People Apprise Us About How They Got Revenge
18. Get Mad At Me For Disturbing You? Guess I Won't Be Helping You
“I went to graduate school to get my doctorate in microbiology a few years ago. Normally in a doctoral program in biological science, you join a lab that is headed by a PI (principal investigator); this is the lead scientist in the lab… They are at least at the assistant professor level in the USA. The PI mentors you until you become an independent scientist and then you defend your research to earn your degree.
It can take 4-6 years.
I had an extremely atypical grad school experience. I had the terrible misfortune of joining a lab run by a very junior PI who, a couple of years into my research training, decided she wanted to quit academic science and go have a baby. Good for her. But I got screwed. Normally you would have to start over completely from scratch.
But I had already passed the midpoint of my training and, more importantly, I had already acquired my own funding. Plus, the PI who quit had just been awarded a major grant from the government.
As a sidebar: when you get a grant to do science at a university, the university gets a (big) portion of the funds. When my PI left, the university had to either give the funds back to the government or try to convince the funding agency that another PI could do the work.
Obviously, they chose to keep the funds, and I was more or less forced to work under the “supervision” of a different PI.
This lady is and was terrible. Beyond being an awful scientist she was extremely hateful and petty. She lost her funding a couple of years prior and only had one student left in her lab who was on their way out. She had a reputation for being an awful mentor.
Right from the start, it became clear that not only was her reputation deserved… it was a bit of an understatement. She was incredibly abusive. To give you some perspective: out of the 14 students to join her lab, only 4 of them have gotten degrees, which is unheard of. The rest literally quit science altogether. To make matters worse, she also had absolutely no idea what the grant she inherited was actually about (and still does not).
So in addition to my graduate training, I was now in the position where I had to work on her other projects and administrate this new grant. The next two and a half years of my life were an absolute nightmare. I soon learned that my new PI would take advantage of my labor in any way she could. She has a philosophy that graduate students were entitled to four days off per year and that “weekends counted.” She also loved to complain that graduate students were overpaid (we made 30k per year in 2019) because when she was a grad student, she only made 22k per year… in 1992.
Enter the malicious compliance. Every year when you have a grant from the government, you have to write an annual report. Normally you have four to eight people working on this research at any given time… but I was alone. The new PI used thefunds to hire a couple of new techs to work on her “other projects,” and I was supposed to somehow compensate for their lack of progress on the work that funded their salary.
These annual reports are 100% the responsibility of the PI and can determine if your grant gets renewed. The first year, I was told to write the report only one week before its due date… these things are massive. It’s important to also mention that in addition to a summary of progress, you also have to submit dozens of pages of other documentation that I had no access to as a graduate student.
The next year, I moved ahead of schedule and wrote the report a full month in advance… but I never heard from my PI about its progress. The weeks passed by. and I started getting worried, so I tried to schedule a meeting to ask her about the report and let her know I was nearly done. She ignored my email and told me she had other things to worry about than “helping me” and that I needed to, “learn to be independent.”
Noted.
The day it was due, I walked into lab, and her door was fully shut. Fair enough… maybe she was working on the report herself. Just in case, I knocked on her door and heard a loud exasperated sigh. She flung the door open and put her finger right in my face and told me, “When my door is shut, I expect complete privacy unless the lab is on fire.
Is the lab on fire?” I responded, “No, ma’am, it is not.” Satisfied and very angry at me she said, “Then leave and don’t bother me when my door is shut ever again.”
The day passed, and at around 7:00 pm, the PI walked over to my bench with her jacket and purse in hand and said, “You see OP, my door is open. Now I have time to help you.
What did you want?” I simply put down my pipette and smiled at her. In my cheeriest voice I said, “Oh, I am sorry for disturbing you earlier. I just wanted to ask you if you needed any help on the progress update, but you must have been working on it.” The vision of the b***d draining out of her face is a memory that will give me strength and happiness for the rest of my life.
She asked me, “When is it due,” and I responded (again, cheerfully), “Due? Oh, about 2 hours ago.” It took her a full 30 seconds to be able to croak out, “Do you have anything for it?” To which I said, “Well, I was working on some stuff for it earlier (it was 100% finished), but I figured you wouldn’t need it when you sent me off.”
After that, she left the bench and didn’t talk to me for over a week.
A blissful, blissful week.
I am happy to inform you that the lab did not get its funding renewed and has not acquired funding since. I did, in fact, get my degree.”
17. Don't Lie To Your Tenants
Bad landlords always lose in the end.
“I am now and always have been very (some would say overly) trusting of other people. In general, I think people suck. But on an individual basis, I try to give the benefit of the doubt.
This plays a big part in this story.
So, my then-partner, now wife, and I wanted to buy a house a few years back when interest rates were low as we knew we would get married and wanted to lock in a low rate.
However, as we were both newly out of college and had a fair amount of debt and entry-level jobs, we gambled on instead of renting for a year to improve our credit and save some bank.
We find a great apartment in a complex of what I think is called townhouses (?) (a bunch of 2 story buildings with 2 apartments on each floor, 4 per building). On our initial walkthrough, in the shared lobby of the 4 apartments, there was a “Do Not Occupy” order from the town.
I asked the landlord/property manager about it, and she said they were being asked to increase the service of electricity to each building but that it was safe and already underway, and of the 30 or so buildings on the property, only a handful was awaiting this small upgrade. Being the trusting person that I am, we signed a 1-year lease.
Things went smoothly for the duration of our lease term, and towards the end, we started looking for houses and signed with a real estate agent.
Inventory was low at the time, and we couldn’t find a house we wanted to make an offer on. Around a month prior to the end of our lease, we received a letter from the property manager asking if we wanted to renew or if we were going to be moving out.
I called the PM and, as her office was in one of the buildings, she asked that I come by instead of chatting over the phone.
So, I went to her office and explained that we wouldn’t want to sign another 1-year lease as we were actively looking for a home. I asked about a month-to-month lease or a shorter-term lease. The PM started talking about how she liked us as a couple and that we had been good tenants. She explained that, normally, the month to month option is $200/month more expensive than a lease, and since she liked us so much, we should sign a year lease, and if we found a house before then, we would end up saving every month, and she would, “work with us.” (With a literal wink, which I found odd, but as I said, I’m very trusting (read stupid)).
I took a copy of the lease, and my now-wife and I sign it, and we are good to go.
About a month into the new lease, we noticed a strong fish-like smell. We looked forever for the source and ended up Googling it. Turns out, sometimes when an outlet goes bad, it can smell like rotting fish. We searched around and noticed a clicking sound behind our couch.
We pulled out the couch and found a sparking and smoking outlet. The PM was called, and the outlet was replaced.
A few months later, we finally found our home. We put in our offer, and it was accepted the same day. That next day, I called PM and left her a voicemail letting her know we found our home and that we would finish out the current month and then move out 2 months later.
At work the next day, I got a call from PM while at work, and she left a voicemail practically screaming that we signed a 1-year lease, and if we moved out early, we would be responsible for the remainder of the term (about 5 or 6 months after the move out date we provided). She also said that we could not use our 2-month security deposit as rent.
I called her up to chat and reminded her of our conversation, but she said, “That never happened…” and threatened to sue us and notify the credit bureaus that we defaulted on a lease. Mind you, this is all WELL before our move-out date.
I looked up my options after realizing she was sticking to her story and couldn’t be swayed.
The only thing I could find online was showing the apartment myself and having someone take over the lease.
I told the PM that this was my intention, and she said she didn’t know if she could allow that. Preparing for a lawsuit, I figured it would make more sense for me to try to rent it myself, so I could show that I provided a way for the property to limit their losses. Unfortunately, nobody ended up renting the apartment.
Being upset that I was scammed and lied to, we moved out without paying the last month we lived there, essentially using 1 month of our security deposit to cover that and expecting not to get the rest back despite the fact that we left the apartment in great shape.
I got a few angry voicemails from the PM but ignored them the best I could. Finally, at my new home, I received a letter from the PM with very legal language putting in writing the threats she made about the lawsuit and credit bureau reporting.
Ever the optimist, I called her one last time and again reminded her of our discussion. I tried to work out a compromise where, on top of our security deposit, I would pay for half of the amount due to end the lease.
She wouldn’t budge and continued making threats in a very demeaning and angry tone.
So, finally, revenge.
I just happened to speak to my dad about this, and he let me know that he went to high school with the head lawyer (I forget the title) of the state housing authority.
He gave me her number and said I should call her and ask if I had any options.
After having a long chat about my general predicament, the housing lawyer (HL) asked me to walk her step by step through the whole ordeal from the initial showing until our last conversation.
I started to tell her the story above and got to the “Do Not Occupy” sign and how the PM explained it away and said it was safe. She stopped me in my tracks and said, “Don’t talk to the PM or ANYONE from the complex until you hear from me.”
A few days later, I got a call from HL who said something along the lines of, “Don’t worry about it, and if they contact you, call me.”
After thanking her and ending the call, I didn’t give it a second thought.
A few weeks later, there was an accident on my way home, so I got off the highway to take back roads home.
