People Spill Their Aha Moments Of Revenge
43. Greedy Family Members Get Tricked Into Taking Junk
“This involves my elderly aunt Dana and her housemate/partner Cathy.
Cathy died and her family wanted all of her possessions. Now Cathy was hated by her family because she was a proud lesbian who became a career woman and never got married to a white man.
Yeah, you can guess what her family was like.
While Cathy was in the hospital and in palliative care, none of her family members visited her and only did once when they thought she’d die and they tried to have her sign everything away to them.
They didn’t even bother with the funeral, but that was for the best because Cathy was surrounded by those who truly loved her.
Now, after the funeral, her family went in and took all of her possessions, and my aunt Dana showed them all she had owned, noting that in her later years Cathy became a collector. The family members got giddy because her collectibles should be valuable as she spent her entire pension and savings on them.
As they got several trucks and even a U-Haul van filled, they got even giddier and even tried to get items that belonged to Aunt Dana, some little shouting matches happened but they left happy and smug.
And aunt Dana laughed her butt off as they drove away.
Because the revenge was complete.
You see, Cathy knew her time was up and she also knew her family was greedy jerks who’d try to take anything and everything she owned.
So she made sure that they’d be the ones to clean up her mess after she died.
She gave away anything valuable to her friends (I got a cool watch from her) and in turn, they gave her useless junk and she’d make it look pretty.
She filled her bedroom which she wasn’t using anymore with every piece of junk she got, cleaned them all up, and made them look presentable.
Most of the items her family took were useless junk. Even the high-tech-looking ones were either broken or just knockoffs. The same goes for her jewelry and clothes. The designer bags were nothing more than fakes.
Aunt Dana told me how they would call her to complain about the supposed expensive items not worth anything and how they felt that some items must’ve been left behind.
Aunt Dana also had them take stuff she didn’t want or needed to throw away. She watched as these greedy idiots clean her house for free and was just waiting to have a good laugh about it.”
42. Free Caramel Apples For All!
“I am in the mall, and I am shopping for clothes, looking around for stuff, just relaxing. In one of the corners of the mall, there was this little open boutique that was selling apples covered in caramel.
I walk past it and stop for a second looking at the apples (I liked the way they were organized all in a perfect line and all that) and the lady standing behind the little boutique rudely asked me if I was going to buy anything.
I responded: ‘No, I don’t really like caramel apples but thank you for asking.’
The lady looks at me and scans me from head to toe (I was wearing some running shorts, a T-shirt, and running shoes that were kind of dirty since I ran and outside was raining).
‘You don’t look like you can afford one anyways.’
Shocked by her answer and how impolite the lady can be I inhaled deeply and shouted:
‘Free caramel apples!’
Now imagine about 30–40 people (about 20 of them were kids) run to the boutique, take one or more apples and leave, all in about 20–25 seconds, while the lady stood there with her mouth open just watching her stand get cleared.”
41. Wake Us Up With The Blender? We'll Destroy It
“One of my housemates in college was on some weird ‘all liquid’ diet so he only ate smoothies and protein shakes and stuff which he made with his prized possession… his blender.
The problem was that he would wake up super early in the morning and blend these smoothies and wake up my other housemates and myself. We approached him about it, saying something like ‘it’s pretty inconsiderate to wake everyone up at 6 am every morning because you refuse to eat solid foods’ to which he basically replied with a ‘screw off,’ so we knew something had to be done.
The night after when he was out, we fake-trashed our entire house and made it look like someone came in and did it. We left a note ‘from the sorority across the street’ saying that it was revenge for stealing booze from them or something. The icing on the cake was that we smashed his blender into a million pieces on our kitchen floor. All to get some darn peace and quiet.
We called him all surprised and told him that we went to the gym and when we came back our apartment was completely trashed. We showed him the fake note and he bought the entire thing. As he looked around our destroyed downstairs I will never forget him saying, ‘Well, it doesn’t look like anything is broken really.. except my blender. So we are really lucky.'”
40. Pour Syrup On My Head? I'll Cover You In Toothpaste
“Summer after freshman year of high school, I went to this tripping camp in Vermont (tripping meaning going on long canoe/hiking/camping trips in the Northeast and Canada).
There was this new guy that year who was about 6’3″, with a limited vocabulary, and loved boasting to us fellow campers about his hot partner who was ugly by the way. Standing at 5’5″ at the time, I had a negative disposition towards anyone A LOT taller than me (I’ve gotten over this). This guy was a jerk straight-up and I can’t say it enough.
Anyway, we more or less got along at the time but for some reason at breakfast in the dining hall one day, he decided to pour syrup all over my head. In front of my friends and fellow counselors…for no reason…just thought it would be funny. The counselors thought it was of poor taste and everyone kind of had a ‘This is messed up’ kind of expression on his face.
I wanted to punch him square in the face at that instant but knew I’d probably get kicked out so I played it cool. He apologized to me a couple of hours later and I acted like it was totally cool and we were boys.
That night when camp activities were over it was time for our age group to hike up this mountain and sleep in our cabins.
The hike takes about 15 minutes if you’re walking but you can do it in about 5 if you sprint up it. I sprinted up to the cabins ahead of everyone…went to his cabin and found his bed. I then took another camper’s toothpaste and squeezed it on this jerk’s bed underneath his blanket and underneath his pillows. I used a lot of the toothpaste but did it in such a way that you couldn’t notice it until you got in bed.
An hour later it was lights out and from a few cabins away I hear this maddening screaming. My friends in this jerk’s cabin told me how they all turned on the lights to find him covered from head to toe in toothpaste. Imagine this cross-eyed jerk covered in Crest, it was beautiful. One of those moments where I feel like the short guy won and the tall jerk never confronted me about it.”
39. You Should've Been More Worried About The Adults Peeing In Your Pool
“A few years ago my husband and 2 kids (3.5yo boy and .5yo girl) were making the rounds to visit family in a few different states. My Grandma wanted to take us to her big retirement community’s pool so we packed swim floaties for the kids, a bit of a pain through travels but they were a present from Grandma so we packed them.
Anyhoo, we finally made it to Grandma’s and we get the kids all dressed for the outdoor pool, including a swim diaper for the little one, super excited. We get there and there are about 15 old ladies doing water aerobics on one side. As soon as their little feet touched the water the ladies swarmed and inform us that no diaper wearers were allowed in the pool.
Oh. We didn’t know. We apologized and pulled the baby out and I was sitting with her and she was dangling her feet in the water. This was still too close, yelled at again. Then they started asking about the boy. I assured them he was fully potty trained and I still got a dirty look. My grandma took the baby over to the chairs and my husband and I played with our son.
They continued with more judgment and looks about my parenting. As we played, an urge hit me, an urge to be petty. I peed in the pool. It was glorious. Later I told my Grandma and she just laughed. It was beautiful.”
38. Trick Us Into Washing Your Car? We'll Sugar Your Tank
“This was, wow! Well over 40 yrs ago..my friend and I asked my neighbor for a ride to the mall to pick up concert tickets..we offered him gas money..he said, ‘How about you wash my car then I’ll take you.’ We said OK..we washed his car.
While we were busy washing his car, he got ready.
After we finished we told him we’d be right back..he said, ‘ok.’ We went back to my house to clean up, but when we got back to his house he was gone. We waited until my Dad got home. He felt bad for us so he drove us to the mall. He even paid for our tickets..he also told the loser off.
The jerk just smiled and went about his business.
The more we thought about it, the madder we got..so the night of the concert before we left, we took a funnel and a bag of sugar to his house. We threw away both at the arena then enjoyed the show.
The next time we saw him he’s outside with his buddy ranting and raving about his poor car..we not only sugared his tank, but we also poured it in every opening we could find.
If it had a cap and we could get it off, sugar went inside..thanks to the funnel we didn’t leave a mess behind!
We got dirty looks every time he saw us, we’d just smile back and wave. I even asked him once if he needed his car washed. Sweet sweet revenge!”
37. I Lived With Chaos...So I Had To Create My Own
“I had the worst flatmates ever in uni. Would never clean the house to the point our really big kitchen was stuffed with garbage bags, barely touched pots (and I mean the BIG ones) full of rice decomposing in the sink, entire moldy watermelons sitting on the washing machine, and rotting food in the fridge.
You get the drill.
One of them had her bed so full of trash she slept on the couch. TV up and running all night of course. The other must’ve been very good at hiding. She was a total disaster because when their parents came and saw me cleaning THEIR stuff off the entire living room they told me ‘yeah you better clean’ with a smiley face that told me they thought -I- was responsible for it.
She had a couple of fish in her room and the water was SO filthy, I had to go and half clean and change it so the little things wouldn’t suffer this nightmare of a person when she wasn’t home.
I shared a bathroom with one of them and she’d leave b****y underwear all around the place. The floor was also splattered with the stuff because I suppose she didn’t wipe herself clean after peeing.
They would come at 5 am with their entire clique and shout out the window to the point my partner had to pin me down so I would not hurt one of them.
