People Celebrate Their Accomplished Revenge With Us
20. Don't Ask Your Bully Victim To Do Your Taxes For You
You might just get an audit.
“I usually do taxes for my whole family and most other paperwork and computer repairs and tech support.
For free.
(Relevant later.)
For clarity, I was raised by my great grandparents. They have always been mom and dad. And the uncle is my great uncle.
This February, my uncle passed away. I agreed to rent a car and drive my great-grandma’s (mom) and three other uncles to Dallas for the funeral. Halfway there, it starts.
One of my uncles, let’s call him Willie, is absolute jerk.
I would be having a conversation with someone, and he would walk up and say, “Don’t listen to her. She don’t know what she’s talking about.” He called me stupid. He called me a worthless witch. He talked crap about me drinking a glass of wine (so I didn’t strangle him). Meanwhile, he drank an entire case by himself.
He’s the only one who drinks beer.
Basically, he was spoiling for a fight for some reason.
Normally, I am a witch. I don’t take crap from anyone else, but I take a lot from three family members. But I refuse to ever cause drama at weddings or funerals. My mother had lost her son. I would not ever add to her grief.
I spent every night away, crying in frustration.
I couldn’t eat for two days. (I literally ate a handful of almonds the first night.) My husband wanted to buy a plane ticket to bring me home due to the stress aggravating my health issues.
Yet, my uncle followed me around talking crap. My husband heard most of it. I was calling him at work, which I never do, to help me stay calm.
He talked crap about me to perfect strangers and spent twenty minutes in a tirade about me while we were gathering to leave for the funeral.
Finally, at church, I told him, “You better be glad we’re in church and out of town. When we get back, I’m gonna give you what you want.” He stopped for about two hours and then started up at dinner, always far away from Mom.
I bided my time.
On the trip back, I played nothing but country music (which he hates). When he complained, I switched to Tejano and then opera, which I sang as loud as possible to “Keep Me Awake.” I made sure all my smoke (which he made a big issue out of) was hitting him directly in the face.
I parked in the mud because he was the only one getting out on my side.
I had on boots. He had on his slippers. I made sure all of our pit stops weren’t long enough for him to finish smoking, and I “missed the exit” when he needed to go to the bathroom.
Once we were an hour away from home, I didn’t hear a peep out of him.
Then, when we got home, he tries to tell my mother that I was starting arguments, but I had taken videos of his crap.
And apparently, he had been doing similar crap to others, and we all backed each other up. And my sweet gentle giant of a husband, who hasn’t raised his voice to them in the decade we’ve been together, blew up about what he saw and heard.
Now my mom isn’t speaking to Willie.
Three days later, he has the unmitigated gall to ask me when I was going to start his taxes.
I gleefully replied, with a Grinchy grin, “Never. I didn’t think you would want someone as stupid as me doing your taxes.”
He ended up paying $200+ to have his taxes done. The best part? Apparently, they screwed up, and he is now being audited.
Thank you, Karma, for your prompt service.”
19. Fine, I'll Spend The Company Dollar
“A number of years ago, I worked for a recruiting company that serviced a major automotive plant in the US.
This was the first of its kind built in the US and had just recently opened.
Now, typically for my company, a business manager/owner/administrator would give us hiring orders for new employees. Usually, it’s someone in charge who decides to hire new people. With this company, the administration handed the hiring decision to the new hire trainers, then those trainers would give us the order.
I loved these trainers. They were deeply religious, family-orientated guys. Both of them adopted children from rough homes while I knew them. Both were extremely kind and welcoming to my new hires I was sending in (which can be rare in an automotive plant). They’d go on missions with their church to help in struggling areas. While I am not religious at all myself, I loved how passionate these guys were.
And how it reflected in working alongside them.
The plant lowered production and our orders for new hires slowed. My managers started getting on my butt. “Hey, go ask Bill and Ted if there are any new hires they need. Take them to dinner and see if you can talk them into more employees.”
I explained repeatedly to my boss that Bill and Ted do not make hiring decisions.
Those decisions come way over their head, and they just relay it. I was told I am new to this business and don’t understand how networking works. Finally my boss’ boss got on my butt when he was in the region for a meeting. I needed to push these guys to make new orders.
So I checked my limits for how much I could spend schmoozing clients.
And then I took these guys all around town for months. A new steakhouse opened, you guys want to try? Bring your wives and let’s go. Do you guys want to hit the billiards club for lunch? The whole ticket is on me. Office want breakfast burritos and coffee delivered? Send your orders in, and I’ll bring it on my way.
At some point, I figured there would be some backlash over the dough I was spending.
I even found the max I was allowed to tip and was maxing it out every time to give out more mooah to the waitresses. I was wrong. The plant cycled up again, and I think my managers believed those new orders came from the coin I was spending and not just typical ebbs and flows of auto manufacturing.
Eventually, I left the industry, and these guys moved on to other jobs.
We had a blast on the company dime while it lasted.”
18. I Hope You Think Twice Before Blaring Your Television At 3 AM
“This was a few years back when I was living by myself in a cheap apartment during my last year of college.
You know the type: thin walls, stinky carpet, and broken AC. I was only living there a year, so I just lived with a lot of the issues, but one that I had a lot of trouble with was my neighbor whose bedroom shared a wall with my bedroom. I never meet the guy in person since I was in college, and he was never home when I tried knocking on his door.
So, here’s the story…
After a few weeks of living there, I started hearing my neighbor’s TV through my wall. Normally it wouldn’t be a problem if he watched TV at a decent hour.
(He didn’t.) Instead, he would watch TV starting from 11 pm till 4 am or later! I’m a usually heavy sleeper, so as long as I got to bed before he started watching TV, I didn’t wake up to it.
Of course, being in my senior year of college meant that I didn’t always go the bed at a good time and stayed up later to study, do homework, etc. These were the nights that his late-night TV binge-watching would keep me up. The first night this happened, I knocked on his door before class to ask him to keep the volume down at night.
He didn’t answer, so I wrote on a post-it note and called it a day.
I came back in the evening and found the note on my door with a poorly scribbled addition saying that he could watch TV if he wanted to because it was his apartment.
I was pretty annoyed but wanted to at least give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he misunderstood my note.
I knocked on his door again. No answer.
That night, I stayed up late working on a project when, low and behold, he cut on his TV and turned the volume up louder than it had been before. I was pretty mad since I knew he was doing it on purpose now and just made up my mind to call the office in the morning about it.
(My apartment complex had a policy where you could put in a complaint about a neighbor, and management would contact them.)
This did not work! I probably called management 4 times about the noise, but the guy never stopped and kept the TV volume super high! I was angry since my sleep is very important to me, and the now louder volume meant it was also starting to wake me up in the middle of the night.
I eventually learned that this guy had a job with pretty odd hours since he slept during the day (he actually had the audacity to complain to management when I had some friends over in the afternoon, and we had woke him up) and apparently was off to watch TV all night.
This is where the petty revenge comes in.
I was going back home for five days during a school holiday, and I decided to teach this guy a lesson.
At the time, the apartment on the other side and above mine was vacant, and that gave me an idea. I had a stereo in my room that had a SUPER loud bass and came with a remote control. I set the stereo to repeat a CD after it had played through the whole thing and turned up the bass and volume as loud as it could go.
I packed up my bags, locked up my apartment, and then used the remote to turn my stereo on. It was so loud that I could just hear it through the door. I smiled and drove 3 hours to my hometown. Again, I was gone for 5 days. The whole time, my stereo was blasting a Celine Dion CD I had borrowed from my friend.
I came back with a notice from management posted on my door.
The notice was about the noise, but since it was my first offense, it was just a warning. There was also a note from my neighbor, begging me to turn off the music and apologizing profoundly for the TV noise. I went inside, turned off my stereo, and I never heard a peep from my neighbor again.
Life lesson: don’t be an b******e, and others won’t be an b******e back to you.”
17. Line-Cutters Don't Get First Pick
“I’m doing my elderly neighbor’s shopping every so often, and they needed stuff from a couple of shops today as it’s been a while, and they needed a good amount of shopping done.
I’d been out for a couple of hours by this point. I was tired, and my feet were really hurting, and I was pretty much done with the outside world (very much an indoor kind of girl; don’t go out if I can help it for months on end).
So, I was at the last shop I needed and the closest to home. I’d already dealt with multiple grumpy/entitled/moronic people already, and as I said above, I. Was. Done.
This random woman (I’ll call her RW) comes barging past me in the cart corral, and whilst I’m walking towards it to get myself a cart, she pushes me out of the way to get her own.
Okay, I think to myself, she’s just in a hurry.
Deep breaths and continue. So, I did.
I walk past her as she’s browsing the flower section, and I head towards the in-store bakery and wait in the orderly line that’s already there. Three people in front of me, two are a couple, so it’s no big deal that I have to wait a few moments for a couple of blueberry muffins.
Then in comes the RW. She tries to push in front of the couple and solo shopper in front of me. The person at the very front said he was in line for the bakery. She tried to stand behind him but in front of the couple. They politely say they’re in a line. Then she stands in front of me.