This particular route took me right by my old apartment. Suddenly finding myself curious, I decided to be nosey and pull in. I drove up to my old building and noticed there were no curtains or blinds in any of the windows of any of the 4 apartments. There was also now a much bigger, “Do Not Occupy” sign on the front entrance to the building.
It seemed as though my call to my dad’s friend caused the “Do Not Occupy” order to be enforced, and all 4 apartments were now empty. Feeling a slight bit of satisfaction, I drove to the exit of the complex and noticed that my building wasn’t the only one with no window treatments and a big sign on the door.
On my way out, I could see 7 or so buildings in the same condition, each with 4 apartments.
So, instead of sticking to her word and allowing us to move out peacefully, the PM lost out on monthly rent from about 30 apartments on top of any fines they may have incurred.”
16. Won't Pay Us For Our Work? Time To Expose The Truth To Your Woman
“A few things: First, I am a security officer with a private investigator certification, which allows me to take PI (private investigator) cases as long as it doesn’t Interfere with local police investigations, and any crimes that I witness must be reported to the police asap, so they can make an arrest.
PI cases come from a few sources. We are sometimes contracted by local police to do what’s referred to as spotter work, where we are brought on active wide-area investigations to do recon work and look but not interact with anything that might be involved with the case.
Basically, we are just an extra pair of eyes. Or the local police will mix us in a surveillance operation, and we would follow low profile individuals and report their day-to-day activities. These are completely confidential.
Then there are client contracts. This is where corporate clients contract our company’s personal investigations unit to investigate their employee’s day to day activities while on the job to see if there is some hint that an employee is committing a crime and to report if there is reasonable proof that an employee is breaking the law on company time.
The job is to gather evidence to prove guilt or innocence. These aren’t confidential but we usually sign a non-disclosure agreement.
Finally, there are personal contracts. When a person wants to hire a personal investigator to do a job, it’s usually something along the lines of a woman or man suspects the spouse is two-timing them and wants some kind of proof. Or someone is looking for a relative or lost family and is trying to reconnect with them.
There is no disclosure agreement, and it’s up to the client to draw up a disclosure agreement. Most don’t, but we keep quiet as a professional courtesy.
Ok, now that the job description is done, let me tell you what happened.
About three years ago, I had been hired to do a personal contract.
The client, a rich sleazy snob, was apparently stupidly rich.
He hired my unit (when I say my unit I mean the unit I work with a five-man team). He believed his lady was two-timing him with other people, and he wanted proof of this, so he could start his divorce process with solid evidence. He contracted us in a six-month contract and was to pay the company xxxx dollars upon completion.
So, we set up surveillance cameras all over his large house and in the woman’s car with the client’s permission.
We had at least one of the team tailing her at all times.
Good times. Day in and out, we watched their lives, and in this line of work, you either get detached or emotionally invested, like watching a soap opera.
As we watched them, we quickly saw this lady was a freaking saint. She volunteered at a soup kitchen and a children’s hospital. She helped with local churches’ canned food drives.
Those kinds of things. She was the perfect definition of what a good human should be. On the other hand, the man was a total jerk. He was the one we caught many times bringing women to his house. Sometimes, he would bring two or three girls in one day. And that is only what was recorded in the house.
We arrive at the four-month mark., which is basically where we show all the evidence and give the 3/4 report.
We show him everything that we found and have a six-hour debrief with video and audio support, showing that she hadn’t done any wrongdoing other than a speeding ticket and a few double park situations.
After we concluded the debrief, he looked stupefied. He says, “So, you didn’t catch her. That what was the point of me hiring you?”
My boss, our captain, turns to him with a serious stare, which is perhaps in the most serious looking face I have ever seen in that man, and said, “You hired us to investigate your woman.
You’re unhappy that your partner is an honest and faithful woman?”
The snob is visibly annoyed. He stands up and is getting his jacket when my captain says, “Look, there are still two months on the contract. We will keep tailing her, and we’ll meet again after our contract is up and give you any updates.”
The snob turns to him and says, “Don’t bother.
This is over. I’m ending it. Come when she is not home, and get your equipment out.”
So, a week later, we did exactly that.
Now, food for thought. When contracts like this are made, a small portion is paid upfront as a commission fee, and the rest is paid at the end of the contract’s allotted time.
In his case, it is six months.
Now pay works like this: the commission is divided up between each PI as a bonus to our salary, and then the salary is what we get from the company to get us through to the completion of the contract. The remaining balance after being paid by the client is then divided into a cut for completion for the PIs and a cut for the office.
Good pay when done right.
So, fast forward to the next payday after the contract is officially over. My unit gets a call from our office to come in on the next payday as there is an emergency meeting regarding us and the last contact. We get there and find out snob pulled the funding and refused to pay us for the work.
So, we’re getting paid, just not with the completion bonus.
We all left super angry. We went to lunch and brainstormed how to get even with the jerk.
Then we remembered all the house footage of his dirty deeds. At first, we wanted to blackmail him, but that’s low, and we’re better than that. I remembered the lady, so I reached out to her.
I set a date to sit down and explain everything to her.
I showed her the videos. She cried for a good half hour. I think I broke her whole world. It was gut-wrenching. I then advised her to get a lawyer and proceeded to give her all the collected evidence and my business card.
AFTERMATH: Fast forward about six months. I’m called into court, as my company is suing him for fraud, breach of contract, and unpaid dues.
My company wins the case easily, as his lawyer’s argument was that we failed to deliver the result he wanted. But we weren’t hired to deliver a product. We were hired to observe and report. We got paid in the end.
I was contacted by the woman who thanked me for all the evidence. She got a divorce. Because of all the evidence I gave her, she got almost everything: his huge house, both cars, and a huge sum of dough.
Moral of this story: don’t try to screw over people who specialize in gathering evidence and reconnaissance.
Update as of June 17, 2019:
A lot of private messages and a few posts asked about the woman. I promised I’d look into it, and I did. I got in touch with her. And we agreed to meet with her yesterday.
She was delighted to hear from me.
We met up at a local coffee shop. And I got to meet her new partner. And she has had two kids (both girls and are cuties and so well behaved) with him and is pregnant with the third (confirmed it’s a boy). She has been remarried for almost two years now.
After a few coffees and idle chat, she told me about her own petty revenge story.
Now keep in mind this is what she told me, so take it with a grain of salt.
She told me of how the family of the super snob demanded that they get the house back as it’s their family ancestral home and offered to buy the house from her almost immediately after her divorce hearing. She had a realtor come and evaluate the house.
The family wanted to give her $250,000. But the realtor concluded that the house value was near $1.5 million. The family kept demanding she sells over the following months.
She “told” the family about the realtor and his appraisal documents of the house are $5 million.
So she would be putting on the market up for sale for that price but would sell to them first because they were like family for a discount of $3.5 million.
They bought the house with funds the next day in hand.
End the pleasant evening with them. As I’m leaving, the lady smiles at me and grabs the sleeve of my arm.
She says, “Wait, I never got to say this, and I want to tell you. Thank you! You are a blessing that rescued me.” She then reached in her purse and get her wallet.
I think she is going to hand me funds or something. And I raise my hand to stop her. She smiles and pulls out my old business card. And says, “I tried to call you and your company a year ago to thank you. But the number on the card was disconnected. I wanted to know if you could update your contact information for me.” I ask her why she continues smiling.
“Because you’re the kind of person I like. You were looking out for me when I needed it, and I want to keep you in my back pocket just in case.” I updated my contact information for her and was invited with my family to their home for dinner on Friday.
The icing on the cake of yesterday is this morning, amazingly, I just got a call from my boss, very excited told me that “we, specifically you, have a new client who has offered you a five-year employment contract.” Apparently, the woman’s new man is a magistrate.
And has got his boss to approve a contract for the company. With the provision that I oversee as the new captain. This means the unit I will be running will be taking our job assignments directly from the court.
So thanks to everyone who asked me to check up on her. I went to meet for coffee and a chat and gained a high-profile and paying client.”
15. Complain About Your Current Work Situation? Let's Make It Even Worse
“This story concerns my former boss who was the best boss I’ve ever had. The guy always looked after us, dealt with a lot of nonsense, but his real skill was in dealing with very senior execs and corporate bureaucracy. He was/is a master of “Business Judo”— anytime some exec would try and throw their weight around, he would use their momentum against them to get his way.
This was my favorite example. At the time, I worked for a very large multinational company, and my boss was a director.
One day, we were chatting when Boss got a call from a colleague, call her OtherBoss, who ran a similar team within the company but in a different organization. My team had developed a product and OtherBoss’s team inherited it and was in charge of keeping it going.
OtherBoss’s team was good and we liked working with them except for one guy, EntitledDude who had been given control of the product (Awesome Project).
He had worked for a separate manager for years but his manager had left to go to a competing company so EntitledDude ended up with OtherBoss. He was trouble from moment one, as he clearly thought he should be running her team (she was an Exec.
director, he was a Sr. Mgr. with no direct reports) and he even told OtherBoss that to her face. He was insecure, backstabbing, ambitious, and wanted a team to manage (to do his work). He had gotten Awesome Project because he had the most availability and his seniority entitled him to it. OtherBoss couldn’t give it to anyone else or take it from him, even though she wanted to.
