-year-old butt a bag boy. (Jokes on you; I love doing easy work for good pay.)
Writing me up for spending 20 minutes talking to the police about an accident I had seen while returning carts (I thoroughly enjoyed the district manager apologizing to me for that.)
Cutting my hours down from full-time to 24 hours a week (which is completely allowable, but as the second most senior member in the store, everyone below me has to get their hours cut first).
No, you can’t force me to take a salaried manager’s position.
Yes, you can make me a cashier (a position you know I do not want) but you have to give me the $3 pay bump.
And on and on and on, in addition to the many broken verbal promises and out-and-out lies. I became very well-versed in the union rules, my specific contract rules, and how to protect myself.
7 Union arbitrations in my first 5 months, all ended in my favor.
Meanwhile, the assistant managers love me. I can cover any department because I’ve done most everything and I’m a quick learner for what I don’t know. Anything breaks down in the store (it was falling apart before they bought it) if I can’t fix it, I can at the very least make a detailed work request so it gets fixed sooner.
I become the go-to cover guy, filling in any position that needs it.
Which at long last brings me to my malicious compliance.
The store was not doing well, sales-wise. About a year-and-a-half in, they couldn’t get a closing butcher. So, the night manager taps me to work in the meat department for 3 hours every night just to close it out and clean it up.
In the department, there is a bandsaw that’s used for cutting meat with bones in it. It’s a pain in the butt to clean, so after reading the department manual I realized you were not to use that piece of equipment if you hadn’t been trained on it.
Now I 100% had been trained on that bone saw.
I knew how to take it apart, fix it, and put it back together. But that training was with the old company and I had been informed many times that the new company only thought I’d been trained when they had trained me. Perfect! I can close down the bone saw earlier and get it cleaned. If any customer needs me to cut meat with a bone in it, I inform them that I hadn’t been trained on that piece of equipment.
Shouldn’t be an issue: This is late night and the store’s not doing that well, to begin with. I clear all this with the assistant manager.
This goes on for months until finally I’m called into the manager’s office during the day. Turns out one of the customers I had informed that I could not use the bone saw was a secret shopper.
The store manager is writing me up for failure to complete my duties. She’s also writing it up as ‘malicious’ failure (I forget the term they use; it’s basically two write-ups instead of just one) and that coupled up with my previous write up (I was 15 minutes late once; that’s on me) gives her the three write-up she needs to fire me.
As I have done so many times in the past with this woman, I invoke my right to Union representation and declined to talk with her until after I’ve spoken with them. At this point I’m thinking “they can’t bust me; I was following the written directions” but oh no!!! it got so much sweeter and so much worse.
While talking to my union rep it quickly becomes clear that the butchers are a completely different Union.
The store is in violation of the butchers Union contract by having a non-union employee work that department.
So first my union fights the write-up, wins, and gets me paid for the four/five days I missed work.
They then get me a lawyer who tells me I am not to speak with any store manager in any capacity, due to The butchers Union complaint against the store. 2 weeks off, fully paid, for me; I can’t very well work at a store where I cannot speak to my bosses.
I then get two more days off paid while I speak to the various Union reps for my testimony.
The store is fined ($50,000 is what I was told) for breach of Butchers contract. When I return to work, my store manager does not work there anymore. Her replacement only accepts the job if his bonuses are not tied to the store’s overall performance, so he doesn’t mind I’m overpaid.
As icing on the cake, no one really liked her so I’m d**n near a hero when I get back.”
14. Run Me Off The Road Out Of Selfishness? Lose Your Right Mirror
“I used to ride motorcycles quite a bit.
One day, I was on a major US interstate (divided highway), following several large trucks.. Riding in the left lane.. as this was a particularly hilly area, the truck on the left was stuck beside the one on the right and wasn’t able to pass quickly to get around…
As I followed in the left lane, a woman came up behind in a large new SUV, catching up, and then came up beside me in the right lane. Being on a motorcycle, I could also see she was glued to a cell phone jabbering away as she drove.
After another minute or so, I realized the truck still wasn’t passing, but the woman was beginning to show signs of agitation, though she was still on her phone while driving (legal at this point in time).
Another minute passed with both trucks still side-by-side, blocking the road, rolling along slightly below the 60mph (90kph) speed limit.
I noticed the woman on the right coming over towards me. I hit my horn (which I had purposefully traded out for a tremendously loud dual-tone truck horn, in order to be VERY noticeable). I KNOW she heard it as she turned her head and saw me… but she just continued over into my lane, forcing me off to the left shoulder (against a concrete wall)..
at ~60mph… I was forced off the road while laying on my horn.
Fortunately, I’ve ridden extensively on all sorts of surfaces, so while riding on dirt at 60mph was a bit disconcerting, it didn’t lead to a crash. I slowed slightly, enough to let her pass, then managed to get the bike back on the pavement behind her.
I did however lose my cool. I KNEW she saw me and didn’t give a flip about my life. She saw me as an obstacle in her way to save .03 seconds of time.
I waited a minute or so for it to become obvious that she was neither worried nor apologetic – in fact, I could see her still on the phone call.
A bit further down the road, the concrete wall was still along the left, but there was no longer a grass strip between it and the lane we were in – it was now a solid paved area: not wide enough for a car, but plenty wide for a bike.
My emotions got hold of me, and I rolled on the throttle a bit, coming up beside her driver’s door (left side), and as I passed her, I leaned over, swung hard, and completely removed the mirror right off the doorpost with one swing.
I’m sure this made an awful racket in the car but was entirely painless to me (I wore carbon-fiber shelled leather riding gloves, which took all the brunt of the hit).
My last vision of her was a look of unrestrained horror as I passed the SUV, down-shifting hard, and blowing up the narrow concrete strip past the big truck, and on to freedom.
Being absolutely certain she was going to call the police, I simply held the throttle wide open for another 10 minutes, which put me a good 15–20 miles away before the police could’ve had time to respond.
While revenge felt good, it was a stupid move, one for which I could’ve been arrested, and one which I would not do now.”
13. Let Your Dogs Attack My Cat? Hope You Have A VERY Merry Christmas!
“Years ago, I used to work with a receptionist in a vet clinic named Margot.
Margot was and still is a very sweet 65-year-old woman who had been at this practice since it was opened, some 40 years ago. She always had a smile, a joke, compliments, and baked goods for your birthday.
She never had an unkind word to say about anyone. She was seriously one of the coolest people I had ever worked with and she basically knew everyone, from our regular clients to our mailman’s granddaughter.
The only bad thing about Margot and this was not her fault was that she and her family lived next to one of the trashiest, nastiest families I had ever met that had two even nastier Pitbulls – I’m talking nastier than stuff that had been hoarded by dung beetles for years nasty.
And these dogs were constantly escaping and terrorizing the neighborhood, even trying to get into her house.
Margot had asked them more than once to please keep the dogs contained, especially since she had an elderly, fat cat named Smokestack and these pits had attacked smaller animals before.
The family basically told her to rot in the underworld, that they knew what they were doing, how dare she accuses the breed, yadda, yadda, basically blowing her off.
Margot knew there had been reports filed against her neighbors but nothing had ever been done about it really. So she made sure to keep Smokestack in the house to keep him safe and was very careful not to let him out.