It wasn’t the only one revenge I took. They were so disastrous they didn’t even remember their food, so I ate for free off their mother’s Tupperwares for an entire month.
I’d pour part of my bleach in their shampoo.
I caught one of them drying herself up after a shower with my towel, so I spent an entire day making sure I’d wipe myself with it every time I needed to pee or take a poop. The next day I found it moist right after her shower. Not sure if she ever realized what had happened and decided not to call me out for it because again, there was little discussion as it was her fault.
When I didn’t have class the next da,y I spent the whole night talking to my friends while playing video games or watching stuff on YouTube at full volume. They never complained.
They’d repeatedly forget their keys so one night at around 2 am I heard my phone going off and knocks on the door. I turned it off and they waited outside until I woke up at 9.
I stole some of their notes before important exams. I don’t think they ever caught me, I think they just thought they had misplaced them, but seeing them panic and cry because they were going to fail their exams (and they did because I always checked both her names and mine on the panel) was priceless.
They tried to use my wifi (that I had paid for on my own) but were stupid enough not to press ‘no’ on the little ‘wanna share absolutely every document within this network?’ screen.
Before changing my password I got a hold of one of the girl’s partner’s email and shared with him some of the beautiful MSN conversations where she admitted having two-timed on him repeatedly stating ‘I’m sorry’ directly from her own email account. I never saw the guy again.
There are some others I don’t remember but I’m terribly proud of having ruined their existence even more than they ruined mine during that year.”
36. If You Get To Be Salty, I Get To Be Sweet
“I’ve never had a nuisance neighbor. But my grandparents had one who salted their grass.
I was friends with the neighbor’s daughter. My grandparents let me invite her over. We played. My young friend was not supposed to have sugar or caffeine because it made her hyper.
My grandmother proceeded to provide us with snacks that included Dr. Pepper and homemade snickerdoodles. Then, when it was time for my friend to go home, just as the sugar and caffeine were starting to hit, my grandmother took a box of salt out of the pantry and handed it to my friend along with a note to my friend’s father and said, ‘I noticed your folks must be low on salt since theirs has spilled all the way onto our lawn.
Here, take this to them. We have plenty.’
My friend just nodded and skipped merrily home.”
35. Make Fun Of My Driving Skills? Here's A Rock To Your Windshield
“Not extremely proud of this one looking back, but ooooooh boy, do I not regret doing it.
Driver’s education at my school over the summer lasts about a month. There’s a kid I’m partnered with (we had 3 to a group with our French teacher as the instructor) who is a complete jerk.
He’s pretty loaded, always condescending to people, tries to pull the tough guy act when he clearly doesn’t look like one.
We’ll call him Chris. Mind you, Chris doesn’t have many friends for the reasons I’ve listed. He also drives to driver’s education. Remember that.
So, one day, we’re working on parking. I couldn’t park for the life of me for some reason, I was clearly angry at this after seeing how well the two people I was paired with were doing. The session we were doing ends, and Chris looks at me as we walk far enough to get to his new Sonata his parents had bought him.
He’d only had it for about a week and a half by this time.
‘So, JoJolion, you see this? This is how you park, not like a fool.’
I’m normally a calm person, but he was really good at getting under my skin. I picked up a rock about the size of a baseball and looked him square in the eyes. Threw it right through his windshield, he obviously started freaking out.
Chris talks about how he’s going to call the police, I bring up the obvious fact that he’s 20 miles from his house and he’s driven here himself. He’s already broken the law by driving without a license.
He drove home after some trash-talk between the two of us. Could he have actually called the cops on me still? Absolutely. I’m still entirely confused as to how I didn’t get in trouble with it.
It wasn’t really proper justice, sure, but it still felt just as sweet.”
34. Won't Let Me Move In? Time To Unleash The Ladybugs
“A while back I was getting ready to move to a different apartment complex, seeing as my lease was ending and I wasn’t too fond of where I currently was. I took my time making sure that I found a suitable upgrade to a better living space and was happy to find what I thought was going to be a ‘too good to be true’ deal.
I signed a lease and a price agreement on the new place roughly 2 months in advance (pretty much and soon as I could) to reserve the space. A month and a half go by, I start packing my apartment up and I get a call that the apartment complex I signed a lease with no longer has my apartment available because the current tenant found a loophole in their lease.
SO the guy is a squatter and won’t leave. Now I’m kinda sadly out of luck. I now have a week to find a new place to live seeing as they had no other availability due to the time frame.
At this point, I’m furious looking at legal stuff against the dude ‘trespassing’ and the complex blah blah blah. Eventually, nothing comes of all of that and I’m stuck in a random basement room I found on Craigslist because that’s all that’s available in a one-week window.
So after all of that, randomly scouring the web I came across a box of 4,500 ladybugs for the nice price of $29.99, this may sound fruitless but I had recently watched a fated video online about ants and their habitats.
I found out if you put a heat lamp over side A the ants will move through a tube to side B, now if you haven’t gotten where my head went yet.
I bought two boxes of ladybugs, fashioned a tube to the bottom of them, and added a heat lamp to the top. Shoved both lines under the squatters door one night and turned on the lamps.
9,000 ladybugs later I still haven’t heard a word.”
33. Be Rude To Your Employees? We'll All Quit On Black Friday
“I worked part-time for a retailer in the mid-’90s that was failing due to bad management.
They were circling the drain and doing the usual…blaming the employees, demanding more and more from everyone, and replacing manager after manager with increasingly incompetent tyrants trying to show how tough they were. They had fired nearly all the old staff and were cutting hours to the point where the remaining ‘full-timers’ were going to lose their insurance. And the weekend before Thanksgiving, they fired the last decent assistant manager, the guy who had given his all and tried his hardest to make it bearable.
The store manager was a moron hired from a totally different industry whose response to concerns was ‘McDonald’s is hiring, jerks’ and who immediately cut the full-time hours to screw their insurance.
So Wednesday night before Black Friday we all called the store voicemail and quit. All of us. Every last employee. The moron manager called everyone and BEGGED people to show up, only to receive a big ‘Screw you.’ I actually laughed at her when she started crying and told her, ‘McDonald’s is hiring, jerk, Merry Christmas’ and hung up.
The store didn’t open and they flew in staff from another city to get it open by… Sunday. The manager was fired, the DM was fired, and the whole chain was gone by Spring. I laughed my butt off. Still wear the watch I stole from the store on my last night there. Statute of limitations long since over, btw. I have always been a model employee, and I know I should feel bad about it, but I don’t.”
32. Sometimes You Just Gotta Play Nice To Strike Out
“We moved into an upper-middle-class neighbourhood. I was a single mom, working from home – with three sons, two of them teenagers. We were renting, when everyone else there was married, homeowners and the houses were worth around $500,00.
This one neighbour seemed to dislike me on sight. She would glare at me, and wouldn’t let her son play with my youngest when both were a similar age.
I don’t know why exactly she disliked me, but I can see that we didn’t fit in, and I didn’t make any effort to do so.
So I decided to ‘kill them with kindness.’ Every day that I would see her, I slapped a big grin on my face and say something nice like, beautiful day isn’t it!? And just keep on walking.
I kept this up for months. One day, she decided she wanted to be my best friend. She finally let her son play with mine. I took care of her little girl when she needed help. But I kept my distance – I was never going to be her friend.
When my son was 10 years old, the neighbours insisted that my son join their baseball team.
He was very frail, in very poor health, and I knew he would struggle, so I said no – trying to explain how difficult it would be for him.
They refused to listen, paid for his membership anyway, and insisted he had to play.
After just two games, he came to me in tears and said he just couldn’t do it. I told him, that if he wanted to quit, he had to go to the coach himself.
He was a very shy kid, but he did it – that’s how much he wanted out.
The neighbours ostracized him and told him he had ruined the team. They no longer allowed him to play outside.
Since my dot-com business was now booming, I bought a house in another city, and we packed up to move without saying a word.
When the neighbour realized we were leaving, she called me in tears – she couldn’t believe we were leaving, where did we buy our house, they were going to all miss me so much.
I simply said, that’s too bad, and I hung up.”
31. We Poured Water In The Pipes To Stop The Annoying Music
“In college, we figured out a way to automatically turn down the stereo in the dorm room below us as if by remote control.
Every room had a heating/cooling unit built into the exterior wall under the window. These units were fed with water that was circulated by pipes that ran along the ceiling of the room below the unit and up into each unit in the floor above.
One time after a little too much southern rock coming up from the floor below, I had an idea. I popped the front off of our heating/cooling unit and noticed a small gap in the floor where the pipes came into our unit from the room below. I found a small length of pipe and positioned it into the gap, and poured a glass of water into it.
Almost immediately the music stopped, some curses were uttered, and we could hear a lot of scrambling going on below. We replaced the front of our unit and went back to whatever we were up to. Sometime later, a maintenance worker came up to our room, knocked, and said he had to check out our heater. He opened the unit up, looked at it, detected no leaks, and asked us if anything weird had happened with it lately.
‘Nope, everything seems normal,’ we replied, and he left.
