We’ve all been told life isn’t fair, but there are some times when you can get back what’s rightfully yours. Justice does exist and with a little clever thinking, you can plan the act of smooth and seamless revenge. It might involve pulling a few strings or sneaky planning, or maybe just revealing the truth and saying it like it is. The following stories are complex tales of people feeling they have been betrayed or mistreated, only to come up with a brilliant rebuttal that evens the score.
It’s hard to be the bride and have a bridesmaid take over your special day! What’s a girl to do? Why, patiently wait and do it right back, of course! How does one deal with a cheating spouse who gets busted? Take back what was given to her but is rightfully yours,
after twisting the knife with a killer one-liner that sums up the situation perfectly! These are just a few of the jewels you’ll find in this article. Plus, stories about dognappers, roid-raging bosses and senior coworkers who have gotten away with their bad behavior for too long.
People can hold a grudge for a long time! They say revenge is best served cold, and after reading these stories you’ll see how they’re done with calculated patience, disregard for the outcome and done with the intention to make right what’s been wronged. Read on for some seriously crazy tales ripe with sweet, sweet revenge!
30. Cheat On Me And Mooch Off Me For Years? I’ll Throw Away Thousands Of Hours Of Your Time
“My boyfriend and I had met online well over 6 years ago through an online game by the name of RuneScape. He was 14 and I was 17, but it had felt like we had been friends forever. We both played the game very often and connected through it, eventually leading
us to start a long-distance relationship. Things began to escalate as the years went on and we began seeing each other in person every few months or so. We were about 1,500 miles apart, so one of our main priorities for the future was moving in together and closing the distance. My job had prevented us from doing that, but we had finally set a date for me to move in with him in December of this year.
Our relationship never had any serious issues and I was more than happy to have him in my life as he was happy to have me. As I got older, I began to play RuneScape less and less, as work took up most of my time. He continued to play regularly,
if not more than he had when I first met him. He could never really hold down a job and barely had an income, but I supported him throughout the years and even paid his rent from across the country after he moved out of his parents’ house a few years ago. I never really minded it because he was a sweetheart, but we began to have problems.
In November of last year, I couldn’t help pay his monthly rent. I was short on cash after having to pay my own living expenses alongside car repairs and bills I owed to the state, and I just couldn’t afford to support him at the time. When I c
alled him one night to discuss it, he freaked out and started crying that he didn’t want to live with his parents again. I tried calming him down and even suggested that I could help him find a temporary job until I could start providing for him again, but he wasn’t having it. He claimed his parents would abuse
him if he returned home, which I know for a fact isn’t true because he and his parents have stayed with me several times. They’ve given him the world. I eventually did calm him down but he remained passive-aggressive the entire night and we eventually hung up.
Because I cared about him, I reached out to his
father the next day and informed him that he would probably be moving back home after his lease expired that month. I explained how I wouldn’t be able to afford to pay for his living for a month or two. I asked if there were any local jobs he could work in order to…
y’ know, MAKE AN INCOME. Apparently, a friend of his father’s needed help managing a small warehouse for his business and was looking to potentially hire my boyfriend for the season. It paid $15/hr and was super easy (lifting boxes, sweeping the floors, and taking inventory).
I brought it up to my boyfriend that
same night and he was not having it. Not only did he not want to work in a ‘sh*tty warehouse,’ but he didn’t want to work at all. All he planned to do day in, day out was play RuneScape. I brought up a
few other job listings I had found in his area and he immediately shot all of them down as well. He then had the audacity to comment about how he thinks I should work harder and possibly work a second
job. I kept my composure and simply argued against it until we eventually hung up. I collapsed on my bed and cried for a good hour or two afterward because of the intense emotional stress I was under. Not only do I work 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, I’m also an industrial meteorologist. If I remember correctly, that’s a lot more work than playing RuneScape every day and using my Hulu account. I really considered breaking up with
him right at that moment, but I changed my mind and decided to give him another chance. Looking back on it, big mistake.
I messaged him throughout
the night and we sort-of made up, but I was still a little uneasy about the entire event. He had moved back with his parents by the time December had come and I began to help him look for jobs while he wasted his life away playing video games. I eventually persuaded him to start working at a small retail store near his house and he thankfully began to make some money! I would still buy him video games and transfer him money like normal because I spoiled him. Our relationship began to feel somewhat okay again.
Last month, both him and I put our money together to fly him across the US to stay with me for 4 days. We hadn’t seen each other in person since last summer, so we were both looking forward to it. He arrived and we had a great time for the first few days because he could actually take me on dates for once with his new income. Everything was perfect until I caught a glimpse of his phone’s lock screen while he was taking a shower.
‘When are you gonna leave herrrrr?’ the Discord message read.
I could have run into the bathroom and snapped his neck at that moment but I kept myself together as best as I could without killing him. I had never felt so used, disrespected, or hated in my entire life. When he came out of the bathroom, I gave him a f
ake smile, but I genuinely hated him from that moment on. He could have dropped dead on the floor and I would have spat on him. I spent the remainder of the night watching him play RuneScape and I remained
very quiet. He took notice of this and asked me if everything was okay, and I lied and told him I was fine. When it came time to go to sleep, I let that jerk climb into bed with me and he tried initiating s*x because it was our final night together. I rejected as politely as I could. He was disappointed but went out like a light.
Immediately after he went to sleep, I reached over and unplugged his phone and started digging through his messages with that girl. I feared that I had misinterpreted the message I had seen, but I was completely right after all. Not only had he been che
ating on me, but he had also been doing so for nearly six months; leading me to believe that he hooked up with another girl directly after I couldn’t pay for his living in November. I scrolled through probably 100,000 messages and wanted to vomit my insides out by the end of it. He had talked **** about me, claimed I was emotionally abusive (just as he had done with his parents), and even sent this girl my nudes so they could pick
me apart physically.
When morning came, I had slept in because of how late I was up reading his messages. I woke up to find him on my computer playing RuneScape and eating my food. It was like our entire relationship had been wiped from my mind and he was now an evil stranger s
itting in my house. I wanted to scream at him, I wanted to tear him apart and kick him out of my house onto the street, but I didn’t. In fact, I gave him as much love and attention as I could muster that morning because I wanted to leave things feeling normal between us. I dropped him off at the airport and we had a quick and somber goodbye before I left him forever, unbeknownst to him.
I drove back home as calmly as I could before crying my eyes out in a mix of complete anger and emotional pain. I ended up kicking my bedframe so hard that the wood split and I had to buy another one recently. If only it were his face. I wanted to break his
heart by the time he arrived back home, but I wanted it to really hurt. I logged into our joint RuneScape account that we had made several years ago, where he and I would work on training the same account and raising it almost like our ‘baby.’ We had always joked that if we were to ever split up, he would take half of the account’s bank contents and I would take the rest. I took my half and transferred it to my main account before taking
his half and giving it away to random people throughout the game. Every last bit of it. Even items I couldn’t normally trade away, I used a spell to convert the items into coins which I then gave away as well. The bank was now empty.
It then occurred to me that the credentials to his main account were written down in my desk, as he would frequently have me train his Farming skill every so often. I didn’t hesitate at all and logged into his precious 14-year-old RuneScape account. I immediately
took all of the contents of his bank and sold it all on the Grand Exchange, a marketplace in the game. It took an extremely long time to clear out his bank, but he would still be flying home for about another 4 hours so I had plenty of time. By the time I had sold/destroyed everything, I had four stacks of coins totaling over 8.5 billion. Now what to spend it on, hmm…
I wanted to waste his ‘life earnings’ on the most useless, stupid thing I could think of besides him. I logged back into my main account to reach out to a friend of mine that collects massive stacks of burnt food. For the unaware, burnt food in RuneScape has no use. Y
ou can’t ‘unburn’ them, eat them, or even sell them on the Grand Exchange. They are, however, tradable amongst players. I’ve always poked fun at this guy for collecting burnt food, but I was now more thankful than ever to make his acquaintance in my revenge. I asked him what the most obscure, unwanted item of the burnt food variety was and he replied “Burnt spider”. Lo and behold, he had roughly 6,000 of the item “Spider on shaft (bu
rnt)” in his bank that he was willing to sell me. Feeling generous with my ex-boyfriend’s coins, I gave my friend a full stack of 2.147 billion coins and left a very happy customer. I dropped the 6,083 burnt spiders in his bank, but still had about 6 billion coins left to spend.
With the remaining money, I decided to treat myself. I went onto the Grand Exchange and ended up going on a shopping spree! The first thing I bought was 100 bonds. If you’re not familiar, a bond in RuneScape grants you 14 days of in-game Membership. After trading all 10
0 bonds to my account, I now have almost 4 years of Membership paid for me. I spent a majority of his coins on extremely nice armor and weapons, all of which went straight into my account. He still had abo
ut an extra billion, so I spent it on the supplies I needed to level up an expensive skill of mine. By the end of the afternoon, he was left with a measly 150,000 coins in his bank, all of which I gave aw
ay to a guy cooking pizzas outside of the Exchange. Nothing was left, so I decided to pick up a pile of bones off the ground and leave it solely in his bank. It might sound petty, but I laughed for a while.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. This is
so cruel, you ruined the tens of thousands of hours he had put into a game! Well, it was time he learned that I can be a *****, a MEAN *****. On top of spending every last coin he had ever made, I leveled
his Defense skill. This may not sound bad; in fact, it sounds like a good thing! I helped his account progress, right? Well, no. Unfortunately for my ex, he had what players commonly refer to as a ‘pure’ a
ccount: meaning he never, EVER dared to level his Defense skill from Level 1, in order to keep the lowest defense stats but have high offensive stats. Well, not anymore. Have fun with your permanent Level 6 Defense.
Cycling through hundreds of possible forms of revenge in my head, I settled on getting rid of his house. It’s quite an achievement in RuneScape to have a nice house of your own, in fact, he had one of the nicest I had ever seen in the game. In order to have built it, he must
have spent well over a few billion coins. Too bad I had disassembled it all in a matter of minutes, deleting it all into cyberspace. And there’s no insurance either, he’s going to have to rebuy everything with his non-existent money if he wants a new house. Bye-bye, Casa de cheater.
Scrolling through his friend’s list, I decided to act like him and pay a visit to his friends who were currently online and admit that I had cheated on my girlfriend and was fully proud of it. If his friends hadn’t removed him by that point, I removed them. All of them.
Lastly, to add a beautiful little cherry to this revenge-filled cake, I changed his username. You’re able to change your username once a month on RuneScape, so I changed his to let everybody know that he’s a dirty cheater. I obviously won’t drop his username here, but I did the best I could to embarrass him with a 12 character limit. He should be able to reclaim his previous username in about three weeks, but if he waits too long, I’ll be able to swipe it and slap it on a throwaway account of my
own forever.
He sent me a very hateful and aggressive message later that night, followed by pictures of him crying. I wrote him a sincere message officially ending the relationship, while also scaring him away by threatening to ‘take him to court’ for sharing my nudes and possibly filing a cease-and-desist if he were to contact me any time soon. I don’t plan on doing any of that, I just don’t want to speak to him ever again.” ***********
29. Steal My Thunder On My Big Day? I’ll Take It Back On Yours
“Last summer I was at a cousin’s wedding. His bride and her family had been close with ours since before I was born, and the couple had known each other since they were toddlers, so it was a particularly exciting event for both sides of the family.
However, after the ceremony was over and the party had only just started, one of the bridesmaids decided to announce her own engagement. The attention was immediately taken away from the newlyweds and brought to the bridesmaid (Sarah) and her equally-smug fian
cé. My cousin’s wife (Emma) didn’t make a scene or utter a single negative word about Sarah. She looked like she was on the verge of tears, but she kept grinning and acted very happy for the other couple. This was unusual, as Emma is typically quite confrontational and speaks her mind no matter the consequences.
Sarah later picked Emma to be the maid of honor at her own wedding, which took place last weekend (I wasn’t there for it, but my cousin sent me some of the best bits on Snapchat and explained the whole situation).
This is where the fun begins.
Emma’s two much-younger sisters were the flower girls at Sarah’s wedding. At the very last moment, Emma switched out the white petals in their baskets to blue ones she had secretly brought with her. She told her sisters not to say anything about it or let the bride see them until it was time to scatter them down the aisle.
Sarah looked very confused upon seeing the blue petals (which didn’t coordinate whatsoever with her theme), but of course, she didn’t say anything about it at the moment. Most of Sarah’s other bridesmaids were also Emma’s friends, had attended Emma’s wedding, and were in on Emma’s scheme. At the reception, Emma’s sisters and the other bridesmaids were tight-lipped when Sarah began demanding to know why there were blue petals. The wedding planner ended up getting a lot of abuse for not checking the flower girls’ baskets before they walked down the aisle.
Finally, it was time for the speeches. The speeches took place in front of a massive screen, displaying a loop of photos with Sarah and her husband, which had been compiled by Emma.
Emma took the remote that controlled the presentation screen and at first, she showed some pre-approved humorous photos of Sarah with Emma and other friends to facilitate a couple of lighthearted jokes.
Then, at the very end, Emma said to Sarah that she must be wondering why there were blue petals instead of the white ones originally planned.
That was when Emma displayed the last slide from her presentation.
Emma announced in front of everyone that she was five months pregnant and that she’d just discovered the baby was a boy, hence the blue petals. The last slide? Her ultrasound picture.
There were shocked yells and gasps, Sarah had a fit, but those involved in the scheme cheered so loudly that I sincerely regret watching the Snapchat recordings with headphones. Apparently, Sarah had been very nasty to her bridesmaids before, driving several of them away and forcing the others to pay ridiculous amounts of money for dresses.
Emma and my cousin were eventually thrown out of the party, but they were all smiles. Sarah’s fuming mother went to confront her outside, and Emma retorted with, ‘Gentle, gentle! I’m pregnant!’ I reckon Sarah doesn’t speak to the majority of those bridesmaids anymore.” yazdon
28. Take Advantage Of Our Kindness? I’ll Sign You Up For A Sample That Will Ruin Your Life
“When boyfriend and I first moved away from X town to Worse town around 1996 or so, we moved into an apartment building that was really a huge house broken up into 5 or 6 apartments. A few days after moving into the top apartment, we discovered that boyfriend actually kind of knew the couple on the ground floor. As it turned out, boyfriend had graduated with the girl, a blonde with a crunchy ’80s perm. Now, we didn’t realize this at first, but she was a complete idiot and he was the male counterpart.
At first, they seemed nice enough. We hung out a bit and went out a few times to the clubs. I even helped Brittany get on at the place where I worked (telemarketing, but almost twice what minimum wage was at the time).
It wasn’t until we had lived there for a couple of months that we found out rather by happenstance that the couple had a rather extensive ****** habit. I was at work one evening and I had a terrible headache. Brittany came to my desk at breaktime (we usually went to eat together) and asked me what was wrong. I told her I had a headache and asked her if she had any Tylenol. Well, no but she had a painkiller.
Turns out that she was talking about hydrocodone, and I politely declined it.
Over the next few days, she offered me a painkiller for everything from a tummy ache to being in a bad mood. That’s when I started to catch on. As it turns out, Britney and Brian’s lives revolved around their pill problems. It was all they talked about. We didn’t want to make enemies of people that we literally lived on top of, so we subtly started pulling back from the friendship. Eventually, Britney got fired from the job, and that’s when the choosy beggar-ing began.
They started out asking to borrow $20.00. We did it and they paid us back. No problem.
Next thing that happened is that they wanted to ‘share’ their cable account. Since we were all in the same building we could run a line and no one would know. Their idea was that we take turns paying each month. Of course, we went first. I did not like this at all but figured that if it went pear-shaped, we would have a legitimate excuse to get rid of them.
The third thing that happened was that Britney came to our door in tears. She said that Brian was downstairs, crying. She said that they had no food in the house and that Brian’s children were with them for the weekend and they were hungry. We weren’t exactly domesticated then, so we had no food to give them. Boyfriend and I are soft-hearted (and we were kind of naive back then), so we lent them some money for food (I think it was $50 or so).
The next day Britney is back and she’s going on and on about ‘Brian’s pill issue.’ Not hers, no it was all Brian.)Sometime during the conversation, she says that Brian had ‘made her lie to her parents and say they needed food for the children’ to get money for *****.
Boyfriend and I just looked at each other. We didn’t say a word to her, but we were furious.
A few days later, our cable was turned off. Since the account was in Britney and Brian’s name, we went down to their apartment to find out what was going on. They tried to cover it up at first by making excuses and hemming and hawing around, but it didn’t take long to figure out that the bill hadn’t been paid in over 2 months! We had given them money for the cable bill that month, but they spent it on something else (gee, I wonder what).
We ended up opening up our own account and they actually had the nerve to ask us to ‘share’ with them.
Ummm…that’s a hard nope.
They got very pushy about the issue and a few words were exchanged. It wasn’t a pleasant conversation, but we finally had the excuse we needed to cut them off.
The problem was that they would NOT leave us alone.
They badmouthed us to other people in the building. They stole things from our cars. They called in noise complaints on us and sent the police to beat on our doors, waking us up at 2 and 3 am. There were a few other things, too, but that was the final straw. I was just. fed. up.
One night while watching TV a commercial for Valtrex came on, and I got an idea. As it turns out, the first few doses of the anti-Herpes medication are free. All we needed was a name and an address to have free information and a voucher for free samples sent to our home.
We dialed the number and sat back and waited.
Now, I know the ‘subscribing people to junk mail’ or dirty magazines is kind of a cliche, and we didn’t really expect anything to come of it. What we had hoped for at most was a blow-up of some sort. We figured that, if we were lucky, there would be a fight and some cheating accusations. Maybe – if fortune really smiled upon us – they would even break up.
What we got was so much more. It was, in fact, glorious.
About ten days after we made the call, a huge ruckus outside got our attention. Britney was in a rage. She was in the yard, screaming at Brian, calling him every name in the book. Brian was standing there haplessly watching as she threw his belongings into the yard.
Clothes were everywhere. A TV and a lamp smashed on the sidewalk. Britney sat in the middle of it like a blonde banshee in booty shorts, cursing and screaming at the top of her lungs. We were extremely gratified when she asked which of his ‘feckin’ hos’ gave it to him.
Eventually, Brian lost patience and the two started brawling in the middle of the street. Beer bottles and gauntlets were thrown. A weave was snatched off. It was a scene fit for the Jerry Springer show. Eventually, the police showed up and Britney and Brian were driven off in the city’s free black-and-white cab service. They were taken to spend the night in the city’s free hotel accommodations, aka the county jail. Apparently, when the police intervened, the couple was found to be in possession of illegal prescription *****, and a night in jail turned into multiple nights in jail. Imagine that.
They never returned to the building and we never saw or heard from them again. For all I know, they’re still in jail.” ambthab
27. Move To The Neighborhood And Change How Things Have Been Done For Years? Enjoy Paying Up
“My great grandparents planted an orchard, and it is now at least 120 years old. My grandparents and my parents were really proud of the peach trees growing in it and did their best to keep them well and in good health. We always threw a big party when the peaches were ready to be harvested and invited all of our friends and neighbours to it. I loved those parties.
The neighbors on the property to the south of our orchard were particularly fond of our peaches. They were a bunch of fine old people and me and the old man, Sam, were pretty good friends. He taught me a lot about woodworking with handtools only and we had some great evenings in his workshop. We finished many good whiskeys in there together. In return, he got a lot of fine peaches, marmalade, homemade peach liqueur, etc… Sadly he died a good ten years ago, cancer sucks. His wife followed soon after, many suspected it was of a broken heart. They had no kids, so all of their property was left to the state, except his tools and whiskey collection, which he had gifted me a few weeks before he died.
In comes Karen. The name speaks for itself. Haircut, attitude, bitchiness. The whole deal. She bought the property of my late neighbors. We hadn’t had the kind of money to buy it at that time, as we had met some dire straits the years before and all our savings were gone. The first thing she did (before she actually moved in), was to go round and make demands of the neighbors on the surrounding properties. When it was finally our turn to listen to her gibberish, she told us that we needed to remove half of the trees, as the leaves were blowing on her property. We told her in a polite way, that we won’t comply to her demands as the orchard is a vital part of our family heritage/tradition/life and has been there for at least 120 years. She was pretty pissed but did nothing for the time being.