If you had been paying attention up until this point, you’ll notice I’m using the word ‘was’ and ‘had’ regarding old Smokestack.
And it was as awful as you think.
Three weeks before Christmas, Margot had the day off and was in the garage with Smokestack fiddling with some Christmas decorations. Unbeknownst to her, the pits next door got out and broke through the bottom of her garage door. They went right for Smokestack before she could blink and started to tear the cat apart.
Margot screamed for help and it was only when her son and husband came out with a baseball bat that they were able to free Smokestack from the jaws of these dogs.
I was working this day and will never forget when she came in, crying harder than I had ever seen anyone cry in my life, clutching poor dying Smokestack in her arms. Her husband had to hold her while we tried to bring Smokestack back but we couldn’t do it – it would have taken a miracle of God and then some – and he passed away – a truly awful way to go in what should have been the golden years of his fat, cat life.
Margot sat there for a while with his mangled body, quietly crying for a while before she finally kissed whatever part of him was still intact and stood up. She told us all, ‘I’ve got a job to do, take care of him, girls.’ And then left. We figured Margot would take a few days off to be with family and then continue on with life as normal.
We figured wrong.
Now when I say Margot knew everyone, I mean, everyone.
Right after she left the hospital, Margot gathered herself up and went to the police with pictures of poor Smokestack and told her story. The same police officers she had watched grow up over the last 20 years from rowdy middle-schoolers she used to help babysit to the officers they were today.
They were absolutely shocked to hear what had happened to their surrogate grandma and pushed her case to the front of the line.
The case found itself before a judge whose daughter had gone to school with Margot’s daughter. The judge granted an emergency, dangerous animal extraction warrant to her neighbors.
Of course, there was a hearing.
Within two weeks which I gotta admit, was ridiculously fast. The neighbors tried to argue that their dogs weren’t aggressive. They even went so far as to accuse Margot of having it out for their family and making it all up.
But their argument trickled when the dozens of dangerous animal reports were presented and finally completely dried out when Margot presented the surveillance video her grandson had gotten showing the dogs coming into her property and attacking poor Smokestack.
The emergency extraction and humane destruction of her neighbors’ dogs were granted.
It was Christmas Eve when Margot heard a knock on her door. She opened it up to see the neighbors standing there, sobbing uncontrollably.
They were begging her to stop animal control – that they had these dogs since they were puppies, how the kids would be devastated and it would ruin Christmas, and if she could find it in her heart to give the dogs another chance.
Up until this moment, the neighbors had behaved abominably. They didn’t offer to fix the garage. They never apologized for trying to slander her name in court. Heck, they didn’t even pay for Smokestack to be cremated.
At no point, had they even shown the slightest shred of remorse for what damage their dogs had done.
And as the neighbors stood there, blubbering and whimpering about how this was going to ruin their Christmas, Margot looked them straight in the eye and told them, in her calmest voice, ‘You took away my family, so now I’m taking yours.’ And shut the door in their face just as animal control pulled up onto the driveway.
Margot was not surprised as she watched the dogs get hauled into the truck and taken away. After all, it was her idea for animal control to take the dogs on Christmas Eve, a perk from having known the AC officer supervisor for years. Margot even made sure the dogs were euthanized before the outside Christmas lights turned on that night.
The family never received the remains nor did they ever get a chance to bring another animal into their family as the father proceeded to drive intoxicated into a telephone pole that same night, killing him instantly.
Mom went off the deep end so CPS picked up the kids by February. And ultimately, the house foreclosed in September.
Despite how traumatic Smokestack’s death was, I’d like to think that if the neighbors had shown at least some regret, Margot might not have gone as far as she did. She was/is still the person to forgive and forget. Or maybe, she ultimately knew it had to be done, to push it to this point of no return before another family lost a member to these irresponsible neighbors.
Either way, thank you, Margot, for making the world a little bit safer for the pets in the world. And rest in peace, Smokestack. Hopefully, I’ll see you on the other side with your favorite orange sock and a can of tuna.”
12. Threaten My Lady? I'll Make It Harder For You To Get To Work For Five Years Straight
“Years ago, my wife and I started new jobs in a new city, right down the road from each other’s offices, employed with the same government agency.
Our schedules were roughly similar for several months before she went to a night shift, so we would occasionally encounter the same people or vehicles on our commute.
The commute consisted mostly of two-lane roads with no passings.
One day, my wife gets cut off by a fancy black sports car with a vanity plate (Let’s say JERKLAW). He had been tailgating her for nearly ten minutes already, as she had the nerve to only go five miles per hour over the speed limit on a busy downtown road.
So, the moment he could, he cut into the other lane and passed her, giving her maybe only a foot or two of space after doing so, and forcing her to hit the brakes suddenly in response.
She honked her horn at him justifiably in response. To her surprise, Jerklaw stopped his car in front of her.
Jerklaw gets out of his vehicle and is an older balding male in a fancy tailored suit. He starts marching towards my wife’s much cheaper car shouting and ranting with his fists balled up and hits her car a couple of times. Thankfully, it didn’t get worse, because my wife stayed in her car and already had her phone out calling 911.
Incidentally, that’s also her place of employment at the time, and she was wearing a uniform that bears a bit of a resemblance to a sworn officer’s uniform.
Jerklaw apparently notices all this (also taking note of her name tag) after putting a crack in her windshield and immediately heads back to his car and drives off.
About a month later, my wife ends up having to talk to Internal Affairs. A prominent member of the legal community made an official complaint against her for ‘reckless driving’ and ‘aggressive behavior.’ Internal Affairs, thankfully, is run by some awesome people, and we had the physical damage to her vehicle that we photographed, a partial recording of his shouting from the 911 call, and the responding officer’s report.
The complaint was dismissed as unfounded.
Due to Jerklaw’s prominent status as an attorney locally for almost thirty years, nothing more could come of it legally.
My wife moved to night shifts and my own schedule adjusted slightly, and I was working a typical 9-5, heading from an office along mostly the same route that my wife followed. Lo and behold, I soon discover that with my adjusted hours, I was leaving from the same parking garage as Jerklaw every day of the week at the same time.
For the past nearly five years, I waited for him almost every day of the week and made sure to drive home in front of him at exactly the speed limit.
This easily extended his home commute time by five to ten minutes each day, depending on how much other traffic was on the road.
He tried tailgating me, changing his hours that he was at the office, and multiple other ways to escape this delay in getting home, but thanks to an accomplice in his office, I never had a problem learning his schedule or what vehicle he was driving when he sold his old one. During times when I would take a vacation, I had comrades from my department take up the mantle of driving slowly home to inconvenience this guy.
I’ve gone through three cars in the ensuing time frame, but he never seemed to want to make a confrontation of it.
As of three months ago, I moved to a new office building and Jerklaw retired shortly after. The saga has ended. It was a good run, and would always fill me with satisfaction at the end of each day, no matter how much nonsense I may have faced.”
11. Put Me Down As A Reference For A Job? I'll Pretend I Don't Know You
“I was a smart kid when I was young. Up to the age of 14, in most of my classes of generally 30 students, I was regularly in the top 5. Teachers were mostly impressed, and that is without me having much in the kind of routine studying, encouragement from family/peers, or discipline. I was just good at picking up and parroting most subjects and a keen reader.