OtherBoss was complaining to Boss that EntitledDude had notified her “formally” that his current work situation was “untenable.” He had said that running the product on his own was forcing him to work 7 days a week, 12+ hours a day. He was barely spending time with his family, and he needed headcount to make this run. He claimed he needed 5 full-time employees reporting to him to make this happen.
Now OtherBoss only had 4 direct reports at this time for reference, and Boss had 5. It was also total nonsense that he needed a team; the product basically was self-contained and he had to fire off a single Python script.
The problem was that at the company we were at, this sort of claim was taken very seriously, and many people used such claims of being overworked and creating a hostile environment to build their own personal empires, and clearly, this was EntitledDude’s intent.
Worse, OtherBoss called to complain to Boss because she felt like her hands were tied even though EntitledDude was obviously lying. She had to give him staff or she would be in trouble with the company. She hoped Boss could give her some technique to maybe only give him one headcount.
This is when Boss’s genius went on full display. He smiled and said, “You don’t have to give him anything; he’ll take it all back and be happy.” After telling OtherBoss what to say we hung up and heard what happened later.
OtherBoss called in EntitledDude (who looked very smug like he knew he was about to get his way, having outsmarted everyone).
OtherBoss: EntitledDude, thank you so much for coming in and for taking the time to tell me how awful your situation is.
EntitledDude: Yes, thank you. I hope we can fix this because this cannot go on, and I would hate to have to escalate this further.
OtherBoss: Absolutely! It made me feel horrible to know you’ve been working this long and under so much strain. I only wish you had brought this to me sooner so that we could have taken care of this before. We are going to take care of all of this today!
EntitledDude: (Apparently massive, obnoxious smile) So you’ve approved my 5 direct reports? I believe that means I’ll need a title change to Director.
OtherBoss: Oh, no, no, we can’t do that! No, I’m sorry for the confusion. What I meant is that effective today, you are no longer running the Awesome Project; instead, you’ll take on a Small Project (which had no external visibility and was a task nobody wanted) which requires much less time, and I’ll give Awesome Employee the Awesome Project. Now you can have a much healthier work-life balance and relax!
And I’m counting on you to let me know if this project takes too much time also, as I can always give you Garbage Project instead which is even easier (and worse)! Please let me know because you shouldn’t have had to suffer like this!
Apparently, EntitledDude was stunned. He clearly hadn’t thought of this outcome. He tried to backtrack immediately, but OB heard none of it.
She relegated him to this minor project, and there was nothing he could do about it. EntitledDude left the company two months later.”
14. You Want The Exact Amount? Then You're Gonna Get It
“When I was 13 or 14, I decided I wanted a PS3. My dad refused to buy me one, but my uncle made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
He said that if I worked at his sweets shop for the two months of summer break, he would buy me a PS3 and some games in lieu of payment. For teenage me with no commitments, this seemed fantastic!
My uncle sold a kind of specialty snack known as a mini-samosa in his shop. They are like samosas, but smaller, about 3.5 to 4cm in size (about 1/2286 of a football field for my American friends).
They were sold by weight, in sealed packs of 250gms and 500gms as these were the most common amounts people bought. Making those packages turned out to be my job. You see, sometime between now and when uncle started his business, he realized that 250gms was roughly the weight of 28 mini-samosas and thus 56 were 500gms. So instead of weighing each packet, I was told to just pack by counting individual items, which was easier and saved time.
We also sold them individually for people who wanted larger, smaller, or unusual amounts.
This was also around the time when our government started airing customer awareness PSAs (“Jaago Grahak, Jaago” for my fellow Indians). Basically, just telling customers to beware of fraudulent business people. This is relevant.
So, one particularly hot afternoon, it was just me and my uncle at the shop. In India, frequent power cuts were very common during summers and thus there were no fans or AC running.
Both tempers and temperatures were running high at the shop that day.
It was then that the villain of our story; Mr. Karan made his entry. He was a local resident and a regular. He seemed angry from the onset when he barged into the shop. He took a look at the fans and saw that they weren’t running, then angrily picked up a 500gm pack of samosas and asked, “How many samosas are in this thing?”
“That’s 500gms,” I said.
“I said how many, NOT how much!” Mr. Karan literally screamed, “Again, HOW MANY in this?”
“56,” I replied immediately since, you know, I packed them.
“How can you be so sure? You didn’t even count! You’re trying to swindle me!” Mr. Karan was now in full-scale Karen mode. “I demand you pack me 500gms of those individual ones and don’t you dare deceive me again!”
I looked over at my uncle, wet with sweat, fanning himself with yesterday’s newspaper. He slowly nodded.
I beamed a huge smile, “Sure sir! Whatever you want!”
So I took a bag, picked up some samosas, and started putting them on the balance. I kept counting samosas as I put them in until they were a little over 500gms. Then I removed the last samosa and the weight fell below 500.
Now, keeping eye contact with Mr. Karan, I crushed the samosa and started putting its powdery remains in the bag until it was exactly 500gms.
But wait, there’s more! Mr. Karan apparently didn’t seem to mind powdered samosa but instead asked smugly, “So how many samosas now?”
“48,” I claimed triumphantly!
You see, sometime in the past, my uncle’s old chef retired, and the new chef made samosas with a little bit more filling in them.
They looked the same size on the outside and only weighed a couple of grams more each, and since he made them in bulk and also sold to other shops in the area, the price wasn’t too much of an issue. So my uncle let it slide. But those couple grams added up on mass orders, and that is what Mr. Karan found out the hard way.
He looked sheepishly at the pre-packed samosas and then at his own package and asked if he could buy the former instead.
“No, my nephew made a package especially for you, at your own request. So that is what you have to buy,” my uncle finally spoke.
Mr. Karan silently took his pack, paid, and left.
He was a lot more respectful during his subsequent visits.
I was reminded of this story yesterday when my PS3 finally died.”
13. Sure, I'll Wear A Bra... On My Head
“This happened last week. I was swimming laps at an indoor pool near my house. I’m a woman who has had a double mastectomy without reconstruction. My chest is flat. I’m totally comfortable with how I look but prefer for my scars to be covered in public. As far as swimming goes women’s suits have extra material to accommodate typical chests so when I wear them they’re baggy.
For backyard swimming, I just use a couple of safety pins to keep it in place. For lap swimming, it balloons open like a parachute full of water and creates so much drag that it’s difficult to swim. Tight competition swimsuits don’t have enough coverage for the way the scars wrap around my sides under my arms. To get around this I wear running shorts and a tight-fitting full coverage synthetic fabric dark-colored tank top.
It works great.
Last week I was approached as I left the pool facility by a worker. He said that they had received a complaint that a woman in the pool was wearing a shirt, which is allowed, but no sports bra underneath. He then said their policy requires women who are not in swimsuits to have sports bras under their shirts. He told me that the policy started when they had a problem where a woman would come in to swim and only wear a thin white shirt and no bra in the pool during family swim hours.
I explained politely that I’ve had a double mastectomy and do not need a bra. I said that swimsuits don’t fit me and my top is very dark and not see-through plus even if it was see-through all anyone would see are scars. He said he understood and felt bad but management requires that the dress code be followed. I explained how I was much more covered up than anyone else in the pool and in fact, was wearing exactly what he was minus the whistle – he was in shorts and a tank top.
There were guys in there with just tight-fitting swim bottoms on and women in bikinis. I look Amish next to them. He again said he was sorry but couldn’t make an exception to the rules. I asked for the rules in writing and he gave me a printout that did say what he was telling me.
This brings us to yesterday. I dug a sports bra out of a bin of old clothes and brought it with me.
I wore the same shorts and top otherwise. When I got in the water I put the band of the bra around my head with the straps sticking up like bunny ears. People in the other lanes got a kick out of it once I explained what I was doing. I started warming up with my kickboard thinking the guy would come over and we would sort this nonsense out.
Well, a lady in business clothes comes over and tells me I need to take the bra off my head. I would like to say here that this was an adult lap swim, there were no kids in the pool area. I explained it all to her and said I was following the rule to the letter. I was wearing a bra which is all that is required. We went back and forth with her saying I knew it had to be worn ‘normally’.
I said I couldn’t wear it the way others do because I don’t have anything to fill it and it would ride up to my chin while swimming without anything to hold it in place. She said I could use skin-safe glue! Yeah, no. I’m not going to glue unnecessary garments to my body and I told her as much.
I finally said that unless she could state the rule I was breaking then I would like to continue with my workout so I could get home to my kids and let the babysitter go home.
She walked away. I swam for an hour with that bra perched on my head (lots of readjusting it and once retrieving it from the bottom of the pool) then showered and went home.
This morning I checked my email, which is linked to my membership at the aquatic center, to find a message from her. They will not be changing their policies but I have been granted a special exception to the rule provided I continue to wear non-see-through tops.