There are some things you need to know before I continue with the story. The workshop I mentioned before was situated right at the border to our property. It was a small timber-framed building, at least 160 to 180 years old. The regulations in my state are pretty strict concerning old structures. Every structure over 100 years is protected and you need special permission to tear it down. Failing to get this permission can lead to a hefty fine. To get permission to build a new building, it has to be up to code and you have to ask your surrounding neighbors and if they agree, you’re good to go. Except there is one specialty in my county. You have to keep a certain distance to the border of the property to allow emergency services full access to your property. If one of these requirements isn’t met, the building is illegal or at least only partially legal and can actually be ordered by the court to be torn down. That might come in handy later.
So, back to my Karen. After our first encounter with her, she did her best to pester the whole neighborhood. She got the neighbor’s dog put down because he allegedly attacked her brat. It later turned out she faked the attack. The dog was the sweetest and most innocent dog you could imagine. A Bernese mountain dog, big, but a real teddy bear. Anyways. She later got us to stop doing our annual peach parties, as she called the police every time for various reasons. Noise complaints (we had a band playing there in the afternoon), arson (we lit a fire in a designated fire pit in the middle of our property), she called the ATF on us (allegedly making moonshine, my dad had a license to distill for our own consumption), in short, she was a real pain in the butt. After three years, we decided it wasn’t worth it to deal with various officers and law enforcement agencies every time we threw the party. We decided to quit. After she had reached this goal, she resorted to pestering us to remove the orchard. We didn’t cave in and some things started to get really fishy. Somehow the tires of our trucks got slashed, eggs got thrown on our farm house, our cat disappeared and surfaced a few days later in pretty rough condition. It looked like somebody had tried to cut his tail off. Don’t worry, he healed up completely, but we actually couldn’t prove that she did all that.
Then came the day she made her biggest mistake. She had a company come in in a sort of secret operation and tear down the old woodworking workshop overnight. Two days later, they started building a big garage/recreational center/house right where the shop was, but she missed one fine detail, which got pretty important later on – she didn’t ask our permission, nor the neighbors’.
A short while after, the trees right next to her property started to get sick. The leaves turned brown in the middle of summer, and the branches started to die. We lost four trees before we figured out the cause. Somebody had driven long copper nails into them. We had a suspicion, but we couldn’t prove it. So we put up some trail cameras. Perfectly legal, as it was on our own property. We caught her red-handed. My dad confronted her, she apologized and my dad, and being the way too nice guy he is, wanted to let her get off the hook. But not me. The nail she drove into our oldest tree was the final nail to her coffin. I started to investigate.
I had some friends at the administration of our county and asked them to do some inquiries. Turns out she hadn’t applied for permission to tear down the old shop, nor for permission to build a new building. I pressed further about the borderline of our property. Turns out, the old markers vanished over time and her building was about 3 feet on our property. After I had gathered all this information, I presented it to my parents. At first, they were reluctant as they didn’t want to start a neighborhood clash. But after I recalled all the things she did to us and our neighbors, they were in.
So let the games begin. First, we called the authorities on her for tearing down a protected building and presented them with all the evidence we gathered. Then we called the building authorities on her for building a building without permission, not up to code, and not only did she not keep the required distance to the property border, but she also built on our property without our permission.
Long story short, turns out the workshop hasn’t only been protected because of its age, but also because it was a historical landmark, which played a vital role in conflict back in the 1860s. She got sued for this and had to pay a fine of an equivalent of about $150,000. She further had to demolish her newly built building, costing an additional $50,000. She got fined for this too (about $83,000) and had to rebuild the workshop at on her own expense, which was another whopping $154,000, as it had to be period correct up to the smallest detail. Means it had to be built with the correct materials with handtools only and to the correct dimensions. As you can imagine, paying professionals to build quite a large timber-framed building only by hand gets pretty expensive pretty fast. So, all in all, it cost her an equivalent of $437,000 plus further expenses with lawyers, etc. This caused her to go bankrupt so she had to sell the property in the end, which my parents bought, by the way. Last I heard of her was that she moved back to the big city. Yes, the Peach Parties are still on and even more lit than ever! ” gustavotherecliner
26. Write Me The Worst Message Because You’ll Never See Me Again? Get Grounded For 3 Years
“I was bullied relentlessly from the 3rd to 7th grade by multiple people in my class or upper grades. After I graduated 8th grade I received a Facebook message from Andy, a boy who had been bullying and harassing me from the very beginning of it all. I would post the exact message, but it was extremely vulgar and long. He ended it by saying that since we would never see each other again, he could put it all out in the open about how much of an idiotic, ugly, and loser I was. Of course, he used a more colorful dictionary with those words but you get the idea.
However, there was one problem; my parents’ owned a large wood chipper and Andy’s father owned a tree cutting business. Andy’s Father would often rent it from them for the much larger jobs. During the Summer I noticed him walk in and start talking to my uncle, and I realized the golden opportunity I had been given. I loaded Facebook on my laptop and brought up the message. I then approach his dad and to tell him, ‘Your son sent this message to me a few days after graduating, and I think its really important you read it.’ He raised an eyebrow at first but took my laptop. As he read, I could visibly see his face turn ***** red and his hands shook as he gripped the sides of my laptop harder and harder. I think he re-read the entire thing over again just to make sure what he was reading and even clicked the profile to make sure it had indeed been his son who sent it. Finally, he gave me my computer back and told me he was so sorry for his son’s behavior and language, and that he would most certainly be dealing with Andy the moment he got home.
It took 2 months for me to hear back about the fallout. Andy’s older (and way nicer) brother Grant was friends with my sister, who told her and then she told me. Andy was grounded for the entire summer, fall, and winter break. His parent’s canceled the trip he was going to take to the beach with their student youth group at church and canceled his summer camp trip. They decided to hold him back from getting his driving permit for a full year, take away all his games and computer, and rather than going with his dad and brother on their hunting trips he would be sent to his grandparents’ house to help clean. Andy’s social media passwords were changed so he didn’t have access to them. His Xbox account was deleted, and Andy would have to work for his dad doing tree cutting the entire summer and winter holiday (there were more punishments but I honestly cannot recall them). I ruined his life for a good 2-3 years and destroyed the relationship he had with his father and mother (probably not forever, but they certainly no longer saw him as their well-behaved youngest child). It was so satisfying.” AppleFruitSpice
25. Force Me To Produce A Subpar Product? I’ll Make It Awesome Behind Your Back
“For the past ten years, I have been working ‘back of house’ in fine dining restaurants. I love learning, and I love all things about food. Because of this, I’ve had a variety of positions in many establishments, learning a pretty diverse set of skills. I’ve baked bread and been a line dog, pastry chef, sous chef, executive chef, all the things.
So six months ago, I decided I wanted to try something different and begin to enjoy my life. I didn’t want where I worked to define me anymore because I’m a human and I have other things that I enjoy. So I accepted a position at a small local dairy and began to learn cheesemaking. It’s been great. I have been able to work on my house/garden and spend so much time with my dogs. But admittedly, I do miss the kitchen and so I agreed two months ago to help out a few ex-coworkers who are the respective chef and sous chef at a new restaurant with a pretty cool concept. In the spirit of trying to maintain my new relaxed life, I agreed to only work two days a week.
Now a week in, my new boss, Le Chef, asks me to please make some ice cream, following his recipe. He’d made a small batch already and gave me a bite to try. He said: ‘It’s a bit hard, but I think that’s just because of the temp of the freezer.’ I took a bite, and while the flavor was nice, the texture was off. Hard, icy, and chalky. He gave me his recipe and I could immediately spot the problem.
For those who haven’t made a lot of ice cream, there are a few things that make really great ice cream. Yolks, sugar, fat, air. Yolks are tempered in and help bind the sugar/liquid/fat together. The sugar content helps lower the freezing point of the mix, preventing it from freezing into a solid block. As it’s churning, air is added to the base and the yolks help hold that air in place, making the ice cream lighter. They also add fat and make for really rich ice cream. Commercial ice creams often skimp on the yolks and use stabilizers to help hold the air inside the ice cream.
This specific recipe had only 4 yolks and 110g of sugar per quart of liquid(milk/cream mix). A pretty standard recipe would have at least 6 yolks and 250g sugar.
I tried to point this out to Le Chef, also pointing out that his ice cream machine was a two-quart gelato spinner which inherently spins slower and therefore incorporates less air. I offered to troubleshoot the base and make a few test batches so we could really bring this ice cream home. Le Chef gives me a funny look, says the recipe is fine and instructs me to make a large batch of it, so I do.
The following week Le Chef asks me to work on a new flavor of ice cream and to just use his base recipe and add flavor until it’s right. I’m kind of sick of watching the poor girl who has to scoop the ice cream struggle with a rock at this point, and also annoyed that the ice cream I made a week prior is hard, icy, chalky. So I decided to just ignore him and make a base that I know will be killer. The next day we spin it up, and it is luxurious. Smooth, creamy, all the things. The owner of the restaurant makes a comment about how fantastic it is. I explain to a fellow coworker (sous) what I changed, and I guess he tried to tell Le Chef that I had made some adjustments but Le Chef refuses to believe him.
In the meantime, Le Chef makes more ice cream base, and they continue to come out crappy. A mutual coworker tells me Le Chef is getting upset that he can’t make ice cream as nice as I can, and still refuses to ask me why. I try to explain ice cream science to him the next day, and am met with a wall of knowledge, ‘4 yolks are fine’ and ‘the freezer is too cold.’
At this point, I am frustrated, because I think learning and sharing is key to everyone’s success. A better product makes for happier customers. I also don’t want to make anything that is crappy and have Le Chef be able to say that I am the responsible party. So I go full revenge. I begin to use my favorite ice cream recipe which calls for a whopping 12 yolks per quart. I add a splash of appropriate liquor, and sub out some of the sugar for an inverted sugar, all done super low key. I don’t tell anyone, and the results are ridiculously good.
According to a mutual coworker, it’s been driving Le Chef CRAZY. But until he decides to man up and ask for a mini-lesson on ice cream science, I’m just gonna keep improving his recipes on the down low and enjoy laughing about it to myself on my ride home.” Lakeveloute
24. Make Me Run The Service Department By Myself With No Support? See You Never!
“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 a 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 off their past declined services a the pop-ups saying: ‘Add engine oil change’ to the Plug-In electric-only car, so its got issues. You need to get a customer in and out quick 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 Facebook that my fiancee and I moved back into town. We’re paid based off of 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 who 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 off VIN so they weren’t forgotten.
I also made sure our Loaner vehicles could be checked in or out easier and being 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 the *** 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 amoung of technicans 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 7am-4pm.
I’m having to walk around a lot and ended up bleeding through 3 pairs of socks and bandages I swapped out. 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 ***** 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 cu**************stome*r we*nt AP*E *** that she saw ***** 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 ***** 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 wanted 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.”
TheDirtDude117
23. Shun Me For Doing My Job? I’ll Get The School Shut Down
“I’ve always been a shy person, and I grew up in a large, urban area. In high school, I had friends, but we were the nerdy type and thought of as losers. I was one of two girls in our core friend group of four kids. Of course, we eventually dated the guys in our group. The youngest in our group was one of the boys, Doug, in ninth grade, and the oldest was a boy, Clayton, in eleventh. The other girl, Sarah, and I were in tenth. I dated Doug all through high school where I was relentlessly teased by people outside of our group because he’s a bit more than a year younger than me. Sarah and Clayton married in college, and are still happily married five years later. Doug and I, for our part, got married once he finished college, and we have been married almost four years. We have a one-year-old daughter, Raquelle.
Both Doug and Clayton eventually got careers in IT. Sarah and Clayton have their own, one-year-old daughter, Amber. Sarah has a small but thriving home business selling refurbished furniture on eBay, that she and Clayton find on weekends.
The reason I give so much backstory is that our friend group is pretty isolated. Chalk it up to years of bullying, being made fun of, excluded, you name it. It happened to all four of us in school, even in primary and middle school. Even now, in my later twenties, I don’t really have close friends besides Sarah, Clayton, and of course my husband Doug who is my best friend. This is true, even though we moved all the way to the Midwest for Doug’s career (we’re still close enough and well off enough so that we can regularly fly out to see our friends and vice versa). Doug makes more than enough money to support all three of us on his salary alone, especially in our state, and always says it’s okay if I am a stay at home mom.
However, in this new environment, I thought I might have a fresh start. To work on being more outgoing, as it were. No one in my new town knew me from when I was a kid, and a total reject. Doug’s father passed away, and so his mother lives with us and has generously helped take care of Raquelle. We all talked it over, and agreed I could go back to college to get a teaching certification for my bachelor’s degree (math). Fast forward just a few months, and thanks to an accelerated program and shortage of maths teachers in my area, I got my teaching license quite quickly and easily. I also made a few new girlfriends in the teaching program, which helped my self-esteem.
So, I put out my resume and within just a few short weeks, I get hired at an independent studies charter school. I was looking to get hired at a regular high school, but whatever. It was a credit recovery school. Basically, the idea was that kids who washed out of the regular school district or couldn’t succeed there for whatever reason could try to succeed in our setting. We hosted grades nine through twelve. Students would make appointments and come in on their own time, meet independently with teachers, be given assignments and projects, and basically earn a legit high school diploma eventually.
I knew it was kind of weird to go back to a place (high school) where I never fit in, but I thought it would be totally different from the perspective of an adult.
The school was one large classroom the size of a basketball court, with administrative offices, science labs, even an exercise room for PE all around the perimeter. About fifty student desks were lined around the center of the room in rows, and around these desks were about a dozen teacher desks. Generally, we’d have two teachers per subject area (ie, two English, two math, two history, etc.) and we each had our own roster of students and ensured that they visited all teachers for whose subjects they owed credits. Although the school officially had over two hundred students on the various rosters, there were rarely more than ten or so students in the school at any one time, due to different appointments throughout the day.
That meant that there was tons of downtime where the teachers would just shoot the breeze with one another.
I could see right away from day one that all the teachers were good friends with one another. That’s not a bad thing at all. Lunch is at noon every day and the school shuts down for a whole hour. Typically, the other teachers would all go out to lunch with one another, or break off into twos and threes. I didn’t really know anyone so I didn’t take offense to anyone not inviting me to go to lunch with them. I thought, well, maybe give it a few weeks and it will change. I had that old feeling from when I was a kid, of being rejected. Still, I was the new person, so I tried not to take it personally. Besides, forming relationships, colleagues included, is a two-way street and I could reach out, too. Til then, it was lunch at the desk. Sometimes I’d facetime hubby, who usually had lunch at that time, too, but I was proud of him for making friends at his own work and tried to minimize taking up his time.
I didn’t really focus on that too much, though, and just did my job. Students tended to like me and after just a few weeks it became noticeable that my students made more appointments to see me than other teachers’ students made to see them. Every time a student finished a project or assignment for a teacher, whatever the subject, they would turn it into their ‘main’ teacher, the one who had the student on their main roster. It soon became clear that students on my roster were finishing their assignments and graduating at a faster rate than my peers. I didn’t plan for this to happen; it just turned out that way.
Over time, holidays would pass and our school would have mandated social and team-building functions (ie, potluck in the breakroom, etc.). It seems like I was making progress socially. I was always positive and nice to my peers and would be myself around them, try to tell them about me and learn about them. They were being nice to me, too, at least to my face, so I thought I was finally fitting in. One day, however, the principal called me into her office to tell me that someone had told her that I was smug and antisocial and that it wasn’t good for the school environment for teachers to ‘bully’ one another. I was flabbergasted and of course, my initial reaction was to ask who told her this, but the principal said it was confidential, and to just ‘work on being nicer.’ I didn’t want to seem intransigent or defiant, so I apologized for hurting anyone’s feelings but also pointed out that I was trying my very best to fit in, and I had been working there the shortest compared to everyone else, so of course I didn’t want to overstep. I also pointed out that students on my roster were graduating at a good pace (I didn’t throw shade at any of my colleagues). My principal agreed with me on this and praised me heartily. The vice-principal happened to be walking by, and he overheard the principal praising me. He too threw in the comment that I was an exemplary teacher, the students were praising me in private to him, and that the school had ‘big plans’ for me, especially since we were on pace to outperform another independent study charter school a few miles away, which competed for the same state funding.
This pleased me of course and took the edge off the butthurt of people telling the principal I was not nice. A small (maybe big) red flag was that they told me that students graduating meant massive funding for our school, money which the regular district didn’t want the charter school to have. And, that if all teachers could ‘get more students to turn in work,’ we all might get bonuses. I mean, all that is good, but both of them spoke about student graduation only in terms of how it could benefit our own pocketbooks.
Ever since I started working at the school, what had originally been five students, ten at the most working in the classroom at a time became twenty or more (almost every one of them a kid on my roster) every day hanging out for hours and hours doing their work in our quiet classroom environment. I thought this was great because this meant they could graduate sooner and get on with their lives.
Gradually, however, I noticed that some of my peers looked resentful when the classroom was so full. I strongly suspect this is because they had grown accustomed to having long stretches of time to simply mess about online at their desks, playing with their smartphones, and gossiping. Our school had a policy that unless you were on a break, you had to be at your desk and make yourself available to grade student work in your subject area. They didn’t like grading my student’s work, because eventually, ‘credit’ for that student graduating would go to me, their main teacher. I certainly didn’t mind grading work from students who were on other teachers’ rosters. That’s the whole point of our job. Gradually, I came to realize that the school didn’t focus so much on actually teaching the students anything and making sure that their diploma actually meant something, then just rubber-stamping their work and saying it was satisfactory, using the fact that we were licensed, credentialed professionals as an official backup. Really, any reasonably intelligent adult (or even kid) could do the type of work some of my colleagues were actually doing.
What would happen was, say, a kid on my roster is behind five credits in English if he wants to graduate. I would then send him to the English teacher to request a packet of English work. The kid would do the work, give it to the English teacher to grade, she would sign off on it, I would input the grade in my computer, and the kid would be one credit closer to graduation. It soon became clear to me that the teachers weren’t even actually looking at the packets before giving them a grade, really just pulling grades out of their butts. I would never dream of doing that on any student’s math work. That’s the way they’d grade for me, but they’d do it in a slow way, so as to reduce the speed of students graduating from my roster. As in, they’d let piles of my students’ work sit on their desk ungraded, while they played Clash of Clans at their desk.
I never said anything, and was always polite and friendly to them, even though I knew at least one of them had badmouthed me to the principal. Needless to say, even months into my new job, I wasn’t making friends with my coworkers. I was nice to them, and it seemed at face value that they at least respected me on a professional level, at least to my face, so I’d accept that for the time being.
The big switch came when the principal actually singled me out at a staff meeting as an exemplary teacher. She said that I had come from [big city] and have succeeded to an amazing degree and that I had set a record for how many students were graduating high school on my roster. From that point on, I sensed that people were being cold to me. It felt a lot like high school, except unlike high school where other girls would openly mock me as a tall skinny no-butt ******* having a giraffe, adults did it in colder ways.
On rare occasions where the whole classroom was empty, or if I’d run into groups of them in the breakroom, they would talk about all these fun things they did together after work, or talk about the big party they were all going to have at such and such venue, and how everyone was invited. Except, obviously…
Well, I didn’t really mind, actually. I wasn’t going to let them being petty ruin the good feeling I had from helping students and feeling like I was making a difference. I was still very nice to everyone and kept up my positive attitude. Inside I felt SO bad and so left out, however. I didn’t tell my husband about basically being shunned at work, and instead, I focused just on my success in getting students to graduate.
Anyway, some of my students would actually quietly complain to me that ‘Miss So and So doesn’t even grade our work.’ I’d NEVER badmouth my coworkers, especially to the kids (it’s important to have a united front of course), but on the sly, I’d separate those work packets that were clearly not graded properly and look them over myself as best I could. Although I was only licensed to teach math, if, say, a history packet seemed incomplete, and yet had a ‘B + nice work’ on the cover, I’d sort of quietly, as diplomatically as I could, staple a new cover sheet to it, ask the student to finish it for real, and submit it again to the teacher. I’d make sure the student asked the teacher to grade it in front of him or her as he or she was eager to see the results of all their hard work. Although the teachers HATED it when my kids did this, I did make sure my students’ work was as legitimately graded as possible. Somewhat surprisingly, students appreciated my determination that they didn’t BS their way through what was obviously a BS school.