This ability was not without its pitfalls. You know how kids behave towards others who they think of as geeks. I had few, but good, friends. From my teenage years, I entered a “rebel phase” and disengaged from school. I flunked classes, chased entertainment, video games, girls. My grades went down like an anvil, failed that year, failed the next due to absenteeism.
My parents were strict disciplinarians, but they could not motivate me, I did not care. If not for my good friends, my life could’ve easily turned very different.
By the time I was 18, my parents had lost their patience, and I had either to work and pay my way or knuckle down for my last attempt at school.
I hadn’t finished secondary education, so the future was looking grim.
I then joined a technical college, that would allow me to finish my secondary ed, get a tech certificate on top, and earn a small income at the same time. The course I chose was for 3 years, full-time, and miles away from home.
It was difficult in many ways.
The long hours, my poor discipline and aversion to early starts, little pay (sometimes just enough for the bus pass and meals) or support, and a ton of bullying. The popular kids, the brown-nosers, and pretty much everyone else despised me. Some said I had no ambition, didn’t know how to play ball (read: kiss butts of people who can get stuff done for you, and be cool with it) with others, and was destined to be a nobody.
Still, I muddled through.
By the final trimester of the 3rd year, we (12 out of the 28 who started the course) were on internships with different technical companies, and if we did well overall, there would be a job offer at the end of the course. I had mine at one of the worst companies, where they would not teach me anything related to our course and just be given menial/meaningless or actual dirty and hard physical labor.
They gloated that I’d never amount to anything else.
Still, I finished it. The relief was sweet in itself.
Now the revenge bit – one week from getting my diploma, I applied for a job at a company that was in direct competition with the one where I had my internship. I could now learn more and apply everything from my training.
And for better salary. Some jaws dropped because my ex-colleagues got stuck in the companies where they brown-nosed so much – for almost the same they had during internship!
But it still was not enough for me. After 8 months, and purely by chance, I heard about a vacancy for a tech engineer in one of the biggest corporations on the planet.
Grabbed my wits and CV, applied for the job, was offered an interview in which I basically said I had so much appetite to learn about the company/business, and got it.
I’ll never forget it, the significance of it all – I (found out later) was the 1st person of my background to land that job, in my country… boom!
Contract with awesome pay, company uniform, company phone, company car, the lot!
I was about 10 feet tall. What on earth could have made it even better?
One of my ex-colleagues, who never, ever gave me anything beyond mockery and contempt, caught wind of this news, got jealous, and tried to muscle in. One day I turned at the office, my manager says, “Hey Dom, I have had a telephone interview with a dude a while ago, he seemed OK, he said he knows you and put your name as a character reference.
Do you know him?”
I said cooly, “No. Don’t remember anyone by that name at all. Sorry.”
Last I saw the guy at a distance, he was delivering pizza on a moped.
Since that day, revenge has never -ever- tasted so sweet.”
10. Hope You Enjoy All These Cats Coming Into Your Yard
I wonder how long it took them to figure it out, if they ever did.
“I couldn’t stand this one kid who I went to high school with, who lived a few blocks away in the neighborhood.
One night, he sent cops to my parent’s house where I was still living, telling them I had done something I didn’t do.
Luckily, I had a receipt in my pocket from the restaurant I was at, in a suburb 10 miles away that was time-stamped half an hour later than when he said the incident occurred. Regardless, my parents were woken up, etc. I was livid.
Well, a few days later, my mom bought some plants that she left in the kitchen window.
Our family cat was a nutball, to begin with, but all of a sudden he was constantly jumping on the counters, eating these plants.
When I’d try and shoo him down, he would actually take a defensive stance and hiss and scratch. 10 minutes later, he would be back, chewing on the leaves.
I asked my mom what the plants were, and she said, ‘Oh, they’re catnip.
They have a really pretty flower. I’m going to plant them in the backyard when the weather warms up.’ I was like, ‘Not a chance you’re planting these in our backyard. Look what you’re doing to the cat! He’s aggressive! You’ll bring every cat in the neighborhood, and they will all fight, all night long!!!’
Suddenly, at that exact moment, a revenge plot was born.
The following night, I snuck into the guy’s backyard and planted the catnip everywhere. My friend who lived across the street from him told me it worked perfectly, and that he was always complaining about cats fighting in his backyard after that. Revenge. No physical confrontation, no property damage, just aggressive cats.
Felt a little like some sort of supervillain, sending out my cat minions to do my dirty work.”
9. Make 8 Months Of My Life Miserable? Here's A Few Days Of Horrible Intestinal Pain
“My story starts with this Amazon review. Taken from Amazon Reviews Haribo Sugar-free Gummy Bears:
‘My flight was leaving at 8 in the morning. After awaking and trying to get to the airport, I forgot to grab something to eat. I usually take my time and do things in order, but not this day. I was traveling from Boston to LA coming home from a work trip.
I do it regularly so nothing was new to me.
I stayed in the same hotel and knew the time I needed to leave to get to the airport on time. During my work trip, I stopped at a convenience store and saw these gummy bears and thought they would be a perfect gift for my son Charlie. He loves gummy bears and gummy worms. So the morning I was to head back to LA, I slept through my alarm.
That never happens. I rushed to get out of the hotel and threw those gummies in my carry-on bag to make it on time to the airport. After speeding and filling up gas in the rental, I made it to my gate as they were boarding.
I get on the plane and head down the aisle to find my window seat near the middle of the plane.
I asked politely for the two adorable older ladies sitting in the middle and aisle seats if I could pass by to my seat.
They obliged. The lady in the middle must have been around 80 years old so it took her some time to get up and make sure she was holding on to something so she didn’t fall as she stepped into the aisle.
I thanked them as I sat and settled into my seat.
Fast forward 20 minutes as we reach our cruising altitude of around 30,000 feet in the air. As I reach into my carry-on bag to grab my headphones, I see the gummy bears.
Since I am hungry and need something, I decided to open them up and just have a few to hold me over until we land.
I wanted to save some for my son so I maybe had 4 or 5. But I had 4 or 5 too many because once the bears had a few minutes to adjust to their new home, they began to work.
It started out with a little cramp.
Which is normal with gassing on a plane. You do not want to fart on a plane so you hold it in.
It is airplane etiquette. It would come and go over a few minutes so I thought nothing of it. Then it got worse. The cramps intensified, the sweating started, and I began to notice the older ladies looking over at me. About 30 minutes into eating these bears, my thinking went from, ‘Oh these are just farts, I can hold them,’ to ‘Oh dear God not here.’ I have been a Christian my whole life and this is the test.
If there is a God, please help me leave this plane with my dignity intact.
After waiting for the intense cramp wave to pass, I stood up and jumped over those two women. I could not wait for them to stand so I stood up, (my back facing them) and tried to shimmy past them.
I think a toot came out cause I heard one say, ‘Oh Lord, was that you?’ After reaching the aisle, I waddled to the back of the plane where the least amount of risk would be.
To my dismay, it was in use. That left one bathroom left in the front. I looked down the aisle and saw my Mt.
Everest. I had to somehow keep my wet cheeks tighter than Fort Knox whilst waddling forward, whilst praying no one gets out of their seats.
After 5 minutes of stop and go, I made it to the bathroom and was pulling my pants down as I entered the bathroom.