I wish they would have just gotten rid of the silly bra rule but I’ll take this and if I ever see another woman struggling with their swimsuit over a flat chest I’ll let them know they can wear something more comfortable.”
12. Sure, I Can Ask For Permission Every Single Time I Leave The Office
How annoying this would be for everyone involved.
“This was a few years ago when I was working in China.
Our company moved office from Hong Kong to Shenzhen. Our sales had reduced a fair bit, hence the move. Our two bosses were old school and believed the best marketing was word of mouth and never bothered to advertise our business.
I tried and tried to make them reconsider, but they would not have it.
I was living rent-free in their apartment, and my salary was reduced by 50%. I agreed to work 8-12:30 as long as I could still live there and they would still keep my working visa. They agreed. I spent the first month enjoying my half days and going to the gym, walking, etc., and exploring Shenzhen.
I had made some friends and applied for a part-time job in an Education Centre in SZ, helping with Sales and teacher recruitment. I was working from 3 to 9 pm. I did not tell anyone about this job and emailed my bosses to ask about a salary increase since we were working almost full-time, but again, no reply. So 12:30 came, and my laptop and work phone were switched off.
I went to my new job.
At this job, the offices were part of the school, what I found weird was we only had 2 teachers, but A LOT of students. They even tried asking me to teach some classes. Heck no, that is not my job. My first day, the teachers warned me about their boss and my colleague. He was the head of the department but not my direct boss, let’s call him K.
I worked 6 hours, and I got a 45-minute break from 6 to 6:45. This school was part of a shopping center, so we had to go into the shopping center to use the bathroom. K was a complete micro-managing control freak. Shenzhen during summer is like walking around in a Sauna, it is 87 degrees Fahrenheit and feels like 113! I used to travel to work by bus and would take me about one hour.
I would wear shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops to work, I would always arrive early, around 2:15 pm, cool down for 30 minutes, then get changed and ready for work. K did not like this. I had to arrive at 2:55 pm dressed ready to work. I said I am. NO, you had to arrive at school in your work clothes… Did not say that in my contract but OK, I will do that.
The new guy did not want to argue.
After a week or so at the job, they again asked me to teach some classes as they were having to hire many part-time teachers, which cost them more than full-time. I said no, I am not even a qualified teacher. Not sure if that is even legal? We now had 3 teachers, but one was transferring and he specifically said it was because of K.
We had previously had another 2 teachers who also left because of K. I was the only foreigner in our office in teacher recruitment, managing our online database, calling teachers for interviews, helping with their documents, etc.
K comes into the office and asks me where I was for 20 minutes, I say the bathroom. Now I need to tell him when I leave for the bathroom, also where I am going for my 45 minutes break.
I ask why. He says in case he needs me. I say, “You are not my boss; you have no need to know where I am.” He states technically he is the department head, so he does need to know. I ask if all of the Chinese staff ask for permission to use the bathroom or just me. They laugh and he leaves.
K was also a teacher to English beginners.
He is teaching a class, so I knock on the door, and he looks shocked. I open the door and ask in Chinese (so the students understand), “Can I go to the bathroom, please?” He is angry, but he says yes. 6 pm, I walk into the office and give him the address loudly of where I am going for lunch. At the same time, I am emailing my boss saying I am shocked about the dress code change, how I’m not allowed to wear these colored shoes anymore, I have to arrive early dressed and not allowed to change, need bathroom permission, etc., stating all of it.
My.boss.was.livid.
He already knew about all of the complaints against K, but I think this was the final straw. He calls me up and I explain everything to him.
About 1 month later, K was removed as head and became just an English teacher. I worked there part-time for 1 year before leaving for a better job full-time. Funny thing was, as soon as he was demoted, he was a nice colleague to talk to.”
11. How I Got Promoted At A Steakhouse
“I was an easy-to-please kid working my first real job as a busboy in a steakhouse. I would help out anyone anytime to prove I could do other things. Dishwasher out, no problem.
We did LARGE steaks. The smallest steak was the 1 pound Filet Mignon. They are no longer in business but were called U R Cooks. It was a guy’s place, where you picked your steak and cooked it on an open grill in the middle of the dining room.
(no disrespect, but we were all but closed on Mother’s day.)
I would be scheduled as a busboy and end up doing any job that was needed. I would often change the blades in the meat saw (band saw) so the meat cutter could just start on the next cut. T-Bones use different blades than Sirloin. The meat cutter liked me and one slow night had me cut the sirloins.
He joked with the managers that they needed to give me a raise as I was getting as good as him.
I would get scheduled… as a busboy (remember this) to come in HOURS early to help with prep. I was PAID as a busboy. This went on for months. I didn’t mind the pay difference as I would get tipped out by the servers and often would help customers cook their steaks and get tips then too.
As a kid, it didn’t dawn on me that I was being stiffed.
Now, this is where the fun starts. When you get a large UNCUT sirloin butt you will NEVER get it cut exactly. The shape prevents that. So the end pieces or scraps from any cut were packaged up and sold to the employees for 25 CENTS a pound. Typically there would be 1/2 pound of waste per group cut.
So for a sirloin butt, 1/2 pound. We would cut 10 a day. Older employees got the first chance at buying the excess.
The day before Father’s day there was a huge fight and the meat cutter was told to take a few days off and decide if he really wanted to work there. He was then taken off the schedule. I was on the schedule as the busboy and was scheduled to come in early as usual. I had only been helping and had never run the area on my own.
About an hour into it the manager noticed I was too slow and that we would never be ready to open, so she had me help her. She took over cutting the steaks and I just prepped the trays, changed the blades, the normal. Now I only did what I was told and when I suggested changing the blades she told me, “There is no time” and kept cutting.
Using the wrong blade on the sirloin tears it instead of cutting it. She would tear off a chunk and toss it to me. I tried several times to stop her, but she wasn’t listening to me and told me that if I didn’t quit trying to slow her down, she would send me home. So I didn’t try to stop her anymore. She cut 15 sirloin butts and was proud of how she had less waste than normal. I had everything as prepped as I could and she turned and saw the mess.
There was not a single steak that we could put out. ALL of it had to go to waste.
The next day I was told I was fired for ruining all the steaks. All 4 managers were there as well as the owner. The owner told me I would never be a meat cutter anywhere with as bad as I had done. He then asked me what I had to say for myself.
I turned around and pulled the work schedule off the wall and handed it to him while asking him to check the records for my employment. I then asked him if there is no meat cutter assigned, who is to do the cutting, and why he would believe anyone would put the lowly busboy in charge of cutting thousands of dollars worth of steak.
It took about 5 minutes for him to get the whole story out of the manager.
She got fired, I got promoted to assistant meat cutter and as a bonus, I was given 100 pounds of deformed sirloin to take home. 16 year old me put on a heck of a barbeque party at the apartments.”
Another User Comments:
“HA! The manager tried to throw you under the bus, but you pulled her arm hard enough to switch places instead! If you weren’t considered a legend by your coworkers, at least that apartment complex so rightly knew you were!” Pan-Pan90
10. Unfairly Grade Me For Not Suiting Up? You Just Wait
“This revenge is based on what happened to me, about 8 years ago. My country has a bit of a different school system. There is an education you can follow before college. The closest thing in English is a Vocational Degree.
This story is about my time there. I was between 16 and 19 years old, during my time there. This is a long story.
Right now, I graduated from college. However, I got my vocational degree first. One of the teachers was the school’s internship coördinator. She was mostly in charge of visiting students at their internships, giving them feedback, and giving the last assessment about how they did.
This also included deciding whether students passed their internship or not. In order to graduate, you need to pass both internships in 2 years.
She was the biggest jerk I ever met in my life. To this day, I don’t know why she works at a school, because she treats students like trash. She would tell students very degrading remarks. I’ve seen her publicly tell students that they already failed, that they wouldn’t be able to find an internship, and threatened to kick them out of the school.
She also, almost always, bragged about how many degrees and how much experience she had. A 10-minute conversation would feel like an eternity because it always included her bragging about her accomplishments followed by how bad you did.
Despite all that, I managed to finish school. I got a passing grade for all my classes, finished my first internship and almost my second one as well.
The only thing I needed to do was one final presentation about my last internship. This happened at the company. I was in the company attire since I was also still doing my final internship days. I did this and I admit that I didn’t do so well. The coördinator told me to redo it.
However, she judged me by how I looked and lowered my grade because of it.
She said that I needed to be in a suit. This was news for me. Nowhere in the guide was this written and I never heard of anything like it. I was in the company attire, just like everyone else there, because I was working there that day. Another teacher heard this later and got really mad at her for grading me on that. However, because I knew I didn’t do so well anyway, I didn’t say anything.
Instead, I immediately asked her when my resit was (every student has the chance to resit every subject twice). I asked her this before she could even leave the room. She told me that she couldn’t give me a date yet.
I asked her almost daily when we could plan my resit, but every time she told me to come back another day. One day she had to wait for a meeting and the other day she had another appointment.