I nicely tell her I’ve also joined the line, and I think it’s just behind me by now to save her trying to jump in just behind me.
She then looks at me, sighs, stamps her foot, and this ensued.
RW: “I’m only here for a couple of them purple muffins. Can I just go ahead? I’m not going to take long.” (as she’s trying to step back in front of me)
Me: (moving forward a tiny bit to make clear she’s not getting in but trying to keep socially distanced from couple ahead.
She was getting up close to everyone.) “Actually, that’s all I’m here for too, so I think your best bet is just joining the line; it’s not long at all.”
RW: (sighs loudly and rolls her eyes at me, clearly getting fed up, starts walking) “For God’s sake: 2 freaking muffins.”
In my head: I get it lady, trust me.
I’m standing here with sore feet in uncomfortable shoes trying my best too…
She eventually goes off to the back but is tapping her feet, tapping her toes, etc., grumbling about wasting time waiting for a couple of muffins.
So, I then get to the muffins. They have a ton of chocolate but only 4 blueberry. After seeing the 4, I was only going to get 2 for the neighbors so as to share, but I wanted 2 for me, and neighbors wrote 2 on their list (the reason I was in that shop in the first place.) I really do enjoy the blueberry muffins and usually, always buy myself 2 when I’m in there.
And given the stress of the morning already, I felt I deserved a treat as it’s been months.
But given that she made the two people in line behind me leave the bakery line (one looked like he wanted to cry) because of her behavior, I decided I would like my 2 usual muffins.
She saw I had 4, 2 in 2 bags, and her jaw hit the floor when she saw none left in the basket.
I was going to leave the 2 for me behind until she decided to continue the awful behavior after the cart incident. She asked the store colleague if they had any more because some selfish woman just took the last ones. (He saw me take them. I’ve been shopping in there for 5 years, and most of the colleagues know my face by now.) He looked at me; I shrugged.
He said to her that they only had what was put out already for the day. So, she tutted and went about gathering multiple bakery bags and getting some other stuff. I continued on with my neighbor’s shopping and didn’t see or hear her again.
And then!
At checkout, with social distancing, we’re being asked to wait in the aisle near the checkout until we’re called up to the register.
So, I stood there, clearly watching the cashier lady and then comes RW. She looks at me, walks past me, and dumps her cart (with about 7 bakery bags, one with chocolate muffins, so clearly didn’t just want 2 muffins) and started loading.
The cashier lady looked at me as if to say something, but I’m not the confrontation type, and after today, it just didn’t need to be said.
But RW looked at me, clearly waiting for an argument.
So, I simply said, after looking behind me to make sure she wasn’t about to inconvenience anyone else, ‘No, you’re okay. You go ahead. I’m not in a hurry. I’ve got the muffins I needed; a couple of extra minutes wait won’t hurt me.’
And her face turned bright red. I’m sure I could see the steam coming from her ears.
But, she got herself sorted and went on her way. I made sure to pack my cart at the opposite end of the packing area. I purposely went slowly until she left; I didn’t need a round 3. Luckily by the time I was packed, she seemed long gone. I put my cart back and came home.
The neighbors are happy, and I’m enjoying my blueberry muffins with my sore feet up.
They said they’ll enjoy theirs even more after hearing my story.
Now, I’m the first person to let people in front of me when they say they’re in a hurry or even look like they’re in a hurry. I’m definitely socially awkward, and I beyond hate being out, least of all alone, but if I don’t shop for the neighbors, they’ll have no food, especially having no kids themselves.
And after nearly being knocked off my feet, so she could get a cart first and saying nothing, I wasn’t about to be bossed around a second time.”
16. Yeah, You Bet I'm Going To Sue You For Stealing My Photo
“This happened circa 2013.
I used to have my hair dyed in a lot of different colors… Think pink, purple, green, blue, all the colors in the rainbow.
And I always took pride in my hair, I won’t have false modesty, I had pretty awesome hair, so well taken care of that people started asking me what my upkeep was.
Because of that, I started a blog to tell what I did to my hair, and in that blog I posted photos of my hair adventures (obviously).
It wasn’t huge, I didn’t have that many followers, I was on the low hundreds, not a big blogger in no way imaginable.
It was just for fun.
One day I received a message from a friend saying that he saw a photo of me in a catalog of some brand of hair dye, congratulating me.
I was surprised and kinda miffed about it.
I asked him to take some pics of the catalog and send me it. And there it was – A photo I had uploaded to my blog. Immediately I went to the company’s website and took a look at the online catalogue.
And there it was again
I sent an email to the company asking them to take it down, that they couldn’t just use my photo for advertising.
No answer.
I sent a message on their social media page telling them the same thing I said on the email (but less politely, I must admit).
This time I got an answer. They could send me a few bottles of dye, I could even choose the colors they would send. It was good exposure, why I was so mad about it?
Well, the thing is… I don’t know how it works in other countries, but here we have something called, “direito de imagem”.
It means that no one can use your image without your authorization, especially if the person had monetary gain because of your image. I responded to their message saying that they should take everything down and pull every catalog that had my photo in it, that I haven’t given authorization, so they couldn’t use it. Simple as that.
There was some back and forth, they say that they wouldn’t stop using my photo and it was good exposure.
That I was greedy, ’cause they had already made an offer to give me some products… And I saying, adamantly, that the photo MUST GO.
The head of marketing of the company messages me, then. She gets all cocky, saying that if I don’t want the hair dye, I would get nothing. That they didn’t do anything wrong…
And here comes the malicious compliance:
She said: “If you’re unhappy with the outcome, sue me.”
Okay, I will sue the company and you, personally, because you were the person responsible for the catalog. And she admitted that she was the one who designed it.
Long story short, I did sue them, I won, I was awarded a hefty sum, but I still haven’t gotten paid, because they took everything they owned out of their names and stopped using their bank accounts.
That is more common than not in my country, unfortunately.
The thing that brought this back to memory is that she messaged me on social media today, asking me to make some sort of agreement with her because it’s been heck, her credit is destroyed, she can’t use any bank account, she can’t have anything to her name and it’s been really hard on her, and she’s another victim of the company’s owner.
She basically asked me to stop pursuing payment.
I forwarded everything to my lawyer and will let him handle everything… But I really wanted to say to her: “I only did want you asked me to. I sued you.”
15. Can't Be A Nice Person? I'll Sell The Ring You Said You Wanted
“I used to work in a pawnshop as both a sales associate and a pawnbroker. I have so many stories I could probably tell, but this one always makes me smile because of how smug the man was.
When I was a sales associate, I sold a lot of jewelry and luxury items. I often had to tell people that we couldn’t hold items because A) someone might come in and want it and have the coin right there, and B) we had a layaway program.
So, unless you put some down, 20% cold hard cash, holding it wasn’t an option.
So, one day, this man comes in and is looking for a very specific type of ring: diamond channel set anniversary ring set in white gold size 5.
The pawnshop I worked at had a VAST collection of these types of things in many sizes and with many different carat weights.
He needed a specific size and a specific carat weight, and he was very much in luck because we HAPPENED to have it. Most pawn shops are you get what you see, and you can see what you get. Basically, we don’t have inventory/stock of any specific item and our jewelers are for sizing and dipping purposes only. So, I show him my ring that I have in the case.
Me: “Here you go. Exactly the size you need and just over the carat weight.”
Man pulls out a loupe, looks at diamonds: “Okay, they’re not AS clear as I normally like them.”
Me: “Yeah, I understand, but the price is only $350, and at a regular jewelry store, this would easily run around $1,500, so while the clarity isn’t as nice, it’s still a really good deal, and I don’t know if you’ll find another this size with the same carat weight.”
Man, sighing: “Okay. Well, I know your sister store also has some rings, right? Do you think they might have a better one with better quality?”
At this time, there is a woman looking at rings and clearly listening to our conversation, but I’m positive he hasn’t noticed her. She sees the ring in my hand, and I see her eyebrow go up.
Me: “I’m not sure, but they are a smaller store, so their inventory is smaller. If they do have one, there isn’t a guarantee the ring will be the correct size or the same carat weight.”
Man: “Hmm. Okay, well can you hold the ring for me? I want to go see their inventory.”
Me: “I’m sorry, we can’t. Company policy is that all items held must be put on layaway for holding.
If someone wants to buy an item and it isn’t in layaway, we don’t want to stop them.”
Man: “Hmph, well, I’m gonna hold off and go check that store. IF someone comes in and sees THIS specific ring, yeah, go ahead and sell it, but I doubt that’s gonna happen.”
He walked away with a kind of smug look on his face.
Just as he left, the woman who was listening to our conversation walks up.
Woman: “Can I see that ring he didn’t want?”
I hand it over to her. She slips it on her finger and smiles.
Woman: “I’ll take it.”
She didn’t even hesitate. She straight-up bought this ring after wearing it for 5 seconds. During ring out, I asked her why, and she said she had been searching for a channel set ring for a few years at the pawnshops, but none had caught her eye like that one, and it was her size, which can be hard to find.