The door was still unlocked as the sweet release was underway.
I thought I died. I thought this was it. Even though I was on the throne confessing my sins, I thought my time was called. I lost count on how many knocks at the door there were. I must have been in there for 45 minutes, but I made it.
I washed my hands and threw water in my face to calm me down.
Opening the door, I saw the faces looking back at me. Apparently, the seal to the bathroom was not airtight. Letting just the slightest airflow from that bathroom to the main cabin possible. These were daughters, mothers, and children looking at me. I could feel their questions and comments. ‘What have you done?’ ‘We still have 2 hours left.’ ‘Please divert this plane.’
As I began walking down, the man in the first row of first-class grabbed my arm.
He said, ‘Hey man, where is your seat?’ Confused, I told him and he said, ‘Go get your stuff and come back and sit here, you need this more than me.’ I was embarrassed and ashamed. I had a family at home waiting for me.
I recommend these bears to anyone. But please eat them responsibly.’ – Derek
On to my story:
Setting: In the military somewhere east of Germany. 6mos into the tour, everyone is starting to hate each other because you eat, sleep, drink, work, and play together.
We really disliked some of the groups we deployed with, there was fraternization, badmouthing, selective rule application, and more.
98% of the misery can be traced back to a certain person we will call Lucky the Leprechaun. George and I are in the same section and work together.
There had been some grumbling as to our work ethic because after several months of working 9-10 hour days our systems had redundancies so our tickets were spread out.
George found the reviews for the Haribo sugar-free gummy bears and we were laughing ourselves hoarse when inspiration strikes. I decided to buy some, and leave a bowl of them in the mayor’s cell office (like the super that everyone hates). Unfortunately, no dice, these gummy bears have been discontinued for like 5 years.
A couple of days go by, and I wonder if any other sugar-free products had the same effect.
So after some google sleuthing, I found this Albanese company. They apparently used the same recipe as Haribo, judging from their online reviews. The downside is they come in 5lbs bags or bigger. I order them, I had no real concrete plan for deployment at the time I ordered them I just did it. It was perfect, military mail being what it is, I expected 2 or 3 weeks to pass before I get them.
I was leaving soon for a couple of weeks, the gummies were supposed to be there when I got back. I don’t know if they airdropped these onto my base, but I got those in record time the day I was leaving. I opened the package thinking it was something else and I see the bears.
Two things occur to me, I have to get rid of these, and there is a warning label on them.
Thinking the jig is up I place them in the office of the people grumbling about our work ethic and leave.
4 days later…
I am explaining the inner working of some piece of military equipment when I get the text: ‘Lucky the Leprechaun has been peeing out of his butt for four days.’ It takes a solid 10 seconds of looking at the text before the realization hits, I got the full story when I returned from my time away.
Apparently, someone in the grumbly office, ignoring the warning label, opened the gummy bears and eats a couple. Which prompted a feeding frenzy, and over the course of 3 days a pack of 4 pounds of gummy bears is consumed. It took 11 people 3 days to correlate frequent violent bathroom breaks with the chewy little morsels they were gorging on.
There are only 9 bathroom stalls in our immediate vicinity.”
8. Want Me To Go "On Call?" I Can See Where This Is Going
“This happened about 12 months ago.
I am a nurse and work in a relatively specialized field. Due to previous financial difficulties, I had taken on a number of additional jobs in the previous few years and had settled on one that was particularly good for me – I was employed casually in a smaller six-bedded unit in a private hospital. Because of the nature of my specialty, this particular area required two nurses in attendance at all times.
2 nurses to 6 patients is a dream ratio and basically unheard of in private health.
To combat this, most hospitals that have beds for this particular specialty area combine them with another ward so that they can staff us down and allow the regular nurses to cover us. However, for some reason, this hospital had located the beds completely separate from any other unit.
This meant they had no choice to safely staff us but to roster two nurses on at all times, and our manager stood her ground and refused to budge on that requirement.
Because I was casually employed, there was always the possibility that my hours could be cut or shifts canceled at any time. However, because they needed both nurses present at all times, they could not do that.
Even if we had no patients in this particular specialty area, they had to keep two nurses available in case we needed to admit. If we had no patients at all some nurses would go on call, but because I relied on public transport/bicycle commuting to get to work, my manager understood that I could not go on call because I could not return to the workplace in a reasonable time, and instead I would be sent to help out in other areas.
Our manager had, in addition to her other duties, become the project lead on a large expansion within our facility, and had performed very well in the role. So well, in fact, that when another facility under the same company was expanding, she was headhunted to lead their expansion project as well. She was compelled to a secondment that would require her to live out of state for several months, and as a result, we would be given a new acting manager.
To our dismay, we discovered that the acting manager was from a ward where it was well known that the staff could not stand her. Sure enough, within days, she began doing things like canceling our staff and moving her surplus staff into our area when she was low on numbers and overstaffed, costing them to us, even though they lacked the appropriate training and experience to work in our area.
Anything to make her budget look better, which at the same time made our budget look worse.
It all came to a head one morning when, after two hours of a 12-hour shift, we discharged our last patient. I was literally on the phone finalizing the patient discharge when our acting manager called the other nurse on the shift and instructed both of us to clock out immediately and go on call.
Confused, I rang her back.
Me: “Hi AM, it’s Schmickers. I just got a message saying that you want us to clock out and go home. You may not be aware, although our previous manager was, but I take public transport to and from work. I can’t be on call.”
AM: “That doesn’t matter.
You have no patients. I can’t pay for you to be on the ward doing nothing and no other areas require help today. I need you to clock off and go home.”
Me: “Are you sure? We are halfway through checking the emergency trolley, there is a massive pile of follow-up calls to make and we haven’t even stripped the patient room yet.”
AM: “That doesn’t matter. Bring me your phone and keys and clock off.”
Me: “What are you going to do if there is an admission? It will take me over an hour to get back.”
AM: “Well I’ll sit there until you can get back.”
I was fuming. The other nurse began re-sealing the emergency trolley and I stopped her.
We had been instructed to leave, and leave we would! I marched the phone and keys to our acting manager and handed them over.
As I did so, she said: “You can’t be paid to sit and make phone calls. That has to be done when you have patients.”
I replied: “We are busy with the patients when we have patients.
Besides, it’s only just past 9 am, and most of the follow-up calls are to families with children who are busy doing school runs. I wouldn’t answer a call from an unknown number before 9 am.”
I handed the keys over, clocked off, and began the journey home.
I hadn’t reached home before I got a message from my OTHER workplace, asking for a nurse for the night shift and offering an overtime payment.
Now, I was booked for a day shift at my second job the next day, and I knew we had no theatre cases booked, which meant the likelihood of THAT shift being canceled was also high. I couldn’t afford to sit at home waiting for work if we didn’t have patients, but just to be sure, I gave the union a quick call, and they managed to illuminate something wonderful.
As a casual employee, I was not entitled to be on call at all.
That meant not only could they not ask me to be on call, but I also was not entitled to the measly $26 allowance that permanent employees received. As soon as I had clocked out, my shift had ended.
Armed with that knowledge, I rang my acting manager and informed her that I had been offered paid work that night, and as a consequence, would need to cancel my shift the following day.