This went on for weeks and I kept going to school just to ask her about my resit. The end of the school year was almost there. I finished every class, both internships, and already got accepted to the college I applied for. The only thing I needed was this one presentation. Eventually, I got the news that I couldn’t do my presentation because “there isn’t enough time left.” She told me to come back next school year.
I got furious, because I asked her almost daily, since the very beginning, when I could do my resit. This also meant that I couldn’t go to college, because I needed to show my degree before the next school year started. However, no matter what I said, the coördinator and the department manager wouldn’t budge. So I went to the exam commission and filed a complaint.
That same evening, I got an e-mail with the date for my resit. The complaint worked. At this point, my mom got involved, because she was livid about how I got treated. Before the resit, we had a meeting about how this resit would go. My mom told the coördinator, in front of everyone else, that she didn’t want her to be present. The coördinator got pale, but that didn’t happen.
However, because I filed a complaint, someone from the exam commission had to be present. The meeting ended and the date for the resit was set. However, I did remember the comment about how I had to suit up for my presentation and that she unfairly graded me on that.
Cue malicious compliance.
I suited up and did not hold back. I put on everything, from my tie to the nicest shoes I had.
At this point, I was in full business attire. I grabbed my laptop, put all my documents in a nice folder, and went to school. I even practiced with another teacher, beforehand. The look on her face, when I showed up in full business attire, was priceless. She was shocked. I did my presentation and, mostly because someone from the exam commission was also there, she had no choice but to let me pass.
She told my mom that I did amazing and didn’t expect that from me. My mom told me straight in her face: ”I know because OP wasn’t the problem. The problem was you.” She got pale as a ghost, said ”okay”, and walked away. She still ended up giving me a C for my so-called amazing performance, but I didn’t care.
I graduated and went to college.
I finished college now as well. A year after I got out of there, I went back to the school to pick up some documents. She didn’t see me, but I saw her bragging to the receptionist about her degrees. She even bragged about having a swimming degree. I don’t know what she is doing now, but I don’t have to deal with her ever again.”
9. Try To Transfer Me To A Terrible Position For My "Mental Health?" Nah, Boss
“There’s a good bit of history behind this, but essentially I was injured after being attacked at work. I developed PTSD and eventually had to go on sick leave. I was sent to the organization’s medical officer for assessment. He sent me for an independent assessment because he didn’t believe I had PTSD. Independent medical assessment not only said I had PTSD but that it was directly a result of my injury at work.
I was given reduced hours at full pay and a position away from the public for at least 3 months. I applied for some unpaid leave for the end of the three months to spend some time with my family and prepare myself before I went back full time.
I spoke with my line manager during this time and was happy to return to my old position.
During this time, my district manager changed. He got wind of my absence and decided I was not genuine. He decided to transfer me to a much busier spot where I’d be dealing with a lot of difficult people. I told him straight up I was not able for that. It was the area I had been attacked in and I’d have a lot of difficulties there.
He said I couldn’t go back to my old spot because that’s where I went sick from. Even the medical officer said there was no reason to transfer me. But the boss stuck to his guns. He said he couldn’t leave me in my old spot because it would be bad for my mental health, I’d be working alone most of the time and there was no documented reason I would have trouble in my new position.
This was all in April 2020. I’m sure you know what global event was kicking off then.
So I decided to get some documentation. I went to my own doctor. He was disgusted at how I was being treated. He gave me a few tests. The weeks of stress and anxiety had raised my b***d pressure and given me some breathing issues (similar to hyperventilating).
I had a few other small issues too. He signed me off work for six weeks citing stress-induced breathing issues and high b***d pressure and stated in a letter that these place me at higher risk of adverse effects for serious illness.
My boss was not happy with this at all so sent me back to the medical officer for assessment. The medical officer took one look at my doctor’s documentation and decided to do a consult with me by phone instead of in person.
He decided that I was too high risk to work with others and issued a direction that I was not to work unless it was in a well-ventilated office on my own. Otherwise, I was to be given paid leave. No such position was available so I was placed on paid leave.
Towards the end of the year, someone noticed I wasn’t around. A line manager contacted me and told me I’d have to be re-assessed as I couldn’t expect to have free holidays.
In the meantime, they’d set me up working from home. It took them till January this year to set that up. I went for reassessment again. I told the medical officer how great I was getting at working from home. The medical officer thought that me working from home was ideal so directed it should continue indefinitely.
All I wanted was to go back to my old familiar job.
I should also note that they never replaced me there. It was a one-man public role and has been closed for nearly two years now.”
8. Start Using A Template To "Work Faster?" It Won't Help But Okay
They found the perfect workaround.
“I used to work in a call center for a while as 1st level support (I did 3 different projects, this was my last one as support for a pharmaceutical company).
General stuff, solve technical issues, and if it’s not possible, then send it to 2nd level teams.
Our Team Leader got feedback from the 2nd level teams that we do not share enough information when sending a ticket to them, so they created a template to use when forwarding a ticket. The template was very generic and was only good for like 2 types of issues to handle so I did not use it that much (I was good at what I was doing, so no complaints about me anyway).
The Team Leader approached me to use the template EVERY TIME I forward a customer case. I told him that the template is basically useless for most of the issues and that’s why I didn’t use it. He insisted to use it anyway.
Cue the malicious compliance.
From now on, I used the template for all tickets I forwarded, and it really increased the time to log a case (I used some self-created templates previously so I could do it as fast as I can) because of having to fill in all the unnecessary details (I could do a ticket in like 3-5 mins, it went up to 10-20, depending on the case).
This made my performance go down a bit but like I cared; they told me to use it all the time. In the end, I found out if a keyword is used the report shows I used the template. I recreated my templates including the keyword so I could log tickets fast again but as mentioned using the template took a lot of time, so I spend my time in ticket handling for the same amount of time but not actually doing anything, just relaxing (perks of working from home, I suppose).
They always pushed us to work as fast (the idea of the template was to reduce the time needed for logging, duh) as we could as the volume was high but whatever. They asked me to use their stupid template anyway. In the end, I was barely doing any calls as I was on my notice, but they did not fire me as they needed me to handle the workload (I was hoping to be fired, or just let go, so I could start my new job earlier.
No more call centers, thanks.)”
7. You Sure You Want ALL That Paperwork?
“I was a Project Manager for a smaller industrial construction company, on the gulf coast. We were adding on to an existing chemical plant, in multiple phases.
The first phase of the project went well.
The client rep was easy to get along with and was very reasonable. He reported to their PM, but we almost never dealt with her. We would have weekly status meetings to discuss cost projection and forecasts, schedule updates, change orders (COs), and requests for information (RFI), all of which always went well. Towards the end of the first phase, the client was bought and merged with another company.
This wasn’t a problem at first; we finished the first phase under budget, ahead of schedule, and were awarded the second phase. The new owner decided the previous PM wasn’t “adequate” and wanted her replaced. A pretty common practice when things like this happen, they want people they know and trust. This change also changed the representative we had built a relationship with.
While funding was getting worked out for the second phase, at the request of the client, my company kept me and three of my direct reports on (project manager (me), cost controller, construction manager, and admin). We assisted with scope development, contract T’s and C’s, construct-ability reviews, material ordering, and general planning. After two months, the client gives us the green light to proceed, so we get to work.
I am not what is referred to as a “change order artist” in my industry. Unless it’s a change of scope or an extreme unforeseeable/weather delay, I try to steer away from requesting more funds as much as possible. Sometimes there’s no avoiding it, especially when the scope of work is lacking, but we had ample opportunity to vet and assist in defining the project scope and I had estimated we would have roughly 25 change orders.
Some jobs are not so lucky. We had accounted for 30 minutes every morning for safety talks and work permits to be given to the crew foremen, which is pretty standard for this client/facility. First day takes three hours to get permits. I think it’s just growing pains, new people; it will improve. Second day: three hours, third day: 4 hours… Day four is our first weekly meeting, and I bring this up, with some draft “test” COs, RFIs, and reports to see how the new PM wants to see our weekly data moving forward.
We discuss the permitting issue and I explain that I’m pretty flexible and believe in a give and take relationship, but I need help with permits if we’re going to meet the project deadline and budgetary constraints. The PM decides he wants change orders submitted weekly, in arrears one week, to have real-time numbers. This goes well for a couple of weeks, permit issuance time went down and I fell into my, “give and take” attitude.
I wouldn’t include every delay or change, believing this was the high road, and trying to build a relationship. Then something happened. The PM got weird. His whole attitude and demeanor changed.
The PM states he now wants change orders submitted every day, per discipline, per instance. I try to explain we have 4 disciplines and that would be an enormous amount of unnecessary paperwork, and that I’d rather have a conversation about these as some of them will not be worth the paper they’re written on.
But he insists, “EVERY DEVIATION. EVERY CHANGE! I want everything on paper and submitted daily for approval. All supporting documentation needs to be included.” His attitude change clicks with me now, he thinks we won’t be able to keep up with the mountain of paperwork. He even made it a point to amend our contract with this, stating if we didn’t follow this, we would lose billing rights for extra work.