From that point forward, whenever the music got too annoying, we simply got a glass of water and turned the stereo off. Makes me wonder why the guy below didn’t move his equipment out of the line of fire.”
30. Demand To Eat My Snacks? No Snacks Or Fun For You
“So I am a very petty person in real life, and this happened when I was in summer camp (I was only about 5 at the time.)
Note: there is a water park near the camp, and this will be important later.
So there was this annoying kid who we will call Julian and he was an absolute jerk, he would always find something that he was supposedly better than everyone else at and would find joy in making trouble. Once, he kicked a glass wall, though it didn’t break luckily, since it was rather sturdy.
So, one day, I was eating some snacks that I don’t remember, and he marches up and demands them, so I refuse. He gets angry and tries to grab them so I push his hand away, and suddenly, he tries to hit me, so now, the two of us are just fighting (silly fighting lol, we were only 5). So, that person supervising just tries to stop us and asks me to share because of that awful thought process.
So the jerk gets some of my snacks, and now I’m mad.
Later that day, we go to the water park, and everyone’s hyped, but now, I have a plan. I grab his bag and put it over one of the sprinklers. It gets soaked, now Julian has all of his toys, snacks, and clothes Soaked, and I see him raging to the supervisor about how they should find the idiot (new word for 5 yo.
me) who did it. But all that really happened was him not being allowed to go to the water park for saying a ‘bad word.’
Still makes me smile”
29. I'll Waste Your Time Because I Have Nothing To Lose
“Fun one from last week actually. So I am currently unemployed, receiving benefits for food.
I have to go every 2 weeks to sign for my dollars, and there are a few terms to follow. (Daily activity looking for work, etc.) Now, most people there don’t have a problem with me. I get job interviews, I sign what they need me to sign, at the end of the day I am doing everything I need to do for them. I’m friendly with them, and vice versa.
Now there is this one lady, however. She hates everyone who walks into those doors and adores stirring up trouble for them. If she senses that you did one thing out of line, she will call for an investigation.
I don’t like this person if that isn’t already clear. Now I don’t see her often, different type of customer, so luckily there aren’t many problems. However, last week she was filling in for someone else, and seeing to me.
Naturally, she starts giving me lip about how I should be doing this more and that more, how I can’t miss any days job searching for any reason. I’m in the clear, it’s not enough to warrant a warning, I knew and told her that, so she begrudgingly passed me for payment.
She was in a pretty bad mood by this point and eying the clock ready for her lunch break.
So come the signing, we use a digital signature, and it must be so identical to all others to count. I have a very unique, complex signature, so I can easily fake failing it, and that’s what I do, 7 times. Keeping it just too low to accept, but not obvious. She spent an extra 10 minutes on my case because of that, and she was getting frustrated. I didn’t keep it going too long and aced it on the 7th attempt, but it held her back and that’s what mattered. I didn’t mind the wait, I’m unemployed and was waiting for the bus anyway.”
28. Let Your Dog Dig Under Our Fence? I'm Calling Animal Control
“We had a neighbor across the street whom we called Crochett. He didn’t want any kids in his empty driveway or around his house. He’d lived there for years and acted like he owned the neighborhood.
He also apparently thought that his mutt dog should be allowed to roam free. One day my kids told me that the dog was trying to dig under our fence; my Pomeranian was briefly outside and she was in heat. I was angry because she was in her own yard and still at risk, and the dog was three times her size. So I called the police and animal control.
A couple of weeks later, my husband was on a ladder working on the house outside, and Crochett came over. He asked hubby to come down and talk to him. My husband stayed where he was and asked what he wanted. So Crochett said, ‘I want to talk to you about your wife! She called the law on my dog and I got tickets!’ My husband replied, ‘I can’t do anything with her!’ LOL Crochett harrumphed and left; we didn’t see his dog making his rounds anymore!”
27. Think You Can Beat Me At Chess? Let's Compare Trophies
“So the past few years I’ve been teaching my friend chess. A few weeks ago I was at a big tournament while he was in another, smaller tournament. During the day, at around five, his tournament finished, and it’s the second tournament he’s gone to without quitting in the middle of it because he is losing.
Most of the good competition is either in a team section or in the tournament I was in. So he gets a few points and a trophy. My mom decided to visit and he brags about his trophy, and his mom asks how I’m doing. My mom says: I don’t know, probably not too well.
Side Note: My friend, here, you see, really likes to show off and likes to see me as competition, and his mom has the same views and doesn’t really like me.
The other day, his mom insulted me and when I pointed out my friend did the same thing only in a more obnoxious manner, she completely denied it.
Anyway, I finish the tournament and get 3rd place, which I like to think is pretty good considering the top two were adults older than me. My friend comes over and brings his trophy, which is weird because he has no use for it other than to…show off, but here’s the thing: He comes to my house with a trophy to show off, and I’m not allowed to do anything because I can’t brag.
Also, who DOES that? Was he just trying to rub it in, because report cards came in 2 days ago or something? Heh, well, my trophy collection is very noticeable when walking into the door, and I casually stated I got a trophy too. It was hilarious seeing him pause and notice how his trophy was a fraction of mine. His eyes widen, and then he challenges me to play him, and I win.”
26. Won't Pay Me Back? I'll Get The Dollars From Your Roommate
“Sometime around the first week of December, I matched with someone on a romance app. After 2-3 days of immense flirting and texting, we finally decided to meet at this fancy place. When I walked in the first thing he said was, ‘Listen I forgot to carry my card, but I will Google Pay you the amount later.’
We had a great night; we exchanged a lot of conversations – about him, his flatmates, his office, work, etc. Here is a thing about me, I can’t help but try to get to know someone, that’s the least I can do – keep the conversation going.
He had way too many drinks (expensive ones), ate a lot (even I did), and the bill was around $200. My wallet was dented, but a part of me knew that the bill would be split.
Later at night, he insisted on dropping me home, I asked him not to. He asked if I wanted to make out with him then, I refused, and he got angry.
After texting a few times, he stopped answering, and I was yet to get my money back.
A few days later, I went out of my way, and I asked him for money, and he immediately blocked me. I was a little angry, and this hurt my ego. I didn’t want my 2019 to end with someone making me feel so small, worthless, and naive.
I spent an hour stalking him on social media and got a list of few folks who looked like his colleague/flatmate/close friends.
Then I spent 4-5 hours on the weekend trying to stalk them down romantic apps. Thankfully, I found three folks and pursued one of them.
We texted for a day or two and then met. I went to this fancy place with him. Throughout our conversations I indirectly confirmed if he was his flatmate for not, turns out, he was and then I mentioned that I don’t have a card and will pay him later.
I carefully made sure the amount was close to the bill I had two weeks back, it was $170. We texted for a day and then I stopped. Two days later, he asked me for money.
I explained to him what his flatmate did and I asked him to take it from his flatmate. He was angry, not at me but at his flatmate and asked me not to worry about the bill anymore.
Petty, stupid, and super time-wasting, but it felt good.”
25. Build A Huge Unpleasant Barn? We'll Make Our Yard Just As Ugly
“We have a neighbor who moved in and promptly began to build a huge horse barn. That’s fine, but there are deed restrictions on these lots, and barns have to be set 25′ behind the back of the house.
These folks ignored that, and sited their barn 20′ off the lot line, right between our houses. The barn is closer to our house than theirs, and it’s huge.
We worked out a verbal agreement with them that they would plant trees to cover the eyesore. When we asked them to put it in writing, they had a fit. They would not sign anything saying that they would plant these trees because it implied that we didn’t trust them.
They went from neighbor to neighbor and had them all sign paperwork to vacate the deed restrictions. People signed because that meant it was easier to do their own projects—they never thought about the fact that their neighbors would now be able to do their projects, too. The documents were so badly written that instead of vacating the restrictions, some people vacated their actual deeds (ha ha ha).
We gave up. No sense fighting stupid/foolish. What did we do? We stopped mowing the strip between our houses. My husband calls it his ‘trash tree nursery.’ It’s slowly growing awful-looking trees—mostly Bradford pear and long-thorn hawthorn. The grass is waist-high. As you drive by, you can’t tell whose grass it is, either.
They sent us a letter saying that it didn’t bother them.
I figure if you go out of your way to send a letter stating something doesn’t bother you…it really bothers you.”
24. Seat Yourself? Okay, You Can Serve Yourself
“I’m a hostess at a restaurant and it’s sadly common for guests to just…
walk on in and sit themselves. I’ll greet them and either get nothing back or just a ‘Going to the bar.’ And since there isn’t much I can do or say back, I just don’t bring them plates, rollups, or menus until their server asks for it. If you’re going to ignore the host and sit yourself, then you also ignore the other part of my job.
I do remember one time the bar was completely filled but a guy just walked on in any way, saw there were no open spots left, and came back to complain to me. ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me that the bar was full????’ ‘… Cause you walked right by. I thought you knew where you were going.’ I’m not a mind reader. Tons of guests just walk in to join their party cause they either arrived late or left to go get something or go to the restroom.
Very petty and really doesn’t do anything since I end up bringing them all of the stuff later… but eh.”