She was quite hostile, asking: “Do you normally cancel work here to work elsewhere?”
I replied: “I don’t normally have my shifts canceled at all, but I am not a charity and cannot sit at home unpaid when I could be paid to work elsewhere. I have a family to support.”
After this call, I sent a quick email to my usual manager, outlining the acting manager’s request and why I had left the ward disorganized, the emergency trolley unsealed, and a stack of work not done, and went to bed to have a nap.
I was awoken at approximately 16:15 in the afternoon by my wife, looking confused. My acting manager had rung and left a message with her that we were admitting a patient and she required me back at work. I was bemused – the acting manager should not even have been there at that time of the afternoon, and clearly lacked the stones to talk to me directly.
No matter. I rang the hospital supervisor.
Me: “Hi, it’s Schmickers. I just got a message via my wife that I’m a bit confused about. Apparently, there is a patient, and you want me to come into work for a shift?”
Supervisor: “That’s right, we’re admitting to your area. We need you back in.”
Me: “You know my shift was canceled, right?”
Supervisor: “AM told me you were on call?”
Me: “Well, I can’t be on call, I’m a casual employee. My shift was canceled. Besides, by the time I’ve dressed, packed, got on my bicycle, ridden half an hour to my nearest train station, caught the train, changed to a tram, then walked the rest of the way, then showered and changed it’ll be,” (quick check of the time) “1830.
My shift was meant to end at 1930. I don’t think I’m going to be much help to you.”
I heard the sound of the phone being covered, and a muffled voice, before shouting and ranting began in the background. It was my acting manager, still clearly there and clutching her pearls about how unreasonable it was that it would take two hours for me to return to work.
As the ranting continued, I spoke on the phone again.
“Supervisor, it’s Schmickers. I know you have AM shouting at you in the background, but right now I’m the person you need to be listening to because I called you. AM is well aware of how long it takes me to return to work because I told her this morning.
She knew when she asked me to clock off that I would not be returning to work. I’m sorry she gave you the impression that I could be on call, but I cannot. Now, as I am not able to assist you any further and I am not on the clock, I will be ending this conversation.”
And I put the phone down.
I got a couple of confusing texts about why I wasn’t working the next day and what had happened on the ward from the night staff when they arrived and began re-sealing the emergency trolley and arranging for after-hours bed cleans. I had a week off after that.
Unfortunately, this particular manager appears to be Teflon coated, but I’ve never had a shift canceled since.”
Another User Comments:
“My father worked in a hospital for many many years. Somehow, someone in management got a bug up their butt that the on-call duties were not being ‘shared equally’ among the staff. They decreed that all departments were to have an equal amount of staff on call.
Note this caused problems with some of the specialists, who only had one or two doctors to a department. But my father eagerly signed up for a less-desirable graveyard shift.
My father was a Physical Therapist.
Now, if for some reason someone had some sort of emergency requiring him to be there, he could get there in twenty minutes, no worries.
But given that PT is generally after a patient has been discharged, and only open normal business hours, he slept very well.
It wasn’t until the policy was changed a month or so later that folks realized what he’d done.” SkwrlTail
7. Carry A Television The Whole Way Home? Will Do!
“Okay, so where I’m from there are two times a year where you can put anything you want to throw out on your front lawn and it’ll be picked up at no cost. I don’t know if it’s just my home state that does this or if most states or even countries do this, where I’m living now used to but doesn’t anymore, but that’s a basic description of what happens.
For kids it’s like Christmas because it’s common to go to others’ trash piles and grab anything you like, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure am I right? I’ve got a desk chair, roller skates, toys, DVD players, a mini trampoline, etc. It’s always fun to see what you can find.
And now onto the story and the malicious compliance:
So when I was 12 my mother sold a lot of our things, TVs and such included, and put anything we couldn’t or didn’t want to sell in storage while she dragged us all over the country for her book tour.
We were homeless, living on the road and all that.
Anyway, when we finally return to our home state we moved into a rental house in a city four hours from where we used to live. And then the unpacking happened, my mother had sold the family tv and so stole mine, which I’d purposely kept, and made that the family tv. I was understandably angry since it wasn’t my fault that she’d sold their tv, why’d I have to give up one of the only big items I’d been allowed to keep?
Months went by and then… then that glorious day came and my siblings and I were allowed to wander the nearby streets looking for hidden treasures.
That year everyone had been transitioning from analog TVs to digital ones so the streets were filled with analog TVs that were being thrown out, almost every house had one on their lawn.
I took my siblings home after some successful treasure hunting and begged my mother to help me bring one of the TVs home. It would’ve taken very little effort on her part to get the car and drive it to one of the TVs I had walked to and bring it home.
We were both used to some heavy lifting so between the two of us it would’ve been a piece of cake and free!
But no… she refused, “If you want a TV so bad then you have to carry one back to the house by yourself!”
It wasn’t a challenge or a tone that was in any way positive or encouraging. It was a tone that said “I won’t help you and you can’t do it alone so just give up” with a hint of smugness, waiting for me to dejectedly walk to my room in defeat.
No way!
“Fine, just make sure to hold the door open for me when I get back so I can get it inside!” I turned and left, determined to prove her wrong.
“Yeah, sure you will.” She had replied, Sarcastically.
So I went from front lawn to front lawn looking for a good TV. There were many that were way too big to carry and others that didn’t have any good way for one single person to grip them and would slip when I tried to pick them up.
Eventually, though, about two blocks from our house I found a, still relatively large, TV with two grip holds and was square enough for me to pick up.
I lugged that thing, arms protesting and back aching, the whole way home and set it down right in front of the door.
Knock Knock Knock!
“MUM COME HOLD THE FRONT DOOR OPEN FOR ME!!”
The look on her face was priceless! She just stood there, dumbfounded, before I reminded her that I’d only done what she told me to do.
I brought that baby inside and placed it on my tv stand, where I proceeded to hook up my DVD player and give my mother a poop-eating grin when it turned on.
I had that TV for years until I eventually had to put it out on my own front lawn when I got a digital tv of my own.
The funny thing about this though, is that the TV had to be moved a couple of times while I owned it, moving house and the like, and I couldn’t lift it again.
It was too heavy and even with my mother helping we both struggled to get it out of the house. Yet 12 yr old me had managed to lift it all by herself. The desire to maliciously comply and spite my mother gave me a momentary burst of super strength in order to accomplish my task.
I still look back and laugh at how my stubbornness and spite empowered me like that.”
6. You're Right, I Should Put It In Writing!
“I used to work IT tech support for a large company and it was my first proper job, as such I started as an apprentice.
This story takes place about a year into my apprenticeship, so I still had much to learn. On this particular week, I was working the shift that started an hour earlier than everyone else, as in I was solely responsible for support before everyone else arrived at 9 am.
My manager sent me on a job quite a few miles south, it was going to take two(ish) days.
On Monday, I informed my manager I’d be leaving Wednesday afternoon and coming back Friday afternoon and he’d need to cover my shift.
It isn’t my responsibility and I didn’t need to say anything but I thought I’d help him out by giving him a nudge:
Me: “Mike (not real name), I’m on early’s this week so someone will need to cover my shift Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.”
Mike: “Cheers mate.”