I told her to have a nice day and cleaned it before she left.
45 minutes later, the man walked back in.
Man: “Okay, they didn’t have anything, so I guess I’ll take that one I was looking at.”
Me: “I’m sorry, sir, but just after you left, a woman came up, tried on the ring, and bought it. I don’t have any more in the carat weight you’re looking for.
I have some in the higher carat weights if you’re interested!”
Man: “Are you freaking serious? You knew I’d probably be back! Why did you sell it?”
Me: “Well, you did say I should if someone came in and saw it. Just because you doubt something is going to happen doesn’t mean it can’t.”
Another User Comments:
“I used to sell at flea markets.
One year, I was helping out my father-in-law who made decorative lawn art. His main seller was a Dutch-style, wooden windmill. The season was basically over to sell this, but he needed working capital. I loaded up the truck and took it to the best flea market in the area. Mind you, the season was over, but I decided the gamble was good enough. I had something like 50 of those things in the truck.
Shortly after noon, I was down to the last three. One guy asked me to hold on to the one he bought (yeah, he paid in cold hard cash) so he could shop around a bit more. I told him I’d stick around til 1, even if I sold out.
Down to my last two, and I have a tourist trying to haggle me down on the price.
The normal price was $30; I was selling them closeout for $25. She wanted both for $35. She wasn’t budging. I had agreed to let her have both for $40, but she never said she’d buy. Meanwhile, the guy that bought the other windmill came back to pick it up, I excused myself, telling her I’d be right back, turned around, handed him his windmill, and went to see about closing the sale.
She was gone. Oh well.
Almost immediately, a guy steps up and asks how much. I told him $25 each, both for $45. He whipped out the dough, paid for them, and walked away with a smile.
Okay, I sold all of my inventory, didn’t have much in the way of clean-up, and the guy I would have waited on picked up his product. All done. I go to get in the truck and the woman came back and said, “Okay, I’ve thought it over, and I’ll buy those two for the $40 you said.”
“Sorry, Ma’am, but I already sold them for $45.”
“But you knew I wanted them.”
“Yeah, but you never said you’d buy them, so when I didn’t see you, I sold them to the next person. And he didn’t haggle. He headed that way,” pointing east, “I don’t think he’ll sell them, though, because he bought them as Christmas gifts.”
“Don’t you have any more?”
“Nope, I brought 50, I sold 50.”
Took the truck back to the shop, handed Dad the dough, and told him I sold out. It always surprised him when I did this. I did this every week for a month and a half, kept his business afloat, then headed out of state. He turned the sales over to my brother-in-law. BIL was lucky to sell one.” Swiggy1957
14. I'll Drive You Insane With My Music
“I used to work at a car manufacturing plant, and it’s quite loud and monotonous, so they allowed us to play music. When I first started, we had these giant radio boxes built out of a car stereo and a car battery.
They were huge and got in the way, so they decided that they were going to install a sound system throughout the line, and people could just play the music that way. This meant that only one person could play music at a time, so you had to sign up for a specific run.
Our day was split between two different jobs for 2 hours at a time.
These were called runs. Therefore, in a given day, four people could play music all day long. When they first implemented it, I waited to see what other people would play. Unsurprisingly, it was either Lil Wayne or Five Finger Death Punch — radio dad rock or an endless loop of the same songs by Lil Wayne. I can listen to any genre of music no problem, but when it’s the same guys (let’s call them Z and Y) played the same 2 albums back to back to back to back of Lil Wayne, that was becoming monotonous unto itself, so I decided to start bringing in my music.
Being a metalhead my whole life, naturally, it took me a minute to cultivate a playlist that was work-appropriate.
If someone heard a curse word in my music, it was immediately shut off, but Lil Wayne’s albums went fully uncensored without a peep from anyone. So, once I started playing my music at the same volume that FFDP and Lil Wayne were played at, I got immediate complaints that it was too loud and too aggressive for a workplace setting.
(This was not the office where the higher-ups worked but the loud floor.)
I ignored these complaints but eventually started making a few of my own. Mainly, it was Z and his friend Y who liked their Lil Wayne played at a volume of 20 who would constantly walk off their jobs and turn my music down to a 5, thereby making it impossible to hear at all over machinery and people talking.
This is when I started to put a revenge scheme in place.
I continued to bring in loud screaming and screeching guitars for weeks stoking the fires and watching them turn down my music time and time again. I complained daily to my boss knowing he wasn’t going to do anything about it. So, I filled up two flash drives with two distinctly different genres of music.
That day, I came into work and complained to my boss before work that if he didn’t make some sort of announcement against turning down other people’s music, I’d go to HR and file a complaint. He agreed to do so that day at our daily meeting before work.
I signed up for two runs that day: the first and third, both of which were while I was at my second job, which was too loud to hear whatever music was playing at all.
My boss made his announcement and said if anyone turns down anyone else’s music, they are getting a write-up and being sent to HR. I thanked him and plugged in my music before walking to my loud second job.
For the next two hours, LOUD Bollywood music played for middle-aged, white dudes and young 20-somethings. They went insane! Some of them literally stopped the line, walked over to me, and begged me to turn it off.
Then they got the point and wouldn’t touch my metal again when I refused. They suffered while I made sure for them all to see me laughing hysterically every time they looked over and shot me middle fingers.
Now that the cat was out of the bag, and they knew what I was doing, they begged me not to do it for the third run of the day.
Some offered cash to take my slot. I refused. So, the third run of the day, I played LOUD Italian opera music for two hours. Same result. Furious, old men losing their minds. “I can’t concentrate with this music,” my boss told me of their complaints. I agreed to not do it again if they all agreed to let me play my music at the same level they all enjoy.
Nobody touched my music again.
A friend of mine told me later about Z and Y talking about all the rap music they were going to bring in and how mad I would be. (I don’t dislike rap at all. I just don’t wanna hear the same two albums day in and day out.) So, my friend said this to them, “You guys don’t understand at all.
It’s not about him winning; it’s about you losing. The fact that this is driving you insane, that’s you losing. Bringing in music he likes isn’t going to hurt him at all. You’re just going to keep losing because he’s better at this than you are.”
I was so proud.”
13. I'm Not Fixing My Attitude, Sorry
“Math…has never been my strong suit. But being the eldest and so given the “must-have all As unless there’s a good reason,” I really tried. Lots of studying practice problems (my dad’s solution to my struggles were constant worksheets every day). I was to sit down at the table until my math was done and completely correct with my dad’s method of tutoring being:
Exclaim, “Oh, this is easy”
Give me the answer (hated this; I wanted to know how to do it, not just get the end result)
Explain his method in what I swear was short-hand plus complicated as it could get
If I didn’t understand, he’d repeat previous steps but do so louder.
I explain this to show how easily stressed I’d get about math, not to rag on my dad.
He’s human like the rest of us, and teaching/communicating was never his strong suit. He did hardwire into me for every problem I had to painstakingly show my work all the way through and then explain how I got there by proofing/writing my thought process behind it. My math homework was always at least 4-5 pages front and back, but at least there was no way for teachers to say I didn’t show my work, right?
Then I meet my 7th-grade teacher. (Let’s call her Mrs. Shrill.) I had her for math and science in a block/back to back periods, which 95% of that time was used for math/study time, and we hardly learned any science, but that’s another point.
We…didn’t get along. She hated my constant questions after she’d explain something, usually saying I should pay better attention when she teaches.
I understood her methods less than I did my dad’s, so I would almost always want help during study time. After a while, she explained that I was taking time away from other students who needed help and to hold my questions until after class. Okay…so I’d try just that only to be waved away as she’d say she has to prep for her next class.
Could I have told this to my parents or to another teacher? Yes, but I saw this as whining and so just kept trying to figure things out. My math grade slipped (she always gave everyone an A in science, probably to cover that we rarely did anything for that subject; I wasn’t about to rock that boat), given more tutoring time at home, and told to pay better attention in class.
Fun times. This went on for 3-4 months with me desperately trying to hold onto a C.
Then, life said let’s take a break on the lemons. My parents wanted to take a road trip to see some family friends almost all the way across the US. It would take a month and a half. I was friends with their kids, so yay, and I saw this as a break from that dreaded woman, so double yay.
Now cue the storm clouds: my teachers assigned me homework packets to do while on vacation, which wasn’t surprising. The part that made my soul shrivel inside was how much Mrs. Shrill had given me, just under half the dang math book I was to complete before coming back.
Much of the road trip there consisted of my nose in my homework trying to get it all done before we got there, so I could relax and have fun – or having to take care of my toddler sibling who, of course, hated being fed while in the car but can’t not feed the baby, so those were glorious moments of screams and trying to keep the mess to a minimum.
(To all eldest kids, isn’t it fun being the substitute parent?)
I had no problems doing the other classwork, so of course, I went through that first. I always loved history English, and reading in almost any genre was a stress reliever, so those subjects have always been easy A’s for me.