23. Disrupt The Entire Building? I'll Lock You Out Of Your Place
“I once rented in an apartment complex structured as cheap condos.
One time someone bought the unit across the hall and renovated it. He was a real jerk. He broke into the utility cages in the basement instead of calling property management. When he was installing something regarding water, he just took it upon himself to shut off the water common to two buildings without notice. He drove over and cracked drain pipes so that he could park his truck under his window and throw stuff into it.
When maintenance came to do the weekly cleaning, he would track plaster and debris out into the hall just minutes after they vacuumed the carpet. I noticed he was leaving his door unlocked at the end of each day. One night I locked the door just to see what would happen. I heard cussing the next day. He had to dismantle the door frame, build a new one, and go out and buy a new door.
He spent a whole day doing that instead of what he had planned. It was worth it.”
22. Betray Your Best Friend? He'll Betray You
“I believe in karma so I don’t really go for revenge, except once. I was sixteen, and my first partner, Shawn, had just broken up with me. I was a mess, especially since he spent the next two months treating me like garbage.
I still don’t know what caused his personality change, but he went from loving to abusive real quick. I was a pathetic puppy and we had mutual friends so I just sat and took it.
Until he moved on. To his best friend, Brent’s, recent ex-partner. Brent and his partner were THE couple. They both lived in a nearby town but even everyone in my school knew they were the couple that would last, (it was a very small southern town) and they were trying to ‘work things out.’ At this point I don’t think Shawn and the ex had moved beyond the flirtation phase or a few dinners ‘as friends,’ but that still wasn’t cool.
Of course, Brent didn’t know any of this.
Then one night Brent and I happened to be at the same party. Maybe it was jealousy, or Shawn had finally pushed me over the edge. He had said a few unpleasant things to me earlier that day in front of a large portion of the student body. Either way, I saw an opportunity and I took it.
I approached Brent and we started talking. Even though he and Shawn were close, we didn’t know each other well. But we had met a few times post-breakup and he was still kind to me so, I didn’t think he would******* off. We actually talked for a while before there was a pause in the conversation. As someone with Asperger’s, I can be an awesome, or terrible actress depending on how much I’ve studied the present interaction.
Despite my temper, I had spent months being a victim and had no problem appearing vulnerable.
I curved my lips in a self-deprecating smile, looked at him, and said, ‘I’m so jealous of you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it doesn’t bother you that Shawn and (what’s her name) are together.’ That’s it. Soon after the boys broke up. If that had been the end of it I would have been content, but my ex decided to confront me.
I guess he thought my personality change after we broke up was permanent, or he had forgotten who I really was because he confronted me in front of all our friends.
He accused me of lying, manipulation, and making his best friend hate him. He called me several unflattering names. I was a stalker, even though I never stayed at a gathering long after he showed up.
The room was uncomfortable as he vented and people had started to edge away from us. I let him fume then slowly stood up. I have never forgotten this moment.
‘Did you think you could mess with people’s feelings and not get screwed? You’re so arrogant you didn’t even think you would get caught. Idiot, there are only three restaurants in this town. You’re responsible for this situation.
I just took the opportunity when it came, to point out how much of a jerk you are.’
Slowly (very dramatically) I walked away and prayed I wouldn’t cry angry tears or throw up.
Now for those of you wondering about the only true victim in this, Brent, well, he and I met at a football game two weeks later. When he came up to me I knew he was going to let into me, but he just said hey.
We didn’t talk about it, but the fact he was nice to me proved he didn’t blame me. Now, life at school hadn’t been very comfortable for me since the ‘incident.’
As with any war, people took sides, even those who didn’t know Shawn or me. Then there were those people who knew Brent and thought I was a right jerk for hurting him.
Shawn was an upper class-man and more well-known, so his supporters were a little more numerous than mine. Which was a blow to my pride as I believed he was more wrong than I was. But now Brent was standing in front of me and I realized we could help each other get a little bit of our pride back. So before I lost my courage, I asked if he wanted to make out a little in front of everyone.
He was a much better kisser than Shawn.”
21. Keep Ignoring Me? I'll Flash My Brights To Make You Alert
“I stop at 7/11 for beverages before continuing to Dominos for some pizza. I have a mild case of hangry, but the hunger monkeys haven’t emerged yet.
My car is the sole vehicle in that part of the parking lot, and as I’m getting in I notice an SUV turning into the lot. I do the buckle up and start car dance and throw it in reverse, and there’s a wild SUV parked three feet from my bumper. Stationary.
Maybe they just didn’t notice? I’ll give two short toots. I think that’s car speak for hey, I am a thing you need to acknowledge.
SUV gives precisely zero cares about my two toots of the horn.
I hate horn-blowy people so I’ll go to some length to avoid inflicting proper beeps. I put my car in neutral and use the e-brake, and get out of my car and walk up to the SUV’s passenger side. There’s a wild younger Karen making upset sounds into her phone, bawling her eyes out.
I tap on the glass of the window, and she doesn’t look, just holds up a finger with her index finger raised like, wait a minute. I do, for 45 seconds or so with no pause in the crying sounds. I tap the glass again, and I get told to wait again.
OK, Karen, I tried diplomacy.
I get back into my car and just LAY on the horn.
This woman has the gall to actually GET OUT OF HER VEHICLE AND ASK ME WHAT MY PROBLEM IS. She is stationary in the transit lane of this parking lane, if I pull forward I’m going into a swamp and there’s not enough room for any sort of alternative.
I tell her to move her car, I’m trying to leave and you’re in the way.
Karen then rolls her eyes and says, whatever. And then doesn’t completely clear the back of my car. I have to back out, drive past her, do a three-point turn, and then drive past her again. If I turn the way I would to leave, I would hit her.
I do so, and right when my car is pointed right at her still (presumably) making crying sounds, I realize I’m going to need to draw the eye because she’s not looking.
Then I remembered that the foolish ones are drawn to bright lights, so I flash my high beams, twice. Just to be sure.
Right when I get a deer in headlights look I give her the one-finger salute and then leave. The indignant squawk was audible outside her vehicle, and felt SO good.”
20. Walk On The Squeaky Floors? I'll Slam Doors
“The apt we lived in was made of wood frame, so anyone walking above our unit would make squeaky noises.
I understand that we couldn’t expect our upstairs neighbor to not walk, but he would walk every night starting from 10 pm to 2 am. It wasn’t just walking periodical either, it was constantly walking back and forth from one room to another. It could be his dog, but the squeaky noise was so loud that it couldn’t be caused by a 30lb dog.
One night, it was particularly annoying with back and forth squeaking for 3 hours straight.
It kept me up till 1 am. I finally had it. I opened our patio door several times (facing in a way that only our upstairs neighbor could hear.) I then tapped on all the vents (mounted high by the ceiling) where only he could hear. I did that for several minutes –opening and closing the patio door then tapping the vents. Finally, he got the message and the walking stopped. I thought he probably slept during the day since the noise always started so late.
The next morning, I started tapping all our vents after kid and hubby were gone, then slammed every interior door as I walked by (making sure not to slam the one by my side neighbor.) I blasted loud pop music all day. No more night walking since then.
Petty, yes. Effective, double yes. When I am tired, I am cranky, when I am cranky, I slam doors.”
19. Scheme Your Way Into Getting Free Stuff? I'll Use The Wrong Bar Code
“I once worked as a pharmacist in a community pharmacy, and there was this guy who had a superb insurance scheme which covered 100% for literally anything under the sun, as long as it was prescribed by a doctor, purchased in a pharmacy, and had a bar code.
Baby wipes, viagra, tea, cheap eyeglasses, kleenex, even birth control (yes he was a man and no, the insurers didn’t care). However. The bar code had to be an EU-accepted one; I knew this but he didn’t.
One day, he gave me sheer trouble because we didn’t have something he wanted. I ordered it but he wanted it that exact day and gave me grief over that, calling me incompetent and whatnot.
I was mad but had to shut up, and he just enjoyed insulting me knowing I couldn’t strike back.
So. Sometime later, among other nonsense, he was prescribed a hot water bag which was rather expensive (like 50 eur). He was super proud and happy about it, gushing over his new hot water bag and how warm he would sleep. I was cutting the bar code from the box when I noticed it had a Chinese/whatever bar code next to the EU one.
So I gave him the bad one instead. Some days later he comes to complain that the insurer for some reason didn’t accept that purchase, he was mad and I loved it. Super happy the insurer didn’t tell him why, my plan was just to give him extra trouble.”
18. Communal Showers Can Cause A Lot Of Trouble
“A guy in my building was playing loud music day and night. He was intimidating almost every person he came across in the hallway. Finally, one day I had enough and decided it was time for revenge. I threw his clothes that were on a stool outside the communal shower into a tree. He was taking a shower and again was playing very loud music.
He was basically forced to walk undressed across the hallway to get some clothes on. Right about the time he was walking back to his apartment, one of the female neighbors came out of her apartment and into the hallway. Let’s just say she was startled by the sight.
Not really proud of it, it was the pettiest thing ever, but the revenge felt good at that time.”