I sit down with my cost controller, const. mgr, and 8 foremen to explain what the client wants. Any scope change, permit delay, operations delay, or scaffold delay was to be radioed in immediately to the cost controller to request a new cost code to track hours. We would track any materials or equipment rentals to these respective codes, as well. We would develop an estimate on the scope changes and on the delays, we would provide actual hours and submit these requests at the end of each day.
Once the work for the scope changes was completed, the original CO estimate would be actualized. The individual COs would then be submitted as independent invoices at the end of the month, in addition to our normal “scope” invoices.
This was not a large project at all, valued at ~$8mm for four months worth of work and 100 construction personnel. When the project was all said and done we had submitted roughly 800 change orders, valued at $1.6mm.
The PM and his team would have to review 150-200 invoices a month. Some of which was only $54.00 for a 15-minute delay. The cherry on top: the client now took too long to vet the invoices, and wouldn’t pay timely, per the contract. Every month the client had to pay an additional 3% due to late payment fees.
Petty? It sure was, but I gave him exactly what he wanted. I ended up making my company, and me, a lot on that project.”
Another User Comments:
‘”I used to run little electrical projects and I dealt with inevitable “changes” with a simple strategy. I would move things and change things for free within reason and on my timeline. I wasn’t ever going to let their “little change” mean I wouldn’t meet my contracted obligations.
So I would reply by saying, “No problem; I’ll just add that to the list for later.”
“Oh? You need it done now? Well, then that becomes an extra.”
My project manager said that I didn’t need to do that, but I pointed out that my way actually kept the “favors” to a minimum and that the general contractor keeps requesting me so it is working.” algy888
6. Always Try Before Figuring Out If It Will Work? Sure
“At my workplace, every employee has three sets of duties. The first set of basic duties is the same for each and everyone, which is a prescribed number of hours per day for which we are rostered, with the total number of hours a week ranging from 10 to 28 hours depending on whether you are middle management or an ordinary employee such as myself.
The second and third set of duties are highly varied and are organized into various committees which an employee can technically change between every year. Some involve heavier working hours, or planning, whereas others involve more menial, simpler tasks.
As you may imagine, rostering the prescribed hours for employees must be a heavy affair, and there must be a committee to oversee it. My second set of duties happen to fall under this committee, and I help with the rostering, which is mainly done on a highly specialized (and expensive) software twice a year, with the committee managing substitutions whenever an employee is away on sick leave or other reasons throughout the year.
Although it was my first job, I had been personally trained for two years by my predecessor in the committee, who was due to retire. At the time of the malicious compliance, I have been a valued member for three years and have made noted contributions towards the rostering processes.
Now on to the malicious compliance: As usual, our story starts when a new boss came into our workplace, whom I shall call Bossman going forward.
There are usually two or three bosses of equal standing above our middle management. Now Bossman fancied himself a people’s person, who would often listen to the “grievances” of ordinary employees and try to find ways to change things such that ordinary employee satisfaction could improve. Now, this would usually be a good thing, except that he would entertain unreasonable requests as well. This resulted in time wasted trying out untenable solutions, or situations where work was shifted around such that it became unfair to other individuals.
As you may expect this usually caused new grievances and then work was shifted back to how it was originally allocated because that had been the fairest in the first place.
We had to interact with Bossman quite frequently as some grievances had to do with rostering. As Bossman had had some experience in said committee in the past elsewhere, he fancied himself an expert in what we were doing.
We frequently found ourselves explaining to him why certain “grievances” were unreasonable and we could not accommodate the requests during rostering. Finally, it reached a point whereby he said something along the lines of “I want you to always try before trying to figure out if it will work.”
Now, we work five days a week. One of the instructions he had given us, along with that ultimatum, was that one particular employee is prescribed no more than four hours a day, with a total number of 26 prescribed hours every week.
Those of you mathematically inclined will see where the problem is. 26 ÷ 5 = 5 hours daily with one leftover. There was no way we could follow his instructions unless the employee came in every day of the week.
But oh well, Bossman wants what Bossman wants. None of us said anything to Bossman, and proceeded to run the software, producing multiple failed rosters as the software could not produce a full roster for everyone.
But man did we keep trying.
The fallout: Eventually, Bossman came to check in on us and our progress as we were behind schedule since the roster also had to be vetted by middle management and managers were wondering why Bossman had not given the go-ahead for any copies of the roster. The manager for our committee, who’s really awesome and tactful, informed Bossman that no full roster has been produced, as we were still trying to get the software to ensure that particular employee did not have more than four hours rostered per day.
Bossman asked why was there a problem with that, which is when the manager reminded him that said employee had to fulfill 26 prescribed hours a week. Bossman was confused as to why we did not bring this up earlier, as it was clear that this set of conditions isn’t logically possible. The manager tactfully reminded Bossman that he had given us these conditions along with the instruction to try first before trying to figure out if there were any problems with the conditions he had given us.
To be fair to Bossman, he took it in his stride and approved the suggested changes we requested to the set of conditions he had given us on the spot. We delivered a satisfactory roster to him by the end of the same working day. For the remainder of the time he was with us, Bossman would actually listen if we proposed changes or protested to some of the unreasonable requests with regards to rostering without requiring us to waste time trying it out first.
Clarification before some of you point out that the particular employee who was supposed to have no more than four prescribed hours a day is the one at fault. Said employee had actually requested to have lesser prescribed hours in a week, as an average worker usually has 20 prescribed hours a week, and it’s only when we are extremely short-handed that a handful of workers go up to the maximum of 28 prescribed hours.
This is so that we have time to complete our other two sets of duties as well, which are not counted towards these prescribed hours. For some reason, Bossman saw the solution as to reduce the number of prescribed hours per day, without lowering the total number of prescribed hours in a week.”
Another User Comments:
“As I told a customer once, I absolutely refuse to work more than 168 hours a week.” dittybopper058
5. Take My Dog's Life? Good Luck Sleeping
“I had a dog once.
My next-door neighbor is a member of the US military and owns 3 dogs. Many of my family members serve in the military, so we assumed he was a pretty trustworthy guy.
One day, I go to let my dog (Romeo 2004-2007 RIP) out, but I notice my neighbor’s dog in my backyard. I wasn’t exactly surprised to discover they had dug under our fence.
According to our town’s laws, we couldn’t fix the fence. He owned those particular pieces of wood, so there was nothing we could do about it. Naturally, we asked him to fix it.
No problem; he is on it.
Over the next couple of months, we noticed a lot more trash than was usually carried by the wind end up in our yard. Beer bottles among them, we figured we might need to talk to someone. Same deal as before; he is on it.
I was in elementary school at the time, and that summer, things got particularly heated. I personally didn’t really care about whatever thing my neighbor was doing at the time.
At that point in my life, my dog was all I cared about. I bought books on how to take care of dogs, I tried to play with him every day, the whole nine yards. I was just a kid, so although I tried, I didn’t always treat my dog ideally.
That summer, though, I was just beginning to realize how stupid some of the stuff I was doing and was making an effort to stop.
Bing bada boom, April rolls around, and I am awoken on a Sunday morning. Surprise. Your dog is dead. I spent that Sunday morning not lounging around but comforting my dog who was on the kitchen floor. It really didn’t look that bad, but his breathing was ragged, and he was just laying there.
He stopped moving.
So, here’s the skinny: apparently, fixing a fence and filling a hole is neighbor speak for putting a recycling bin over the specified area.
Now contrary to popular belief, dogs aren’t actually dumb. Even if they were, it’s not that hard to push a box out of your way.
So, here’s the scene:
In one corner, you have a pitbull and 2 German Sheppards, and in the other corner, you have a chihuahua. I didn’t see what happened, but I was told he was fought over like a toy. If you have ever seen a dog rapidly spin its head with a toy in its mouth, imagine that but with a little more b***d.
I don’t like dogs anymore. In fact, I’m afraid of them. The ring of a small dog’s collar behind me will put me into eighth gear fight or flight mode.
When everything was said and done, the dog tally was 0 on our team, 2 on theirs.
Let’s do some math. The average person goes to bed at say, 10, right? I have made it my duty to be as loud and disruptive as possible for my neighbors in the late hours of the night.
Between that and their kid, hopefully, they would be pulling a grand slammin’ total of 0 hours of sleep. This has been my life’s purpose since that day.
They can’t get mad; what are they gonna do? Who are you? Oh yes, the man who neglectfully killed my dog?
At the very least, you could have flipping told us you didn’t want to do it. Just give us like 3 dollars, and we’ll fix it for you, so it’s all official and legal.
I’m a very introverted person, but I am quite the rowdy partier. Lights on, music blaring to the left a bit. They own a small dog of their own now, but I’m not that much of a sociopath yet.
I’ve really harnessed my couch potato, though. Our yard isn’t the one getting littered in anymore. The occasional garden snake I catch? Why take it all the way to the woods when there is an area completely devoid of sentient life right next to my house?
As I’ve matured, so has my payback. I used to knock, knock, ginger them every day. I used to intentionally accidentally walk through their garden and make their yard look like something out of a trailer park. Though, to be fair, parking your truck in the middle of your front yard does that for you. I don’t do anything anymore, and I have never truly felt satisfied with my revenge.