It came to Wednesday and I suspected he hadn’t arranged anything so I thought I’d give him another nudge, genuinely trying to help the guy out:
Me: “Mike, just letting you know that my early shift will need coverage for the rest of this week.”
Mike: “Ah right you are, thanks pal.”
So off I went on the Wednesday thinking I was doing a great job and keeping everyone in the loop.
We knocked the job out of the park and finished by Thursday evening so I head to the hotel and enjoy some sweet, sweet expenses.
Friday morning I head out in a rental they’d given me for the trip and start the journey back to head office.
I get a call from my manager:
Mike: “Where are you?”
Me: “Heading back, I’ve just set off. I’ll be back in the…”
Mike: “I don’t see anything in your calendar?”
Me: “I didn’t put anything in it, I told…”
Mike: “The finance director came in this morning and couldn’t access the system and YOU were supposed to be here for 8(am).”
Me: “I told you…”
Mike: “Speak to me when you get back.”
The finance director happens to be my boss’s, boss’s, boss.
Not a dude you want to anger. And he was very angry. Turned out his network cable had somehow come loose (kicked) and couldn’t access the network. He sat stewing from 7 am expecting someone to arrive by 8 and fix it, only to have no one turn up until 8.45, the head of IT.
My bosses, boss. Who took a fair few expletives on the chin.
I arrived back at the office as planned, expected, and informed Friday afternoon.
My manager calls me over and gives me a lecture on the importance of communication. I tell him:
Me: “I told you Wednesday I’d be back Friday afternoon and my shift would need covering.”
He couldn’t even look at me as he says the following in the most condescending manner possible, loud enough for the head of IT to hear:
Mike: “I don’t know, Jam_and_cream, I’ve got a PRETTY good memory and I do not recall that conversation.”
Then sends me to the head of IT who gives me a bit of a sterner lecture on the importance of communication.
The word ‘disappointed’ was mentioned.
I go back to my desk defeated. My victory in the south quashed and sullied. My manager finishes the barrage:
Mike: “Next time, put it in the calendar and tell everyone in writing.”
The words ricocheted around my mind for a while until they settled and sat imprinted in my brain.
I chalked this up to a learning experience and carried on.
Fast forward a few months later. The words lay dormant until a bizarrely similar situation occurs.
I was sent on a job for a few days and was returning, once again on a Friday afternoon and it just so happened to fall in a week when I was doing the early shift.
As soon as I heard about the job, the words sprang back into life. Put it in the calendar. Tell everyone in writing.
Now I could have put the details of my trip into my personal calendar. But I thought, why not enter it in the IT department’s shared calendar.
Which the head of IT is part of.
And when telling everyone in writing, surely that means everyone involved the last time. The IT department, and of course, the finance director.
So I send off an email to my manager with the IT department, and, just for fun, the finance director copied in. Something like:
“Hi Mike,
As you are already aware, I’ll be working down south this week until Friday afternoon.
I am on the early shift so this will need covering while I’m away.”
Some of my colleagues asked what that was about and I informed them about my manager’s memory issues.
They smirk and continue working.
I complete the job and arrive back Friday afternoon, exactly like before. And like before. The finance director came in early.
And unbelievably, like before, he had issues getting onto the system. Choice expletives were shared, words were had. But not with me.
I only knew things had hit the fan when a colleague pulled me to one side and told me why Mike was in such a foul mood. In classic British style, he never said a word to me.
And never has silence felt so vindicating.”
5. Cut In A Three-Hour Wait Line? Get Your Car Filled With Seagulls
Everyone knows seagulls LOVE to poop!
“If anyone has traveled from Galveston, Texas, to Crystal Beach, Texas, you know it’s a nightmare.
You have to take a ferry where you wait in line for 2-4 hours depending on how much traffic there is, drive onto the ferry, sail across the bay, and drive off the ferry onto the Bolivar Peninsula.
The line for the ferry forms on a two-lane road, the idea being one line is for the ferry and the other is for locals to get around, however, it’s all too common for people to skip 100% of the line and cut in at the last second, despite there being a ton of signs that say no line cutting and Galveston police driving around ticketing people who line cut.
So there I am, being a dutiful citizen and waiting in line for the ferry, way far into hour 3 of the wait, and I’m almost to the gate when this jerk comes flying in and cuts me off. I start flashing my lights and honking, trying to alert the police around but get nothing and the guy has the audacity to flip me off as he settles into the line.
Ten minutes later, we’re on the boat, and the last two cars in line, side by side on the back of the boat. The ride across the bay takes about twenty minutes, so it’s common for people to mill around the boat.
There are restrooms and sitting areas. Jerk gets out and gives me a grin and gestures like ‘Screw you, I made it!’ to me.
He then goes inside the boat’s superstructure towards the bathroom.
I can’t help but notice Mr. Turd has been gone for a while, and I have a bag of pretzels in the front seat. So, I grab the bag of pretzels and walk to the back of the boat, where they allow you to feed the seagulls.
I make it rain with pretzels until there is probably a good 40-50 seagulls captivated by the bag of pretzels.
Mind you, we’re both parked right by the back of the boat, so I make sure that I conduct my feeding activities squarely behind his car, and away from mine. In short order, my flock of seagull parishioners do what they do best: cover his car in gigantic seagull poops.
You know, the nice big, impossibly white and runny ones. I even stealthily threw a bunch of pretzels on top of his SUV to make sure they spent a lot of time crawling all over the vehicle.
Presently, I see the Peninsula coming up fast, we’ll be there in maybe 5 minutes.
I start walking back with about a quarter of a bag of pretzels left and I realize that Mr. Jerk has left his front windows open.
The opportunity is way too good, so I pitch the bag of pretzels into the second row of his seats and climb back into my car. Sure enough, as soon as I’m in the car, the seagulls bombard the jerk’s SUV. By the time he comes waddling out when they sounded the arrival horn, there were probably 15 seagulls thrashing around the inside of his car fighting over the bag of pretzels and the outside of his car was COVERED in seagull poop.
He started freaking out, yelling at the birds, and engaged in a losing battle to get them out of the car. Never even looked back at me. I don’t know if he ever put two and two together but wow, did he get heated. He was screaming and swearing and carrying on at the birds and by the time we docked and I drove off, he had just finished getting the birds out of the car and was scrubbing seagull poop off his dash and driver’s seat with his t-shirt.
Screw you, line jumper.”
Another User Comments:
“I love it!
Someone cut in front of me on the bolivar side once and really made everyone in line around me mad, in front and behind. I kept trying to get the guy to get out of the line, but he was firmly planted. We waited in one of the lanes from the lighthouse to the ferry landing for a solid hour or hour and a half.
I was so livid the entire time; it was about to ruin my morning.
Right when our line was set to go, they pull our line through but stopped at his truck and made him turn around and hit the back of the line, way back by the lighthouse again. Pure poetic justice. I gave the DOT worker the coldest water I could find in our ice chest.” dearbill
4. Enjoy Your Fish-y Car
“When I was younger, I needed a place to live, and a friend (Rob) and his lady offered me their ‘basement apartment,’ which turned out to be a cot on a bare concrete floor and framed walls with no drywall, right next to the laundry machines.
I didn’t really need much, so I said fine and took the ‘apartment’ for $200 a month rent.