17. I Drenched My Gross Neighbor With Water
“I am not proud of this. Not at all, but it was a low moment and I took the chance I had.
I used to live in a mildly sketchy pretty isolated part of town and had one of the most irksome neighbours life could offer.
He was constantly drinking, enjoyed stealing groceries out of peoples deliveries, spent his free time harassing all the women who lived in our small building, and he constantly smoked like a steam engine, usually on the street right under my window because he didn’t want to lose the deposit on his room by stinking it up. Our building manager was very firm about that kind of thing, but a little more lax on all his other unsavoury behaviours.
Now I didn’t know this at the time, but I had a small tracheal ulcer that had developed during an earlier surgery, so I was constantly coughing all day and feeling generally unwell. His smoke filtering into my room didn’t help matters at all, especially since he seemed to enjoy smoking late at night when I was lying down and trying to sleep – something which would set off another round of violent hacking coughs that would last for ages.
Repeated attempts to ask him to please go elsewhere to smoke had failed, and my building manager had even put up a no-smoking sign on the wall below. But he’d simply disregarded it, and the manager couldn’t do anything about it because once he was off the property, he was effectively free to do as he chose.
One day I decided I’d had enough.
I stopped by the shops on my way back from work and bought a cheap water gun and an air horn before heading back to camp out by my window behind a closed curtain.
It didn’t take long before he stepped out and began puffing, so I decided to give him a few minutes of peace before making a move. Slowly, I reached the air horn out of the window and positioned the nozzle of the water gun to face him, and gently pressed on the trigger.
A light spray of water hit him on the face, and he looked up to see where it was coming from.
Immediately, I jammed on the trigger of the water gun with full force and started waving it around, while slamming my thumb down on the air horn. He yelled in shock at the double assault on his senses and stumbled backwards, tripping over his feet in his haste to scuttle back indoors.
I yanked my weapons back into my room and hid, heart-pounding and wondering if I had just made a terrible mistake in upsetting that scuzzy man.
Eventually, it transpired that he had been too wasted to really understand what had happened because he hadn’t put two and two together and didn’t seem to have been able to figure out that I was the one behind it.
A while later he was kicked out of the building anyway. It seems like so many people had complained about his terrible behaviour that the management had decided to just cut their losses and send him packing.”
16. You Don't Want To Get On Her Bad Side
“My first roommate in college, we’ll call her A. She was made up of petty revenge and it didn’t help that she was smart enough to not get caught or so she thought.
Let’s start with her sticky fingers. She would steal anything and everything for other people in the dorms. Mostly from the dryers other people were using. One problem with a laundry sign-up sheet is that A knew when people she didn’t like were washing their clothes.
She would steal their stuff and wear it around the dorm. If she ran into the person she would make a big deal about her new whatever she stole in a nice way. A way that just made you think you had the same great taste in clothes. As her roommate, I often got roped into helping her because if you weren’t with her you were against her.
One time, when I didn’t take her side, she burned holes in my new sweater. Now I know what you’re thinking: how did she do it so I didn’t think she did it. Well, she wanted to bleach her sheets so about 2 days before this happened, she went out and bought some bleach to ‘clean.’ Now we were a mess but not in an old food everywhere kind of way but in the you-could-wade-through-our-sea-of-clothes for days kind of way.
I had worn the sweater, took it off and it ended up in the abyss. A week later, I was washing clothes and picked them off the ground only to find that it was full of holes. I look for what could have done this and see A’s bleach in a bag next to it. I look around for a spill or leak or something.
There was no spill and nothing else was ruined. Now I know better than to call her out on her petty nonsense. I just looked confused, made myself seem too stupid to figure it out, and bought a new one. A mutual friend later told me that A had taken my sweater, burned bleach holes in it, and put it back. Thinking I would never figure it out and if I ever did, she figured I wouldn’t do anything about it.
One thing about A is that she thought I was stupid because I was a history major. She came from a very ‘smart’ family and thought she was better than everyone else.
The last story – she once put baking soda in a friend’s shampoo. What does that do you ask? It makes your hair brittle until it breaks off. Why did she do this you ask?
Because she and her friend got into a fight the night before. What happened to the friendship? They made up even after I told the friend about it, she forgave her. They are even better friends now.
I could write a book about this roommate but I better stop for now.”
15. Act Foolish? Time To Crank Up The Music
“This happened when I was stationed in West Germany New Years ’87. I had a busted ankle so was hopping around on crutches as the Dorm Manager in a 3 story Security Police/Pararescue dormitory. I already figured the night was gonna be a cluster and had confirmation when I found roommate 1 (RM1), roommate 2 (RM2), and visitor 1 (VS1) slamming pitchers of drinks.
I left them and started with the night, during which:
Two intoxicated pararescues rappelled down the side of the building from the 3rd floor because ‘it was safer than the stairs.’
One intoxicated guy (no clue who) was in the parking lot making snow angels. Unclothed.
RM1 sitting in an open bathroom window talking to someone in the next dorm. I told him to get out of the window and close it (mountain region of Germany, winter=FREAKING COLD) so he told the others he was coming over and jumped out.
We were on the second floor. I stuck my head out to see if he was okay only to get a snowball in the face as he drifted to the other dorm.
RM2 got into an argument with his partner, who had flown from the States to be with him because she was being completely unreasonable about his other partner, a local. I later had to physically stop him from wrecking his large shot glass collection, along with the rest of our room.
VS1 kept trying to go down the stairs because he thought his partner was waiting in the Rec Room (she was still in the US). After the third try, I handcuffed him to his bed for the rest of the night.
RM1 and RM2 reentered the dorm by way of the first-floor laundry room window because they couldn’t find a door. RM2 then vanished for the next two days.
RM1 went to bed and spent the rest of the night performing Olympic-level gymnastics to hit the floor on his hands and knees fast enough to avoid puking in his bed.
Things settled down after that and I thought up my revenge. I waited until RM1 was feeling extra awful from all the drinking, loaded my Top Gun CD into RM1’s sound system, set the volume to 50%, selected Danger Zone, set a one-minute delay, and left the room.
The song played so loud that the building rattled for about 15 seconds before he was able to stop it and when he got into the hallway I swear his head was visibly throbbing! He and RM2 moved out soon after and I never saw my CD again.”
14. Start A New Life With The Neighbor? I'll Make His Boots The New Toilet
“This is kinda gross and maybe childish but I could have done far worse. At the time, I was living in a three-story apartment building. I had been living there for maybe two years with my wife and small child. My marriage ended up falling apart and my wife moved out.
Things were understandably tense but we were able to set a custody agreement. It was 50/50 with set days during the week and alternating weekends. It was going relatively well although the divorce overall was not.
Things really turned south when I was told by a friend that during times when I had my son, my soon-to-be ex-wife was parking around the block and coming to the apartment building.
Of course, this did not sit well. I then learned that she was visiting the gentleman who lived on the third floor while I lived on the ground floor. This insult could not go unanswered.
The revenge came one weekend when my son was supposed to be with his mother. I had several friends come over and had a friend in another unit. The raucous party drifted up and down the stairs.
Everyone was thoroughly inebriated. Now again, this ‘other man’ was on the third floor. I knew that he worked at his father’s asphalt business and had a pair of heavy-duty rubber boots. He unwisely kept these boots on a mat outside his door.
Through the inspiration that can only come from drinking, I had an idea. I stealthily went to his door and grabbed one of the boots.
I then brought my trophy back to the party taking place in my apartment. I took the boot into the bathroom and set it on the floor next to the toilet. I returned to the living room and made an announcement. I told everyone that if they needed to use the bathroom they were welcome to use the toilet or the boot belonging to Jerkhead, my affectionate nickname for my neighbor.
After a short period of time, I carried the now heavier boot upstairs and placed it back on the mat. The party then continued for the rest of the night.
The next day, I returned home after running some errands. Once inside the building, I saw a wet sock hanging on the stair railing. I felt a huge grin across my face and went home satisfied.
Epilogue:
She ended up marrying him and starting a new family. She and I have learned to get along rather well. Jerkhead and I have rarely spoken, and only out of great necessity, over the past 15 years.”
13. Be A Petty Teacher? I'll Show You How I Really Feel
“6th-grade math class, my teacher thought she was funny (but I was funnier). She would make a joke in class and I would immediately one-up her, nothing rude or mean. I just stole the spotlight.
I have glasses and forgot to bring them to her class once, and she caught me squinting to read what’s on the board so she told me these words exactly and I’ll never forget: ‘If you can’t read what’s on the board then don’t waste your time in my class.
Get out and stand in the hall.’
I was so incredibly angry, and I knew it was her just being immature and petty. So I was just sitting in the hall waiting for class to end. She opens the class door and I expect her to let me back into class but that horrible woman said: ‘Why are you sitting? Stand up and touch your nose to the wall.’
Have you ever felt so much hate so fast towards a teacher? If you have, we’re on the same page. I was plotting so many things to get back at her. First I thought I would ruin her car by shoving rocks in her car’s exhaust praying one day maybe her car would blow up when she starts it (I was very young and angry) but I realized there is a much better and clever way to get back at her.
