People Tell Their Best "As You Wish" Revenge Story
19. Sure, I'll Check Inventory Again, Even Though I Know We Don't Have Any In Stock
“So this happened a few years back when I used to work at a department store in the UK. This store is very popular amongst the middle/upper class and therefore leads to a lot of entitled and outright rude customers coming in.
I should also explain that the way the break system works here is due to the lack of staff, you have to wait for the people who go before your allocated break slot to come back to work before you can go so that there’s always staff on the shop floor.
This also means if you’re late going to break you can send the whole team off track for the day causing people to have lunch breaks ages after they’re meant to.
So I was working in the TV department when a customer came up and asked me to check the stock on a particular model, no problem, I check the systems and see that it is showing out of stock in store and the distribution center with it due to be coming back into stock in a couple of days time.
I explain this to the customer who immediately goes into a tirade of entitled complaining about ‘this is not what I expect from DEPARTMENT STORE’ and ‘If it’s out of stock why is it still on display?’ I explained that the store sells upwards of 50 different models of televisions and if we had to remove each one that went out of stock there’d be no staff left to serve anyone, which just annoyed this customer even more.
Anyways, it got to the point where despite me explaining the TV would be back in stock in 2 days and also offering viable alternative models, some better specs for less, this customer was bent on getting that particular TV today and started demanding I went to check the stock room.
‘Surely you must have one? This is ridiculous, how can you tell you don’t have any without physically checking, etc.’
I can’t describe to you how incredibly entitled and rude this customer was, even by the DEPARTMENT STORE’S usual standards and he really started to wind me up.
Now by this point, I’d been with this customer for a fairly long time explaining I can’t just magic a TV out of thin air for them and I was already 15 minutes overdue on my lunch break.
I could see my manager (who had been listening to this whole conversation) waiting to tell me to go to break so I explained to the customer that I was going to talk to my manager and come back to him.
My manager was a down-to-earth guy and a good friend of mine, I explained the customer was asking me to go check the stock room and I knew I was already late for my 45-minute break so together we formed a plan.
I returned to the customer and explained that the stock room was on the 3rd floor of the building and contains 100’s of different TVs which would take a while to search. The customer was adamant that I checked the stock room for his particular model as that was the service he expected from DEPARTMENT STORE and if not he would be complaining. With a spring in my step, I then asked the customer to wait there whilst I went up and checked if there was any in the stock room and swiftly left the department.
As pre-agreed with my manager, I then proceeded to go on my 45-minute lunch break, I had a Subway, did a bit of clothes shopping, got some snacks for the team for when I went back to work, and generally took my time strolling around the town center.
I then return to work at the end of my break, go to the 3rd-floor warehouse (via the stairs, not the lift), straight to the shelf where the customer’s TV was meant to be and sure enough there isn’t any there!
I then stroll back down three flights of stairs, stop for a glass of water, have a couple of chats with some colleagues, and then return to the TV department well over an hour after leaving the customer, who is still there, where I left him, looking extremely angry.
I approach the customer ‘out of breath’ and explain that I’d checked every TV in the warehouse and his one wasn’t there, at which point he erupts into a rich person rage, shouting and asking to speak to a manager and saying I’d wasted his time making him wait for so long.
My manager then walks over, introduces himself, and then explains he had heard the entire conversation and that I had already explained there was 100’s of TVs upstairs meaning it would take a while. The customer looked as if he was about to explode but realized that he had caused the wasted hour of his life, stormed out the shop and, as far as I am aware, never did get that TV.”
18. Complain About The Service Being "Slow?" I'll Give It To You Slow
“This happened last summer.
I am a waiter at one of the nicest restaurants in my home town. I am pretty personable and always end up striking friendly conversations with my tables. I have a million and a half stories about people who were seemingly very friendly but ended up stiffing me on my tips, but this is a revenge story, so I’m going to tell you why you shouldn’t be a jerk to your server until AFTER you receive your food.