I lived there a few months, not spending much time there but basically storing my stuff in the ‘room’ downstairs. Clothes, a TV, a DVD player, and some movies, and a couple of long boxes of comics that I’d collected since I was a kid and a big wood box of hockey cards – second year Gretzky, Messier rookie, Kurri rookie, Lemeiux rookie, etc…
One weekend in the middle of summer, I was heading off to the city and asked if they wanted the rent ahead of time or not, because the 1st fell on a Saturday. They said after the weekend was fine, so I headed out.
Got back Sunday night and found my clothes outside and the lock changed. I pounded on the door, and Rob opened it a crack with the chain on, told me they kicked me out because I didn’t pay rent and were keeping the TV and comics/cards to pay for it.
I was young and stupid and didn’t realize NONE of that was legal. I went and crashed at my friend’s house for the night and found a new place the next morning. Swung by that afternoon, paid them, and asked for my stuff back.
Sorry, I was told, but it was sold to pay the rent I owed them… even though any one of those cards would have paid it plus some.
So give me my deposit back… No, I owed them for damages.
I gave up, like I said I was young and dumb and didn’t know my rights. I said my ‘screw you’s and drove off… right past Rob’s car he’d gotten a couple of months earlier.
I went back that night with a paint scraper and four cans of anchovies.
Used the scraper to bend the rubber seals on the doors back, and dumped a can of anchovies into each door. I saw him the next day – +30ish degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) – pulling stuff out of the car to try and find the smell. The day after, he was scrubbing down the seats and carpet.
I dropped more anchovies in that night, after outwaiting his lazy ‘surveillance’ efforts.
By the weekend, that car stunk just walking NEAR it. Every time I saw him driving it, he had all his windows down. Every month or so, I bombed it with fish again. I heard he tried to trade it at the local dealership, and they wouldn’t give him anything for it.
They moved to another province about a year later, and I hope they still have that stinky car.”
3. Pizza Shop Refuses To Change Their Phone Number, So We Hatch A Plan
Should have just changed your freaking number.
“The end result of this story, which I will tell you upfront, is that we lost the ability to order from several local Pizza-Huts for life.
Growing up, we had a phone number that was very similar to a Pizza Hut, their number was (555)455-5575 and ours was (555)455-5515. Now, these two numbers are commonly mixed up for obvious reasons. This was back before the days of cellphones and everyone having their own personal number, and we actually had to get a caller ID because of this.
For years we had this Pizza-Huts client base call our house (about 50/50 split sober/intoxicated) and order pizzas. The thing is people WILL NOT LISTEN when you tell them ‘Sorry wrong number.’ We would have intoxicated people call back 4-5 times and then begin screaming into the phone ‘I KNOW THIS IS A FREAKING PIZZAHUT YOU *********!’ or ‘GIVE ME THE NUMBER OR I’LL KICK YOUR BUTT.’
This was pretty normal and the pizza hut was even aware of this and profusely apologized when we would call them.
(Never giving us anything for free though, despite the massive inconvenience of the phone ringing off the hook.)
Well, Pizza Hut Corporate then pays for an advertisement on paper, billboard, and phone book. And guess what?
They botched the number. They put OUR number on the things for the phone number as one of the locations in our town for Pizza Huts pizza. Why? Because 1’s and 7’s are the same numbers apparently.
The phone calls we get start to explode. It goes from like 3-5 phone calls a day to like 100-200.
Initially, we were directing people with a message that simply said ‘THIS IS NOT PIZZA HUT! THEIR NUMBER IS XXXXXXXX.’ It didn’t end. We would get calls with people screaming into the voice recording ‘I WANT A FREAKING PIZZA THIS IS NONSENSE I’M GOING TO KILL WHOEVER DOESN’T ANSWER THIS FREAKNG PHONE!’ (Aren’t boomers great?
We got that nonsense all the time from older people.) I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been told to kill myself for trying to direct someone to the correct place, and for some FREAKING reason, no one EVER listens.
Well upon this happening my Dad calls into the pizza hut and says “look, all we want is to not have to change our number.
If you guys will PLEASE change yours, or pay for ours to be changed (it was like a 10 dollar convince fee or something) we will stop getting your ****** phone calls.” The manager cussed my Dad, who had him on speakerphone, calling him a ton of names and for ‘getting him bad reviews’ as well as losing customers to his branch, which is locally owned.
What a freaking joke. It’s costing their business a solid 10 grand EASY over a phone number why not JUST CHANGE IT? IDK.
My Dad looks at the phone, hangs up, and says “Ok ********, you want to be like that about it?”
My dad then instructs my 17-year-old self (and my sister) to take all calls from now on.
If it rings pick it up, take the order, and say “Ok your pizza should be there in (1.5 hours)” Then when they call back to tell them ‘Sorry the driver just left.’ and if they call back a third time say ‘Well I can get you on the phone with my manager but he’s probably going to kick your butt if you keep complaining.’ And then switch the phone with someone else and have them say ‘Listen here witch, you aren’t getting your pizza and you aren’t getting a refund, freaking get over it.’
Or something along those lines anyway.
Two weeks pass and my Dad tries to get said Pizza Hut to change our number for free. Never pointing out that they screwed up their ad, as apparently, they were completely oblivious to this fact. Again the manager screams at my Dad saying “I don’t have the means to change your freaking number!” We even tried calling OTHER pizza huts to get the issue resolved, and their corporate with no real luck.
Fair enough, it’s game on time now. For two reasons 1. My dad got a phone with a transfer button and 2. Because summer was rolling around, and my sister and I loved messing with people over this. It was a really bad influence on us tbh.
We fielded phone calls every day all day long, we had friends come over and they loved partaking in the same thing.
We had a general plan:
Every other call would get a pizza ‘delivery.’
On the other calls, we would get them really mad talking nonsense to them and saying ‘Ok do you want to speak with my manager?’ And just cold transfer them to the pizza hut.
It took 6 more weeks of us doing this, and the pizza hut closed. A few weeks before they closed we got a phone call from pizza hut corporate who more or less threatened us with a cease and desist, sounded like they didn’t really understand what was actually happening as it accused us of ‘stealing their phone calls.’ LOL.
We called their corporate and explained what was going on, and even played our recordings of talking with them before about the issue and ignoring us.
All they said is ‘You had better stop! This is ILLEGAL!’ over and over. We didn’t stop. They were aware of what was going on and didn’t want to do anything about it.
A few weeks after the owner lost his job he called our house and was trying to argue with my Dad about how ‘bad of a person he was because I lost my income, and got my butt beat several times.’ …apparently, we had angered a few people so bad they actually went in and attacked him and other staff… To this day it cracks me up that a company can be so oblivious, and is the single reason I don’t believe we live in anything close to a ‘Meritocracy.’ Anyone in this position who has any merit would instantly change the number, but not a corporation who has the means to sue, and not a middle manager who has an ego problem.”
Another User Comments:
“I had this happen, too.. our number was 888-2345. We had people calling for Domino’s and Direct TV. Anyone who wouldn’t listen to us advising them they had the wrong number, we’d prank them about the pizza. For Direct TV, we’d ask them “have you tried turning it off and back on again?” over and over until they hung up.
It didn’t stop until we moved and got cell phones.” XxSabirahxX
2. Can't Follow The Rules Regarding My Pay? Someone's Got To
“I (23F) decided to take a year off university to work and have some fun before my last year as a student.