This is what I did and still consider it genius to this day: I took clear super glue, went to her whiteboard after class, and wrote the words ‘screw you jerk’ very big. But it was clear. And dried clear. You wouldn’t even notice anything was done. The difference between whiteboards and super glue is that expo markers wipe off easy on whiteboards but stick permanently to dried superglue
Over time (few days) slowly, slowly the words started to appear. And the look and rage on her face was priceless.
I think she had a feeling that it was me but had no evidence. So I continued to vandalize her classroom, I would glue her textbooks shut, glue her calculators together, etc… Finally, one of my classmates came into class after school and saw me doing this.
She snitched on me and I got suspended.
I had the last laugh in that class. I walked in with a solid grin and stared that teacher down every day after that. We both hated each other’s guts. Now I’m in medical school. How do times change.”
12. Steal From Me And My Family? It's The Wake Up Call I Needed
“There have been multiple people who have taken advantage of my generosity and kind nature over the years. Some of these people totally deserved revenge for the things they did.
For example, in high school, I was hanging out with a group of ‘friends’ one day after school. We used to hang out a lot together, and eventually, I got the suspicion that they were stealing from me.
So, that day, I kept my money in my pockets, rather than my purse. I assumed there was nothing else in my purse worth stealing.
Fast forward to the next morning: Everyone at home wakes up around the same time. We’re all getting our bearings and my grandfather scolded me for forgetting to lock the front door. He goes back into his bedroom as I’m thinking to myself, ‘I could have sworn I locked it!’ Within seconds, the house is in a frenzy.
The safe he kept right next to his bed had vanished. Most of the contents were replaceable, but not my dead Grandmother’s wedding ring.
Naturally, I knew exactly who took it, and I can’t even find the words to describe how guilty I felt. Those dirtbags stole my house key off my keychain the day before, snuck into my grandfather’s room while he was sleeping, and took off.
Maybe a year or two later, I bumped into one of the kids at a party, and he tried to apologize/feign innocence/blame the others. Thinking back, he was obviously more naive than me to think I’d actually forgive him. But I told him it was water under the bridge and he believed me. The ring was long gone, and this was my best shot at getting revenge.
Soon after, he reached out to see if I could get him a good deal on some stuff to smoke, as he wanted to buy for an upcoming camping trip. He told me he had $400 to spend, and as Julia Roberts would say: ‘Big mistake. Huge!’
He got $400 worth of lettuce and leaves. But was that really revenge? I mean, I still didn’t have the ring.
I barely had my dignity after fake-accepting the apology. I’d stooped right down to (or maybe even beneath) his level.
It took a longer time than I’d like to admit for me to stop hanging out with dirtbags. Finally, though, I just cut ties with all the negative influences around me. I didn’t blame them for my unfortunate circumstances, it’s just that I knew they would impede my ability to improve as a person.
The last person was really hard to shake: My ex-partner/best friend who also happens to be my neighbor. He got really nasty when he realized I was phasing him out. But I continued going about my business and working on myself. After a few months, my life had improved 10x over, and I was the happiest I’d been in almost 10 years. The whole time though, I would hear the horrible things he was saying about me from mutual acquaintances and people around the neighborhood.
It came to a point where I couldn’t stand quietly on my own porch for 10 minutes to wait for my ride to work, because someone always had to spill the latest gossip. That was really the last straw for me. I’d been trying to ignore it and hold my head up and rise above that petty nonsense, but at a certain point, it wasn’t just ‘gossip’ anymore.
I felt bullied and harassed, and he was really trying to discredit my character.
So, I typed up a carefully-worded social media post that pretty much said ‘I know what you’ve been saying, and even though it’s all nonsense, you have my blessing to continue running your mouth because it obviously brings you joy, and your life is sad.’ I really didn’t want to have to go there – I felt like it was petty and like I’d stooped to someone’s level once again.
But, misery loves company, and the fact that I was doing well genuinely angered him enough to try and derail me. Within minutes he responded, denying that he ever spoke about me to anyone, and asked that I take the post down. I gave him a piece of my mind, but I took it down and haven’t heard ‘gossip’ since.
In hindsight, I no longer feel bad about the post, and I don’t consider it to be revenge.
It was more like standing up to a bully. My real revenge was leaving him to feel bitter as I continue to do better. So, in essence, I really think it’s true that focusing on yourself and fulfilling your personal definition of success is the best revenge you can get on a person like that (I forget how the actual adage goes).
For the most part, I no longer wish bad on those who’ve wronged me because I’m too busy hustling.
But I understand the feeling of wanting to see them suffer, and those feelings being totally justified. In the specific cases I mentioned, karma eventually came around and gave those people exactly what they deserved…”
11. Try To Get With My Man? Enjoy This Drink I Spat In
“My partner and I broke up for a short period of time several years ago. During this time I was working a miserable job as a bank teller.
One day, this girl I knew came into the bank with a couple of friends of hers and approached my station. Let’s call this jerk Brandi because I hate that name and also, that’s her name. Before even a hello to me, she said ‘Hey are you still with (partner’s name)?’ And I replied, ‘No but we are taking some time apart and working things out.’ Before I could really get those words out, she and her friends burst into laughter and walked off.
I couldn’t help but notice she didn’t need anything at the bank at all so I immediately felt weird about it.
The next few days I spent figuring out what was so funny. I did some sleuthing as us ladies do. Turns out she was trying to get with my ex at the time and for some reason thought it was hilarious that we were ‘working it out.’ I was not having it.
A month or so later, my partner and I were back together and things were good. I’m out at a bar in my early 20s glory with my bestie and we spot Brandi across the room. Excellent, I thought, rubbing my hands together like Doctor Evil. Don’t judge me, I was wasted.
She approaches us with a few friends and goes in for the OMG HEY YOU GUYS / hugging thing girls do even when they hate each other.
I played along and she ended up buying a round of shots for the group of us standing there. I dug in my butt crack for a few minutes while we stood there. I then spit in her glass (my bestie covering me so Brandi couldn’t see) and then proceeded to run my butt crack finger around the rim. I turned around and sweetly passed it to her.
She brought the glass up to her lips and took her shot. She ended up licking the edge of the glass after too, to my great pleasure. My bestie and I laughed hysterically and then wandered off without a word to her. The confused look on her face mirrored mine when she asked about my partner previously. It was awesome. And so petty.
Worth it.
Don’t mess with my man or I will spit in your drink and wipe my butt crack on your glass.”
10. Super Glue Shut The Annoying Neighbor Up
“When we were newly married and living in a garden apartment complex on the first floor, we had an upstairs neighbor who was a medical student. He enjoyed “lighting up” and every morning we could hear him hacking his guts out coughing for at least a good three to five minutes. He was also loud in other ways, including playing his stereo.
We tried talking to him to no avail – he became pretty obnoxious.
I would take to putting one of my own stereo speakers up against the ceiling playing classical music at full volume, but he just turned his massive system up louder than mine.
We finally had it after months of lodging complaints with management about him disturbing us. We put Crazy Glue in his apartment door lock.
He must have tried for half an hour to get his key to go into the lock with no success.
He finally had to call the management office to get somebody to get the door open and change out the lock.
Shortly after that, he moved out.”
9. Don't Think Me Working With You Will Work Out? Funny, I Thought The Same
“Some years ago I was recruited by a local company to fill an open executive position, a job with really quite significant responsibilities. I took a day off from my then-current job and spent the day with my prospective new employer. Remember, they came to me and asked me to leave a good job to come work with them.
The day went great. We toured facilities, met people, had lunch with senior executives, and negotiated a fair and appropriate compensation and benefits package. We toured what would be my department and took a look at what would be my office.
The last meeting of the day was with their Chief Financial Officer. I would be technically operating under his supervision, but from a practical standpoint I would have little need to deal with him and he would have practically nothing to do with my operations, except at budget time.
As soon as I sat down, he told me that it was most irregular that I would be offered an executive job without his approval. I pointed out that senior executives of his company had recruited me. He repeated that it was most irregular and that he was not pleased. We talked for a very few minutes when he stood up, walked to his office door, and opened it.
He looked at me and said, ‘I don’t think this is going to work out.’ He nodded toward the door and I, pretty good at taking a hint, stood up, grabbed my briefcase, and left.
Fast forward five or six years. I was working on restaffing a company that my company had acquired. We had cleaned house when we assumed control, it was exceedingly clear that their existing corporate staff was incompetent at best, corrupt at worst.
Our Human Resources department emailed me a resume for a prospective Chief Financial Officer. I read it and found that the candidate had extensive experience in our industry, was qualified and a was Certified Public Accountant with lots of audit experience. Seemed to fit the bill. I ask HR to set up an appointment for him to come see me.
I had not recognized his name, but when he walked into my office I realized that he was the guy that told me that I wasn’t going to ‘work out…’ at the interview five or six years ago.
I generally let things go, I don’t carry a grudge or worry about minor insults. But my treatment at his hands those years ago still kind of stung.