When it came to other teachers’ students coming to me with math packets, I did the professional thing and actually went over the packets, and gave the tests and quizzes as prescribed in the employee handbook for our school and as is mandated by our state. The other teachers didn’t like this, I guess because they were used to teachers just rubberstamping the work as passing, regardless of whether or not it was competently done. Invariably, teachers preferred to send their ‘math’ kids to the other teacher, because he had no problem just breezing through the packets as if they were flipbooks and assigning whatever grade he dreamed of. However, even though for him to just scribble ‘C+, please show work for each equation’ on packet covers took no time at all and he could go back to searching updating profiles on OkCupid (I found out eventually that he was already married), he resented the fact that he ‘graded’ perhaps twenty math packets in one day, whereas I graded maybe five, because I graded them and assigned the tests and everything, which of course took time. Eventually, other teachers began to grumble, too, how I was taking too long to grade their kids’ packets and thus slowing down their students’ graduations, whereas mine was graduating relatively faster.
I began to hear rumors that kids only came to see me, especially the boys, because they wanted to screw me. Naturally, the rumors eventually spread that I actually WAS having affairs with the kids. Other rumors spread that I was unqualified to be a math teacher. What was a woman doing being a math teacher anyway, I was just trying to hook up with young studs, all sorts of nonsense. Still, more rumors spread that I was cheating with my graduation rates and that it was all fraud somehow. My husband Doug had actually come to see me on a couple of occasions at the school to go with me to doctor’s appointments, so the staff knew what he looked like.
One day, I had my phone out on my desk when Clayton called to tell me the news that he and Sarah were coming to visit next month. Unfortunately, for my reputation at that school, Clayton’s contact avatar showed hugely on my phone screen when he called in the middle of the day, and one of my busybody coworkers happened to be walking by my desk, saw my phone, and made a face of barely concealed contempt.
Needless to say, rumors soon spread that I was cheating on Doug with some other young man, along with all the high schoolers who I supposedly worked with off the clock. Still, I tried to grind it out.
But, I would plan my revenge, too, if it came to that. I’m mature, but I’m not above getting even. I went through twelve years of crap growing up. I’d be ****** if I resigned myself to a lifetime of crap as a grownup.
First thing I did was let my principal know what was going on. My plan was if she addressed the bullying at a future meeting and put an end to it, then hey, I wouldn’t even need to get revenge. I’d just go back to doing my job and minding my own business. I was kind of hoping the principal would back me up, as up until now, aside from the red flag about being obsessed with the school getting money and not with students learning anything, she seemed friendly enough if a bit detached from her school’s day to day operations. I told her that students would tell me quietly that Mr. So and So or Ms. What’s Her Name told them that I was dating a student or cheating on my husband. More than one kid would tell me these kinds of things. I knew my kids weren’t trolling me as over the months I’d established a good rapport with all of them.
Principal basically gaslights me and tells me I’m being paranoid. ‘It’s a high school,’ she says, ‘in high schools there are rumors. It’s part of the territory.’ Yeah, I reply, but the rumors are usually from students, not adults. She doesn’t really address this, other than to tell me that I needed to grow up and not let petty things like supposed rumors. She tells me to ‘be the bigger person.’
Nah.
I should have mentioned that I had brought my cellphone in with me, and had been recording the principal’s responses to what I had been saying. Which was good for the case I was building, because, as if on cue, the vice principal comes walking by once again, ‘Oh hey, Mr. Vice Principal Dude, come in really quick!’
I thought Principal was going to tell him about my concerns about the rumors that I was basically both an adulterer and also trying to go to jail for having illicit fun with minors. But no, instead principal and vice-principal complain to me that I am being too thorough in my grading of math work from students on other teachers’ rosters. I explain that I’m trying to do my job according to the employee handbook they themselves had given me, and according to the two-day training seminar (standard for all teachers of independent studies schools where I live) they had mandated I attend prior to my first day of employment.
They tell me that I needed to ‘play ball’ and that our task was to get these kids out the door with that diploma in hand. I counter with, what good is a diploma if they don’t actually know any history or how to read or how to use the scientific method or whatever. The principal actually calls me a ‘pretentious, wannabe female Jaime Escalante (famous calculus teacher).’ They both strongly encourage me to use my ‘professional judgment’ (ie, place my teaching license in jeopardy) by assigning passing marks to work that is clearly not passing. I get all of this on record, and I make sure to email a backup copy of the mp3 to my outside email address.
Our school plays it slick when it comes to the school board inspecting our paperwork. Whenever the principal knows the state is coming for an inspection of our packets (an audit, they like to call it), they have each of us take extra special care to grade about three or four packets in our subject area very thoroughly. These packets are placed in a file cabinet in the middle of the classroom, so as to imply they represent our average work. All other packets with BS grades on them go in these other file cabinets in the back, that the school never invites the inspectors to look at. We tend to empty out students’ folders into these file cabinets after they graduate. The school had a policy that once a packet was three months old, we only had to retain the cover with the teacher grades and comments to save cabinet space, thereby destroying evidence that the actual packet behind the cover was never actually done properly. The phony cabinet in the middle of the classroom represented ‘active work.’
The only two sort of friends I make at the school was the music teacher and computer teacher, who taught small labs only once a week, and both of whom had other, full-time jobs and were married (not to each other) and had families. The music teacher taught at a local community college and did the charter school just as a side hustle, and the computer guy consulted and made six figures. I, therefore, didn’t feel too much guilt about what I was going to do. Still, I quietly hinted at my plan to both of them on the day they came to campus, and both of them were like, ‘do it!’
After getting the principal and vice-principal (and the counselor too, who also ‘just so happened to be walking by’) all encouraged me to basically commit academic fraud, I thought, eff em. I also suspected and later confirmed they had a secret buzzer system to surreptitiously call one another from their desks, which is why they always happened to be available at the same time when necessary or convenient.
I snuck toward the filing area where all of our BS student work credits were stored, and day by day over a period of three months took a video of hundreds of packet covers, all of them labeled with academic grades, teacher comments, and teacher signatures. I of course also continued the videos to show page after page of blank work and incomplete work, nonsensical work… English packets especially were rife with ridiculous gibberish, sometimes even mocking the teachers, like, ‘Ms. English teacher lady is a **** and she doesn’t even grade our work LOL!’ and the cover would have Ms. English teacher lady’s signature along with ‘A+, fantastic! You are such a talented writer!’
Sure enough, after three months, the secretary (who was also kind of snooty and played on her smartphone and uploaded selfies to Instagram all day even though she was like fifty-five) shredded mountains of bogus work and filed only the covers.
Throughout this whole time, I’d been slyly walking about the classroom in such a way that other teachers would think I wasn’t trying to look at them or what was on their computer, and I’d catch video of them on Facebook or Plenty of Fish or shopping on eBay, and they have a student interviewing right in front of them, what the actual EFF.
At home one day I asked Doug how to do a remote microphone that I could control from far away. He’s like, what for, are you trying to be James Bond? But he’s so smart and it’s child’s play for him, so he personally rigs one for me at work. Basically, it’s like a wireless mic that isn’t a detectable Bluetooth, and he sets up a way for me to turn it on and off from far away. I’m like, that’s awesome, can I have ten? He smiles but he asks no questions because he’s awesome like that. Next day, he has a dozen of them. I want it so that there’s no way for my devices to appear when the other teachers turn on their Bluetooth earpieces.
I’m always the first at work because my coworkers tend to be irresponsible *****, so even though everyone is supposed to be at their desks by 8:00 am, most of them drift in at 8:10, 8:20, and so on. I’m there at 7:30 just in case. I know the code how to get in on the keyless entry side door, let myself in, and slip a mic beneath everyone’s desk. Each mic has this mini watch battery that’s supposed to last quite a long time. I bring the old smartphone that I don’t use anymore and make sure it has a huuuuuuuuuge capacity SD card that my husband got for me installed. I connect it as wireless audio input for the mics. I then hit record, and every day for two weeks I hear the teachers, most of whom are wearing Bluetooth headsets ever since it became uncool to yell gossip across the room, talking trash all day long. Totally unrelated to work. Saying the most inappropriate things about other teachers, the principal, even the kids. Some of the things these middle-aged women would say about what they would love to do with ‘that young, blonde God over there’ made me want to puke. Of course, these teachers are too stupid to simply text one another if they really want to sneak around and talk trash. To them, the Bluetooth thing is easier.
It stung, but I knew I struck gold when I heard them spreading false rumors about me, calling me an ****** B, a pretentious, big city loser with no friends, they’d definitely get me fired. They’d also talk about how they didn’t grade and just pretended to, that they were so glad that they could sit all day instead of teaching in the district, how it was a cushy job, how they were tricking state inspectors during audits. Every day, during my lonely lunches, when they all went off to, I dunno, Applebee’s? I loaded the previous day’s MP3s into my real phone and edit out the dead air and keep all the good stuff. I then emailed these as separate, dated files to my outside email address.
This whole time, I continued to grade as normal, and take my time doing my job CORRECTLY. I knew I was going to pull the trigger soon anyway, but the last straw came when my latest student finished her last credit (coincidentally, a math one that I graded thoroughly) and now had enough credits to graduate. Every time a student graduates, we’re supposed to blow party horns and give them a little congratulations trophy, and they’d get their diploma in the mail a week or two later. Students had the option of attending schoolwide, formal graduation at the end of the school year in June if they had graduated anytime during that year from September onwards. Most tended, however, to go right into the workforce or to the local junior college or state school.
So, I blow my little party horn for this girl, and everyone in the classroom, students, and teachers, claps enthusiastically. The girl’s mom and dad and little brother come that day to the classroom and insisted on having a photo with me and they all gave me a big hug. Later, I reviewed the audio recordings of that day, and when the girl graduated, other teachers were saying I had ‘switched teams’ and was into ‘eating rug.’ They also said a lot of really mean things about her and her family, a lot of it totally racist (this family was Hispanic; all the teachers and admin, including me, are White).
It just so happened both the music teacher and computer guy were on campus that day. So, in true ‘Half Baked’ fashion, at the end of the day when the classroom was empty of students and teachers had the last five minutes to close down their computers, I walked from teacher to teacher, purse and other small belongings in hand, saying, ‘eff you, eff you, eff you, [pass by computer guy] you’re cool, [pass by music lady] you’re cool, eff you, eff you, eff you…’
I walk into the principal’s office while the other teachers are still in shock. She’s at her desk, and I know where her little buzzer button is beneath the desk (the computer guy told me about it because he was the one who installed it) and said, ‘I’m quitting. I don’t want to be part of your criminal school.’ And just in case the buzzer was just a buzzer and not also a speaker, I pressed the PA button on her wall and said, ‘Ms. OP is quitting today because you’re all a bunch of hateful, unprofessional, mean spirited ******, except Mr. Computer and Ms. Music; you’re cool.’
I decided to finally take my darling Doug up on his offer for me to be a stay at home mom. And I’m cool with mother in law. She can stay.
Epilogue: I emailed our school district’s superintendent, our city’s mayor, state governor, the entire school board, and our local newspaper with all the files of photos, audio, and video I had taken, along with a terse, one-page summary of what had been going on.
Within weeks, every single one of the teachers and administrators, except the computer lab guy and music lady (who I made special effort to prove had participated in no wrongdoing), had been fired and had their credentials at least suspended, and in most cases revoked outright. Only innocent parties like the custodial staff and the like emerged with their reputations unscathed. All of the teachers who worked at that school and had been named in the school board’s inquiry as having participated in fraudulent practices were blacklisted from teaching there, or anywhere.
After a few weeks of initial turmoil, all students currently enrolled at the school were, due to parental pressure, allowed to keep their existing credit completion status. Students who had already graduated did not have their diplomas rescinded. All students were given vouchers to enroll at the competing, independent charter school down the road.
My own, former school was shut down stayed abandoned for a couple of months, but eventually turned into an electronics store. All the other stuff happened within a month of my quitting. But I told my hubby about it on the very day I came home. Clayton and Sarah thought it was pretty LOL. I’ve since made new friends around town to go along with Computer guy and Music Lady and college friends, especially with other moms. Doug is killing it at work and is thinking of starting his own company. Life is good.” AlwaysLastChoice
22. Threaten And Beat Me? I’ll Reveal Your Dirty Not-So-Little Secret
“This is a long one, but a good one.
BACKSTORY
In 2003 I was the Director of Information Technology and Communications on a project tasked with securing Saddam’s major weapons storage sites throughout Iraq, performing a comprehensive inventory of said weapons, and then destroying what we’d found.
I was based at one of the largest weapons storage sites in the country so our mission there was monumental. Blowing up 100 tons of weapons six days a week (SCUD missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, anti-shipping missiles, all varieties of rockets, grenades, and mines heavy to light) was going to take years.
In order to accomplish this, we had to first build base defenses and secure an area the size of a small county. Once that was complete, we built a major support base in the middle of the Iraqi desert from scratch and all the infrastructure to support it. We’re talking housing, cafeteria with full commercial kitchen, office buildings, electrical, water, and sewage systems, toilet/shower trailers, recreational facilities, an eight-bay full-service vehicle shop/motor pool, and most importantly IMO, IT and communication systems (radio, network infrastructure, servers, VOIP phones, all connected to the outside world via satellite uplink).
STORY
All of these facilities housed bomb/explosive technicians, engineers, base support personnel, and as we had to provide our own security, private military contractors (PMC). If you’re not sure what PMCs are, think Blackwater/mercenaries or look them up and you’ll get the picture.
Our PMCs were a mix of ex-US Special Forces (Army, Green Berets, Delta Force, Air Force Pararescue, SEALs), British SAS, French Foreign Legion, and ex-South African/Rhodesian Special Forces (Recces, Selous Scouts). All of them were now mercenaries, and in reality, so were the rest of us to some degree. Most of the PMCs were **** good men, but when you assemble a motley crew of individuals from such disparate backgrounds, you’re bound to have a couple of bad apples in the bunch. This story is about one of those bad apples and for the purposes of this story, we’ll call this bad apple RoidRage.
RoidRage was one of the supervisory PMCs and oversaw the night watch from 2200-0600 (10PM-6AM). I usually started my day around 0700 (7 AM) and often worked until midnight although those last few hours were generally spent surfing the Internet and catching up with folks back in the US as Iraq is nine hours ahead. You’re in the middle of the Iraqi desert so there’s not much else to do anyways and other than the daily 100-ton explosion at 1600 (4 PM) the Internet is pretty much your primary source of entertainment. Since I was often in the office late at night, I was regularly alone in the office with RoidRage for a couple of hours.
As I previously mentioned, I managed the IT/communications infrastructure for this project and a vital component of that infrastructure were our telephones and voice over IP (VOIP) phone system. All of our sites used a satellite uplink to connect to a central VOIP server in Baghdad which in turn, connected us to the world. You could pick up any phone and dial a five-digit extension to connect to any of our sites throughout Iraq or call any international number in the world. It was a pretty sweet setup, but it was also ripe for abuse.
We tried locking down international dialing with various server rules and PIN schemes, but due to the inherent latency in satellite communications and the amount of bandwidth being consumed over a single satellite uplink at each site, we had trouble keeping those rules pushed to the phones on every desk. Ultimately, we had to scrap the restrictions as they were a real headache and we went with an honor system. All international calls for business would be logged for review by the site manager each month. Anybody wanting to make a personal international call had to use an AT&T calling card which you could top up online or with a credit card.
After spending a few nights alone in the office with RoidRage, I noticed a trend. RoidRage would start his shift, check-in with his men at their various positions/patrols on base, and then pick up the phone and talk in hushed tones for hours. It was a fairly large building and our desks were on opposite sides of the office so I couldn’t ever really make out what he was saying, but I could hear this constant murmur of him speaking to someone on the other end of the phone. It wasn’t my business however, so I largely ignored him. This went on for a couple of months and as our site manager had to return to the US for a family emergency, the phone logs went unreviewed during that time period.
A couple of weeks after the site manager returned, I have summoned to the conference room for a meeting with him and our senior US Military and Department of Defense (DoD) advisors. I could sense the tension in the room and as I sat down, the site manager slid a manila folder across the table to me. As I opened the folder to reveal pages upon pages of call logs, he said, ‘Freebass, we know you’re usually in the office late at night and somebody has been making hundreds of international calls during that time and racked up thousands of dollars in phone bills. I hate to say this, but you’re our prime suspect at this point and with theft of this magnitude, we’re going to have no choice but to terminate you immediately and bar you from working on any DoD contracts in the future. Unless you have some evidence to the contrary, we’re going to have to move forward with termination and remove you from the country on the next supply convoy.’
I was shocked and sat in stunned silence for a couple of seconds and then it hit me. Those calls were made by RoidRage! Someone hadn’t been using their calling card! I immediately protested my innocence and told them that every night, RoidRage would get on the phone at the start of his shift and would still be on the phone as I left around midnight.
They then summoned RoidRage to the conference room and confronted him with the records. He begrudgingly admitted it was him and began to spin some bullcrap story about being unable to top of his calling card with his credit cards and blah blah blah. All the while, he’s staring at me with eyes of the fiercest degree of rage. We were short on senior PMCs at the time so a call was made to Baghdad and a decision handed down that RoidRage’s employer was to immediately settle the debt with the US government and RoidRage’s salary would be withheld until he worked off the debt with his employer. RoidRage was also put on final warning that any future impropriety whatsoever would be met with immediate termination and removal from Iraq as well as being blacklisted from working future DoD contracts. For an ex-US Special Forces Operator turned mercenary like RoidRage, that would forever spell the end of the DoD contracting gravy train and he didn’t take this threat to his livelihood lightly. Now, any rational person would admit they messed up, tighten up their game, and move on, but RoidRage isn’t a rational person by a long shot and the events that were about to unfold would highlight his irrational and sociopathic nature.
After the daily demolition at 1600 (4 PM), I was especially dirty so I hurried back to the base to beat the evening rush on the shower trailer so I could grab a hot shower before the limited supply of hot water ran out (our water heaters took forever to heat). Upon entering the shower/toilet trailer, I noticed that I had the entire place to myself! I savored this rare moment of solitude, used the toilet in peace, disrobed, and stepped into a much needed, hot shower. Just as I was working a nice lather of shampoo into my hair, I hear the door to the shower trailer open…
Boots clomp across the floor to my shower stall and the shower curtain is ripped off its hanger by none other than a very pissed off RoidRage! Seething with rage, he grabbed me by the throat and yanked my wet, naked butt out of the shower and slammed me up against the opposite wall of the trailer choking me all the while. Now, I’m about 5’11” and a toned 175lbs., but RoidRage stands 6’4″ tall, weighs about 240lbs., and is a steroid-enhanced muscle-bound mass of a man. RoidRage’s grip on my throat put ever-increasing pressure on my windpipe and in my oxygen-deprived state, I began to panic. I thrashed about trying to loosen his grip, but in doing so I expended the limited oxygen I had and felt myself growing weaker by the moment. RoidRage leaned in close to my face and said, ‘You think you can rat me out like a little **** and there wouldn’t be consequences?! Let me tell you this, Iraq is the home of unsolved mysteries and bad stuff happens to people every day out here! You better watch your ****** back you **** a*s *********** because I’m gonna be coming for you from every ****** angle at every ****** opportunity from this moment forward!’ Just as I felt myself about to blackout, he threw me to the floor and gave me a solid kick to the stomach followed by another to the kidneys and walked out leaving me cold, wet, and gasping for air. I pulled myself up onto a nearby bench, caught my breath, and staggered back into the shower in shock. I pissed ***** for two days after that beating. So much for a peaceful afternoon shower…
I made my way to my quarters, sat on my bed, and thought about everything that had just taken place. My immediate thought was to report him to the powers that be but given the circumstances and that he was always armed, I had to plan my next course of action carefully. RoidRage is a steroid influenced individual and professional killer with his career on the line in the high-stress environment that is Iraq. My fear slowly turned to caution and then evolved into anger. Yes, I’d have to plan my next course of action and ultimate revenge very carefully. For the time being, I decided against reporting him and riding on any convoys he was on. I had been procrastinating setting up a private WiFi network connection to my trailer, but I wasn’t going to be caught dead spending any late nights alone in the office with RoidRage in the near future so I got that set up that night.