I was thankful Mrs. Shrill hadn’t given any science homework, but even then, I struggled to get through even 3 chapters before we got to Michigan.
Still not sure if it was good or bad that dad couldn’t help me at all what with a cranky toddler being louder than a jet, but at least I didn’t have him timing my progress by thumping his fist, so I’ll take that.
We then arrive at the family friend’s house; I’ll call them the Lemon family. Amazing people, they used to live nearby, but a job crisis made them move a couple of years prior.
Of course, I want to spend time with the kids, relatively my age, and just relax have some fun.
I got a day before I was told to finish the homework, so it’d be all done for the ride home. Of course, dad tries to help, but as usual, this resulted in many frustrating hours wishing I was anywhere else but at the table.
This went on for a couple of days before Mrs. Lemon (to this day, I still say thank you) saved me by sending my dad off to hang out with her husband saying, “Enough is enough; she needs a break.” She made me tea, gave me a cool book to read for an hour, before she took it upon herself to try helping me. She homeschools her kids, and I quickly found out I had no problem understanding her.
It still took me time, but after maybe 3-4 days of homework sessions (every time she’d send dad off with her husband) with her, I finished everything.
Years later, I found out she wanted to step in and help earlier, but dad had been firm in that I was his kid and his responsibility to teach. She let it be until she had enough and convinced mom to help her get him out of the house.
To this day, I’m still grateful. We only could stay for so long, but at least I had the last 3 days to just play and hang out before we started driving back home.
Aside from more screaming and a couple of side trips the return home was uneventful.
Dad looked over the homework to confirm I had done everything correctly, and thankfully that was that.
I think he was perturbed still someone else had an easier time teaching me but didn’t say anything to me about it. I was mainly relieved I had somehow finished all that math and so my grade was sure to go up.
The first day back, I’m almost giddy to turn in 10 chapters worth of homework to Mrs. Shrill. She even (surprisingly) said that I had done well, and it was good to see I was finally taking the time to learn.
That irked, but whatever, you horrid woman; I completed it. Then, as a further….reward for my “sudden learning curve,” I could help her help the other students during study time as they went through the chapters.
Apparently, they only made it through 3 chapters after I had left, so helping with the next 7 should be a good experience for me.
Fairly certain my face went “error…reloading” when she told me this.
Until I was able to respond that I’d really rather not help out, to which she was so lovely to point out, “This would show I really learned something instead of probably lying my way through the homework. Otherwise, I would’ve shown my work” Excuse me? I lost it and profusely maintained that all of what she held was my work alone and how much more work needs to be shown before that’s to be believed. Her face now curdling like spoiled milk told me to “Get lost until I found myself a better attitude.” Still fuming, I did just that.
For the next week, come periods 6-7, I’d head over to the library and read to my heart’s content until the bell rang signaling buses. Now, of course, my parents eventually were called and informed I was skipping and so they were peeved and demanded an explanation. As well as being very interested to know what happened to my math homework, as online, it showed it was missing, 0%.
Now very nervous, certain I had an F for the first time and wasn’t sure what punishment that’d warrant, I explained, yes, I did turn it in and how that unfolded. At this point, I’m getting basilisk stares when asked why I didn’t go to class after this, and I explained that she basically told me to.
Since I hadn’t found the attitude she was looking for, I didn’t have the urge to attend class.
After what seemed an eternity of silence, my dad busted up laughing then they both hugged me and told me, “With balls like that, you’ll do fine in life,” then admitted maybe he wasn’t the best person to help me with math. (Mom had been wearing him down that she should try instead after I did so well with Mrs. Lemon, showing it was more likely communication issues that were preventing me from learning quicker, but I didn’t find this out for a long while.)
While I might be a tad scarred from his math teaching methods, my dad is a loving father, and when the need calls, has no problem being our advocate at school even if it requires roaring.
He’s always been…a vibrantly emotional person. He told me I could keep going to the library until he said, otherwise, he’d take care of things. I was extremely happy to follow this.
Think I got two more library days before things were handled, and I had to attend Mrs. Shrill’s class again. Dad had verbally berated her in front of the principal, how I should be credited for all the work I did, and not require me to help teach in any way and that until the class had caught up to where she had assigned me in the book, I should only have to take tests and be left alone, to make up for pulling so much homework on me when it was a gross overestimate of where she thought the class would be when I returned.
She had tried to defend herself saying she gave so much with the hope of maybe I’d learn without taking up too much of her time. After all, parents or tutor are supposed to help with homework. She wanted someone else to teach me. The reason she didn’t credit me for my homework as I’ve always been slow and never really showed my work, and so she thought I had been dishonest.
Dad ALWAYS checked my math homework and made sure I showed my work up to his standards. This did not help her in the slightest, and to appease my dad, the principal said I could essentially be left alone in class till they had caught up to the last chapter I worked on.
As well as getting credit for my vacation homework, aside from whatever questions I’d gotten wrong.
(Ha! Already knew everything was correct.)
Suddenly I loved her class for a decent while as it meant I could just read aside from taking tests. Once the class caught up, that ended, but with my mom helping me with studying math, it wasn’t so bad to learn.
It was the first time I had really stood up to a teacher like that, and it ended up changing life for the better.
I still say math isn’t my favorite; give me music theory any day, but I ended up not being too bad at it.”
12. Try To Pull A Fast One On Us After 15 Years? Let Me Just Do A Little Digging First...
“There was a small mechanic shop a few blocks away from where I lived ran by a man who I will call P.
My mom had been going to this mechanic for as long as I can remember, I would say at least 15 years.
I was 17 when this went down and was looking at getting my first car. I would have considered P to be a family friend at this point, so when he heard about me looking for a car he offered to gift me a car he had sitting on his lot for a while.
Around this time my mom was wanting to also fix up her 1989 hardbody Nissan pickup truck (valuable due to its dependability) as it had been just sitting around for about a year. I don’t remember the exact timeline, but it would be safe to say my mom brought in the truck and he offered to gift me the car around the same time.
For a few months he always had an excuse for why the truck wasn’t ready yet or why he hasn’t gifted me the car yet.
When it came to the car, it was always something like “the car has just been sitting around for a long time and needs work done on it. I will get to it when I can”. And when it came to my moms truck it was “I have been really busy around the shop, so I haven’t got to it yet” or “I’m waiting on parts to come in”.
Since we had trusted P, we didn’t think much about it since we knew his shop had a very good reputation in the area and was always busy. Also, I mean he was giving me a car for free, so I wasn’t going to keep pushing him for something he doesn’t have to do. I would estimate this started around November and it wasn’t until around February or so that we felt it started to get out of hand.
My mom started contacting him at least once a week to see when the truck would be ready but was given an excuse each time. At this time, I knew I wasn’t going to get a car from him anymore, but I wanted my mom to get her truck back.
I researched who to make a complaint to if you are having an issue with an auto shop.
In California, there is a department called the Bureau of Automotive Repair (BAR) who licenses and governs all auto repair facilities. In the process of making a complaint, I had to look up the auto shops license. This is when I landed on a gold mine, his license had expired the previous September. So, I threw the report out the window for now and decided to confront him.
Now, I have never been confrontational. When I must confront someone and get “heated” I start having an anxiety attack with a shaking high pitch voice and the whole nine yards. So, imagine a 17-year-old with a high pitch shaky voice screaming at this guy to give my mom her car back. He kind of brushed me off and I didn’t get anywhere, but as I was walking out I said to him something along the lines of “have fun with the BAR when they find out you don’t have a license” and walked out.
The next thing I did was report him to the BAR for the whole situation including him still operating when he shouldn’t be. Over the next week, my mom was communicating with the person assigned to the case and within a couple weeks we were marching back into P’s shop to pickup the truck. After a very awkward situation where my mom paid for the services done and I was standing behind her still trying to act like I am in control, we left with the truck and were good to go.
I don’t really know the exact timeline of when everything happened after this, but I know I passed the shop a couple of months later and saw that it was closed. When I am writing this now, his Yelp is obviously reported as closed and I have found a citation posted on the BAR’s website that corroborates the timeline from my memory. When my mom and I look back on this, we are dead set that he was trying to steal my moms truck.
Anybody who knows about old pickup trucks knows that a 1989 hardbody Nissan pickup truck is a great truck and can run forever. She has owned the truck since 1991 and it is currently at 250K miles while running the same engine and major components. She still gets offers for cash on the spot to this day.”
11. Can't Be Faithful To Him? Better Pack Up
Your life is going down in shambles.
“Me and my friends sometimes hang out with a guy we will call Mark.
Now, Mark is in his 40s, happily married to a woman, they have 2 kids in their teens. I will tell this story as accurately as possible from what Mark told us.
As you all know, married life can many times get boring with 9 to 5 jobs, mundane life in a small-time village, kids are growing up so you don’t have to look after them 24/7 anymore.
So, you do what you can to make life interesting.
You get a dog, start some hobbies, etc., etc. Or so at least Mark thought. He also thought that his happy little life would last forever. Wrong.