It’s a beautiful day, and the restaurant is on the water. Every nice day is absolutely packed. My restaurant does not take reservations of any kind ever, so people have to go in person, request a table, leave, then come back later to eat. Normally, locals understand and expect this. There is no problem, but we are a tourist town. When newcomers try to get tables, there is always trouble (this is important in a second).
Now I am SWAMPED. I have had my section full for the entire day and hadn’t had time to go on a single 5-minute break since the start of my double shift at 10 am, and it’s now around 6 pm. A couple lands at one of my tables in the corner, and they are already upset because they had to wait to get a table after a new girl had tried to make a reservation for them over the phone, and they had to be called back and told that they had to come in to reserve a spot.
I nod to them, acknowledging that I see them after I notice them GLARING DAGGERS at me as if to say get your butt over here now. (I was dealing with a particularly awful table at the time. Any server reading this will know the type.) Every freaking time you come back they need something else. They ask for ketchup, you bring ketchup, then once you’re back, they ask for refills on drinks, you run and do that, and then they need salt, and they want to order more food blah blah blah.
Now at this point, there are two things you need to understand: one, they had sat around waiting for a table for over an hour before being sat, and two, our restaurant has food runners… For those of you who are not familiar with this, it is a group of high school kids that (for around 6% of all tips the restaurant receives) will take care of running your food to your table for you.
Now I was also the only person that treated the food runners like human beings instead of pack mules. Because of this, my food runners were very well organized and would happily help me out when I was swamped. A food runner had gone to my table, offered them water, brought them silverware, and told them I would be over shortly.
5 minutes later, I roll up and start my speech.
“Hello, my name is Gray, and welcome to the restaurant! Sorry for that wait as you can tell I’m really busy and…” the man cuts me off, “What’s your name?” he asks condescendingly. “Gray,” I reply. “Gray,” he starts up again, “why is this the first time you are coming to the table? We have been here waiting for over 45 minutes.” They had literally gotten there no more than 8 minutes ago and thought I hadn’t noticed them walk in.
“You are by far the worst waiter I have ever seen; you should have greeted us and walked us to our table” — another lie, as I saw the hostess do this as she does for every other person that eats here.
Now I was already having a bad day, and I was on my second part of a double shift that I knew would go well past midnight, so I was having none of it.
This guy goes on to insult my posture, my accent, my clothing (I’m wearing a uniform), and a myriad of other things. At this point, I’m staring straight through him, not listening to a single word.
Finally, he says, “We want another server NOW. You should be fired for your incompetence,” I smile; he should not have asked for that. He basically just gave me the green light to mess up the rest of his evening.
I’m friends with everyone in the restaurant, when I have a request, it can usually be handled almost instantly. But this time was going to be different. I walk to the hostess’s table and see one of my best friends (let’s call her Emma) crying under the counter. Emma is a 4’6″, adorable Hispanic girl who was 20 years old. She was just a tiny little thing, and she needed a step stool to address people at the front desk.
She had a cabinet that she could literally sit in and take naps, and she was in there crying. I gave her a big hug and asked her what was wrong. She said a couple had chewed her out for 10 minutes straight about how terrible she was, and guess who it was? My freaking table!
I asked her if she wanted some revenge, and she said heck yes.
I told her apparently, I was not good enough, and they wanted a new table. She smiled; she knew what was going to happen. I told my water buddy John that Emma was going to send him a table in an hour or so and went back to work. That couple watched 3 tables sit down, order their food, eat, pay, and leave before they even got to order.
They sat and waited the entire time just to try and stick it to me.
The look on their faces as I happily and efficiently took care of all my tables right in front of them was priceless. Since they were not my table anymore, I didn’t visit them once. After they were moved, ate, and left, I asked the waiter who took their table how they were.
He said they were very polite and patient with him. I think that will be the last time they treat wait staff so horribly.”
17. We'll Leave, Just Like You Requested
Be careful what you wish for.
“I work(ed) as a housekeeper at a small local hotel.