The next night I left my trailer to use the bathroom and as I passed the office on the way back to my room, I saw RoidRage sitting at his desk by the window on the phone. Why is this guy on the phone all the time and who is he talking to? Time to investigate.
INVESTIGATION
I don’t want to get off in the weeds in technical jargon so I’ll try to keep this as brief and simple as possible so you can comprehend my next course of action. All of our phones at our site were voice over IP (VOIP) phones and connected to the local network which was connected to our satellite uplink. Every VOIP phone has a unique MAC address, a fingerprint if you will, which identifies it on the network. I had the master list of all devices and phones connected to the network so I could easily identify the phone RoidRage used every night. Network Instruments makes a nice little program called ‘Observer’ which allows you to monitor all traffic on the network. It even has a cool little feature where you can flag a phone’s MAC address (fingerprint) and tell it to automatically begin capturing traffic on that phone from the moment the phone makes a call until the end of the call. Once the call is complete, it dumps the entire phone call to an audio file which you can then playback at your leisure. Pretty neat! Time to observe!
ANALYSIS
Over the next month, I amassed hours and hours of calls that RoidRage made and I finally found out who he was talking to! We already know that RoidRage is a huge waste of space, but the conversations I listened to took it to a whole other level of *************. I sat at my desk every day with my headphones in pretending to be listening to music, but in reality, I was digesting each and every call, taking notes, and marking timestamps of the ‘good”‘stuff. Here’s what I found:
RoidRage is married and has three kids. RoidRage also has a mistress in the US who is a stripper and by the sounds of it, she’s a world-class gold digger.
RoidRage spoke to his wife and kids about twice a week on average, but always kept the conversations brief because he was ‘busy running the show in a very dangerous Iraq.’
As soon as RoidRage would hang up with his family, he’d immediately call his stripper mistress. Let’s call her SM. RoidRage made it a point to call and talk to SM for hours every night. A ********* has to have priorities, right? Most of the conversations were pretty nasty phone ***, but others were sprinkled with bits of gold like, ‘Yeah, of course, I ****** hate my wife. She’s a dumb b*ch and I regret marrying her in the first place. The reason my kids are so ****** stupid is because of her *** genes.’ ‘Yes, baby, I promise as soon as I get home, I’m going to divorce her and marry you. Promise!’
Another memorable conversation involved RoidRage calling his wife and telling her that he’d have to cut his next vacation leave to the US short because he was so critical to the operations in Iraq, they wouldn’t be able to run the place without him. This conversation was followed by an immediate call to SM telling her, ‘Yeah, the old lady bought the story hook line and sinker. Yeah (chuckle), I told you, she’s a dumb ****! Yeah, baby, I’ll book the tickets and this time we’re going to Paris. We’re gonna do it big.’
While these conversations were certainly deplorable, other conversations with SM were more dangerous in nature and severe violations of operational security. Given RoidRage’s foul nature, I can kinda understand why he felt it necessary to brag about operations, but man, you’re talking to a stripper in the US who has no idea about any of this Iraq stuff anyways. Make it up if you must, but DON’T ACTUALLY DISCUSS THE SPECIFICS OF OUR OPERATIONS AND MOVEMENTS TO INFLATE YOUR PATHETIC EGO!
Some of these calls went like this, ‘Yeah, I’m the convoy commander tomorrow. Yep, large and in charge. I’m running a 20-vehicle convoy of flatbed trucks loaded with big SCUD missiles from Karbalah to Amarrah tomorrow morning at 0900 (9AM) and all 40 of the guys on the convoy report to ME.’ And, ‘These missiles are pretty volatile and sensitive and we’d be a prime target for the bad guys so I came up with a plan to cover everything with these huge canvas tents we stole off some local idiots so we can disguise everything. **** yeah, I’m smart baby!’
This is just ONE of the many calls of this nature and the growing frequency of these calls ultimately forced me to cut my investigation short and move to the next phase of my plan.
PHASE 1 ACTION
I started studying RoidRage’s movements and which convoys he was on and where they were going. If I was going to pull this off, I had to be pretty spot on with my timing. I edited all the calls down to the ‘good’ stuff and burned two CDs for two different audiences. RoidRage ran a weekly supply convoy to Baghdad and one of these CDs needed to be shipped to the US within a week’s time. The only way to make that happen was to drop off one of them to DHL at Baghdad International Airport. The convoy always stopped by there on their way back to our site to pick up beer and booze at the Duty Free (which was the only thing open in the airport terminal at that time) so I packaged one CD up and asked a buddy on the convoy to drop it off at DHL for me and told him I’d pay him back when he returned. Once the convoy returned to our base, my buddy handed me the receipt and tracking information. Done! Phase one is complete, now it’s time for phase two!
PHASE 2 ACTION
The following week, I packaged the other CD up and asked the same buddy on the supply convoy to drop that off to the DoD Country Director’s office at the project headquarters. By this time, the first CD was out for delivery in the US and the second CD would be delivered to Baghdad HQ in four hours. Perfect! Not to pat myself on the back, but the disaster that was about to unfold for RoidRage was the product of patience, dedication, meticulous planning, and flawless execution. The convoy made its way to Baghdad and the second CD was delivered to headquarters. RoidRage made the usual pass by the airport for the booze run and then returned later that night.
REACTION
The following morning the entire base awoke to an unusual sound. That unmistakable sound of the whirring of helicopter blades! The only time we’d ever had a chopper land was for a medevac (medical evacuation)!
So this Blackhawk helicopter, with overhead Apache escorts, lands and these guys come running out asking for RoidRage and the head of the PMC at our base. They unceremoniously roust RoidRage out of bed along with the head of security and told them they needed to leave immediately for Baghdad. With just the clothes on their back and their body armor, they were whisked away within minutes. As soon as they left, the camp manager approached me and said we needed to have a ‘chat’ with Baghdad in the conference room.
We made our way to the conference room and got on a call with our local DoD advisors and the DoD Country Director in Baghdad. He had listened to the CD and wanted to commend me for blowing the whistle on RoidRage. He also scolded me a bit for not blowing the whistle sooner on the first violation of operation security I had heard, but when I told him the entire story and the brutal assault I endured at the hands of RoidRage in the bathroom, he softened his tone a bit. He concluded the call with assurances that RoidRage would be ‘dealt with’ swiftly and thanked me for my vigilance.
FALLOUT
What follows was relayed to me by the head of security who traveled with RoidRage on the helicopter to Baghdad:
Upon arrival at the helipad at headquarters, a US Army security detail led the two individuals into the DoD Country Director’s office and RoidRage was confronted with the evidence. The Director sat there with the senior advisors present and played the entire CD in front of RoidRage and his superior. It was a heated one-sided conversation and RoidRage got ripped up one side and down the other. He was ordered to leave the country immediately and would be taken under escort to the US Air Force PAX terminal at Baghdad International Airport upon conclusion of the meeting. He was also notified that he would no longer be eligible to work DoD contracts in the future. The head of the PMC was also excoriated for allowing this behavior to happen on his watch and notified that their security company would now be under investigation for any other possible violations. If the investigation unearthed additional violations, they’d be found in breach of contract which would be terminated upon transition to a new PMC company. That company lasted another seven months in Iraq.
As RoidRage left the meeting under escort, the Director turned to him and said, ‘AND TELL YOUR ****** WIFE TO STOP CALLING HERE AND BLOWING UP THE PHONES! SHE’S PISSED OFF ABOUT SOMETHING, BUT THAT’S YOUR ****** PROBLEM TO DEAL WITH! YOU NEED TO CALL HER WHEN YOU GET TO THE AIRPORT AND TELL HER TO KNOCK THAT CRAP OFF!’ Moral of the story? Don’t mess with your IT guy.” freebass
21. Try To Get Me To Leave? I’ll Show You Who You’re Really Messing With
“Buckle up. It’s a long ride with a pleasant finish.
Some time back I was hired to a company by a CEO I had previously worked for someplace else. He was a good friend so when his newest company wasn’t achieving sales, he headhunted me to join the new one.
The company hadn’t made a sale in two years. Year one, the software product was in beta so it wasn’t ready to be sold. Year two they realized using the tech staff to make high-end sales to C-level executives was the sh*ttiest sales model one could conceptualize. In general, and there are exceptions of course, these two personality styles don’t speak the same language. Tech people talk tech. Buyers talk benefits and how the potential product fills needs. I bridge the gap well by translating tech-speak into natural conversational language so buyers better understand how their needs will be filled.
The job was an hour and a half drive one-way from my home so the CEO said I could work from home as long as I kept the sales management tool current (it’s where you keep the notes of each prospect’s status), came to important meetings and made sure the executive team had daily sales reports.
The first month I made the daily 3-hour commute because I needed to have solid, constant interaction with all the departments to rapidly form my sales strategy and develop a two-way confidence level with the section heads.
Once I had a handle on things, I was ready to launch my sales plan. In the meantime, the CEO hired a VP of Sales (B*tchboss) who started 4 days before I hit the ground running to get in front of buyers.
She was a VP coming from the banking industry and had a long career in sales and marketing in finance products. I hated her from the moment she arrived. She knew nothing about tech and I spent a huge amount of time trying to orient her which wasn’t ideal because I needed to work on my sales strategy. They brought her on board because she had strong experience gaining financial investors.
Nevertheless, I forged ahead. Traveled to a target state and spent 19 days crisscrossing it. When I came back I had 17 contracts from buyers totaling about $2M in sales. My CEO was overjoyed.
Fast forward six months and now working from home, I’m rocking and rolling. Sales are strong. CEO is happy. Good things are happening.
B*tchboss has landed an investor willing to drop $6M into the company, and they are coming into town for a discovery meeting. She asks me to drive up because they specifically want to meet the salesperson. Seconds before walking in the door for the big meeting, B*tchboss pulls me aside and says she needs me to back her up on a lie she has told them. Basically, she doubled my sales numbers. I told her there was no way I was going to do that. She says the CEO has okayed the lie.
We get to the part in the talk where the investor is looking over my inflated sales numbers on the prospectus, then directly asks me how many sales I’m making a month. B*tchboss is behind him waving her arms but I was having none of it and answered truthfully. He looks askance staring at the document which has the false number listed, while she’s giving me the stink eye behind him.
No one says a word. Dead silence.
I ask to see the document and fates have aligned allowing me to solve the dilemma. I explain the first two numbers were transposed (they correlated well to my real sales versus inflated sales if you flip-flopped the first two digits.) A potential investor is satisfied and we move on.
Switch gears. About a week later I was meeting with the CIO in his office and he referred to my ‘big *****.’ I’m no shrinking violet but it stunned me because it was so unexpected.
That night I was chatting with my BFF who happens to be a lawyer and told him about it in casual conversation. He said I should tell the CEO so he can address it. Thinking along with smart business practices, I decided to tell B*tchboss to whom I directly report as proper protocol since we don’t have an HR dept yet. Side note-I also reported directly to CIO as a boss since my role was a muddy mix of sales and tech.
The next day, the CEO calls me and I take him through it telling him it’s no big deal but to make sure he talked to CIO so it didn’t happen again. He says he’ll do it right away.
Two days later I check in with him and the CEO still hadn’t talked to CIO because the investors were in town. I gently push him to get it done and casually mention my best friend who happened to be a lawyer was the one who urged me to tell him because ‘any good CEO would want to know about it.’ I reiterate I’m not mad or upset.
The only word he heard was ‘lawyer.’
He went insane over the fact that I was bringing a lawyer into the mix. Now, this guy was my good friend. We’d worked together at two companies for years. I calmed him down (or so I thought,) explaining that I only wanted him to talk to CIO. I also told him I HADN’T brought a lawyer into it, that I had been innocently chatting with BFF who just happens to be a criminal defense attorney. He seemed okay and we hung up.
The next day, I’m working as usual and I get a call from an attorney who explains the company has hired her regarding my ****** harassment claim. I’m flummoxed and adamantly told her that was not the case, that I had no claim against the company. She said otherwise.
And that’s when everything changed. Dramatically.
CEO was furious with me for bringing this on when investors were looking at us. His reaction set the tone which filtered down. The company began to retaliate against me. B*tchboss now made it her mission to make my life ****: ‘forgetting’ to tell me about important meetings I was supposed to attend, freezing me out when I was in the office, telling me I could no longer even speak to CIO (a problem since I’m selling a multi-million dollar tech product needing his input AND I directly reported to him as my other boss), denying me a long-planned, approved vacation, basically anything she could devise to screw me over – she was gleefully working it.
Coinciding with this was a serious health problem I developed ultimately requiring surgery. My illness had no impact on my work as I was able to work from home which made things easier on me health-wise. ********* then decided that I need to come to the office every day despite a 3-hour round trip commute.
Now I know you’re thinking why didn’t I just leave, get another job somewhere else…
I needed health insurance. There was no way to turn around another job fast enough and I had a complex surgery scheduled requiring 3 surgeons for my procedure.
My doctor gave me a note for them which released me from having to make the daily commute so I could continue to work at home. As long as my work didn’t suffer, they legally couldn’t force me to commute especially since working from home was a part of my employment contract from the outset.
The night before my surgery, B*tchboss calls to tell me they’ve canceled my health insurance. After hanging up with B*tchboss I collapsed on the floor in a faint. I was so, so, so sick, and mentally exhausted from all the stress.
The next morning the CEO frantically calls asking to talk to me. My mom refuses to let him. I’m on official leave as of that morning and we’re heading to the hospital. CEO had told their lawyer about canceling my health insurance and she chewed him a new ******* telling him it was illegal. They immediately reinstated my insurance.
In the two weeks I was out, my mom had found a lawyer for me as it was clear shenanigans were going on. I still needed them as an employer because I was in no shape to rigorously job hunt while recovering.
Turns out all the ******* they were doing to me is illegal. Companies aren’t allowed to retaliate against employees when they report nefarious acts against them.
I met with my new lawyer who said I had an excellent claim for retaliation and took me on. He said I had to continue working there while he did his thing to stay within protocol while he filed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) claim.
Now it’s time for me to return to work. The company had relocated (planned) during my absence and B*tchboss refused to tell me where so I couldn’t come back to work. A company lawyer told them they HAD to tell me so B*tchboss gives me wrong directions making me late on day one.
I walk in the new office and it looks like any other place except for one thing. There is a wide-open area directly in front of the CEO’s glass office with a single desk in the middle of it. Welcome to my new desk.
Also, I wasn’t allowed to do sales anymore. In fact, I wasn’t allowed to do anything, at all, period.
They had hired a bunch of new people to the company and they treated me like a pariah. Turns out B*tchboss had gone to them telling a pack of lies and if they know what’s good for them they’ll stay away.
Since I had nothing to do but couldn’t just sit there looking like a dope, I worked on documenting everything being done to me as per my lawyer’s advice. I was meticulous in my note-taking.
B*tchboss began writing me up. Stupid stuff like not answering my phone on the first ring and for asking questions during company-wide meetings, asking to see my personal file which employees are legally entitled to do although not entitled to photocopy any of it.
Each time she wrote me up, I had to sign the write-up. There was a space for me to reply to it so I consistently wrote, ‘I do not agree with this assessment.’ It infuriated her so much, she wrote me up again for writing the statement that I didn’t agree with it.
There were several instances where she called me into her office and literally began screaming at me loudly and enthusiastically. I wouldn’t engage though; my standard answer to everything was OK which made her apoplectic. At one point, she’s inches from my face screaming, her face beet red and I just sat there with a dreamy expression whilst envisioning her blowing a vein in her head stroking out. I infuriated her with my equanimity.
Still and all, I was in it to win it at this point. It didn’t matter what new humiliation they dished out. I took it all with a bland face, then went to my desk and documented it in my notebook.
She loathed my notebook, sure that I was doing exactly what I was doing. Documenting. Because it was my personal property though, she couldn’t take it from me. I had to carry all my belongings with me everywhere (company-wide meetings, the bathroom, lunch) because I caught her one time going through my desk drawer….in my ****** purse!!!!! (Although it gave me great joy to write a note reading “*** you” which I left in my backpack and jerry-rigging it so I could tell if she went into it…which she did.)
I withstood it all with a brave face only breaking down once I left for the day. My attorney took a lot of sobbing phone calls during this period.
Finally, the day comes that my attorney has what he needs and I can resign, better still, he advises I don’t have to give a two-week notice. I come back from lunch and type up my letter with one sentence, ‘I resign immediately.’ I take it into the HR guy (who also took part in their evil machinations) and hand it to him. His mouth forms an O shape and he half stands up from his chair as he reads it. He looks up and I give him a smile and say bye-bye just as sweet as pie, walked out the door and drove home feeling mighty fine.
One month later, my lawyer and I are at the EEOC office along with the CEO, B*tchboss and their lawyer so the EEOC can review my claim.
In my state, you can’t just bring a lawsuit against a company for things like harassment and retaliation. Claims must first be evaluated by the EEOC, and then if they determine you have enough grounds to file a lawsuit, they issue a Right to Sue document.
My lawyer presented my case logically and forthright detailing all the evidence. It took him 40 minutes to go through it all. Then they presented their side with allegations of my poor employment along with their ‘evidence’ which were all the copious write-ups B*tchboss had written. EEOC asks about the timeline of the write-ups inquiring if they before or after my claim occurred. B*tchboss wearing a smug self-satisfied smile states they were all prior to my claim as noted by the dates on each document.
EEOC Lady looks at my lawyer. My lawyer looks at me. I look at B*tchboss then serenely pull out MY photocopies of the documents. Whilst handing them to EEOC lady, B*tchboss barks, ‘she’s not supposed to have those, they’re company property.’ I show EEOC lady that the dates have clearly been altered by B*tchboss (She had made copies with the dates blanked out then backdated them).
You see whenever she wrote me up, I had to take the document personally to the CEO to put in my personal file. Along the way through, I stopped at the copier and took copies. She never knew I was doing this.
You could’ve heard a pin drop.
EEOC Lady reviews the copies then slowly sets them on the table. She didn’t say a thing for a long time, then she spoke. I can remember her words exactly to this day.
‘I’ve seen a lot of ill-treatment and illegal undertakings by both employees and employers, including forged or altered documents, but I have never seen someone so incredibly stupid to present documents this easily disproved. Not only are employees entitled to receive and keep a copy of formal write-ups but reading these ridiculous allegations, it’s obvious you are trying to manufacture your case.’
She went on to say I had a clear case for a lawsuit, and moreover, I would win it. She recommended their side go in another room and determine a settlement amount to pay me immediately or risk the lawsuit.
They went to a nearby office and I could hear the lawyer dressing them down. Words I heard included ‘lied to me,’ “lied to EEOC, ‘presenting false documents,’ ‘broke so many laws,’ ‘figure out a number big enough to pay her so this doesn’t go to court because you will lose.’
They came back with a $50k offer which we accepted. My lawyer and I left then did a football touchdown dance in the parking lot. Looking up at the EEOC window, I could see B*tchboss in the window looking miserable and crying.
She had just been fired. That was my year 1 revenge.
I’m not a hateful person. I get mad and get over it. But… for B*tchboss, I nurtured hatred and vowed to one day get revenge, so I kept tabs on her and discovered she opened a finance marketing company after she was fired. Then I waited a year before exacting my petty delight.
For the past 18 years, I’ve executed a wonderful, soul-refreshing project. Each year I go to her website and write down all the work email addresses and phone numbers for the employees. Then I subscribe them all to ‘get more information’ from places like online schools, online insurance companies-all those ******* aggressive organizations that keep your contact information longer than a gypsy curse while trying to sell you stuff.
The last few years, I’ve subscribed them to an email bomb service where the service takes the address and instantly subscribes it to 1000s of newsletters, request for more information feeds and other online buyers of email addresses for marketing services. I tested it with a burner email and it wreaks havoc on your inbox with thousands of emails received within seconds, and they never…. ever… stop.
You literally have to close down the email because it can’t be salvaged. Each year when I go to collect the contact information, all the emails have been changed to new ones.