Mark found out through the g*******e that while he was playing sports, being at work, trying to break the boring life they were having, his wife (let’s call her Mandy) was tending to some hobbies of her own, hobbies that included getting sweaty and real passionate with another man from a few towns over.
At first, the rumors didn’t bother him; they were rumors after all. But something in Mandy’s behavior started to change. No more fun time with Mark, she started to get distant, no more talking – just yelling, being annoyed, etc., etc.
It went on for a few months.
This struck Mark as off, and one time after we were done playing soccer, he asked us what to do.
We came up with several solutions, like confronting her. But Mark didn’t want to ruin his marriage over some mood swings and a rumor. So, he did what every sane man would do. He set up cameras all through the house. And I am talking PI quality stuff here. He had cameras in the bathroom, living room, their bedroom, basically everywhere but the room of his children.
He updated us on his new hobby and his set up, and things cooled off for a few weeks.
After a few weeks after soccer time, we went out for a few drinks.
Mark wasn’t quite himself, so we inquired what was wrong. He told us that after several nights of recording tape, he found out that Mandy, indeed, was unfaithful to him. He was furious, they were married 20+ years, they were high school sweethearts with 2 boys, and she betrayed him.
Now comes the revenge part. He didn’t confront her right ahead. Mark formulated a plan. Living only a few towns over, he had no problem getting the guy’s phone number. Now you all know those pesky advertising companies who call you to get you to buy products, right? Mark pretended to be one and called the guy with the pretense he was selling him body cleansing pills and other crap.
He knew the guy was overweight, and being quite a smooth talker, he didn’t have much problem getting him hooked.
He got the guy’s first and last name (which he already knew), his address, SSN, job, address, and some other stuff that doesn’t really matter to the story. He told the guy he was in a ballot for different prizes from the company he was working for, and he would stay in touch in case the guy won anything.
After that came part 2. While Mandy was at work on a Friday, he packed all the stuff she owned: clothes, jewelry, collectibles, and other stuff into their family car. They have a VW Touran, so everything she had easily fit in. When Mandy came home from work, he told her they were going on a trip.
At first, she was against it, but again, the smooth-talking convinced her to roll over pretty quickly, and she got in the van with him.
Before that, he took the boys to one of our friend’s house (they weren’t 18 yet, and he is a responsible father), and off they went.
Where did they go, you ask? Remember how he called the guy Mandy was unfaithful with? I think you know the answer. Sadly, or very hilariously, Mandy had no clue. He took her and all of her belongings to the guy’s address and called him on the way, telling him to come outside.
He said he won the first prize, and he was on his way to give it to him personally.
Mandy still had no clue. She thought he was just pranking one of his friends. (I believe you realized by now that she isn’t the brightest one in this world.)
Imagine her and guy’s face when he rolled into the parking spot of guy’s house. He stepped out of the car, shook the guy’s hand, and told him: “Here is your prize, sir.
I believe you know what it is.” He took one last look at Mandy’s white face and walked off.
He got custody of both kids since he was better off than her and also told the judge she was being unfaithful and that’s why he was divorcing her.
This all happened last year, and as far as we know, the guy was an A-grade b******e, and she left him soon after that.
Mark got over her after some time and a lot of drinks, but he and his boys are doing great. They were both big enough to realize their mom was at fault and still barely talk to her when they go to visit.
She tried to return into Mark’s life on a few occasions, but he did the smart thing told her to go away.
He told us this story after we went out for a few beers after soccer again. I was laughing so hard imagining the whole thing that I had to go to the bathroom; otherwise, I would have peed myself.”
10. Can't Help An Elementary Student Who's Getting Bullied? Lose Your Career
“In the middle of my 5th-grade year, I was having an argument with one of my “friends;” let’s call him John.
it was just some bickering and other stuff like making fun of each other. This progresses for a while.
John gets his friends, let’s call him Steven, to also bully me. I told my mom about this, and she emailed my principal about this multiple times, but we got no response.
So, fast forward to my school Thanksgiving walk. It was basically where all the 5th graders walked around our track in our last period.
John gets his other friend, who was much bigger than me, to walk by me and insult me about me being Jewish. I’m not extremely invested in my religion, and it was 5th grade, so most of the stuff they said to me flew through my head. Now I know that they were saying some terrible stuff to me like your nose is a big ’cause you’re Jewish.
(This was 5 years ago, so I don’t remember exactly what they said.)
There is a good part of that day, though. My crush overheard what they were saying, so she just told me to ignore them and other stuff.
She walked with me for the rest of the walk, so that was really good.
Anyways, after school, I was going to go home with some of my friends and to play some video games.
I need to mention two things before I go on with the story: in elementary school, my backpack weighed like 5 pounds, and I was doing some martial arts at the time, so I had some really good reflexes.
As I was walking over to the table where my friends were, Steven runs up behind me, and a lot of people were watching. I think someone was recording it too.
So, Steven runs behind me and, as I said before, he was really big, so he hit his terminal velocity really fast.
That walrus hit an all-out sprint. It was really loud where I was, so I didn’t hear his panting behind me. So, as soon as I feel his paw on my shoulder, I realize what was happening. You know how people say that their lives flashed before their eyes?
It was kinda like that; it was like everything was in slow motion.
I stepped back, grabbed his arm, and pulled/pushed it forward. What I mean by that is that I pulled his arm even more forward, so he went even faster. Then I grab the collar of his shirt and pull as hard as I can. I kid you not, his legs flew up so high that it was like his entire body had just flipped.
He landed on his back and hit his head on the concrete. Later I found out that he got a concussion.
I didn’t really know what to do, so I just walked over to my friends and told them that we would go somewhere else to wait for my mom to pick us up.
During the weekend, I told my mom what happened, and she emailed the principal. At school on Monday, I got called to the office, and I thought that I was going to get expelled because, on the way out, John whispers to me that I’m going to get expelled.
In the principal’s office, I see Steven sitting there. I can see a big, red rash on his neck. I thought that I also saw a scab on his neck too, but I wasn’t certain.
The principal tells me that whatever is going on between me and Steven has to stop. I try to intervene, but she cuts me off, “I don’t care what happened; it just needs to stop.” At that point, I kept my mouth shut because I was glad I didn’t get expelled.
I tell my mom about what happened when I get home, and she was fuming. You know how I said that someone was recording? I get the video from them and give them to my mom. In the video, it is clear that I acted from self-defense. I also got a bunch of witnesses to say that they heard what Steven had said to me.
I left John out of it because I was stupid and wanted to protect him from getting into trouble.
Armed with all this firepower, my mom emails my principal’s boss; let’s call her Jan. She tells her the story of what happened (the name-calling and comments) and the video of the “fight.” We also say how the principal didn’t care about what happened. Jan emails my mom and asks my mom if she wants to have a conference with her, my dad, the principal, me, Steven, and Steven’s parents.
My mom says yes.
At the conference, the next weekend, I can confirm that Steven didn’t have a scab on his neck, which I was mildly upset about, but then I realized that that was good because if there was a cut on his neck, I could have gotten into trouble.
Jan shows everyone the video of the fight and all the things that Steven had said to me.
My dad actually laughed and had to mask it as a cough. He also gave me a high five under the table.
Steven’s parents are appalled by things Steven said and did to me. They profusely apologize to my parents and me and assured me that Steven would be punished. Jan asks to speak to the principal in her office to discuss her future at the school.
They come out of her office after a lot of yelling. To sum the meeting up, the principal got fired because she wouldn’t listen to me, and that was no way to be when you’re working with kids.
Steven didn’t get expelled, but he got suspended for a couple of days. I can’t remember exactly. After he came back, his parents made him apologize to me.
After that, we became acquaintances, not friends, but I forgave him.
As for John, we didn’t really mend our friendship, so we just slowly got new friends.”
9. Get The Police Involved? Yes Sir
“Australian here. To set the scene, I had minor surgery in the morning (Kidney stones aren’t fun) and decided that it would probably be best to Uber to an appointment instead of drive.
For most of the Uber drive, everything goes relatively peacefully, we’re about 2 minutes out and everything has been going as expected. What I wasn’t expecting was for some ‘roided up stress head in a 4WD to have an insecure masculinity meltdown.
Traffic is a little backed up, and my Uber driver does a socially frowned upon, but not illegal maneuver, as we are stopped to let turning traffic have unrestricted access to a side road (not something we have to do, as it’s not an actual intersection).
Uber driver notices that the guy in the right lane has done the same because the gap in front of him is too small for his giant 4WD. She indicates, takes that opening, and then is immediately honked at by the 4WD.
She looks confused at me and asks if she did anything wrong, I shook my head.
We are approaching the lights that caused the backup, and our emotionally stunted 4WD owner speeds violently into the lights right turning lane, screaming at us through his car, giving us the finger, the works.
I laugh, the Uber driver ignores. As we continue up to the lights going straight on, 4WD owner slams his 4WD into the straight lane with no warning or indication and slams his brakes on. It’s worth noting, that this was done at a well-surveilled set of lights.