I’m still waiting for the right moment to bust a flaming pile of brown playdough onto their front doorstep.
I am 100% willing to take suggestions.
To be fair though, they did later fix the fence.
I had a dog once.”
4. Planting A Little Something In A Bully's Locker
That’s how you do it!
“I was the sort of outcast kid in high school who never really fit into any group. At the time, I was 6’0” and about 210 lbs and was considered fat and unhealthy.
I had a few friends, and we just did our own thing during lunch, but that was it as far as my high school social life was concerned. I kept to myself and didn’t want to make enemies of anyone.
This happened back in 2006 in my sophomore year of high school.
At the beginning of the school year, we are given the option to choose our own elective classes for the first and second half of the year.
(Science, math, English, and reading were the four mandatory classes, and then we could choose two elective classes such as photography, PE, woodshop, auto shop, etc.; you get the idea.)
Anyway, at the start of the second half of the year, I chose weightlifting as my second elective class because I really wanted to build my muscle mass and get in shape. This was when I met the main antagonist of this story whom we will call Chad.
Chad was a two-faced jerk. He was co-captain of the football team and the biggest brown-noser of the gym teachers (who were also the coaches of the football and wrestling teams) you have ever seen.
Chad liked to cozy up to them to stay on their good side, but if he decided he didn’t like you, he was gonna make your life awful.
I don’t know why he had it out for me, but he would do anything to make me look like a fool.
He’d kick weights in front of me so I’d trip, he’d mock my efforts in front of the other jocks (also b*******s), and even stick his dirty gym socks in my lockers on Fridays, so I would come into my locker on Monday smelling like a landfill. I put up with Chad’s antics for nearly four months.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was when he had something bad to eat one day, and instead of throwing up in the toilet like any normal person, proceeded to throw up in my backpack.
It wasn’t like vomit levels of puke or anything, but it did make a mess of my paperwork and folders. I finally had enough of this terrible individual and decided it was time to get even.
Just in case any of you are wondering, yes, I did inform the teachers of what was going on, but they were just making excuses because they didn’t want to risk losing the star football player just before heading to the state tournament.
Okay, b*******s, you wanna play hardball? Let’s play hardball. I spent the night at home thinking about how I was going to get back at him. Then my brain hatched an idea. He wanted to mess with my personal stuff, so I’m going to do the same to him.
Objective 1: Find out his locker combination
The following Monday was a normal day as Chad was up to his usual nonsense, but this time, I was discreet.
I played nice with him, trying to butter him up, hoping he would drop his guard. He finally did when I saw him put in his locker combination. Objective satisfied.
Objective 2: Find some booze
This one was obvious yet difficult. My dad had a bar inside our house in the basement and had quite a respectable collection of booze. I figured he wouldn’t miss one or two bottles as I was doing this for a good reason.
(Dad, if you ever read this, I’m sorry. I hope you understand.) Objective satisfied.
Objective 3: Plant the booze
This one was difficult as I knew I was risking suspension and possible expulsion from school.
(I didn’t have the privilege of being on a sports team, so I would have been thrown to the wolves immediately. You’ll see what I mean here in a bit.) I had to be discreet and make sure no one was around.
When school was over the next day, I went to the locker room and waited. It was easy enough to convince the teacher I just needed something out of my locker. I was fortunate he had to step out real quick to deal with some issue with another teacher and trusted me to be quick and close the door behind me. Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Cole, I will be; of that, you can be assured.
The moment he left, I worked fast.
I got Chad’s locker open pretty fast. I took the booze out and stuffed it in the back part of his locker. Then I reset the lock to the number it was on before I opened it. The little details are always important. Objective satisfied.
Objective 4: Tip off the principal and security officer
We didn’t have a weightlifting class until 5th period, so I had a good window to get this last objective done.
During lunch, I went to the computer lab (bless you, Ms. Fraser, for being so kind to me) and typed out an anonymous letter stating that I believed a student in the weightlifting class was bringing booze to school and taking drinks while in class. I thank the powers, that being I was born with a silver tongue, because I was able to just walk into the principal’s office with smiles from the staff.
I left the note right on her computer, so she would see it the moment she walked in. Next, I went over to the security guard’s office and left the note taped to his door. Objective satisfied.
And now, the waiting game. Pretty much as soon as the principal and security officer got the notes, they immediately called for a search warrant of all the lockers in the boy’s locker room.
Every boy was ordered to come from their class and open their lockers, including me. Chad was completely unaware of what was about to happen to him, and man, I couldn’t help but smirk a bit when he opened his locker to find a bottle of booze in there. He tried to tell them it wasn’t his, but the security guard was having none of it.
He was escorted to the principal’s office.
I don’t know what happened to him exactly, but I do know he was no longer a part of the football team and was suspended for two weeks as a result. He’s thankful that the investigation remained in the house and didn’t catch the attention of the local news media. He also still got accepted into the college he wanted but lost his football scholarship.
I never truly hated Chad; I just hated that he didn’t know when to stop being a b******e. From what I understand, he’s doing alright now. He has a wife, one kid, and a fairly good job working as a garbage truck driver.
Moral of the story? Always be kind to people because you never know what kind of person you may be screwing around with.”
3. Cancel My Birthday Lunch? Say Bye To Your Office
“A few years ago, I was working at a tech company doing quality assurance (QA). For the most part, I liked my manager. He was a decent guy but not someone that was a technical guy so more of a manager than a team member. School starts for the year, and he starts to get to be a pain in the butt to get in contact with: working from home most of the time, erratic office hours.
For the most part, I didn’t care. Things were getting done, and life went on.
Things started to get real bad in October. He was a believer in one on one meetings, so at the beginning of the month, he scheduled one with me and then missed it. I didn’t think much about it and just went with the new time to meet on a new day.
It happened again and again. In all fairness, we did meet once for our one on one but both agreed that the crisis going on in the department needed both of our attention, but he scheduled eight different meetings with cancellations going out minutes before the meeting (maybe two?) or not even doing that much, MIA.
At this point, October was on its last days, and I was angry as heck about this and decided to send him a pointed email about how I expected better out of him than that.
He apologized to me, and I figured it was done. We decided to hold off on another one-on-one meeting for a while because I would just rail on him about this, and I didn’t want to do that.
November comes and goes without any sort of scheduled meeting between us, and it’s alright. He is still hard to get in contact with him, but I don’t care.
I figure things are back to normal, but I’m also kind of bothered by the fact that he hasn’t asked for a new meeting.
December comes around, and the morning of my birthday has arrived. I don’t care; I don’t bring it up, but I get an email from the calendar app to schedule a birthday lunch for the next day.
I inwardly groan at this as it’s way more of an official thing and that it’s for the next day. I press accept and start looking forward to going out to lunch.
Less than four hours later (probably two hours) comes the notification that the event organizer has canceled the event, he explained that he had some schedule conflict. All of the calm and cool that I worked to build up over November suddenly erupts into a rage in me.
If he had just sent out an email saying let’s get lunch and had to cancel that, I wouldn’t have cared.
This was an official meeting because of the dang calendar thing and canceled, just like nothing had changed since the email I sent the manager.
I decided to sit down and write another email to him, detailing out what happened again and how it showed no respect for me and the rest of the department.
(They were all having similar issues.) I managed to keep it professional, but it was also clear I was so mad. I also added his boss to the email, the CTO of the company.
After a bit, I manage to get back to actual work rather than just fuming from these events when I get a call from the CTO. He says that he wants to talk to me Monday (next business day) about what is going on and that he wanted to get to it today but had a full schedule.
I say it’s all good and thank him. A call happened around noon, and by three o’clock on Friday, I was sitting in the conference room talking with the CTO about what happened. We have our conversation as did all of the people in the department.
I found out that my manager was a full-time manager, a newly married husband with kids (four of his own and four of hers), and going to school full-time for nursing.
There might have been more to the list, but the guy had negative time during the day and cut time from his employer to make it work. Dang, salary is great, isn’t it? The CTO was pretty mad about this, with one of the most direct changes being made was that the QA manager had to sit in the QA lab with the rest of the department.
I don’t recall what else he had to do or what other changes he had to suffer, as it’s been years.
I did feel a bit bad for the next QA manager (the manager of this story lasted about 3 more months). He had to fight and beg to have an office that he deserved, but I never did try to hide the fact that the reason the new manager didn’t have an office was because of me.”
2. Super Glue To A Mean Neighbor's Door Lock
“It was my mum and dad’s anniversary recently – he passed around 10 years ago. I would be lying if I said that we had a good relationship. We have never seen eye to eye on much – but at the end of the day he was still my dad, and from the many, many posts I’ve read I realize that maybe I didn’t have things quite so bad.
Anyway, the reason I mention this back story is that we were reminiscing about him, and some of the stuff he would get up to. When he was younger, he liked to think of himself as what we’d term in Scotland as a ‘hard man’. He wouldn’t go looking for trouble, but he would quickly end any trouble that would find him. And that was often – back in his early twenties, the culture here was often that guys would go out drinking and have fun with their friends, and come back home to their wives, who might or might not make them spend the night in the garden depending on how generous they are feeling.