Last year my cousin took a job in the same building. I enlisted her help and she made it a point to befriend a receptionist working for B*tchboss. After executing my yearly plan, my cousin went to lunch with her. The receptionist was in a foul mood and explained the entire organization was in disarray because IT had to redo all the emails again. ‘It keeps happening over and over and nobody can figure out why.’
She said the owner (B*tchboss) has had to get her cell phone number replaced 3 times because of all the texts and phone calls she gets whenever it happens again (B*tchboss would have her phone number on the website which I duly subscribed to everything under the sun).
The best part for me was hearing how she lost a mega client because they felt the company was in too much turmoil so often.
The thought of this keeps me warm and cozy at night, and I sleep so very, very well.” digitalgirlie
20. If You Want To Say Something Like That, Be Prepared To Suffer The Consequences
“Context: I am a black teenage girl, and when these comments happened, I had turned 15 not even a week prior.
I had a ******* attempt in September 2017 and was admitted to the psych ward. For anyone who doesn’t know, psych wards aren’t good at best, and a living **** at worst. When you come in, they do a medical exam, to make sure you aren’t harming, *****, etc. I tried to hang myself, and because of that, I had visible bruising around my neck that needed to be examined. So they sent me to the in-ward doctor.
I was nervous, and obviously in a bad space, so I tried to just go along with it and not do anything crazy. Just a quick in and out. He started looking me over and said, ‘Is this the bruising from your attempt?’ and I said, ‘On my neck?’ He rolled his eyes and was like, ‘No the bruising on your foot, what do you think I’m talking about?’ I decided to just let it go and ignore it. He then started asking me about who I was, and when he asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said that I wanted to be an ER doctor, because how fascinating medicine was and still is to me. He looked at me dumbfounded, rolled his eyes again, and said, ‘Please. Negro girls can’t handle the sight of ******.’
I was in complete shock and didn’t respond. He went on a spiel about how I would never make it as a doctor and how I should give up on that dream. I stayed silent until the exam was done, and ran out and started bawling. It hurt me so much, and I was extremely broken up. That was my only hope and dream and it had just been shattered.
About a day later, I’m asked to take a survey about my stay. I had been there for about 3 days and I was like sure, whatever. The nurses and everyone else I had met were amazing and treated me like a human, not a patient. I sat in front of the computer and took the survey. I’m giving 5 stars, saying how the food is decent (except for some stray bits of plastic), etc. Then it asks me about the doctor. You already know what went down. I did what I do best and wrote about the experience and how awful it was.
About 3 hours later, a nurse calls me out and leads me to a side room. Inside, there are three people who are introduced to me as the directors of the adolescent mental health program. They said they had some concerns about my review, so I went ahead and told them everything. They were shocked and apologized about the experience and said he would be dealt with.
About two days later, a bag of Panera bagels was sent in. I got 2 cinnamon crunch bagels, my all-time favorite! I never saw the doctor again and found out he had been fired.” Zia2345
19. Want To Be Disrespectful? Hope You Don’t Mind That I Blow Bubbles With My Gum
“Planes aren’t fun. I’d teleport if I could. The biggest problem is usually the time and hassle at the airport, but I had a memorable encounter on one flight that makes me shake my head to this day, some 18 years later.
Please remember that this was pre-9/11. The rules were different then.
I was flying constantly for work at the time and had established a routine to settle in fast in my exit row. One of the last to board was a young woman, late teens/early twenties with very long, straight, hair. I didn’t really notice her until we were at altitude for a while and she started flipping her hair back over her headrest.
This was a 5-hour flight. Her hair hung down onto the keyboard of my laptop. I got her attention and asked her to pull her hair back onto her side of her seat, but she refused: ‘Why should I have to sit on my hair and get a headache?’
I got some tissue and moved her hair off to the side. She turned around and told me to stop touching her hair then promptly tossed it back over as before. I put on the call button and had a flight attendant (all of whom knew me on this route) tell her to knock it off. She grumbled, but I was able to continue without hair in my work for a while.
At some point she did it again and her hair flipped right into my cup of water – no harm to her, but my beverage was ruined. So, I pulled out two pieces of bubblegum and started chewing. I like blowing bubbles. I’m good at it, too. A little girl across the aisle had noticed the Hairy Diva’s antics and was suddenly very interested as she watched me blow bubbles. Sure enough, a hair flip came soon and it coincided with a rather large bubble.
‘Your hair has gum in it!’
The little girl’s gleeful shriek announced the news to the annoying person in front of me. The Hairy Diva’s hands flew to her hair, she scrambled awkwardly to the lavatory and she never came back! I was so happy to have her away for a bit that I didn’t even ask where she ended up; I just hope she learned her lesson – or cut her hair.” Poldark_Lite
18. Want To Have Loud Parties And Take Up The Street With Your Cars? My Mom’s Got A Rotten Idea That’ll Change Everything
“Let me set the scene, the year is 2017 and my family and I live in a quiet suburban street. It’s mostly retired couples and some families with very young kids. Normal. Now earlier this year the house diagonal from us decided to move and sold it. About the day after everything’s packed away, five cars come peeling down the street, and pull into the driveway and out in the road. They’re a bunch of college-age kids, so we give them some slack and let them go for a day or two. Meanwhile, day in and day out different cars keep peeling down the street, some are over 30 miles over the speed limit. This does not go over well with the neighbors, for most of the younger kids walk and ride their bikes down our street. Everyone’s concerned they might hurt someone or someone’s dog.
Before something serious can happen, some of the neighbors who’ve lived here 20+ years go over and meet the newbies. This includes my mom. They’re polite at first. They agreed to not go over 35, but more cars keep racing down the road. Along with that, they seem to be having parties every other Tuesday with about 30 cars up the street.
Now the niceties are over, and the cops are called. Usually, they wouldn’t do this, but about 5 calls came in from a bunch of houses and the police department was fed-up. Having nothing better to do, they send one of the deputies and they wait around the corner for a few hours a day. About 2 fines are given, and then they slow down. Except they get smart, there’s only one place the deputy can hide, so they send one car to see if they’re there. If not they speed again. The deputy gives up after about 3 days and is gone.
A few months pass, and we were at a loss of what to do. Summer is almost here so my brother and I are outside more. We have a basketball hoop at the edge of the road, right across from the house. Our driveway is at almost a 45° angle, and all my brother’s buddies come and play, so we leave it there. There’s a problem, the cars keep parking to block the hoop. My brother’s pissed since that’s all he used to do in the summer. He goes over to the house and guys just shut the door on him. Now my mom’s pissed. She marches over there and asks them to move their cars, sweetly, and when they refuse she hatches a plan.
This summer was a hot one, and my mom decides to cook some homemade pea soup. Now she burns this batch, by ‘accident’ of course. Instead of chucking it out, she puts it in this big plastic jar, seals the lid, and places it out on the back porch in the middle of the sun. Weeks pass, and she occasionally opens it. There are maggots squirming around and it’s turned a deep brown-green. There’s also this clear yellow liquid that separated itself to the top. Disgusting.
Meanwhile, my brother is determined to play basketball when there’s a little opening. About twenty minutes in, the ball bounces onto one of the cars by accident. There was no mark, but the car alarm goes off so he’s trying to leave. I run out to see one of the regulars who lived there, a woman, yelling obscenities at my brother and how he needs to pay for her car. My mother runs out after me and starts yelling at the lady to get away from my brother. There was no damage, and it was clear, but the lady kept screaming. My brother and I run inside and watch as the woman follows my mom up the driveway, waving her arms and still yelling. My mom yells for her to get off her property or she’ll call the cops. By now our older neighbors are watching, some walking over, and the lady realizes that she better leave it or she might actually get in trouble. She runs across the street and slams the door.
Around 2 am on a Tuesday with one of their parties, my mom puts on a gas mask (my dad worked in pest control so he had one) and takes out the soup. The stench was terrible. It was rotting meat and something indescribable. She takes the jar and goes over to the cars as quietly as possible. Onto almost every car she dumps the rotting pea soup onto the windshield and into that space where there are the windshield wipers. Before anything, I have to explain these were nice cars. Not sports, but Priuses and new cars, which doesn’t fit with their age.
The next morning, my mom’s out sitting in the garage, smoking a cigarette like always. It’s around 6 am and the lady that yelled at my brother comes out first. She’s obviously tired as she gets into her car. A minute or two passes and this woman has the most disgusted-looking face. She turns on the windshield wipers and a hunk of rotting ham is sent flying. My mom’s now in tears, and I mean tears. I wake up and head downstairs to the garage to see the woman yelling and about 20ish kids heading out to their cars. Each one’s trashed. The cops are called, but since there’s no evidence, they can’t press charges against my mom. One by one they leave in their ruined cars. They moved out 3 weeks later.” Skerivo
17. Underestimate My Reading Abilities? I’ll Outread Everyone In The Eleventh Hour And Come Out On Top
“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 cheating, 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 P*SSED 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 p***, 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 u so good at reading, why didn’t YOU overachieve and kick her ***? 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 cheat.’ (I NEVER CHEATED YOU SH*TB-okay, okay. Ahem.) Thanks to this, I was too embarr***ed 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 cheating 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 ******* 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 *** eating grin, were SILENT. You could hear a pin drop. Every rustle of uniform. Sweet, GLORIOUS shock.
Six ****** 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 cheated 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 ******** 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 a **** of a spice.” Anonamaton
16. Want To Be A Selfish, Horrible Mother? What Goes Around Comes Back Around
“The first example of how evil my mom is was relayed to me by my older brother. He told me, back when I was really young, my dad was in the Army and managed to score some leave (vacation time) from Desert Storm to surprise my mom for their anniversary. When he knocked on the door, all my mom said was,’Why aren’t you dead, I need the money.’ Her new beau then started backing out of the garage in my dad’s mustang cobra.
He got revenge, but that’s a story for later if you guys want.
The divorce was pretty much what you expect, mom got custody of me. My dad later tricked her with some money and got me for a visit, then filed for custody since my mom had warrants out for her arrest.
A few years later my dad remarried to your typical evil stepmother who doted on her daughters and hates her stepson. For example, for Easter my step sisters got huge baskets of candy and chocolates, a couple of toys, etc. I got an old soup can with my name painted on it (poorly) that ‘I could use for pencils.’
This witch managed to talk my dad into sending me back to my mom, and here the story begins in earnest.
Where my mom was living was an old two-bedroom, one-bathroom house. My sisters shared one room, my mom and stepdad shared the other, my brother got the whole basement, and I got a ‘room’ so small that I could touch fingertip to fingertip each wall, and it was double that length. I had a curtain instead of a door.
I got nothing. I hated living there. I was one of only a few white kids at school, so I got beat up a lot for being white. It was a low-income area in Michigan, so I was the one who always had to shovel, rake, mow, and then my mom would ‘rent me out’ to the neighbors, and they all just paid her. I did all the chores and was ‘grounded until she felt like ungrounding me.’ I basically sat on my bed for six years anytime I was not in school, cleaning, or making her money.
I learned this later, but my mom was ‘extorting’ money from my dad. She would demand $3,000 for a school photo, and he willingly paid $700 a month in child support, even though there was no need to (he worked in the oil field business after he retired, on a corporate board). She would make stuff up like, ‘Our car broke, etc.’ and demand money. My dad had to fork over $12,000 for me to go visit him for a week. He couldn’t take me in at the time, he wasn’t home enough (lots of travel) and he was single, but I found out he was sending me Christmas and birthday gifts every year, and I later found out from my brother, my mom pawned them all. He bought me a brand new Color Gameboy, which was promptly taken away because ‘I was grounded.’ She pawned that too. She would often hit me for stupid reasons, like when I once put the dishes away a bit damp or if I managed to get chocolate milk from the school cafeteria. Once I got fed up and pushed her. She called the police and he chided me.
In short, it was ****.
Meanwhile, my sisters got upgraded to a private school and lots of amazing toys. She took custody of my grandfather who had MS from the waist down and couldn’t even use the bathroom by himself. She got power of attorney and took all his money and blew it, as well as taking half his pain meds (like Vicodin) and giving them to my brother to sell. This will be important later.
Now the revenge part.
In my junior year of high school, I was working in the library. My teachers were amazing and supportive and knew my situation. I got my dad’s email, and we started planning. He figured once I finished high school, he would personally come up and get me. My mom decided to have a ‘graduation party’ for me, complete with inviting all her friends and none of mine (maybe two people I could call a friend) a couple of days before my graduation ceremony. About two hours before the party was going to start, my dad pulls up. I invite him in, and he looks around, looks confused. He leans in and asks me, ‘Where is she?’ I point. She was right in front of him lying on the couch. He screwed up his face and said he’d wait in the car. He didn’t recognize her after all these years.
While I was gathering my stuff in a single garbage bag, my mom finally realized who this stranger was, and lost her *** – she didn’t recognize him at first, either. She tried everything from bribing me with Nascar tickets (I hate Nascar, she liked it but I knew she didn’t have any) to physically obstructing me. She had pulled out all the stops for this party, spending a couple thousand and lots of time cooking, errrr… making me cook. I get outside, throw my stuff in the truck, and we take off.
(Side story. We get halfway down the street and my dad has to pull over. He laughs uncontrollably for a while. I asked him what’s up, and in his Texan accent says, ‘Boy, when I was a kid I always wanted to marry a movie star. I just didn’t think it would be Jabba the Hutt.’ Evidently, they didn’t recognize each other at first, she put on ALOT of weight after they divorced.)
We get to his place, and it starts. I get updates from my sister in law. The party was a disaster. My mom was humiliated. Since she didn’t have me, my dad stopped sending money. They had months worth of unpayable bills. She had to pawn her jewelry, pull my sisters out of private school and put them back into public school. My mom had to sell one of the cars she had. Soon she started calling for money claiming someone stole the mail all the time and she couldn’t pay their bills and needed money to replace the mailbox so they wouldn’t steal it anymore.
It was refreshing knowing I was free, and I could say no with no repercussions. I was happy to live and let live. I vowed to leave her be and let her sink or swim by her own hand. I was elated to be free and had no desire to look back at that part of my life.
But she wasn’t done with me.
I decided to follow my dad’s example and join the service. I decided the Navy was the place for me. My job required a top-secret clearance, so they do a very thorough background check, to include a credit check. Turns out I was delinquent in mortgage payments, I was receiving social security, and I owed a power company a lot of money among other credit card debts. My mom stole my identity and ran me into debt since she couldn’t get any more money. I knew about identity theft, it just never occurred to me that a parent has everything they need to do so.
This couldn’t stand. After I finished basic training and my technical school, I spoke to my Chief (supervisor). Chief was awesome. She managed to wrangle me a ‘temporary assignment’ to a recruiting station in my old town where my mom lived so the Navy would buy my plane tickets. I spoke to the police and filed a report. One by one, I managed to clear most of the debts from me and send all the debt collectors after her.
Then I made a visit to the social security office. I was in uniform at the time and spoke to a clerk about how I was somehow getting payments when I never got anything. She looks up the account and boom. My mom was listed. She claimed I was permanently mangled and disabled in an accident and I was physically unable to sign, giving her permission to cash my checks. The clerk read that last part out slower as it dawned on her that I was clearly more than able. She opened a case. For the monolithic bureaucracy that is the government, they move pretty fast when someone’s stealing money from THEM.
Turns out when they went to investigate, she had already skipped town. They issued warrants for her arrest but she was already on the run. This was ten years ago.
So evidently my brother found out that not only am I doing great, I am very successful. I recently left the service and I am starting an even more exciting job. So he told Mom, and she came crawling out of the woodwork via Facebook for money for a ‘doctor,’ but I told her prison gives free medical care, and it felt good. Turns out, when my aunts (her sisters who lived in another state) found out about how she treated me, she was cut out of everyone’s will including my grandmother. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to my grandfather before she cashed in on him.
Heavily in debt with no family to turn to, no way to get a job, with fraud on her record as well as selling prescription medication, and warrants out for her arrest, my mother, Jabba the Hutt, is receiving hers.
I got cut a check for $20,000, the amount that was garnished from my wages for what she stole from the social security administration, and she now owes that much to Uncle Sam.” Admiral_Bismarck
15. Take Advantage Of Me As Your Assistant? I’ll Transfer Out And You Can Clean Up Your Own Mess
“I graduated college right when the recession hit us hard in the summer of 2009 and I was desperate for a job. After months of searching and desperation, I finally landed a gig at a small, outdoor niche recreation shop that serviced the nation. The manager who hired me was a pretty cool and relaxed dude and we hit it off well. Let me tell you, this job was grueling – retail, small staff, and since it was a fairly open facility, there was no A/C. This was the summer of over 100 days with over 100-degree weather. However, I enjoyed the work and learned a lot about life. I worked every weekend (hooray retail), with one or two days off Mon-Fri.
Good manager taught me everything he knew and challenged me to continue learning everything we carried in-store as well as things we didn’t carry to be helpful to our customers, after all, we were the experts in our field. Unfortunately for me, the good manage was eventually transferred to the head facility and a new manager was hired – an outsider named Ash.
Ash thought his **** didn’t stink and he was the best manager ever. He had 3 employees, including me. I was the only other full-time employee which made me unofficially the assistant manager because I did all the tasks the manager did when he was out. The other two were part-time college students with limited schedules. So Ash and I ended up working together a lot.
Let me help you imagine Ash: If you can imagine a 1980’s greased back hair car salesman, much like Don Ready from The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Trying…that’s Ash, except older, with greased hair and a balding spot. He’s a creepy, mid-40s bachelor, career salesman who has never had a girlfriend last longer than a year. Even on dates (which I heard him boast about on many occasions), he was sexist and degrading. Ash took this job from across the nation and his background was definitely not in outdoor recreation, but he was a **** fine salesman, his only redeeming ‘quality.’
His only possession was his pride and joy: a supped up Dodge Ram SRT-10 (known as the Viper from here on out, it was a limited edition 2-year run Viper edition pickup truck). He often gloated about his lack of material items ‘so it’s easy to move around’ and would mock me for what possessions I owned (broke college kid trying to make a living), yet would routinely complain about his back hurting because he slept on a futon.
We never saw eye to eye. I was 22 and looked out for the customer’s best interest. He was in his mid-40s and wanting to squeeze every nickel out of the customer that he could. By this point, in my tenure at the company, I had established myself as a reliable employee to both upper management (another major city away) and customers alike, and I was sought out for advice by coworkers and customers nationwide. Ash noticed this and tried to ‘take me under his wing’ to produce me as his little protégé. He ‘taught’ me the best way to help a potential customer is to hang by closely – ‘work’ by wiping down products – so I could eavesdrop on their conversation to look for a way in and ‘seal the deal.’ Ugh, I hated that behavior in salesmen.
A few weeks later he asked me, ‘OP, do you like to read?’
‘Yea, I don’t read as much as I should but I enjoy a good book.’
‘Great, I’ve got a good one for you!’
He pulls out Dale Carnegie’s infamous self-help book How to Win Friends & Influence People.
‘You should really read this, it’ll be good for you.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
You’re a real piece of work Ash. I’ve got friends. I’m in a happy committed relationship – ***.
When he noticed I didn’t take his wisdom to heart and upsell everything, he backlashed in petty ways that he could. OP is off today and we had pallets of products being delivered? Let’s call him in to unload by hand (pallet jack/forklift did not exist for this company), price all items, and restock the store. OP is off today and I’m overwhelmed with customers? Let’s call him in regardless of where he is! OP is on vacation? Let’s ruin it or deny it! It was horrendous. Would Ash return the favor when he was scheduled off? Never. I clearly remember calling him when we had a full 53′ trailer to unload and I was by myself with customers. ‘Oh sorry, I can’t come in, today is my day to do laundry.’ Okay, gloves off. I was done. Most of his behavior was petty and I could usually overlook it, but when I sacrifice everything for this company, my health, and you…I’m done.