He’s in front of us, and brake checks us again as we cross over the lights, and then he turns off onto the next side street… the side street I was going to get my Uber driver to drop me off on.
I get her to go one street further up, and U-turn, so as to not antagonize the clearly angry driver and give him time to get ahead. She agrees, does the U-turn, then turns onto the side street.
Only guess what is at the entrance to the street? The 4WD. My eyes roll into the back of my head as I realize there is a pretty solid likelihood this dude is going to come over and try and abuse us.
The Uber driver drops me off and asks nervously, “do you want me to hang around?” but I shake my head.
I get my phone out and hit record just in case, and sure enough, as my first steps down the street happen, Mr. I-purchase-large-cars-to-make-up-for-deficiencies-elsewhere is coming over.
He’s Greek or Lebanese. I can tell right away. The clothes, the annoyed strut, the glasses, the skin tone.
Sure enough, he starts right away being verbally aggressive, and his accent confirms my suspicions. For 8 minutes, I let him go, complaining all about her driving… but when I bring up his own actually illegal actions saying ‘so what?’
He tells me he doesn’t care if I’m recording, does the short man syndrome thing of entering my personal space and calling me “tough because I’m big” and telling me how hard he is for doing “4 years in prison” and then makes a fatal mistake, he tells me to call the cops.
So I do.
He’s standing there, riled up, a mixture of nervous and self-righteous energy. Except I tell the police immediately that I arrived at the location via an Uber, and was being harassed.
When I mention the word Uber, his head tilts, and when I explain his actions, as well as him admitting to them on camera… he looks surprised and then concerned, and then he runs to his car, but not before I can relay to the operator his license plate.
Police arrive later, and I show them the video footage of the altercation. I didn’t think anything serious would happen, most likely just a fine unless he’d done this kind of thing before.
Turned out he had done worse, he had been involved in a nonfatal hit and run where the police were only able to get a description of the vehicle and of the driver.
He was sentenced just last week, 6 months. Not much, as it was his first offense… at least now when he tells folks he’s spent time in prison he won’t actually be lying.”
8. Wanna Be Gross Teenage Boys? I'll Go Straight To Your Parents
“It was around the summer of 2018. I’m not going to lie, I’m big into games and call myself a “Gamer Girl.” I’m not like those thirst **********, I just wanna sit down and play some games.
I was starting to get pretty bored of playing solos and decided to play squads. I plugged in my headset and readied up. I ended up joining a match with three boys. They knew each other so I was the only stranger really. The whole game they were super nice to me – and we joked around a lot. They ended up adding me as a friend and inviting me to their Discord server, which I didn’t find weird because we were all the same age and I thought it’d be nice to have some new friends to play Fortnite with.
Even though I live in Canada and they are from America, we still got to play a lot even with a time zone difference. Wverything was perfect/normal until one of them suggested we all do face reveals.
Boy A: “Hey guys I just had this cool idea! We should all do face reveals!”
Boy B: “Don’t matter to me haha.”
Me: “Sure, I guess.”
Boy C: “I wanna see [My username’s] amazing bod.”
Now I found that weird but I assumed they were all joking, they all took turns showing pictures of them. Then I showed myself, and from that day on the harassment started. Constantly asking me “Send naughties” or “Show your bits.” Hh and my favourite one “Let’s have e-hookups.” I just assumed they were all joking around.
One day Boy A (who is a year older than all of us) asked for a full-body picture of me, he didn’t want a naughty picture though he said it could be a pic of me in clothes, which I regret sending but at the time I wasn’t thinking. He started making gross comments about my body. This continued for weeks on end, through August and even when I started school again, I trusted these guys because they were so nice to me at the start, and I’m already insecure about my body.
I would often join calls and not speak, to which they wouldn’t notice I was joined and say things like “She’s got a nice bum but nothing else haha” and joke about vulgar things I won’t mention, which made me disgusted and sad, so that’s were the revenge comes in.
I found Boy A’s social media account because none of the other boys had any from what I tried to find.
He was the crassest anywhere. I looked through his small amount of followers, to find HIS PARENTS. I messaged his parents providing them with screenshots and screen recordings of him saying disgusting things to me. Nothing happened, a few days later I get hundreds of messages on Discord from private messages from this guy saying “YOU TOLD MY PARENTS? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU WITCH” and more cussing, etc, I then showed his parents again what he did, finally getting a message back from them saying they made him delete Discord, and banned him from his PC for half a year (6 months).
I eventually got in contact with the other two boys, and we all joined a group chat to which they formally apologized and said boy A was making them join along with them, and they are now very nice (and when we start talking about what happened because it sometimes comes up in conversation, they apologize again). I still play Games with them today!”
7. Go Ahead And Make A Mistake That'll Cost You $100,000
“So, I work at an outdoor bar and grill. I work as a busboy but have some responsibilities outside of that. One of the responsibilities is stocking the walk-in freezer when bottle shipments come in.
The restaurant that I work at is VERY popular in my town, which means it takes a very long time to stock the mammoth shipments. It takes most of a day as there are usually 100-200 cases of ale.
So, I got to work on a shipment day, and there’s more than I thought. I’m taking a lot longer than I usually would.
I look up at the sky, and the clouds are looking pretty rough. I look at my phone, and low and behold, it’s gonna thunderstorm. So, I take the hand truck and start moving the cases under a canopy.
My boss sees this and doesn’t like that I’m taking another 30 minutes to move the cases for a second time.
(She was a police officer for 20 years, and as she puts it, “I aLwAYs kNOw BeST.”)
So, she just starts chucking the cases in the freezer way too high with no regard for how it’s stacked. I know she is gonna mess up royally and try and explain that that’s not how you do it.
This is how the following conversation ensued:
Me: “That’s not how you do it. You’re stacking them the wrong way, and the towers are way too high.”
Boss: “I’ve been in this game for 3 years. I know what I’m doing.”
Me: “You put me here to do this job and to do it right, and I was trained properly. That’s the wrong way to do it.”
Boss: “Either help me, or the door’s that way.
-points at door-”
Cue malicious compliance
So, I go home for the day because I know it’s gonna go wrong, and I don’t wanna be responsible.
Not 30 minutes later, I get a call from a coworker FURIOUSLY screaming at me, saying need to get back and fix “my” mistake.
So, I ride my bike back and walk right to the freezer and see a mess. The entire right wall fell down ruining around $4,000 worth of ale, $2,000 worth of food, and the entire wall is soaked.
They had to close down the restaurant for 2 weeks to fix the freezer from the damage.
(The ale got under the floor and started mucking up the walls and floor.)
Moral of the story: listen to your employees.
UPDATE: my boss tried to lie to upper management to get me fired saying that I was the one that told her how to stack the cases. THANK GOD my coworker Jack saw what happened and vouched for me. That trick backfired.”
6. Fine, We Will Leave, See Ya!
“I work(ed) as a housekeeper at a small local hotel.
At the beginning when I started (about three years ago), things were pretty peachy. I got above minimum wage and worked in an environment with a more relaxed working pace.
We had more time than your average hotel to clean rooms and it showed in customer satisfaction.
We had stellar reviews with customers raving about how there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere, how everything from the lampshades to the bathroom drain was always scrubbed squeaky clean.
I loved my job and took pride in it, and when we had extra time (which happened from time to time), we would do some deeper cleaning like scrubbing all the walls inch by inch, disinfecting the whole bathroom, cleaning the blinds, etc.
Even though we all had some extra time, we used it to make sure the rooms were always up to a very high standard.
As a result of this, we got a reputation of being an affordable but very clean hotel, so our popularity spiked. Even before we got so popular (in our prime we were booked full about 90% of the days) our boss made a pretty nice amount of coin.
We don’t have a reception, we’re self-service (you just get a passcode for your room via text message) so he saved dough with that.
He drives an expensive car and seems very well off. We were never struggling financially.
Then things started changing. We’re a very close-knitted team of cleaners who have been in the house for years. A couple of us left at the end of last year (one moved to another state, another became a housewife after having a kid), and we started expecting newcomers to our team.
They never came. Our boss claimed that it’s hard to find workers for this kind of job.
We never had anyone interviewed and I never saw ads anywhere that we’re hiring, so I’m not sure he was even planning on replacing them.
So our work pace got tighter. We managed somehow but there was no longer time for thorough cleaning.
Then, the boss opened a restaurant so that the guests could have breakfast. Cleaning it daily got added to our workload (and that place is massive, it takes at least 1½ hours to clean daily).
At the same time, he also opened a separate Airbnb-style apartment (three bedrooms, kitchen, living room, and bathroom) for larger groups who wanted to reside together.
Cleaning that fell on us as well.
So suddenly, we were down two people (there were seven of us initially) and shoved two massive new responsibilities. We asked our boss again to hire more people, but he said no and that “we’ve been having it too easy” beforehand.
He also refused to add another hour or two to our daily working hours (currently 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.). We have six hours and everything needs to be done at 3 p.m. sharp because that’s when the new passcodes start working.