In addition to his twenties and thirties filled with drinking, he was a heavy smoker as well. My parents had me late (there is a 10-year gap between me and my next oldest sibling), so I think that was perhaps why my dad didn’t really bond with me as well as my brothers. This story takes place when I was around 17. I’ve told it to my family many times, and it always gets a laugh.
By this time, my dad was not very well at all. He struggled to walk and had a multitude of health issues mostly due to his substance consumption and smoking. That didn’t deter him in these habits, and most nights he’d stay up after my mum went to bed, continuing to smoke and drink. By the time I was 17, I mostly just spent nights in my room, keeping my head under the radar.
Both of my older brothers had moved out of the house by this time. My dad had mostly stopped giving me a hard time by this age, and most of our nighttime interactions would be if I went past him to the kitchen to get a drink.
One thing around this time that we both had in common was that we HATED the neighbor living upstairs.
He was rude, and we often heard him shouting at his family. My dad could be a jerk, but he was never usually that bad. We tolerated it because it was mostly worse in the small hours of the morning – my mum would be asleep, my dad would be wasted, and I’d probably be playing my PC with headphones on. I and my Dad had both noticed it, but we didn’t care enough to do anything about it.
One day he inexplicably bought a puppy. I only ever caught glimpses of the puppy, but it usually seemed happy enough. The only problem with the puppy was that every time he left it alone (which was a LOT). It would not. Stop. Barking. Day or night, if we heard him leave, or saw him get in his car, the puppy would go absolutely nuts.
The worst part for me was that the puppy would go to his front door, which was near the window to my bedroom. That meant it was mostly me who heard it barking. My dad would hear it whenever he got up to go to the toilet, and I heard him grumble angrily to himself “stupid dog”. It was unusual for us to have a common issue.
On one particular night, the dog was going at it as per usual. My dad and I happened to cross paths during a late-night visit to the bathroom. While waiting outside for my dad to finish, he shouted out to me from behind the closed door.
‘I’m going to put a note through his door.’ I laughed a bit – my dad was wasted again, and the idea of him doing that was funny – because at best, my dad was able to shuffle the length of the living room before getting out of breath.
When he came out of the bathroom, he shuffled past me and went back into the living room. I didn’t think anything of it and used the bathroom, then went back to my room.
Maybe about 20 minutes later, I’m playing the PlayStation, sitting by the window in my room. I see something out of the corner of my eye, and look – it’s my dad, in a t-shirt and boxer shorts, shuffling along the back of our house in his slippers, heading towards the upstairs door to the neighbor’s house.
I was really nervous – if the neighbors turned up and things got physical, my dad could have been seriously hurt. I scrambled for my shoes and ran through the house to the back door, and along the back of the house to catch him. When I turned the corner, he was already on his way back down the stairs. I quietly shouted to him ‘What did you do?’ He simply said, ‘I posted a note through his door.’ I went to go help him back in and noticed that he was holding something.
I asked him what it was, and took it out of his hand – it was an empty tube of super glue.
Preempting my question, my dad said ‘I put it in his lock.’ In the UK, many locks are really small and narrow – superglue would ruin the lock and mean it needed replacing. I couldn’t help but laugh, but then I said to him – ‘He’ll come knocking on our door first needing help.’ (This was before mobile phones were prominent).
My dad literally did not care and shuffled off to bed. I went to bed too – but sure enough, the door went a few hours later, around 3 AM. I woke up, and opened my door – my dad had already gotten to the front door before me and opened it. I settled for listening to the conversation from my room door.
Neighbor: You’re not going to believe this, but some jerk has put superglue in my lock.
Is there any chance I can use your phone?
Dad: You’re joking? Of course, come on in.
The neighbor flicks through the yellow pages for a locksmith, and eventually phones one. All this time my dad is genuinely trying to act helpful and friendly while being said jerk who superglued the lock. When they’re done, my dad shuts the door and laughs. I peek my head out of my bedroom door and laugh as well.
But then I have a horrible moment of realization – ‘the locksmith is going to have to drill and hammer his door to get it open!’ He shrugged and said he didn’t care.
20 minutes later I’m lying in bed, unable to sleep due to the hammering and drilling. I definitely was not destined to get any sleep that night! My dad was definitely in the wrong, but I will take the image of him shuffling along the back of our house to my grave.
Our family still has a good laugh about it to this day. My dad and I were definitely not besties, but this is absolutely one of my favorite memories of him.
Oh, he did apparently post a note, but he took what he wrote on it to his grave. I’d love to know what he had written. The puppy continued to do its thing, but we would always have the night of the superglue in the lock to console us.”
1. Forcing A Terrible Bus Driver To Resign
“From 7th grade to just before my 11th-grade year, I and the other kids on the bus had this horrible, vindictive bus driver. I’m going to go ahead and say her real name, Cristina.
Our school system has too many kids for k-12 to all ride the bus, so we have an “Early Bus” for kindergarten through 5th grade, and then the “Late Bus” which had 6th grade through 12th grade.
My bus came around 7:40 a.m., and I have to walk half a mile from my house to get to the bus stop, so I would leave at around 7:20. (This is important; trust me.)
Cristina would always tell us we “HAVE to be at the bus stop five minutes early or else you’ll be left behind.” She would purposely come ten minutes early to make kids miss the bus, and then she’d yell at them if they were coming up on the bus stop just before she pulled away.
She would scream at us for stupid nonsense. Everybody hated her.
When I was in 7th grade, I witnessed her screaming in her own daughter’s face as soon as her daughter got on the bus from the high school. I later learned her daughter was taken into DHS custody after running away multiple times, but I never heard what came of that.
She was also a REALLY reckless driver.
She would run off the road, she hit a stop sign, she ran the bus into a ditch, and she even backed into a DISABLED MAN’S TRUCK. Wonder why she wasn’t fired? We didn’t have enough bus drivers to cover someone being fired. Welcome to the Oklahoma Bus System.
Now, I have some anxiety when it comes to car accidents because when I was in 3rd grade, I was in a school bus accident (different driver).
A car T-boned the bus, and I was thrown from my seat and got my face a bit torn up. I have one noticeable scar just above the right side of my jaw, but it’s not super big, and I also have four other small scars that aren’t noticeable. I have a scar on each eyelid, a scar on my left cheek, and a scar on my left cheekbone.
So, every time she put us in danger with her reckless driving, I’d get major anxiety.
The final straw was when Cristina nearly got us all killed when I was in 8th grade. There’s a train track that runs through my town, and there were two different stops we had to go over the tracks to drop kids off.
We came upon the tracks, and Cristina decided “screw it” and STOPPED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TRACKS WHILE A TRAIN WAS COMING!!
The safety arms were coming down, and we were all screaming at her to move the freaking bus. She finally moved off the tracks, and the safety arms literally scraped across the top of the bus.
All of us were panicked and started calling our parents in tears. My mom knows how bad my anxiety about this kind of stuff is, as I had completely blocked out the traumatic memory of the bus wreck for years and finally remembered it when I was around 11 or 12 when I started riding the bus again.
Literally, every single parent of the children on the bus called the Bus Barn and complained about Cristina constantly putting us in danger, and she was investigated but never fired.
We had a substitute for the rest of the year, but she was back when we got to high school. We decided to put a plan into motion to force this jerk to quit her job.
Cristina was always telling us about how much she hated us and wanted to move out of the town. So, we decided we’d help her with that. We all decided to be as misbehaved as we could to force her to quit. We refused to listen to anything she’d say. We’d get up and walk up and down the aisles any chance we could.
We’d eat and drink and leave the trash on the ground (jerk move, I know, but she deserved it), and some kids even smoked on the bus.
Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore and announced to us that we were “the most disrespectful little brats” she had ever had the displeasure of transporting, and she was quitting because of how horrible we were to her.
We told her that she was the most horrible bus driver and that she traumatized us and nearly got us killed, and we’ll be glad when she’s finally gone.
This story does have a happy ending. The new bus driver, I forgot her name, but she was a sweetheart, was the nicest driver I’d ever seen. She would greet us with a big smile and tell us good morning, and she passed out candy every Thursday.
(Our schools go to school Monday-Thursday because of budget cuts.) Unfortunately, she had to stop driving for a few months because she’d had intense knee surgery, but as far as I know, she’s back on the route.
I don’t feel bad for making Cristina quit. She deserved it, to be quite honest. I’m glad that I’ve graduated and don’t have to deal with that nonsense anymore.”
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The sad part? Had he just taken care of business from the beginning (better yet, listened to his brother and sold the house), he could have legally justified the annual 5% rent increase allowed by law. But now, if he were to raise the rent ( which, to his credit, he hasn't done in six years), it would appear as retaliatory action against me. It doesn't help that the city is sort of breathing down his neck. I've heard of people being out on a limb, but honestly, this is the first time I've actually seen someone sawing it off behind themselves.