I had friends at our main offices who I reached out to and was told I had to essentially******* up. Ash technically hadn’t done anything wrong and his numbers were superb! He constantly landed huge ticket items and large purchases. What went unnoticed was that he checked out a number of my sales (we didn’t work on commission so it didn’t matter to me before), many of his sales were one-shot sales – customers didn’t return – and some even processed refunds. So in the long run, my sales were more frequent with repeat customers, albeit smaller, and I had roughly 60% of the total sales of 4-5 people. Upper management hated the guy because he was annoying (they weren’t blind to that because they hated dealing with him) but couldn’t terminate him based on that, so I had to be the bigger person.
Fine, I’ll play dirty then. New email address, email the main company email as a concerned customer to complain about Ash’s poor customer service behavior and claim I won’t return. I’d monitor Ash’s encounters with customers and would focus on potential issues he’d blow off. Once or twice a week or so I’d send in a complaint from a new email. Just to get his muddy deeds on the head offices’ radar. He would get sent the emails with an ‘Explain this’ prompt. He started sweating and would charm his way out. I never sent anything too horrible, just anonymous complaints.
He had all of the qualities of a bad manager. Took credit for others’ work and successes, never showed appreciation or congratulated successes (unless it was a major sale that he wasn’t able to swipe), and micromanaged every aspect. He was a control freak, rarely provided clear or realistic instructions, wouldn’t listen or accept feedback, lacked humility, and wouldn’t fully follow through or recognize his own responsibilities. I think maybe this was his first managerial job, and it was obvious why he should have remained a worker. Great sales, poor leadership. Why else would you accept a dumpy retail manager position across the nation for one store of 5 employees?
It finally came to a head a few months later in Summer of 2010. My parents were going to Colorado and Wyoming in about a month or so and decided to invite me along. Ash denied my request, saying, ‘We’re going to be really busy then.’ Yet, he decided he would take a day off to decompress whenever.
Next day, I was assisting an elderly gentleman who had purchased a kayak and needed a way to haul it in his truck. Ash convinced him he needed to purchase the mac daddy kayak holder for the guys’ truck (Maybe $700?) with the load assist to get up 6-7 feet above the ground…blah blah blah. Of course, Ash couldn’t be bothered to help him install it. ‘OP, go install this on his truck!’ Sure why not, gets me out of the store for a bit and away from Ash. We had some difficulty putting it on and I could tell the buyer was getting frustrated. I convinced him to get a simpler piece of equipment that only cost $90 and went onto the trailer hitch. The kayak only needed to be lifted 3-4 feet off the ground, which he could do with ease. The buyer was relieved! We went inside, swapped equipment and did a refund for the difference. He thanked me for saving him $600 and said he’d be back to get his wife a kayak! Cool! Win-Win in my eyes.
When the buyer left, Ash stared at me with such disgust, as if I had punched his deceased mother. When the store emptied, he unleashed some of the worst verbal lashings that he could. At that point, I decided, eff it. I’m done. Next day, here’s my two weeks’ notice. Called up my parents and said, ‘Hey! I’m quitting my job! Am I still able to go with you guys to Colorado and Wyoming?’ Tickets bought that day. Parents were worried for me because I did not have another job lined up but they understood.
Ash, on the other hand, acted blindsided, how could I just abandon him? Don’t care. Go eff yourself mate. He purposefully ignored me those two weeks which were the best weeks ever.
But there’s more.
Remember how petty Ash could be? Three times during my tenure with him, he had a friend of his that he’d send into the store to purchase something when he was out and I was working, and pay in pennies and nickels. We’re talking $20-$40 worth of purchases in change at the last hour of the day. Fine by me. I’m here until closing time, and store policy is I can’t leave until all customers are gone…let’s count it. Oops, lost count. Oh man, you distracted me, gotta start over. So now I’m in overtime, Ash’s dumba*s friends got tired of that prank real quick, and now Ash had to send me home/come in late later in the week, and boy did he hate that. It was a satisfying little petty victory before I left.
Now, I’m free of Ash the ******…or so I thought.
I went on my trip and had the best vacation in a long time. I had been unemployed maybe 2-3 weeks? I’m in a car traveling from Denver, CO to Cheyenne, WY and I get a phone call from the Vice President (VP) of my former company. That’s weird.
‘Hey, OP, have you found a new job yet?’
‘I don’t really want to tell you, but no. I haven’t found a new job yet.’
‘Look, Ash is in the hospital. He had a pulmonary embolism that nearly killed him. He’s going to be out for some time and we need an interim manager.’
‘Let’s talk about a raise then…’
When I returned from my trip, I returned to the store a happy man. Ash was gone, I was in charge and making more money (still peanuts). My coworkers were excited to have me back. We changed a lot of things to ease and increase productivity, busted our butts to make amazing sales, and re-establish proper procedures that Ash had…altered.
Ash was out of the store for 2-3 months and I was not looking forward to his return. I knew I needed to find a new job, but the recession was still not kind to us at this point. Ash finally came back, and he had changed…into a nicer, considerate person? It’s amazing what a life-threatening accident will do to your behavior.
Ash’s supper charged Viper pickup was routinely in the shop, and it could only be serviced by a specialty Dodge location about an hour and a half away. Every month or two it was in the shop for yet ANOTHER repair. So Ash made the sensible decision to purchase a new vehicle (while keeping his Viper pickup) and got an 18-year-old Nissan pickup (now dubbed the taco truck) with 220,000 miles on the speedometer and a camper over the bed. Overall, not a terrible vehicle, but the exact opposite of his other one. He was still sleeping on the futon.
Apparently, he spent all his money on hats to cover his balding tendencies, a private garage for his Viper truck, and repairs to his waste of a vehicle. Why not sell the supped up, finicky, only-one-shop-can-fix-it, expensive Viper pickup? But whatever. The kicker, he used one of those old school red Clubs on the steering wheel to prevent theft. I got a good chuckle out of that.
Well, a snake in the grass can only hide for so long. His true colors came back, but I never let down my guard.
We had a show every quarter (boat show, demonstration days at the lake, etc) and he would always be the poster boy and would say anything to get the sale. Well, he would have me at the store to ACTUALLY sell the items and get them on their way. One important thing that is essentially required, but not included, is tie-down straps for kayaks. I would try to sell them and customers would say, ‘Oh, Ash said you’d take care of it.’ I’m sorry what? I couldn’t give out product for free. That was never discussed. **** near lost a sale because of that miscommunication. He was livid. I was informing him of better wording to use so we don’t have it occur again. Does he listen? No. We’ll fudge the numbers next time to appease the customer and head office won’t find out.
Not on my time we won’t. I’m not going to be your scapegoat. Cue toddler tantrum from ‘ole reliable Ash.
I used the tactics Ash taught me to ‘fudge numbers’ and ended up using them on his big-ticket items. Forgive me, reader, for I’m admitting to fraud. The same fraud Ash committed, the same fraud he wanted me to do for him…this time I did it for my own benefit. I had the ability to alter his sales after the actual sale (remember I was the manager when he was out?) so I did just that. Not ‘technically’ theft but I get a few items for free from the store based on discounts to customers they didn’t know they got. I know, I’m terrible. I’ll meet my maker and have to explain. Like I said…I’m playing dirty now.
Towards the end of summer 2011, my relationship with my significant other came to an abrupt end, and I decided, I’m done. I’m not staying in this city with a job I hate, and an ex I don’t want to see, I’m done. Called up my parents that evening and told them the situation, they offered me to stay with them short term until I could get back on my feet.
I called VP of the company after talking to my folks and said, ‘I’m moving to Houston. Is there a job available for me there?’
‘Have you told Ash about this?’
‘No, I’m moving for personal reasons. I’m going right to the source that can help me.’
‘I’ll see what I can do, we’ll talk tomorrow.’
Next day I walk in and inform Ash that I’m moving. I am giving him a generous 4-week notice so he can get someone in to replace me and I will train to the best of my abilities. He tried to talk me out of leaving (he knew he was screwed without me) but I insisted I had nothing left for me in this town and will be moving on. VP said all he could offer was a part-time position at the Houston location, which I took (any job is better than no job).
4 weeks come and go, no replacement. Finew by me. Ash begged for me to stay, at least another month or two. Nope, I’m moving in two days, everything is packed up and I’ve been sleeping on an air mattress. I said farewell to my few coworkers who I know were going to miss me. And I left.
Next week, I entered the Houston store and within a few months went from part-time to full time, to assistant manager, to the acting manager. This place was awesome! The Houston manager, Drew, was a godsend. His mentality was ‘family first’ and ‘train up or train out’ which are two truths I hold true to this day.
Ash, on the other hand, was exposed without me to save his behind. The college students didn’t care about long term effects, they could quit and find a new job. He hired multiple full-time people (one after another) to fill my spot, but none stayed much longer than a month or two. No one wanted to deal with his bull crap. The revolving door of employees brought a watchful eye from HQ and they noticed Ash’s inability to process orders in a timely manner (like Amazon, online orders had to go out same-day), his receipts were askew, and on top of their lack of tolerance of him as a person, he wouldn’t last much longer. The VP started frequenting his store much more.
I was having a lovely day in Houston and got a phone call from VP, ‘Tell me more about Ash.”‘I unleashed all the petty things he had done that he was too ignorant to listen to earlier. It wasn’t legally ethical issues, just moral and annoying things.
The next day I called the store to check up on an in-stock item expecting to speak to Ash and unexpectedly VP answered. ‘Where’s Ash?’
‘He’s no longer employed here.’
‘Oh no, what happened?’ I didn’t think he’d be terminated based on the dumb stuff I said.
VP told me, ‘I haven’t been this happy in a long time, OP. After two years, I joyfully drove down here so I could terminate Ash. Thank you.’
FINALLY!
Without any decent connections in this state, and his tail between his legs, he decided to move back to his home state to live with his mom. He didn’t have a means to transport two vehicles or what few belongings he acquired in two years. His Viper truck was in the shop when he was fired and he spent the last bit of his money to get it out. He purchased it for nearly $70,000 (top of the line in the mid-2000s!) and ended up having to sell that monstrosity quickly and only ended up getting maybe half or 2/3rds of its then value (about 9 years old at that point).
He kept the little taco truck, packed his hat collection, and left most of his belongings in his old apartment. Along the 1,400 miles journey home, his taco truck broke down. I guess nearly 250,000 miles on an almost 20-year-old micro truck was too much for his aging engine. Ash abandoned it and took just a few items and finally made it back home. Now, nearly penniless, living with mom, he tried to re-establish himself with his former employer. It’s been 8 years and last I heard, he failed again and ended up moving to China to work in a clothing manufacturing company out there. I guess the ‘it’s easy to move around’ mentality was good for him and he finally found an industry where his ‘skills’ are useful.
Good riddance. Ash, if you’re reading this. You’re an ****** and you’re probably one of the worst people I’ve met.” MiLaddo7
14. Insinuate Only Boys Can Win A Math Competition? Watch This
“I’m a high school student and this happened to me in 9th grade.
My teacher decided that I should compete in a math competition because she saw potential in me. I agree because she was my favorite teacher. I did not really care that much because I was kinda lazy at that time.
On the day of the competition, I saw a kid (let’s call him Sam) boasting about how he didn’t sleep because he reviewed everything. I was annoyed but I didn’t really think much of it.
The results came, sure enough, he won. But I got second place, I was shocked and happy at the same time and so was my teacher. Everything was all sunshine and rainbows until I heard Sam’s mom say:
‘Good thing that girl didn’t win (I was only 2 points behind). This is a math competition, my boy should win. He studied really hard for this and a girl shouldn’t beat him.’
I WAS LIVID. My teacher patted my back and told me to not listen to her.
When they announced that I was in second place, Sam’s mom started booing. This woman. I couldn’t take it. So I devised a plan.
This competition happened every year according to my teacher, and in grade 10 there was a regionals competition after. I swore that I had to win next year.
The whole year I taught myself various math equations, and my friend helped me with everything. I spent every day reviewing just to prove this entitled mother wrong.
The next year, I entered the competition, more ready than ever.
I saw Sam again. Even his mother is boasting about how ‘he couldn’t sleep knowing that he was gonna win again’ and that ‘he is excited about the regionals.’
Everything she said just encouraged me to do better. The exam was kinda hard but I managed to answer most of the test questions while I heard Sam said it ‘wasn’t that hard’. I was not confident that I would win but I was hoping. The announcements came and they said only one got a score of 40 and above in every grade level. Sam was smirking, thinking it was him and telling his mom ‘regionals, here we go!’
But to his surprise, I won. The look of shock on Sam and his mom’s face was worth it. They didn’t utter a word, his teacher was just standing there, shocked.
I gave them a gigantic mirk and went up to the stage to accept the prize and everything.
When I went down the stage I saw Sam’s mom crying and saying ‘my boy was supposed to win, he was supposed to go to the regionals!’ And once I heard her cries of agony, the whole year of reviewing was paid off.
I got second place in the regional and I became friends with the guy in the first place.” yumi1756
13. Want To Cheat? I’ll Expose You
“Late 2016 I discover my (now) ex-wife was cheating on me. As you can imagine, I was destroyed mentally and I felt like my life was spinning out of control. We had been through a lot together so this really hurt. After the admission that she had cheated, we both figured seeing a professional would help and maybe we could make it work.
Fast forward a month and I find a journal she had been keeping detailing EVERYTHING. This was a second hard-hitting blow to my mental well-being. After reading some pages, I learn she’s still cheating. This is my breaking point, I can’t even look at her. I’ve stuck with her through drug addiction, a miscarriage, and a workplace injury that left her unable to hold a job (the injury is what led to a pain pill addiction I thought she had kicked… I was wrong).
I was in total shock and in revenge mode. I was going to destroy her.
Day 1
I go to the county courthouse and retrieve a ‘divorce packet’ containing what papers and documents one would need to file without a lawyer. I also make an appointment with a high profile divorce lawyer in my state. The only downside was my soon-to-be lawyer was across the state roughly six hours away so I had to take some time off work and meet with her ASAP.
Day 2
After my ex leaves for a bit to go to the store, I locate her journal and proceed to take very good pics of every page. I also decide to go through a few other things like finding her pill stash and – I kid you not – found a line of crushed pills on one of our glass drink coasters.
I was livid at this sight and take pics of it as well. After she returns home, I tell her I’m leaving for the city for the night and I’d be home the next day. At this point, she still believes I know nothing, thinking we’re still trying to work things out.
Day 3
I meet with the mastermind of a lawyer. She was a true shark! I explained everything to her, gave her copies of every photo, the texts of my ex admitting to cheating -any type of dirt I had was laid out on a silver platter for this shark of a lawyer to salivate over.
My lawyer asks me if I have any laundry to air, I told her no and told her everything I’ve been through, I was **** near untouchable when it came to my image as a good husband. My lawyer was pleased and said she would happily take my case and jokingly said, ‘this is going to be an easy payday.”‘We settled on a flat fee of 4,000 USD since she was so sure the case would be a slam dunk, warning me though if my ex was dumb enough to take the divorce to trial, my fees may go up but not to worry about that.
We drafted a very one-sided divorce decree: One where my ex would waive all claims to my 401k (over 200K USD at the time), to my truck (currently in both our names), and finally dividing up the debt, leaving me to only pay my personal credit card and utilities that were in my name and any debt in my ex’s name was hers and hers alone. With the documents in hand, I make the long drive back home and begin to set the wheels in motion.
My ex is served the following day and she moves out that night trashing the house at the same time I assume to stay with whatever lowlife she was sleeping with.
2 Months Later
Our divorce is finalized. I then contact every pharmacy, Dr, and physical therapist she used informing them of her drug abuse along with pictures. I contact her new employer and hint that they may want to have her tested (this was her first job in five years since I wasn’t there to support her). She’s later blacklisted from her doctors, pharmacy and fired from her job.
On top of all that, I start seeing her ‘best friend’ for casual hookups. Turns out she loved rubbing it in my ex’s face that she was having relations with me. To this day my ex has never recovered, holds a minimum-wage job at a slum bar and is still on the pills. I’ve recently learned her boyfriend is currently cheating on her. This woman wasted 8 years of my life in total.” Brokentide
12. Don’t Want To Teach The Boys In Your Class, Only The Girls? I’ll Bring You Down
“Back in 2008, I was in Year 11 (Australian, second last year of high school). My high school had a reputation for being abysmal and faculty would more often than not brush aside any problems students were facing. Enter Crazy Teacher. Crazy Teacher taught a multimedia class I enrolled in, and this was the first year they had done this class as it was an equivalency course they were trialing (sort of like a community college course you could take during high school, earning a certificate at the end). These courses are not graded, they were pass or fail.
Crazy Teacher started off fine for a few weeks. Then the rants started. They would last the full hour of the class as she yelled and yelled about almost anything – our perceived laziness, our idiocy, the powerlessness of the principal to do anything. This, obviously, severely impacted our work as we couldn’t focus while Crazy Teacher was screaming at the top of her lungs. Several students voiced concerns to deputies, the principal, student services etc. all to no avail.
One day, Crazy Teacher announced that because the male students were taking up all her time with questions, she would no longer be teaching us (the boys), instead only focusing on the female students. This was an elective course, and there were 2/3 male students to 1/3 female students in the class. At first, I thought Crazy Teacher was joking, but it became abundantly clear that she was seriously not going to teach 2/3 of the class while ranting and raving every time we had her.
Eventually, I had had enough. I recorded one of her hour-long rants, in its entirety, on my old Nokia slide phone. I vividly remember Crazy Teacher said that ‘the principal has no power in this classroom, GOD himself could come down from heaven and he wouldn’t be able to stop me!’ Bingo.
The next day, I took this to the principal and demanded a meeting. I showed the principal and vice deputy the recording, albeit a mere snippet of the ~60 minutes. After a moment, the principal asked if I knew that I could be suspended for using my phone in class and for recording someone without their permission. I was told to delete the recording on my phone immediately or face disciplinary action. I deleted the recording as asked, and the principal and deputy thought that would be the end of it but oh boy were they wrong.
While I’d never been one to stick up for myself, I decided it was now or never. I told the principal that I was disgusted by the audacity they displayed to threaten me with disciplinary action over showing them proof that there was a problem with Crazy Teacher. I told them truthfully that I had made copies of the recording and would release them to every major news and radio station unless something was done about this situation. They didn’t believe me and again threatened me with suspension. At that moment, I realized what I had to do, so I pretended to drop it and claimed that I would continue my classes without complaint.
That night, I wrote a very detailed letter to the Department of Education wherein I recounted as much as I could remember about Crazy Teacher and her ridiculous rants. I explained the lengths I had gone to have this resolved within the school, and the response I was met with. I put the copy of the recording onto a thumb drive with the letter and sent it to the DOE. Weeks went by without a response, and with everything I was dealing with at school, I had almost forgotten about it. Crazy Teacher would not show up for some classes, sometimes Crazy Teacher would kick us out for no reason and then scream at us for leaving – it was a nightmare.
3 weeks later, I received a response from the Department of Education. In the letter, they apologized for the mistreatment I had suffered at the hands of teacher and principal alike and explained that they would be conducting an audit of the ENTIRE school – literally every single staff member there would be audited with no stone left unturned. They thanked me for bringing this to their attention and assured me that no disciplinary action would be taken against me for recording the rant that I had supplied them with.
Soon, the entire school found out what I had done. Most of the teachers absolutely loathed me after that point, one going so far as to say that ‘you should have kept your mouth shut and your head down.’ I guess the audit was seen as an inconvenience to them, but what is a small inconvenience against the education, and possible graduation, of around 15 kids? We just wanted to learn and were discriminated against for no reason, with no help offered from within the school. Even some of the students in that class with me thought I’d gone too far, but I couldn’t care less about their opinions, I knew what I did was right.
Eventually, Crazy Teacher left on her own accord, literally stomping out of class and driving away mid-lesson, never to be seen again. I heard she got a really nice job at a private school not far away, so I guess she got lucky. I graduated the next year, with the principal remarking as she handed over my certificate during the graduation ceremony, ‘I can’t believe you made it.’ Not in an encouraging ‘good for you’ way, mind you, but in a ‘I tried so hard to stop this from happening’ kind of way.
This was 10 years ago and it still boils my ***** thinking about it but I learned a valuable lesson – if you can’t fight the system, make the system work in your favor. I hope this encourages any students who are facing similar issues to speak up and demand that they receive the education they deserve.” chitonya
11. Harass Every Woman In The Office, Then Pick On My Team? Not On My Watch
“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 a ‘retard.’ 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. *** 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 ****** 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 an a*s 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 words ‘****** harassment’ leave 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. The worst story was from a junior staff member who Steve had ******** assaulted at a company party the year prior.