In the beginning when I started (about three years ago), things were pretty peachy. I got above minimum wage and worked in an environment with a more relaxed working pace. We had more time than your average hotel to clean rooms and it showed in customer satisfaction. We had stellar reviews with customers raving about how there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere, how everything from the lampshades to the bathroom drain was always scrubbed squeaky clean.
I loved my job and took pride in it, and when we had extra time (which happened from time to time), we would do some deeper cleaning like scrubbing all the walls inch by inch, disinfecting the whole bathroom, cleaning the blinds, etc.
Even though we all had some extra time, we used it to make sure the rooms were always up to a very high standard.
As a result of this, we got a reputation of being an affordable but very clean hotel, so our popularity spiked. Even before we got so popular (in our prime we were booked full about 90% of the days) our boss made a pretty nice income.
We don’t have a reception, we’re self-service (you just get a passcode for your room via text message) so he saved with that.
He drives an expensive car and seems very well off. We were never struggling financially.
Then things started changing. We’re a very close-knitted team of cleaners who have been in the house for years. A couple of us left at the end of last year (one moved to another state, another became a housewife after having a kid), and we started expecting newcomers to our team.
They never came. Our boss claimed that it’s hard to find workers for this kind of job.
We never had anyone interviewed and I never saw ads anywhere that we’re hiring, so I’m not sure he was even planning on replacing them. So our work pace got tighter. We managed somehow but there was no longer time for thorough cleaning.
Then, the boss opened a restaurant so that the guests could have breakfast. Cleaning it daily got added to our workload (and that place is massive, it takes at least 1½ hours to clean daily).
At the same time, he also opened a separate Airbnb-style apartment (three bedrooms, kitchen, living room, and bathroom) for larger groups who wanted to reside together.
Cleaning that fell on us as well.
So suddenly, we were down two people (there were seven of us initially) and shoved two massive new responsibilities. We asked our boss again to hire more people, but he said no and that “we’ve been having it too easy” beforehand.
He also refused to add another hour or two to our daily working hours (currently 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.). We have six hours and everything needs to be done at 3 p.m. sharp because that’s when the new passcodes start working.
Understandably, we were stressed out. There was suddenly far too much to do and our boss also simultaneously expected that we would keep up our usual cleaning standard.
But when our time per room plummets from 45 min to 25 min tops (usually closer to 15), obviously we’re not able to clean everything the way we did before. We would get yelled at when we got bad feedback because there wasn’t enough time to clean thoroughly enough, customers who came in after our clean rooms were disappointed and took their business elsewhere.
Also, my coworkers started calling in sick because they were burnt out.
It was a mess, but our boss maintained the outlook that if he just pushed a massive amount of work on us, we’d somehow magically find an extra pair of hands and get everything done 100%.
Last week, we had a meeting with my coworkers. We discussed the current situation and to my surprise, everyone was considering quitting. Out of loyalty to our long-time employer, the five of us agreed to have a meeting with our boss and try to persuade him to hire more staff to bring the hotel back to its earlier standard.
A couple of days later, we had said meeting. Our boss was still in denial and said that we just need to up our pace and do things faster. He cited that most hotels give housekeepers about 20 minutes to do everything. We pointed out that it’s true, but in that case, he can’t expect us to clean better than those hotels.
He scoffed and told us, “If you don’t like working here, then leave.”
That was all we needed to hear. That night we had another meeting amongst us cleaners.
We checked our contracts and realized there was no agreed-on notice for resignation as we’re at will. So, we were all going to take his advice.
This morning, at 9 a.m. sharp, the five of us paid our boss a visit. The look on his face when we simultaneously slammed down our resignation letters and marched out, leaving no one to clean the whole hotel today, will warm my heart for the rest of my days.
He was absolutely stunned.
He tried to call us to talk things over.
Nuh-uh, we just did what you told us to. Have fun replacing what was a motivated, loyal, and dedicated team of cleaners who made your business bloom.”
16. Write A 10-Page Essay As Punishment? You Won't Like What I'm About To Write
“This happened back when I was around 12 to 14.
So this happened during a drama class around either my junior high or early high school years. Now my school was in a small town where, and at the time, all the sects of the school (elementary, middle, etc.) were within walking distance of each other with the old middle school used as an administrative building.