Understandably, we were stressed out. There was suddenly far too much to do and our boss also simultaneously expected that we would keep up our usual cleaning standard.
But when our time per room plummets from 45 min to 25 min tops (usually closer to 15), obviously we’re not able to clean everything the way we did before. We would get yelled at when we got bad feedback because there wasn’t enough time to clean thoroughly enough, customers who came in after our clean rooms were disappointed and took their business elsewhere.
Also, my coworkers started calling in sick because they were burnt out.
It was a mess, but our boss maintained the outlook that if he just pushed a massive amount of work on us, we’d somehow magically find an extra pair of hands and get everything done 100%.
Last week, we had a meeting with my coworkers. We discussed the current situation and to my surprise, everyone was considering quitting. Out of loyalty to our long-time employer, the five of us agreed to have a meeting with our boss and try to persuade him to hire more staff to bring the hotel back to its earlier standard.
A couple of days later, we had the said meeting. Our boss was still in denial and said that we just need to up our pace and do things faster.
He cited that most hotels give housekeepers about 20 minutes to do everything. We pointed out that it’s true, but in that case, he can’t expect us to clean better than those hotels.
He scoffed and told us, “If you don’t like working here, then leave.”
That was all we needed to hear. That night we had another meeting amongst us cleaners.
We checked our contracts and realized there was no agreed-on notice for resignation as we’re at-will. So, we were all going to take his advice.
This morning, at 9 a.m. sharp, the five of us paid our boss a visit. The look on his face when we simultaneously slammed down our resignation letters and marched out, leaving no one to clean the whole hotel today, will warm my heart for the rest of my days.
He was absolutely stunned.
He tried to call us to talk things over.
Nuh-uh, we just did what you told us to. Have fun replacing what was a motivated, loyal, and dedicated team of cleaners who made your business bloom.”
5. Can't Work Past My Scheduled Time? Enjoy This Big Rush
Since you don’t want my help.
“This is a story from about 6 years ago back when I worked as a waitress.
The summer between grades 11 and 12, I worked at a small family-owned restaurant about a 20-minute drive from my house.
I lived fairly middle of nowhere, so this restaurant and 2 others served basically the whole county. So, even during the dead time of winter, we were often busy. But, we’re also directly on a path from a big city to a large lake, so we’re especially busy in summer.
The people that ran the restaurant were a married couple. The wife, Sandra, was generally lovely, but the husband, Marvin, had a very short temper. I think I can count the number of times he talked to me without yelling on one hand.
I picked up on the job easily enough. I’m very extroverted and friendly, so a lot of the customers loved me.
Sandra decided to train me to do the opening shift at the restaurant.
She would stay in the back and help me with prep and other things as I got used to the setting. Marvin was against this from the onset, saying I wasn’t there long enough to be taking on this commitment.
This malicious compliance took place about midway through June. After two weeks with Sandra helping me out, she stops coming by, so I was there with a singular cook until lunch when I got relieved by another staff member.
It just so happens that the next few weeks were going to be gorgeous weather, so my first week without Sandra, we get slammed. The waitress that relieves me, Bonnie, is my senior. So, as Sandra and Marvin have told me, Bonnie can ask me to stay to help out, and it’s like them asking me to stay.
Bonnie asks me to stay and help out every day that week.
Marvin sees my time clocked in and out and freaks out, saying he knew I wasn’t trained enough and that I was using that excuse to get more hours (even though I was getting 25+ every week and had a second job). I knew better to say anything back, and then he told me I wasn’t allowed to stay past my time anymore. I confirm with him that, no matter what, I shouldn’t stay past my time.
He yells that, unless he or Sandra specifically tell me to stay, I can’t stay past my time. I smile and tell him no problem.
So, I’m opening all of next week, and like the week before we’re slammed.
It looks like there’s going to be no reprieve as my time to clock out comes. I tell Bonnie I’m leaving, and, like usual, she asks me to stay.
I shrug and said Marvin told me explicitly I couldn’t take her word for asking me to stay. Bonnie is furious. She agrees that I can leave, and she phones Sandra and Marvin. Sandra phones me and asks me if I can come back, but I’m already at home at this point, and I refuse. So, she and Marvin have to leave their house to go help out.
I come into work the next morning to open, and both Sandra and Marvin are there. Marvin starts yelling at me about how I just left when it was so busy.
And I calmly remind him I was told to leave unless he or Sandra specifically requested it. He’s grumpy and says I should know what he meant. So, I ask if I can take the relieving waitstaff’s word for asking me to stay.
He disagrees, and instead, I have to phone him before I leave. Sandra starts arguing with him, saying that’s ridiculous and to just let us make the judgment call as we’re the ones out there and know what’s happening. But Marvin is sticking to his guns, and Sandra just rolls her eyes and walks away.
So, obviously, here comes malicious compliance part two.
I phone him at the end of every one of my shifts, even when I have to close, or it’s dead.
I always said I just wanted to be sure this time since he was so upset last time.
This lasts for a little over a week before he finally gives up and says it’s fine if I or another waitstaff make a judgment call to stay past the time if it’s busy.”
4. If You Insist On Paying More To Get It Fixed By A Mechanic Instead Of Having Me Do It For Cheaper, Then Fine
“I’m a new supervisor in property maintenance, and the riding lawnmower we have has often broken down. A lot of these problems are from years of not doing preventative maintenance on it, which is something I’ve started doing recently in order to have the machine working better, for longer, and cutting down on downtime and mechanics’ costs.
I’ve been spending almost all my free time researching this mower so I know what’s wrong when something is wrong and will be able to tell the difference between a 30 minute, $40 repair I can do or a 3-day, $600 repair the mechanic needs to do.
A few weeks ago while I was in the middle of starting a maintenance log on the mower, my boss sees me and asks “Is that thing broken down again?” To which I reply, “No, I’m just trying to make sure that it doesn’t break down again.”
This is when he lets me know that he thinks what I’m doing is a waste of time and because “our biggest expense is labor.” So he no longer wants me to work on the mower and instead wants me to take it to the mechanic across the city that charges $110 an hour for labor.
The next week, of course, the mower breaks down again.
I tell my boss that I think the problem is likely the air filter, and he just tells me to take it to the mechanic. Me and my whole crew spend 45 minutes driving across the city to the mechanic, drop off the mower, and sure enough, they had to replace the air filter and it took them an entire day. They also told me that they’d looked the whole thing over and found no other issues and charged us a few hundred dollars.
2 days after getting the mower back from the mechanic, and it began having issues again. I knew it wasn’t the air filter, but the fuel filter looked extremely dirty. Once again, I told my boss, and he told me to “take it to the mechanic.” Back we go. I tell the mechanics that the fuel filter looks bad and describe the issues I’m having. They say it’s probably the fuel pump module, so they replace that and don’t touch the fuel filters.
This is another 3 hours of labor they charge us, plus parts, and the problem still isn’t fixed.
We get the mower back from them, and once again, it breaks down on someone’s front lawn. I call the mechanic, he acts confused, then asks us to bring it back for them to work on it more. This time, they keep it for 3 days. I told them something was wrong with the fuel filter, and they insisted it must be the fuel pump, and took the whole fuel system apart just for them to agree with me that the problem was the fuel filter.
Essentially, because my boss insisted that whenever there is a problem with the riding mower, we take it to the mechanic even if I can fix it, and it cost us nearly a full week of lost work plus over $1000 in mechanic’s costs when I could have had it back up and running within 2 hours and for under $100.”
3. Ignore The Customers? Sure, That's An Easy Task!
“After graduating college, I worked for about 6 months as a cashier at a local branch of a chain sandwich shop.
Mostly, it was a great job. Customers were mostly polite, my coworkers were friendly and helpful, and I genuinely believed in the company’s products.
Even my bosses were pretty great, except for one. We’ll call him The Jerk.
The jerk was belligerent, vindictive, nitpicky, and pretty much an awful boss in every way a boss can be awful. He had the type of crappy ‘no excuses’ policy that defined ‘excuse’ as literally anything besides, “Yes, sir. Of course, sir.” I could go on and on about all the different ways he was terrible, but this story is about one specific flavor of his awfulness.
During our shifts, each employee had a certain section of the store they were assigned to keep clean in addition to their duties. The cashier’s section was the front counters, displays, and coffee kiosks. I don’t know if it was officially the manager’s job, but as long as I worked there, whoever was the shift manager always took care of the outside patio area.
Except for the jerk.
At first, he would just say things to me like, “I’m really busy right now, could you clean the patio?” which was fine.
Part of the job description stated that if you had free time and the manager asked you to do something extra, you did it. He was well within his rights. But one day, he suddenly started asking me why I was shirking my duties by not keeping the patio clean.
After all, the patio was part of my section.
It wasn’t and never had been. I asked the other cashiers, and they all agreed they’d never been told anything about the patio being part of the cashier section.
I didn’t mind helping out with the patio if my other cashier duties were done, but it irked me that he had taken something extra I was doing to be helpful and turned it into something that I was neglecting my duties if I didn’t do.