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 print outs 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 Facebook 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.” Quixxlez
10. Steal My Stuff? I’ll Catch You, You Big, Scary Thief!
“My grandpa was an amazing man. I gladly attribute my writing style to him; he was simply an incredible storyteller. I’ve been imitating his humor since I was old enough to say so. He had some great revenge stories, too, especially from the Army Reserve (and when he was a boy scout leader, too, come to think of it). Now, buckle up, because I’m going to wax nostalgic.
Grandpa worked for a company that set up displays in grocery stores. Due to his generous and talkative nature, he had a lot of contacts and connections, which meant that he was offered all sorts of food that was nearing its expiration date. Even better, once a display was done, it was often ‘to be disposed of,’ which meant it was whisked away to the basement. Grandpa’s basement was like a grocery store that did your laundry while you shopped. It was awesome. He even had a refrigerated section. The dairy products needed to be eaten right away so they didn’t go bad, but the potato chips, cans of soda, fruit drinks, cereal, canned food, and other non-perishable stuff lined the shelves and filled the fridge. While the grown-ups would grab a few cans of green beans or a bulk bag of frozen pizzas, the grandkids knew where the good stuff was: an inflatable 3-foot-long Oscar Meyer hot dog in a bun, an inflatable package of sliced cheese, a world globe made of (fake) candy, and all the ice shovels we could ever want, to name a few! When he was selling a store on new products, we got the extra samples – Nintendo cereal, Dannon bottled water (in yogurt containers; I don’t think those ever made it to market!), and all sorts of amazing things. His twice-yearly garage sales were the stuff of a legend.
But what about the revenge, you ask? Well, while most of the stuff was stored in the basement, some of it was boxed up in the – long-term food and trinkets that could stand the summer heat. Grandpa’s shed was one of those simple corrugated metal things; the doors didn’t even lock. It housed his lawnmower, some grass seed, and a few boxes of bulk goods for his garage sales. One day, he saw that a box was open, and some of the trinkets inside were gone. Over the next few weeks, he saw other things go missing; not big stuff, just toys and trinkets, which is why he suspected a neighbor kid was breaking into his shed. There weren’t many kids on his block, though, and he never saw them actually breaking in. Plus, an adult would have taken more, or not come back at all. His shed was in the fenced back yard, too, so it wasn’t like someone was just wandering past.
Finally, after losing quite a few trinkets, and finding a box knocked over onto the floor, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He had a day off in the middle of the week, and that evening he built a trap that would have made Rube Goldberg weep for joy. It involved balloons, falling marbles, roller skates, the works. He spent a week planning it; there were drawings. Once he finally built it, he went to bed, content that he would catch his thief.
Early the next morning, he got up, made coffee, and waited for his burglar. As always happens, he was taking a break from watching when he heard part of his trap spring – I think it was the balloon that popped when the door was moved. He ran for the back door, pelted down the back steps, and ran around the side of the house just in time to see a flash of movement, only a glimpse, but enough that he saw exactly where the burglar was: hiding behind a tree. He crept up to the tree, moving stealthily on his driveway.
Now, this tree was special; for whatever reason, it split a little less than 4 feet off the ground, the crotch of the tree making a wide U shape. It was perfect for climbing. Grandpa, having reached the tree, realized he could look down on the thief from above. The thief peeked around the tree, saw grandpa there, and leaped up – and at the same instant, Grandpa popped his head over the tree screaming ****** murder, hoping to scare the ever-living daylights out of the little sneak-thief. For a moment, the thief stared in absolute shock and terror, then keeled over, flat on his back. The excitement of the chase and the sudden shock of seeing my grandpa’s contorted face screaming down at him was too much; his heart must have given out. My grandpa actually scared him to death. For a moment, my grandpa just stared, then, unbelieving, went around the tree and gave the recent corpse a gentle nudge. The thief was dead as a doornail. Grandpa leaned against the tree, put his hands over his face, and laughed until he could barely breathe.
I can still picture the tears of laughter in his eyes as he told me the story of how he gave a squirrel a heart attack. He never got his trinkets back, but boy did he ever get his revenge!” I_Arman
9. Steal Our Dog? We’ll Freak The Living Daylights Out Of You
“A few years ago my ex and I lived with my mom. Directly next door to my mom lived a kindly old lady and her great-grandson (about 15; we’ll call him Caleb). We shared a back yard. According to relatives and other neighbors, this kid was trouble.
Once, Caleb took a pack of cigarettes from our vehicle (no idea how, as we kept it locked) and shot them up with a BB gun, leaving the mess right on our driveway. The list of ****** moves he pulled goes on and on.
He had this bike he rode all day, every chance he could, up and down the street with some other boys. On more than one occasion he left this bike in our driveway behind our vehicles. Each time we put it in his yard, out of harm’s way.
Well, one day the bike goes missing. We have no idea how or why, but Caleb thought we took it, I suppose. One day my ex was taking the dog outside to use the bathroom and she ran into Caleb’s side of the yard and into the bushes. Before my ex could get over there, she was mysteriously gone.
We spent hours looking for this dog. While we were doing this, we see Caleb outside with his friends, laughing about something and staring at us. Ex and I go over to ask if they’ve seen the dog and they say no, but offer to look with us. They were looking, but not really ‘looking.’ It was all really fishy. When we parted ways, they sarcastically said, ‘Good luck finding your dog!’ and laughed.
Days went by, we thought she was dead. But after a while, one of the kids from Caleb’s group of friends brings the dog to Caleb’s great-grandmother’s house. The dog is back, yay. We pretty much figured Caleb took her because of the searching incident and the fact that every time the dog saw Caleb she would howl and run inside. The poor thing was traumatized and wasn’t the same for months. Even if he didn’t take her, he was a little jerk in many other ways and deserved what he got.
While all this was going on, the bike was in our yard again, right behind the car. I guess Caleb got it back. One night, ex and I decided we’d had enough and Caleb needed to pay for hurting our dog. Armed with the biggest knives we had along with some spray paint, we doctored up the bike. Slashed the tires, spray painted it pink and scratched ‘dog-napper’ into the metal. We went far into the woods behind an abandoned house on our street and tossed the bike into a giant thorn bush.
Caleb didn’t mess with us again.” pikacakes
8. Go Behind My Back? The Car Belongs To My Wife
“Years ago, I used to be married to Alice.
Somewhat significant age gap when we got married: I was 27 and Alice was 19 at the time. We had our share of ups and downs, and during one particularly hard time about a year after we got married, we were sunk in credit card debt and had to move in with her mother, who had a whole bunch of chronic medical problems and no insurance. Stepdad is a shade tree mechanic (who was not bad at it, actually), but couldn’t get regular work because he had medical problems of his own. Move in, cut some costs, help the family. It’s the right thing to do, right?
Problem was, Alice and I couldn’t seem to both hold jobs at the same time. She would******** off a week before I would start a new job, and vice-versa. After about 9 months of this, I was like, ok, I’m going to get ALL the jobs.
I get a job working weeknights. I get a weekend job. The temp service I signed up with was really aggressive and got me decent (weekday) jobs on a regular basis. The only problem was, these jobs were over an hour away from her mom’s and I’d be so dead tired from working, I’d crash at my brother’s place which was 10 minutes away from the next city over. I’d only be able to go home to see Alice every few days, then have to get up a few hours later so I could beat the rush hour into work. Four months pass, and we find ourselves slowly inching from the red into the black.
One day, Alice lets me know that she got a job. It’s about 20 minutes away, and only I have a (working) car. She has friends that can give her a ride when I’m not home, and I take her to work or pick her up every chance I get. This goes on for about a month. Finally, she says, ‘I think I need my own car.’ It’s all good, she’s an independent girl, and I can see how hard it is for her to be so dependent on other people. I do some quick math and figure it would take about four months for us to get enough money together to get a decent beater that won’t die in a year. She nods her understanding. I see her disappointment, and my man-pride cannot take it.
I level up and go beast mode. I start taking side jobs (mostly construction) with a friend of a friend who pays on a per-day basis to fill out the times when I have blanks on weekdays when the temp agency hasn’t got anything for me and I pull double shifts for the weekend job. I sleep an average of four or five hours a day.
Three weeks later, I have purchased a car for her, a cute little 4×4 that I saw on Craigslist. Mechanically sound, but was dirty AF. I park it at a friend’s place and over the course of a week, give that grimy ******* the most comprehensive cleaning of its life. You could have eaten off the wheel wells, I kid you not. My good buddy Nathan springs for some cheap but nice visuals (wheel paint, seat covers, floor mats, etc.) and we make it look even better. When we move it out of the garage, my friend’s mom swears it can’t be the same car and I have to prove it to her. I leave my car with Nathan and drive home in her car.
Timing is perfect. I’m about 10 minutes away from home when Alice calls me on my cell. She wants to go get some groceries. I let her know I’ll be there in a bit and park by the curb one house down. I knock on the door and tell her to come out so we can go. She steps out and looks around.
‘Where’s your car?’
‘Left it at Nathan’s.’
‘What did you drive?’
‘That.’ (I point at the car.)
‘Whose car is that?’
‘Yours.’
She takes a couple of seconds to process that single word. Then, her jaw drops and Alice runs back inside screaming, ‘MOM, InsaneRN GOT ME A CAR!’ She is thrilled.
A couple of years go by. Alice has learned how to use a manual transmission because Her Baby has one. Between myself and her stepdad, Alice has learned to change the oil herself and even took an active part in replacing the brake pads and all four shock absorbers on Her Baby. She bathes Her Baby herself. She has learned to take care of Her Baby.
Mother in Law’s medical problems are mostly manageable with meds now, and stepdad is getting almost regular work thrown his way by friends and previous customers. We have moved out of her mom’s place, and I’m only working two jobs now. Credit card debt is down by 80%. Alice also has a steady job and is thinking of going back to school.
And then I find out she is cheating on me.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. There is no third time. There must be payback. My man-pride demands it.
A week after the nuke drops on our marriage, I’ve worked out the problem. She’s already gotten her stuff and moved out by then.
I call her up to meet. Lunchtime, her work. Just to talk, I say. There’s a little pseudo-eco-industrial picnic area right by the building she works at, and there’s a fair amount of foot traffic (ie, witnesses). There’s some chitchat, and she makes a vague appeal to work things out by dragging my dead dad into it. No way. You don’t have the right to do that. You had a one percent chance, but that just flat out dropped it to zero. I cut her off mid-sentence.
‘I’m taking the car. Your car.’
‘Wut?’
“The pink slip is in my name. I’m taking back my property right now. And if you don’t hand over the keys right now, I’m going to report it stolen to the police.’
‘But you gave that car to me!’
I’d been talking in a normal, conversational tone up until this time. Her betrayal rams into my chest for the thousandth time. My voice hardens.
‘I didn’t give the car to you. I gave the car to my wife.’
Her brain still isn’t firing on all cylinders. She asks, ‘B-but how will I get to work?’
‘ . . . Get your boyfriend to drive you.’
I’m still looking at her. Her face goes slack as she realizes that I am. Not. Kidding.
I take the keys, get into the Her Baby, and drive off. I look at her as we pass. She still has the same look on her face.
And I drive all the way home with the biggest smile on mine.” InsaneRN
XX. Throw Out My Stuff Animal? I’ll Make Sure You’re Late For Everything
“My roommate threw a huge party in our room while I was out with friends and when she was super drunk, spilled beer all over my childhood teddy bear and threw him out. Every morning since, I’ve been turning her alarm off, right after she sets it, while she’s brushing her teeth before going to bed. She’s missed four 9 AM classes (officially lowering her grade to a C), thinks her phone is broken and is about to spend a huge ton of money she doesn’t have on a new one.
That’s what you get for messing with Larry Beary.” v1nd3x
7. Lie About Being Homeless? I’ll Make You Pay For My Dinner
“Living in Chicago, you come across quite a few homeless. In my younger years, I’d give them spare change. Now, I won’t because I’ve realized that the vast majority are just scammers.
About 20 years ago, I passed by a very dirty looking homeless family. They had a big ratty cardboard sign explaining about him being laid off, the wife was ill, one kid had Leukemia, and the other had something else going on. Their storyboard read like an encyclopedia of the ******.
I gave them $20 and they acted like I just gave them a brick of gold. I felt pretty good about my generosity and went on my way feeling like I’d helped people in need. While they were thanking me for the money, I noticed that the guy had a large birthmark on his cheek. The Leukemia son had the same birthmark. I thought nothing of it and that was that.
I took my girlfriend to a fancy steakhouse for dinner hours later (or maybe the next day). This was nowhere near where the family was. Guess who I see having dinner with his sick wife and destitute children? Yep, Birthmark Face. There he sat, shoveling crab legs and filet mignon down his throat. He was all cleaned up and wearing a watch that probably cost more than my car. My revenge wheels began turning. I didn’t think it was going to work because I’d seen it in a movie, but I formulated a plan.
This restaurant had an open dessert bar with little gourmet pastries. When I saw him head up, I took a deep breath and hoped he didn’t recognize me. He didn’t. I went to the dessert table and ‘accidentally’ bumped into him and dropped my plate. A few of his pieces fell too. I apologized and made it seem like I was super embarrassed. I picked up the spilled desserts and he stooped down to help. He was actually very nice about it all and when I finished picking it up, I said, ‘Again, so sorry about that! I’m Myzyri, nice to meet you.’ We shook hands and he told me his name was Dennis. I had what I needed! His name! That’s all I wanted out of this and I got it! We chatted a moment as we chose our desserts and before we went back to our respective tables, I said, ‘Thanks for understanding and helping me pick it all up (that wasn’t a planned comment, but it played into my revenge so perfectly later on.)’
We finished eating and it was time to see if I could pull it off. My girlfriend and I stood up, got our coats on, and we’re ready to haul ***. The bill was for a little under $150. I told our waitress that my ‘Uncle Dennis’ was going to pay for our meal and pointed to Dennis. She thought for a second and said, ‘That’ll be fine, but let me check with him.’ My heart sank.
Then, I thought of the last thing I said to him. Before our waitress started walking over, I yelled across the restaurant, ‘HEY DENNIS! CATCH YOU LATER! THANKS FOR PICKING THAT UP!’ I laughed, he laughed, and he waved goodbye as he quietly said, ‘No problem! It’s the least I could do!’
The waitress was convinced and put our bill back in her pocket. I gave her a $100 tip ***uming he’d stiff her once he got the news and I told her, ‘He’s usually pretty cheap, so I don’t want him stiffing you on the tip.’ Thankfully, she headed toward the kitchen instead of their table and my girlfriend and I took off out of there like lightning.
Once outside, we sat in the car waiting for him. I wanted to see if he was pissed and I wanted to see what kind of car this destitute family got into.
About an hour later, they come out, indeed, looking pissed. He’s ranting and raving. The wife and kids look shocked. I have my window down, but we’re pretty far away and I can’t make out everything he’s saying, but they start walking toward us (but not directly heading for us). As they get closer, I hear him going on about, ‘*** this place! I DID NOT say I was paying for someone else’s dinner! A HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS! ***! EFF THIS PLACE!’
I definitely feel bad for the waitress, but I gave her a good tip. So, I hope that compensated for his lunacy. Based on how he was reacting, I’m guessing they made him pay for it and the waitress was probably like, ‘Dude, he said thanks for picking up the check and you said it was the least you could do!’ Hopefully, some other guests backed up the waitress and management since I made sure the whole room heard it.
And in the end, he and his destitute family climbed into their relatively new S-Cl*** Mercedes and drove off. Destitute my ***.
Mini update: The waitress had a very unique name and I ran into her about 5 years ago. She now works at the Brazilian steakhouse that’s a few blocks away from where this restaurant was. I always ask for her when we go there. She doesn’t recognize me and I always leave her a huge tip. I still feel guilty. But I also want to ask her how that all played out… But I know I never will.” Myzyri
6. Berate And Belittle Me And My Colleagues? We’re Out And You Don’t Even Know It
“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, ‘****** self-important and entitled Expat’ and ‘******* ****** [insert racial slur here].’ Called the firm ‘the worst ****** oil company in the Middle East’ (at least, here we agreed). Not only a racist but a sexist, 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 ‘****** 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-a*s 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 crap 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 money’ 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 ****, 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 double vodka and Bitter Lemon), I did a quick tally: the company was, in this one instance, losing its Sr. Staff Geologist *** 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…****** Sunday.
Once the realization of what had happened, the GM went completely ‘off the rails,” ‘totally sh*thoused’ 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 the *** are you? If you don’t get you ***** 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 were 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 (it’s all ‘wasta’ (nepotism) in this part of the worlds).
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 ‘*** off’ and ‘Don’t let the door hit you in the a*s on the way out, you might suffer brain damage.’ randomstudman
5. Steal My Possessions? I’ll Find You And Do Whatever It Takes To Take Back What’s Mine
“This was about 2 years ago while I was living at my buddy’s place. His place wasn’t in the best part of town, so theft happened all the time and for the large part, most of these crimes are met with a ‘sucks to be you’ attitude from the police who then create a report and forget anything happened entirely.
OK, so I wake up early on Thursday morning with a call from my roommate who was running to work at 5 AM and he explains the detached garage has been broken into. The thief broke in through the window and stole a bunch of stuff – the highlights being Milwaukee drills, motorcycle jackets, and the receiver and the sub from one of those ‘surround sound systems in a box’ packages deals but leaves the speakers around the rest of the place. To say I was livid is an understatement, I work hard for my things and have no intention of replacing them so some lowlife can sell them for a very small profit. So for roughly then next 4 days, my focus is entirely on this and you’ll see why shortly.
So, I know the chances are slim that I will ever find my stuff but hey it can’t hurt to look for it on the common online sales places. I used eBay searching local sellers only and I put alerts on Craigslist (an extremely handy feature) and I tell my roommate to keep an eye on Craigslist since he has a little time. So fast forward to Friday, and my roommate calls me up and tells me he thinks he found our stuff on Craigslist. I pull up the ad and there it is. This beautiful not too bright gentleman had taken all the stuff he took from us and put it into a single ad in the barter section of Craigslist. He even added the model numbers (not serial numbers) making things very easy to identify. The give away was this cheap surround sound system for which he only had the receiver and the sub and after a quick search reveals this particular system is only sold as a package. You can’t buy the single components, so this was definitely our stuff!
I call the police, thinking case closed but guess what, they don’t care that I found this stuff on Craigslist and after about 20 minutes of complaining on the phone with non-emergency they ask me what I want them to do. I say, ‘Send a car over here I want to speak with someone directly!’ So they reluctantly send a car with a very nice officer (she was nice I’m sarcastic but she was really nice) who runs the number associated with the Craigslist ad and guess what! He’s got a rap sheet a mile long and has been arrested 10 times for theft. With the break in the case, I think I’m home free! But nope. The cop can’t do anything, ‘The investigator needs to take care of this,’ she says and leaves. So I call the investigator who doesn’t work on Fridays. I ask who I can speak with so they send me up to the investigator’s team line to which no-one answers at all. I try again on Saturday and learn investigators don’t work weekends at all and I’d have to wait until Monday before I can talk to my investigator.
Good thing crime doesn’t happen on weekends otherwise cops weekends would be in trouble! So I call on Monday and sergeant drags-his-feet is out sick. It was at that point I was done trying to call them. I drove to the police station and demanded to speak with an investigator. I mention to this new investigator the situation and the name of the guy who put up the Craigslist ad and the cop knows him very well and has arrested him on a couple of occasions. The cop is confident the police can now help me since I’ve already done all the dang work here.
Finally, the cops tell me to make a meeting with this guy and let him know when and where. So again the work is on me…. and to meet this guy… thanks police.
So I text him a few times with no response, then I call him and joke around and express interest in a variety of items most of which are mine but a few that aren’t. Since simply asking for the things from one of the victims is suspicious in my mind. So I tell him I’m Christmas shopping. I then say I’m from out of the area and ask him to pick the location and he lists off a few places one of which is a grocery store within eyesight of the police station so I pick that and laugh to myself at how this is turning out. I call the cops and let them know the deal is on and when and where it is. They say they’ll be in an unmarked car and that I should take my wallet out as a sign to swoop in to make the arrest.