I found a job in retail fairly easily, as I’ve worked in stores ever since I was old enough to work. My boss was thrilled to find someone with experience, who could help improve her small store.
My job was great at first, despite everything in the store that needs to be done manually. We have to write receipts down by hand, make a list of articles in the store every month, we didn’t even have a clear schedule of work, the boss would just call us and ask us if we could work the next day.
My co-worker and I weren’t bothered about any of it… Except for the schedule. She’s going to university this year and not knowing when she works is seriously messing up her progress in class. Our boss would also get really upset and mad whenever we told her we couldn’t work the next day, due to other plans.
A few weeks into the job I decided to fix that. I made her a spreadsheet that she could use to plan our work hours (like in any other company I ever worked for) in advance.
We also gave her our schedules three weeks in advance, so she could build and plan around them.
Her response?
“This doesn’t work for me, what if something comes in between and the person who’s supposed to work doesn’t show?”
I tried to explain that if that were to occur, the other will just try to show up, but she was having none of it, insisting that us learning whether we worked or not the next day was just fine.
It wasn’t, but okay… I didn’t want my work to go to waste, so I altered the sheet to work as something that counts our monthly hours at work since that also had to be done by hand and it was unnecessary time wasted. I’m sure most of us keep track of the hours spent at work, just in case.
I tried improving some other things in the store like building a database for articles we have, so we wouldn’t have to hand count everything every month or every time she had to order something new.
She sternly told me to delete everything I did because ‘she doesn’t like the look of it.’
Sidenote: this is kind of biting her in the butt right now because some providers are now giving her smack about the way she reports items sold at the end of each month. That database she made me delete and the way it generated the list of items in storage is exactly what they want from her from now on.
Skip to a few days ago. A few months into the job and I’m tired of her attitude. I try to help her improve the store, show motivation, present my ideas and she shuts everything down and we stay in the same cycle of work that wouldn’t be needed if she’d just take up some of my ideas.
My co-worker already quit, she’s not in the store purely for emergencies until a replacement is found.
My boss comes into the store and tells me it’s payday.
Sweet.
She usually wants us to count the hours by ourselves and then compare with what she counted, but apparently, she was in a bad mood that particular day and wanted me to go through everything again.
Boss: “We have to go over your hours for the previous month. I’d like you to count them now and tell me how many you had.”
Me: “Okay. I already have them counted, so you can just tell me how many you got and we can check if it matches with mine.”
I pulled up the sheet which both my co-worker and I update daily, so we don’t have to do this at the end of each month.
She apparently didn’t like that response, since she loves doing everything by hand so much. She came barreling from her office and into the store, yelling at me, how I shouldn’t be checking the spreadsheet of my hour count and that I have to delete it from the computer immediately and never try one of my improvements ever again.
I, having been tired of her nonsense, just raised my eyebrows and did exactly as she said. I deleted the spreadsheet.
Boss, now satisfied: “Good. Now I would like you to count and report the hours you worked last month.”
Alright. I pulled my phone out and showed her the exact same spreadsheet, except this one also calculated how much I should be getting paid for my time.
“I counted x hours, which means I should be getting paid y €.”
She was absolutely livid with me. She was banging and throwing things in her office before she came back and handed me my hard-earned payment.
Bonus: That was also the day I decided I no longer wanted to work for her, due to her abusive behavior to both me and my co-worker.
I informed her of my decision the next day and now she has to find two replacements. I take some pity on her and jump in when she really needs someone, but am otherwise free from her clutches.”
1. Getting Back At My Sister On Her Graduation For Eating My Desserts
“I come from a family of 6: my parents, my older sister, my older brother, my little brother, and me.
Often, in order to bribe us into good behavior, our parents would buy us our favorite candy to munch on in the car. Now, I’ve never exactly been a giving person, not huge on sharing just for the sake of sharing.
My parents, however, were trying to raise respectful and generous kids and often forced me to share things even when I didn’t want to.
That’s all fine and good, except that my sister abused this system. See, she would say she didn’t want a bag of candy, then once we were on the road she’d start taking candy from all three of the brothers.
That really made me mad. I didn’t get candy often, as my mom didn’t like feeding us sugary food, so when I got my own bag of Sour Patch Watermelon, I wanted to eat every last one myself. Besides, my parents would always offer to buy her a bag of candy for herself, but she would just refuse because she knew she could leech off the rest of us.
So after a point, I started refusing her requests for candy. But that didn’t fly with my mom, because that was being selfish, so she would force me to hand over the candy.
One time, I even said when I purchased my bag at CVS, ‘sister, I’m not going to give you any of my candy.
If you want Sour Patch, buy your own right now.’ ‘I’m fine,’ she responded, ‘I don’t want a whole bag of candy.’ Fast forward 20 minutes into the car ride, my father was requisitioning a candy to give to my sister, as I sat fuming. This went on for years. My whole life, really.
And I hated it. I would hide my candy when I got it, I would try and keep it out of her reach, but always, a parent would intervene.
Fast forward to my sister’s college graduation. She is now 22, I am a senior in high school at this point, and we’re up at her school at a fancy restaurant celebrating after she had graduated that morning.
In attendance are all immediate and some extended family, some close friends of my sister’s, and her long-term man who I was meeting for the first time.
So, enough people for the following to be embarrassing for my family.
Our meal ends and my mother offers to buy a nice dessert for anyone who wants it.
My brothers, my dad, and I all take her up on it.
I ordered a vanilla bean cheesecake with a burnt sugar bird’s nest on top. My mother repeatedly offers to buy my sister anything she wants, but my sister says she couldn’t possibly eat a full dessert right now and turns it down every time.
The food arrives, and everyone is staring at mine. I’m sitting right at the head of the table in full view of everyone, so it’s hard not to look, and aside from the cake slice being large and delicious looking, the burnt sugar bird’s nest is huge and ornate, hollow on the inside like a freaking old-timey brass globe.
Honestly, it was pretty impressive.
And right as the food gets placed in front of us, my sister says, ‘I’ll just have a bite of everyone’s.’
At this point, I’m seeing red, having flashbacks to all the times my food has been stolen. Logically, the right thing to do would’ve been to just hand over one bite.
I mean, it was her graduation, it was a huge cake, it would’ve been no loss. But it had become a matter of principle.
So, the moment she says this, in one fell swoop, in full view of everyone at the table, I sweep up my slice of cheesecake and stuff the entire thing into my mouth at once, shattering the sugar nest, crumbs falling everywhere, in front of my whole family and some college students close to my sister who, again, I’ve never met in my life.
My sister stares, appalled, and says, ‘Did you do that just so I wouldn’t get any?!?’
And I look at her, cheeks ballooning out like a chipmunk, face covered in cheesecake and graham cracker, dead in the eyes, and nod.
There was a fair bit of shocked silence, at that moment and in the very tense car ride home.
But to this day she never asks for anything from me anymore.”
Another User Comments:
“I broke my sister of this when I sucked the salt off my French fries before being forced to share (mom and sis didn’t know). I waited until she ate every last one before letting her know (she’s a germaphobe).
To this day she won’t ask me for anything unless she knows I have extra and she double-checks with me first.” Thepettyone