It felt like a bait and switch, and I felt cheated.
The bigger problem, though, was that keeping the patio clean through my entire shift was a huge pain for me as a cashier. In the afternoons, I was often the only one at the counter, and customers would trickle in with a few minutes between each group.
This meant that I was constantly having to run back and forth between the patio and the register, which confused customers and made it hard to get any actual work done on the patio.
One day when this was particularly bad, the jerk came upfront and started asking me why I hadn’t cleaned the patio. I started to explain that I kept having to come back inside to serve customers, but he cut me off.
I don’t remember his exact words, but it was something along the lines of, “That’s no excuse. Cleaning the patio is your job.
Now go outside and do your job. Don’t come back inside until the patio is clean.”
That last sentence was music to my ears. I assured him that of course I would do exactly as he said, went outside, and started cleaning. A few minutes later, a family walked past me through the front doors into the store. Through the large front window, I watched them stand, confused, in front of the register.
There was no one at it to serve them (the jerk had gone back into his office to attend to his oh-so-important manager duties).
I continued to clean the patio.
A few minutes later, another family came in and joined the first, standing confused, and now annoyed, in front of the counter. At this point, the jerk must have noticed them on the security camera because he came out of his office and started ringing them up.
Then came another set of customers and another. The jerk was at the register, so he had to serve them. He was now being forced to cover my job because I was too busy doing his.
I finished cleaning the patio and came inside, and The Jerk immediately tore into me, asking where I had been, why wasn’t I at the counter, couldn’t I see there were customers?
I put on my most innocent smile.
“But you told me not to come back inside until I’d finished cleaning the patio. I assumed that meant you would take care of serving customers since I couldn’t possibly be two places at the same time.”
He just glared at me for the longest moment, then mumbled something about how I should have known what he meant, and I was never to pull a stunt like that again and shuffled back to his office.
Not much of a victory in the grand scheme of things, but seeing the momentary flash of panic in his eyes as he realized his “do as I say no excuses” policy had backfired had me giddy for the rest of the day.”
Another User Comments:
“I used to work at a restaurant in the mall. When I was cashier, the manager was always telling me to stock up, but don’t leave the counter!
(Stock room is in the back.)
Mgr: You need to stock get things stocked up.
Me: Ok, will do (go to get a few things).
Mgr: Don’t leave the counter!
Me: Ok… Then how…?
Mgr: Make a list and ask the kitchen person to get it for you.
(I then make the list and ask the kitchen person.)
Mgr: Kitchen person has her own work to do!
You need to do your own work!
Me: Ok… (Go to get the items from the back.)
Mgr: How many times do I have to tell you: DONT LEAVE THE COUNTER!
(I decided forget it; I just won’t get the stock then). Then 10 minutes later, the manager walks over.
Mgr: I thought I told you to stock up!!!” nerdy3000
2. Karen, This Is Exactly What You Ordered
“My brother Jason, who started his first job, and not three days into it, met his first Karen and witnessed a really satisfying case of malicious compliance.
For background, he started his job at a popular pizza chain and was with three other employees: Alisha, Kaylie, and Jess, all three of whom were easy-going, young women who were showing him the ropes.
It was a busy day and in walks our future Karen.
But at the time, she was seemingly nice and even left a small tip for initial order – wings and a pizza.
Cut to about an hour later, she calls, and Jason is the one managing the phone. She tells him that her pizza was completely “undercooked and disgusting, and it tastes as if someone has just poured an entire pile of butter on it.” And she demands a new pizza be delivered to her home for her for free.
Keep in mind that 1. She initially came in to pick up her first order, and 2 this pizza place has a delivery fee.
So, Jason, unsure what to do because it is his THIRD DAY, calls over his coworker, Jess, and they were talking about what to do for this situation.
And meanwhile, he is still on the phone, keeping her on hold, and Jess says to him that if she wants it, she’ll have to come back to the store to get it.
So, Jess goes to start the pizza, and Jason informs Karen that they were not able to deliver, but they still were able to honor her request. Her last words before hanging up were a snippy, “/Fine/. I’ll go there and I’ll make a scene.” Yikes.
Jason informs Jess of what she said, and she takes the pizza that almost went in the oven and throws it right away.
“I’m not making that witch her pizza.” Way to go, Jess.
Out walks the shift leader, Kaylie, who asks why Jess threw away that pizza.
Jason catches the shift leader up to speed, and Kaylie just sorta shrugs it off.
Cut to another hour later, Karen comes storming in with her previous box of pizza in hand, slightly more in disarray than she previously had been.
Jason says, knowing who she is, “Hi, how can I help you?”
“Hi, I’m here for my pizza.”
Kaylie steps in at the moment and asks, “Are you the woman from the phone?”
“Of course! Look at /this/,” she says haughtily, and opens the pizza box, revealing the already half-eaten cheese pizza that didn’t have anything wrong with it.
Kaylie responds, “I don’t care.
Did you threaten my employee?”
Clearly taken aback by this “accusation,” Karen exclaims in self-defense, “No, of course not! No one threatened anyone.”
“Okay. Well, he says otherwise.”
Karen insists she did nothing wrong, “I said my pizza was undercooked and calmly asked for a new one.”
Jason shakes his head, “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but that’s not what you said.”
Karen, now being caught in a lie for some reason now says, “I wasn’t even the one who called!”
Alisha steps in and then pulls Jason over to the side while Kaylie and Karen continue, and says, “Alright, we’re just gonna pretend to do something and listen in on this.”
Karen’s final words on the matter before Kaylie gives in to end up remaking her pizza are, “My kids are /starving!/ This is not acceptable!” And so they begin to make her pizza.
Karen complained it was underdone, so they are extra careful to be sure the crust was burnt and hard.
She complained that it was too much garlic on the crust. So, they place none on and leave it bland for her. No oil is in sight.
When they give her the pizza, Jason smiles, she opens it and sees the disaster of a pizza, looks up with disgust, realizes she’s not going to win against four young people who refuse to be treated like garbage by customers, and leaves in defeat.
She calls corporate, so he’s heard. But nothing will probably come of it. Hope your starving kids enjoyed the wings that you didn’t bring in.”
1. You're Going To Personally Kick My Butt If You See One Pineapple On Your Pizza? Game On
There won’t be pineapples, but there still might be…
“When I was in high school, my best friend and I worked at a pizza joint. We were drivers and would make pizzas between deliveries on slower days.
One slow weekday evening, a bloke calls in and orders a pizza. He orders a specialty pizza that typically has pineapples and requests no pineapples are added. No problem.
We get those requests all the time.
But he takes it a step further. “Last time, you guys put pineapples on it. I swear, if I see one pineapple on my pizza, I’m coming in personally to kick your butt.”
Whoa. I hang up, shocked at the unnecessary threat to a teenage boy, one who is about to handle his food, and tell my buddy about the call.
Immediately, our wheels start turning and we devise a brilliant plan.
We make his pizza exactly as he requested, but before tossing it in the oven, we each grab giant handfuls of pineapple and squeeze out all the juice we can onto his pizza. When we were finished there was a standing pool of fluid across the entire pan.
I cook it, box it, and have the pleasure of delivering it.
When he answers the door, he repeats the threat he made on the phone.
“Sir, I personally made this pizza myself, and I can guarantee you will not find a single pineapple anywhere.”
Satisfied, he takes the box from me, and I head back to the restaurant.
Like a giddy schoolgirl waiting for her crush to call, I stared at the phone, willing it to ring.
Finally, it does, and the caller ID confirms my hopeful anticipation.
He has lost his mind. Screaming about how he demanded no pineapple, but it’s all he can taste. I calmly tell him I was the one who made and delivered it and reassured him I put no pineapple on the pizza.
“Sir, please take a picture of the pizza because if a pineapple made it onto the pizza, we want to make it right.
As I said before, I made it myself and was extra mindful that no pineapple was added.”
He finished his profanity-laced tirade and slammed the phone down.
Still waiting for the b**********g he promised.”
Another User Comments:
“When I worked at McDonald’s, I actually had a customer hand me a laminated card at the drive-thru window where they ordered and paid, stating a tomato allergy.
They came in at least once a fortnight. The process was, they would order with no tomato. I would take the card to the kitchen (which I had to walk through to get to the drive-thru booth, so NBD, give it to the person making the burger, they would make the burger, and then the burger and card would go to the runner (the person who assembled DT orders), and both would go to the customer at the pickup window.
This way, the customer could rest assured that every person involved in handling his food was aware of his allergy.
Although, some customers would take the win.
-Can I get a Big Mac, no pickles?
-Sure.
-I mean it. There can’t be ANY pickles; I’m allergic.
-No worries. You’ll want the sauce removed too then?
-Why would I want no sauce?
-Because it’s made with pickles?
-Shocked Pikachu face. I just don’t want pickles.
Like, if you don’t like pickles, fine, fair. Don’t lie to me about an allergy, though.” mazzy31
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