So I pull in to the parking lot. I see no cops and I stop and wait, I think the guy is a no-show when he finally shows 10 minutes late. My heart’s pounding at this point. I get out meet the mastermind criminal and shake his hand. He proceeds to pull out my stereo, then my drills and a few other odds and ends. Before I can get my wallet out, a gold Taurus speeds in and out pop 3 cops with guns drawn, ready to cuff the guy. When this happened I just turned around and walked away for a second while they put him in the car. The lead cop asks me if this is my stuff and I say yes it matches with the previously provided, very detailed, description I gave the police. All the while the guy in cuffs is yelling, ‘That’s my stuff!’
Finally, the cops get the warrant for his apartment find the rest of all of our stuff and a few other peoples’ things. I have all my stuff back by Wednesday the following week. He received 1.5 years in a state penitentiary for his efforts.
I kind of fixate sometimes and he got unlucky by stealing from someone who didn’t just claim renters insurance.
Pro-tip: Record the serial numbers on everything you own. Cell phone, computer, tv, router, stereo, etc. If you can give that to the police you have a stronger chance to get your stuff back. Pawnshops need to report all serial numbers that come through.” mnkjoe
4. Want To Take My Lawn Ornaments? They Mean More To Me Than They Ever Could To You
“I had purchased my first home in a slightly lower-class area of town, which is pretty close to an even lower class area of town (think slightly ghetto a mile from absolute trailer trash). I know most of my immediate neighbors since most of them are pretty loud and I’d rather be friends with them than have them be my enemy.
Some local kid likes to go around collecting trash in his free time. A really nice kid, and does it for really no reason. Whenever I see him, I usually get him a drink, lemonade or soda so he can stay hydrated (California is hot). Sometimes I give him a few dollars, I offer the kid $30 a month to mow my lawn 2x a month. So, the kid has a gig for small, but consistent income.
The kid takes a lot of pride in his work. He mows the lawn, pulls weeds, moves rocks out of the driveway, and just makes my place look extra nice, even though I don’t even ask him to do any extra work. This guy is great.
This goes on for a few years, the kid is now a senior in high school. Family is not doing so great, dad just lost his main source of income, and mom had accumulated debt which put a lot of stress on their failing marriage. Mom was abusive verbally and sometimes physically to both the kid and the father. But the kid keeps on walking, doing work, volunteering and being a really happy, upbeat dude.
Despite his troubles at home, the kid starts buying lawn decorations. Mostly small, little gnomes, some decorative rocks, a birdbath, and he decorates my yard. It looks amazing, but I knew he must have spent a lot of his own money on that. I try to reimburse him, and he denies it. He won’t take it.
I know he needs a car, and I was about to get a newer one for myself, so I give him mine for free. It really was the least I could do for this guy for everything he has done for me.
A few weeks later, a drunk driver T-bones the kid, and he dies on the scene. I was devastated, his parents were devastated, and they soon after got a divorce.
They were fighting over who gets what, and the father discovers that the mother had a drug addiction she had been hiding. The discovery was straight out of the left field. She wants everything they had, and she lawyers up to fight the battle. Due to the debt the mother had accumulated on the father’s bank account, he really had no money. And nobody knew where she got her money from.
As sad as it is, it’s not my affair. Until she sent me a letter claiming that the yard decorations are rightfully hers and that she will take them ‘or else.’ Now, this is a problem. I get it, you lost your only child. You’re in a lot of pain as a parent. But you were never a good parent to him. I was closer to him than you, by a long shot. So, I had a meeting with the father and told him not to worry about court costs. I decided I was going to fund him in court.
Long story short about their divorce battle, he wins and gets to keep everything, and even gets a restraining order on her. He then files for credit card fraud and puts all the debt on her. I heard from the father that she was recently arrested for driving while drunk, and searched and has a decent stash of meth on her. She is currently awaiting trial for that while the father is living life now relatively stress-free.
And I got to keep my lawn decorations. RIP Johnathan. You are missed.” VSauceGuy
3. Be The Worst Step-Dad Ever? I’ll Visit You Every Chance I Get So You Don’t Forget It
“When I was 15, my mom started dating a man she met on a dating website. I didn’t like him the first time I met him and two months later he moved into the house.
About three weeks after he moved in, he took my skateboards, self-built halfpipe, ramps, BMX bike, ice hockey gear, and many other things to the dump one day while I was at school. He said he did this because he didn’t want all of my crap cluttering up ‘his’ garage.
Maybe two months later, he punched me in the stomach for the first time because I got up from the dinner table without asking to be excused. From there it escalated into full-fledged beatdowns for the smallest perceived slight to his authority.
One day, he decided to take my extensive Pokemon card collection, even more extensive comic book collection, my Game Boy and PS2 with all the assorted games, and my fantasy and sci-fi book collection and got rid of it all because,’15-year-old boys should be playing football and baseball, not being a fa**ot nerd playing with Pokemon cards and reading comics and books.’
I would like to add that he was a middle school teacher, and in his off time refereed and umpired local middle and high school sports games.
My mom never intervened, and in fact acquiesced when he demanded that she stop giving me lunch money, because ‘the little *** will just spend it on comics and other ***.’
One day, I took maybe $3 and change out of his change jar so that I could buy a slice of pizza and some fruit punch during lunch at school because I was tired of being hungry. My twin sister was always a bit of an ****** and frequently blackmailed me into doing her chores from a young age. I was fed up and refused to do something, so she told him what I had done. This man actually called the police and pressed a larceny charge against me, and once the police had left, proceeded to beat me senseless.
At that point, I ran away. When the cops found me and returned me to my home, I found out that he had been trying to talk my mom into sending me away to military school or something of that nature. I ran away again, and between having run away several times and the larceny charge, I ended up turning 16 in juvenile detention.
I spent the next couple of years miserable and afraid, frequently contemplating taking my own life. Once I was out on my own, I didn’t speak to my mom for several 3rs. We eventually reconciled, and by that point, they had married. I was a lot bigger then I had been as a young teenager, and had gotten into weightlifting so he no longer acted like he was going to punch me to make me flinch, much less actually hit me and we basically avoided each other for the most part.
My mother found out that she had stage 4 cancer, and no longer wanted to waste any of the time she had left with him, so she had a lawyer draft up a separation agreement whereby he would receive a set amount of money upon separation and would have 45 days to retrieve his belongings from the house. He had spent his entire inheritance in six months and then had to sell his mother’s house that he grew up in so he could settle his debts shortly before they started dating. My mother bought the house back from the bank before they married. She allowed him to keep the house and he moved back into his mother’s house.
My mother passed away about nine months after their separation and despite the agreement had been allowing him to come and get his stuff piecemeal. I put an immediate end to that.
He was past the deadline to remove his personal effects and they were now legally mine to dispose of as I saw fit.
I sold his baseball card collection (around $14k) and his autographed sports memorabilia (roughly $11k) and also sold all of his woodworking equipment, along with several finished pieces of furniture that he had made ($6,500 I think).
I kept his mother’s engagement ring (platinum band 3 diamonds roughly 2 carats), wedding band, his coin collection (I also collect coins) and some tools and other odds and ends.
Now comes the real fun.
Around a month ago, I finally saw him at the grocery store. As he was leaving I approached him. I told him I had sold his collections as he was pushing his cart out towards his car. He reacted exactly as I expected. He took a swing at me multiple times. I already had my phone ready to dial 911. Several of these punches missed and the ones that did connect didn’t have much effect because he’s nowhere near as strong as he was 20 years ago in his forties, and I was no longer a skinny little 15-year-old. He continued to try to punch me as I spoke to the 911 operator, and was actively ramming his grocery cart into my new Toyota as the police officers pulled into the parking lot.
He was arrested for assault, communicating threats, and destruction of property. As a result, he lost his job (and pension) at the local middle school, and because he had never learned how to save money while married to my somewhat wealthy mother, he ended up having to sell his mother’s house because he hired an expensive lawyer thinking he could somehow beat the charges.
My nephew, who was on the football team made it well known to his friends that he not only had just been arrested and convicted of assault as well as other charges but that he had also beat me as a child causing several parents to call for him to resign from refereeing and umpiring for local sports games.
My niece and my girlfriend’s much younger sister are enrolled at the middle school where he worked, and say that he was not only universally disliked, but when he came up to the school to get his belongings, he made a big scene and ended up hysterically crying as he was leaving. At least that’s what they’ve heard from the kids who were attending summer school at the time.
His son, who he was equally abusive towards as a child refused to take him in or help him out so the abusive stepfather ended up having to take a job as a cashier at Walmart so that he could afford the rent on his crappy little trailer in an absolutely awful neighborhood.
Even though that specific Walmart is not the closest Walmart to my house, that is now the only place where I go grocery shopping or to purchase anything I need. I purposely stand in line longer than I need to just so that he can be the one who has the pleasure of ringing up my purchases. The first time I went through his line, he attempted to ring up multiple items more than one time to overcharge me and when I called him on it, he said that I was mistaken. I asked for a manager, and the manager believed him that it was an accident but he learned that he can’t get away with that. The second time, I made sure to be as nice as possible and had to ask for a manager because he was overwhelmingly rude. The people in line behind me backed me up and he got in some trouble for that.
Every time I go there and step into his line, I see him die a little bit inside. Sometimes I’ll say that I’m paying with exact change, and as I’m about to hand him the money I’ll say, ‘Oh! I didn’t realize I had (rare coin from his collection) in my pocket! I guess I’ll use my credit card.’
I just sold his expensive ratcheting wrench set, and so on Monday when he works again I’m going to go buy my daughter one of their better above ground pools, and as he’s ringing it out, I’ll tell him, ‘I know that (my daughter’s name) is just going to love this pool. It’s not like I would have ever used those expensive ratcheting wrenches anyway.” Kveldson
2. Have A Secret Double Life Hidden From Your Wife? I’ll Scare You Into Confessing
“This story is about my dad and happened in the mid to late 70s. My dad taught shop in a very tough part of town, think ghetto area with beginnings of gangs. He was highly respected by ALL of his students because they knew he wouldn’t tolerate their BS.
Summers were a tough time for our family because teachers do not get paid for summers, so they have to find jobs. One year there was a perfect job at the school that was tailor-made for my dad. The group funding the summer class actually wrote the job description with my dad in mind. The school principal chose to hire his mistress to teach this vocational class instead. The woman had absolutely no clue about the subject matter (she was an English teacher), but she got the job instead. My dad was quite angry, and so was the group funding the job, but hiring was solely the principal’s decision.
The principal was married to a woman with money and he did NOT want her to know about his mistress. My dad helped the janitor with a LOT of maintenance for the school and was good friends with him. My dad had keys to the entire school because of this. He also had a lot of experience with all sorts of locks (a hobby of his). Dad knew that making friends with the janitor and secretary would help him around the school and he made a point of doing this at every school. He knew where the combination to open the giant safe in the office was. For some reason, the school had been built with a HUGE old fashioned safe (think bank safe type) and the principal kept the combination written down inside a desk drawer. Yes, that WAS an idiot move, but this man was very arrogant and refused to ever change the combination or memorize it. Who would dare to get into his things?
My dad never threw things out and often pulled things out of the dumpster if he thought they might be useful. One of the things he rescued from the dumpster was a life-size skeleton that was discarded when a biology teacher suddenly left. The principal was freaked out by it and ordered it tossed because the teacher left. The skeleton was not school property and the principal had no idea that my father had rescued it from the dumpster.
The principal gave his mistress very expensive status symbol type things. This included a mink coat, jewelry, and expensive trips. Both principal and mistress told their spouses that the trips were to educational conferences. Being friends with the secretary meant he heard all the gossip, and knew that the principal kept these items in the big safe in the office so that his wife would not know about them (and neither would the mistress’s husband). Being really irate about the job (because he had to find something else and because the kids would learn NOTHING from this job training course), my dad decided to set up revenge. He took the skeleton to the safe and dressed it in the mink coat and fancy jewelry. He put the skeleton on a stand that held it upright inside this big safe. Then he left for the summer.
On the last day of the summer course, the principal and his mistress were getting ready to take a week-long trip together. They told their spouses it was for a conference. Then they went to get the coat and jewelry so the mistress would have a chance to wear them. The mistress didn’t care that it was summer, she wanted to wear the coat. Yes, this makes no sense but she was super status-conscious and wanted to show it off. She was that kind of person.
When the principal opened the safe, he saw the skeleton in the coat and jewelry. He had a panic attack (he had no history of heart trouble) that he and mistress thought was a heart attack. They called an ambulance. Mistress went to the hospital wearing the jewelry that she grabbed while waiting for the ambulance. The coat was left on the skeleton in the safe. Wife showed up at the hospital and met the mistress wearing expensive jewelry. It was very distinctive and a style the wife had asked her hubby for on several occasions. The wife knew a teacher could NEVER afford it. When principal and mistress left in the ambulance, no one thought to lock the safe. The door was just pushed shut, but it had a big wheel that had to be turned to lock it. Wife went to the school to see what was in her husband’s office about the mistress and she saw her dream coat in the safe. The wife never saw the skeleton because the janitor took it out of the safe after the ambulance left.
Principal knew he was in a lot of trouble with his wife AND the school board. He kept ranting about a skeleton but it wasn’t there and he was the only one who saw it other than mistress. The school board thought he was delusional AND had violated a morality clause in his employment contract. He got divorced and couldn’t take any money from his wife because she proved his adultery. The mistress wouldn’t talk to him or say anything about the situation because she didn’t want to incriminate herself. After the principal was fired, his secretary testified about his mistress and the money spent on her at the divorce proceedings. He literally lost everything including his pension. His wife got it all. The mistress tried to lie to her husband about why she was there and said the jewelry was from a contest for best teacher. Her husband divorced her and got custody of their kids (NOT common in divorce at that time) because of her infidelity being a bad influence on the kids. She got fired and had to give the jewelry to the principal’s wife. The school board did an audit of the school budget. The principal got arrested for fraud and embezzling because he used school money for the coat and for trips that he and mistress took that were supposedly for educational training.
My dad thought this was all exactly what the principal and his mistress deserved. He would not have said anything about this matter if they didn’t take a really good paying summer job away AND they didn’t leave a bunch of kids stuck in a class where they would learn nothing because all the teacher could do was tell them to read the book. She couldn’t do any of the projects that were part of the course because she was an English teacher and NOT a shop teacher. To be honest, I think depriving the kids of solid job skills that the class was designed to teach upset him even more than having to find a different summer job. He did, however, enjoy having a different principal the next year!” StargazingSuzanna
1. Force Us To Leave Town? We’ll Reveal Everything And Ruin Your Career
“Susan is my fiance’s adoptive mother, and she was my lecturer when I was at university.
Susan hated that I was dating her adopted son (biological nephew) since she found out about us. When we first told her we were dating, she tried to kill me via allergy (another story for another day) and after she found out I was pregnant she stalked us, impersonated me, and broke into our flat, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. She made our lives ****, to the extent where we no longer felt safe in our own home, and my fiance and I had to move across the country to escape her.
We’ve been living in our new place for a little under a week. The baby is due in a couple of months and everything is mostly ready. We’ve deactivated our social media, created new emails and changed our numbers. Only a few friends and relatives from the town she lives in (which we left) have our new numbers. We had to leave our entire lives, and everyone we knew and loved behind, while I was 7 months pregnant, because we couldn’t trust her around our baby.
REVENGE:
On Monday, an email was sent from the dean to Susan’s graduating students saying Susan was being considered for a promotion, from lecturer to head of department, and they wanted to hear from her students first. The aim of this was to receive glowing recommendations to give to the board. This was not the result.
As I changed my email, I hadn’t seen this. One of my friends who had my new number and was on the course with me did see the email, and on Tuesday he gave my new number to the dean, saying that he would only give her the number in person, on paper, and only if she agreed to ring when she was alone and throw out the paper and erase it from the logs after (if she was calling from a university phone then the number would go on the call logs that were accessible by all members of staff), but he assured her that this was something she’d want to hear before promoting Susan.
So I got this call from the dean on Tuesday. She told me what was going on (my friend hadn’t had time to get in touch before she rang), and she asked me why my friend thought I should speak to her.
I told her everything.
I started 2 years ago when I met Susan’s son, the man who would become my fiance and the father of my child.
I told her about Susan poisoning me via allergy after finding out about me and her son, and the epi-pen incident.
I told her about the outside of class harassment I received post-pregnancy announcement (impersonating me, crashing GP appointments, breaking in, etc).
I told her about the in-class harassment (telling me to break up with my fiance, stopping lectures until I left, throwing out my food and drink, trying to reschedule exams, and more).
I told her about the last time I saw Susan in person when she tried to hit me while I was 7 months pregnant with her grandchild.
I told her about having to move away (I was careful not to give a location or distance) and filing a restraining order to escape Susan (I thought the uni was made aware of the RO but apparently not).
Fiance then arrived home from work and when I told him what was happening, he was all too eager to chime in with stuff I forgot (copying keys, punching the landlord, canceling orders, going through our things). He also told the dean about the abuse he got from her growing up.
We also gave the dean the names of people willing to support our story, as well as some dates, times and locations of on-campus incidents (I’d made a note of a few of them) so she could pull CCTV from the campus security recordings.
Fiance also told her the story of one of his cousins (Susan’s biological kid) who got close with a guy on Susan’s course, but the guy was told to break up with her by Susan with a thinly veiled threat against his academic career. We also told the dean about Susan telling me to break up with my fiance and vice versa so she could ‘better maintain professionalism.’
The dean was horrified.
She had me and my fiance record a video, where we said everything all over again, from the top. We made sure the video had nothing to identify the location, and we were assured Susan would never see it. We also sent her all the proof we had alongside it. This was all forwarded to the board on Wednesday and Thursday. She asked my friend for the number again and just called me for the second time, telling me that the board unanimously agreed this was grounds for Susan’s dismissal.
They said that while the outside of uni events wasn’t really their business, they go towards her character and the fact that as department head, she would represent the department, whether she was on the clock or not. They said even without this, the events that happened inside of uni alone (stopping lectures, telling me to dump my fiance, telling that other guy to leave her daughter alone, throwing out my stuff, seeking special treatment on grounds of nepotism) were all abuses of power and enough to justify Susan’s dismissal.
They asked me why I hadn’t filed charges, and I said all I’d gain from filing charges is Susan staying away from me, and the RO and moving away has the same effect. Plus as it’s exams season, my tutor work is really taking off and I don’t have the time to go through a whole court case, and I’ll have even less time once the baby arrives. The baby is due in about 8 weeks and Susan has already caused me enough stress.
Tomorrow, in the meeting where Susan is fully expecting to be told she got her promotion, the dean is now going to give her a week to hand in her resignation. If she refuses, she will be fired. If she does not hand in her resignation, she will be fired. She will not be getting a reference. The only reason she is being given the option to resign is that she has worked at this university for nearly a decade, but if she so much as raises her voice in the meeting tomorrow, she will be fired. Security will be present for the meeting, in case she tries anything.
Meanwhile, the friends we left behind aren’t hesitating to tell anyone who will listen all about what Susan did during the course of mine and my fiance’s relationship. There’s not a single soul left in that town who trusts her or will take her side if she tries to fight back, not even her husband, who told us that now all their kids are over 18, he will be initiating divorce proceedings.
I don’t feel even a little bit bad. I know there’s a chance I went too far but I didn’t lie, or embellish anything, I just gave the dean the facts as they are. Everything is 100% true and while it was me who told the dean, I see this as Susan’s actions having consequences. Susan has more than enough money to pay for herself for the foreseeable future, she owns her home (her husband’s name is not on the deed and she bought it before they got married so she will get the house in the divorce as it’s not technically a shared asset, or one acquired during their marriage), she will have a roof over her head and money in her bank account, and if she wanted to she could get another job, just probably not one as a lecturer.” MundaneLibrary2
Long, calculated and perfectly exacted, that’s what makes for an act of top tier revenge! You never know who’s willing to dig and get some dirt. Got a juicy story you want to share? Tell us everything!