I greeted him, interviewed him for an hour or so. Then I launched him to some individuals, revealed to him the accounting floor of the building, then gave him a soda to bring with him to the break space.
I requested him to attend my own office for several minutes. I went and visited with a few people for approximately a half-hour. Then I went back to my workplace. I stepped just into my office and stopped. He had been sitting comfortably in the visitor chair facing my work desk. I looked him right in the eyes, paused for dramatic effect, and stated, ‘I don’t think this going to work out.’ I nodded toward the door.
He left. I was told sometime later that it took a couple of days for him to remember who I was and how we’d already been linked. My informant explained he knew me personally as ‘That rotten jerk.’ Which was fine with me, I assume I was a little bit of a jerk in that particular commitment.”
8. Annoy Me At School? I'll Humiliate You In Front Of The Girl You Like At Work
“There was a jerk I went to middle and high school with. I wouldn’t call him a bully because nobody saw him as any kind of threat, but he was always hot-headed, always thought anything I did was wrong (it could be as simple as ‘WHY ARE YOU USING A BLUE INK PEN?
BLACK INK MORON!!’), didn’t like when good things happened to me (‘How come HE got an 87 on the quiz and I got an 85?? My answer is acceptable too!’ No, it’s not, jerk or you would get the points), and put people down in general.
Again, not a bully because anyone could tell the kid was just a jerk and not a threat in any way.
Now in high school, he worked at Bertucci’s as a host/cashier. He was very proud because in his mind Bertucci’s is the Pinnacle of restaurant quality and service and he had a position of stature and long-standing of 2 months. I was picking up dinner when he was at the register with a female employee. He sees me and starts yelling ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘Picking up dinner.’ The girl immediately rings me up and tells him to go to the back and get it.
As soon as he’s gone she starts going ‘Are you his friend??’
I just want my dinner so I say we know each other. She pushes and asks ‘But are you his friend??’ Screw this guy and screw this restaurant: ‘NO’ I say.
‘Ok, it’s my birthday today and he tried to kiss me, and I’m not ok with this!!’ I listen and try to console her because holy cow, what a moron.
This isn’t a girl we go to school with, he barely knows her, and what in the actual heck? I tell her ‘You want a birthday gift? Hold on 15 seconds’ as the jerk comes back.
‘HERE!’
‘Where are my rolls?’
‘What?’
‘I want rolls, they’re complimentary and I asked for them.’
‘Are you really going to make me go back for rolls?’
‘Get. Me. My. Rolls. Now.’
The girl looks at him totally serious ‘Get his rolls, now.’
He whines and starts walking to the back of the restaurant. As soon as he’s out of sight I say bye to the girl and walk out.
The next day in school he yells at me in class for everyone to hear ‘MINTY, WHY DID YOU MAKE ME WALK TO THE BACK FOR ROLLS, LOSER?’
‘BECAUSE WHY DO YOU THINK A RANDOM GIRL YOU LIKE WANTS YOU TO KISS HER ON HER BIRTHDAY AT WORK?’
Our entire friend group (we ‘shared’ some friends) and a few others in class just bust out laughing at him while he turns the most perfect shade of red.
I got my rolls every time after.”
7. Want To Run Your Own Club? No Budget For You
“When I was in college, I was treasurer of one of the clubs on campus. There was also a trashy little con on campus that my club was in charge of the budget for, but they acted like their own little entity, and just came to us for money. So, we wanted a few changes to be implemented, namely: They needed to charge people who were not students to attend, and they needed to give us at least 3 weeks’ notice of any purchase request. They thought that we were being unreasonable.
They also wanted me to attend their meetings and put forth all of the money requests with little to no oversight from my club (lol, no, you come to us, and the club decides whether or not we do it). They also attempted to forge my signature on a few things that they wanted, but they knew that the club would say no to it.
Luckily, I told the head treasurer to not sign a single thing for the con unless I personally handed him the paperwork. On top of that, they wanted to make purchases the day of their con, which, when I told them that that was ridiculous and completely unallowed, and out of line. They then went to the head treasurer for the student government who told them the same exact thing.
Next, they went to the person who actually writes the checks and got told the exact same thing.
So, con’s over, and I’m grooming a new treasurer. They start complaining about my actions and decide to form a new club so that their treasurer can do whatever they want. Due to their unprofessionalism, I cut them from my budget for the next year, so their only source of income will be their club.
So, we get to the meeting of the Student Government where we all decide on the budget for next year. We have a rule where, if a representative for a club is not present during either role call (beginning and end), or is not present when their budget is being discussed, they get nothing next year. We can also call out budgets in whatever order we want, but generally, it’s alphabetical. They’re near the end of the list, so they think they’re safe.
One of their people is there for role call but then leaves to ‘use the bathroom.’ Still not back almost an hour later. I bring up their budget (way out of order). No one is there. Unanimous vote to give them no funding. One of their people is there the second day and tried to bring their budget up. Since they were not there to vote for no funding, they can’t bring it back up.
No one else brings it up (although literally anyone else there could have). That was the last day of budget discussions. They got no budget. I graduated that year, and I have no idea how they’re doing.”
6. Try To Get Away With Skipping Class? I'll Make Your Absence Noticed
“A guy in my middle school (let’s call him Josh) used to bully me all the time. It wasn’t crazy things like some of the stuff you see today or on TV, but it was still really annoying and made me not want to go to school just so I wouldn’t see that jerk’s grinning face.
Now, my classroom (and every other classroom in my school) had a really big closet with wooden doors and shelves used to store a whole lot of books and other school supplies. It’s pretty spacious, and you can fit a human in there quite comfortably. It also has a little hole in the wall so you can pretty much live in there as long as nobody blocks the hole, in which case you’ll run out of air.
Well, one day, Josh has the absolutely brilliant idea of skipping Spanish class inside the closet, maybe stealthily coming out to answer the roll call and then going inside again.
As soon as I caught wind of this, I had an idea myself.
After he slipped into the closet and closed the door, I changed my sitting place from the usual front row to right near the closet door.
As the class went on, I slowly moved my chair in front of the door and convinced the classmates (who knew he was in there) in my row to move back a bit so my chair would be locked between the door and the rest of the chair row, and the door would become unopenable without moving the (quite heavy) chairs away first.
That day, I learned the closet was quite soundproof as Josh repeatedly beat the door from the inside trying to get out to answer roll call (he missed it!) and then just wanting to get out in general, and the teacher didn’t seem to notice.
I myself couldn’t hear much, and I was sitting right near the closet. My classmates were in on it thinking it was just a prank, but to me, it was a sweet moment of pure, unadulterated vengeful bliss.
My friends later told me school staff found him 10 minutes after class while cleaning up (it was the last class of the day), in a corner, and on the verge of tears.
The best part was since the principal found out the whole class was in on it, nobody got punished (aside from a 1 hour long collective scolding) except for Josh himself, who got a warning for skipping class.”
5. You Think I Meant Nothing To Him? I'll Show You How Wrong You Are
“Years ago at the youthful age of 22, I had a partner of 8 months who dumped me for his ex of many years but he did it in a very cowardly way.
Rather than just being upfront and honest with me, he would barely speak to me basically just saying ‘it’s just over’ without any explanation, without any respect. Then the following day, I stumbled upon him at his friend’s house with the foolish ex who ended up physically attacking me.
As I was getting in my car after all this craziness, she said to me, ‘He never cared about you!
You were just a fallback to him!’ That last statement from her burned right through me. It made me feel so angry and so badly embarrassed that I decided I simply had to set the record straight. I mean ok sure he didn’t love me as he did her, after all, they had many years of being together but I’ll be darned if he gets off that easy by just telling her I meant nothing and was just a fallback (when that was simply not true).
Meanwhile, I’m left with a broken heart completely blind-sided by this cowardly snake and they get to live happily ever after. Nope. Screw that…
I had a gang of loving sentimental cards he gave me with these amazing love letters written in them telling me how happy he finally was after being so miserable for so long and how he can’t wait to see what our future holds because it’s wonderful to be with me; how lucky he is to have me in his life, how he feels like a brand new person and couldn’t be happier, etc. You name it, he took the time often to write it (because the fact is, he really did care, true it didn’t compare the love he had for her after their several years together but he still did care for me.)
After week two, when I knew they’d still be in lovey-dovey make-up mode I took all these cards and all of the photos we took together (all showed two people very happy together and very coupled) and mailed every last piece to her home address with a sweet little note to her that said ‘I just wanted to show you how much of a fallback I was.
Who gets the last laugh now jerk?’
Bounce forward 3 years, I run into him. To no surprise of mine, I find out they didn’t last. He told me that about 6 months prior he had picked out a big beautiful home for her and surprised her with it and she, get this, was MAD at him for it. (Can we say Megajerk?) He said that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for him.
He also told me how much trouble those cards and pictures caused him and how she often gave him grief over me even up until the end. Apparently, she got the point that I really was more than just a fallback. I couldn’t help but find this hysterical. Karma baby. We both had a good laugh about it. He was a nice fun guy whose company I enjoyed and that past wasn’t something I held on to.
So, we spent a couple of evenings together after, but just hanging out as friends, until the end of the second night when he was trying to put the moves on me. Not happening. I wasn’t interested in him at all these days. I let him crash at my place since he was wasted but made him sleep on the couch. I met my now-husband shortly thereafter and the rest is history.”
4. Next Time You Should Bring Your Own Calculator
“While I was taking some math credits that were required for my Associate’s degree, I had the opportunity to sit beside an international student who refused to get his own calculator. He had noticed that I generally carried two calculators in my bookbag and would always insist I should loan him one of mine so he could use it on the tests.
The reason for the two calculators was this took place when they all had big, red numeric displays that ate batteries like popcorn.
(It has been a few years since I got that degree.) At first, I was nice about it and loaned him the one that had a cleaner way to enter the data. Because of this, I started carrying my calculator with the nonfunctional subtract key as a second backup. I didn’t see this as a problem because subtracting something was the same as adding a negative.
One day, I overheard him talking to another international student, calling me stupid for loaning him my calculator. I wasn’t going to take this quietly. The friendly calculator would let you key in 7-3=4. The one I generally used had what was called reverse Polish notation, so the same problem was keyed in as 7(enter) 3(minus), and 4 would pop up on the screen. The one with the broken subtract key would have to be entered 7+(-3)=4.
The next test rolled around, and as always he wanted to borrow my calculator. I made up some story about forgetting the easy one at home and handed him the one with the broken subtract key. I figured a clever chap like him would have no problem. It was pretty funny to watch him repeatedly mash the broken key. When he handed it back to me after the test he said something in his home language, and I doubt it translated to ‘best friend.’
For the next test, he made it plain he didn’t want the one with the broken key. He wanted my other one. Oh, my, such a shame – I didn’t get new batteries for the friendly one. He didn’t care, he wanted my other one. I handed him the one with the reverse notation without telling him how to use it. He was even more frustrated this time.
The next test he brought his own calculator.”
3. Don't Think I Can Keep Up? We'll See About That
“This happened when I was working in an airline. Basis promotion, I was transferred to a department that handled payments and liaised with travel agents and online companies for enhancing sales.
I was actually promoted thrice within 5 years. I felt good about working in different departments. General manager Joe introduced me to my new team consisting of four people and one asst manager named Sulas.
I was eager to start my work. He told me to file an agreement per my understanding on the first day itself. I was more than glad to do it, and I was placed with another staff named Sylia. She had been working in the department for more than 2 years. The next day, he had a look and agreed it was correct. He asked Sylia to teach me filing, and for that, we had to download reports from two independent sources, liaise with Agents, take their data, and match.
Sylia said, ‘Be careful, write down everything, I will tell you only once.’
I agreed, she was very fast on Excel, but I managed to still write down everything I could. I asked her about 3 to 4 times (different queries). The next day, I had forgotten a step, I asked her again, she looked angry but helped nevertheless. The same task which I did in a full day, she had done in 2 hours flat.
I was impressed and told her this. It might have been a couple of weeks when a new type of agreement arrived. She absolutely refused to help. When I went to Sulas, he said, ‘You should know all this, you were promoted, not demoted.’ They both laughed. They humiliated me multiple times but I kept quiet, I knew my time would come.
I checked with few more people and filed it, I had to wait back almost 3 hours, it was OK.
There were few more instances like this. I used to watch Sylia’s hand movements to understand the shortcuts she was using. Within a month, I understood all the tricks. Then came the best part, I was working when I could hear Sulas talking to her on phone, she was not coming to work and there was an urgent pay release which had to be done.
I was given the task, I finished it in half an hour and sent it to Sulas. He yelled at me in front of everyone, ‘This report is incorrect, it takes 2 hours to create this payment report.’
‘Are you saying this basis time is taken or output arrived?’ I asked back from my seat itself. He didn’t look pleased. To cut the matter short, he did not accept my report and delayed the payment for the next day when Sylia would come to work.
Sylia as usual took two hours and submitted the report, I was marked in CC, and guess what, all the numbers matched.
Sulas said to Sylia, ‘Ramesh prepared and submitted the same report in half an hour yesterday.’ She opened my report and did complete due diligence, all the numbers were correct, with extreme pain she asked, ‘How did you do it in half an hour?’
‘No idea,’ I said and went back to my work. She asked me again and again, and I reverted with the same answer. She launched a complaint against me, and Sulas went to go with her. They looked very happy when they both came from GM’s cabin. I got a call from GM, I told him all that had transpired, how they mistreated me, and asked him to validate the same with the other two members (Who too were upset with Sulas’ favoritism of Sylia).
He checked and they both concurred my version.
He then called Sulas and asked him to come to his cabin. I met him on the way, smiled at him, and went home. I learned the next day, he was issued his first warning. Neither (Sulas and Sylia) spoke to me except on the last day of my work.”
2. Scold Me For Pulling Out Of My Own Driveway? You're About To Get Unlucky
“My drive is a pain in the butt to get out of. It’s on a busy(ish) road and due to the trees, it’s hard to see oncoming traffic. Over the years I’ve perfected the ‘listen for traffic and edge out slowly’ technique.
So I was doing my thing and this black Ford is approaching. No problem, I’m not in the way.
Then I receive the longest honk and this lady actively slows down to give me the classic ‘what are you doing’ sign. I thought it was rather obvious but anyhow…
I pull out after her, and turn off, she carries on straight. Clearly, she’s oblivious that the road ahead is closed. Serves her right.
Not even five minutes later, I see the same black Ford pulled halfway across the road blocking all traffic in one direction.
Now could I have let her out? Absolutely. Was I going to? Not a chance.
Instead, I slowed down, made eye contact, and gave her a massive ‘oh my god it’s you, how great to see you!’ gesticulation accompanied with an enthusiastic ‘screw you!’ wave as I continued on my way.
She followed behind me for the next ten minutes, my smug face visible in the rearview mirror the entire time.”
1. Bully Puts Me Down As A Character Reference? I've Never Heard Of Him
“I was a smart kid when I was young. Up to the age of 14, in most of my classes of generally 30 students, I was regularly in the top 5. Teachers were mostly impressed, and that is without me having much in the kind of routine studying, encouragement from family/peers, or discipline. I was just good at picking up and parroting most subjects, and a keen reader.
This ability was not without its pitfalls. You know how kids behave towards others who they think of as geeks. I had few, but good, friends. From my teenage years, I entered a ‘rebel phase’, and disengaged from school. I flunked classes, chased entertainment, videogames, girls. My grades went down like an anvil, failed that year, failed the next due to absenteeism. My parents were strict disciplinarians, but they could not motivate me, I did not care.
If not for my good friends, my life could’ve easily turned very different.
By the time I was 18, my parents had lost their patience, and I had to either work and pay my way or knuckle down for my last attempt at school. I hadn’t finished secondary education, so the future was looking grim.
I then joined a technical college, that would allow me to finish my secondary ed, get a tech certificate on top, and earn a small amount of money at the same time.
The course I chose was for 3 years, full-time, and miles away from home.
It was difficult in many ways. The long hours, my poor discipline and aversion to early starts, little money (sometimes just enough for the bus pass and meals) or support, and a ton of bullying. The popular kids, the suck-ups, and pretty much everyone else despised me. Some said I had no ambition, didn’t know how to play ball with others, and was destined to be a nobody.
Still, I muddled through.
By the final trimester of the 3rd year, we (12 out of the 28 who started the course) were on internships with different technical companies, and if we did well overall, there would be a job offer at the end of the course. I had mine at one of the worst companies, where they would not teach me anything related to our course, and just be given menial/meaningless or actual dirty and hard physical labor.
They gloated that I’d never amount to anything else.
Still, I finished it. The relief was sweet in itself.
Now the revenge bit – one week from getting my diploma, I applied for a job at a company that was the direct competition of the one where I had my internship. I could now learn more, and apply everything from my training. And for the better salary.
Some jaws dropped because my ex-colleagues got stuck in the companies where they sucked up to so much – for almost the same they had during internship!
But it still was not enough for me. After 8 months, and purely by chance, I heard about a vacancy for a tech engineer in one of the biggest corporations on the planet. Grabbed my wits and CV, applied for the job, was offered an interview in which I basically said I had so much appetite to learn about the company/business, and got it.
I’ll never forget it, the significance of it all – I (found out later) was the 1st person of my background to land that job, in my country… boom! Contract with awesome pay, company uniform, company phone, company car, the lot!
I was about 10 feet tall. What on earth could have made it even better?
One of my ex-colleagues, who never, ever gave me anything beyond mockery and contempt, caught wind of this news, got jealous, and tried to muscle in.
One day I turned at the office, my manager says ‘hey Dom, I had a telephone interview with a dude a while ago, he seemed OK, he said he knows you and put your name as a character reference. Do you know him?’
I said cooly, ‘No. Don’t remember anyone by that name at all. Sorry’
Last I saw the guy at a distance, he was delivering pizza on a moped.
Since that day, revenge has never -ever- tasted so sweet.”