Behind that is where the drama building was. I say this to show why it wouldn’t have been possible for the drama teacher to just get another teacher to watch the class while he made this call.
We all come in and sit in the semi-circle of chairs just to kind of wait and talk amongst ourselves (well, I just kind of sat there quietly; I didn’t really have friends in the class) before Mr. Drama comes in on his phone.
Mr. Drama says nothing to us as he just gets on the school line phone and continues this call.
Okay, so you have a bunch of kids in there with nothing to do. People start playing hangman on the board (I joined in of course), and those who had data on their phones were hiding in the corner texting or on their internet, just basically passing our last period class time in any way we could since we hadn’t been given instruction.
Now I remember we were getting loud with him on the phone, but not once did he even act like this was a problem.
Until he hung up and yelled for us to sit in our seats. This was where he proceeded to lecture us about manners, etiquette, and a whole bunch of other nonsense while we just sat there shocked as he blatantly said he expected us to just sit there and wait for instruction.
We are at ten minutes left for class at this point I believe, and classes ran up to 50 minutes to an hour.
This is where he breaks to us that he expected us to come in the next class period (which was the next day) with a ten-page essay on manners and how to behave in classrooms. He also said this would count for 25% of our grade.
Then he just left.
Now all of us were angry. Some were saying let’s just not do it, but others knew their parents wouldn’t allow it, and they always found out (I think he sent an email about it I don’t remember), and others were joking about just writing the words “screw you” over and over again. I remained quiet and just smiled as I came up with an idea.
As I don’t have a lot of memory of back then, I don’t recall if I told anyone of my plan, but this is where my malicious compliance comes into play.
I go home and talk it over with my mom. She can be an entitled parent but always picks and chooses when to side with the teachers. After hearing my side, she asked me what I wanted to do.
I told her I was going to write a two-page paper calling him out hidden under what he wanted. She grinned and told me to use her office at home as it had word on it and she could help me format it. (I feel older than I should saying this.)
Side note: I always excelled in English. So grammar and the like were never an issue for me, but it was around the beginning of high school the school started noticing that I had signs of dyslexia.
I had just always made high grades and had someone double-check my work, so it was never noticed until my AP courses. It’s weird.
With this in mind, I begin writing a huge, passive-aggressive paper using all the knowledge I had up to that point. It included scenarios that depicted ours but showed that the fault could lie with both parties as the teacher “…never gave instructions to the students…” And metaphors and similes and everything, treating it like a paper I would seriously turn in.
I did not go over my two-page mark I gave myself. My entire plan was to point out that, yes, we could have acted better but we are kids, and he is an adult who gave no instruction to us. Mom checked everything, made suggestions, printed it out, and kicked me out of her office to work on accounting.
The day of the turn-in comes, and only a few of the students actually did the paper while others stood their ground that doing it meant they were at fault which no one blamed them for.
He expresses his extreme disappointment in the lack of obedience as he reads someone’s paper out loud. Then he gets to mine and looks confused as it’s only two pages. Probably because I’m a notorious teacher’s pet. So he began reading.
As he is reading, you can hear in the tone of his voice that he realizes the paper is calling him out on his false anger, and I’m just feeling proud of myself grinning.
I’m a normally shy person that never speaks out against anyone, especially a teacher, yet here I was.
He finishes reading and goes really quiet. Everyone is quiet too. He still has a handful to read, but he sets them down and sighs. He admits the paper makes a good point about misplacing blame and not taking it, and he excuses himself from the room asking us to stay seated this time.
I just remember a few of my peers saying, “Way to go!” and “Good job!” And that alone made this little introvert feel really special if only for the rest of the day. Mr. Drama ended up throwing the papers away, giving extra credit to anyone that turned it in at least, and was just extra careful to always tell us what to do before making any more calls like that in the future.”
15. Bury A Water Tower And Use It As An Emergency Shelter? Why Not?
“So this actually happened to my dad a few years ago.
He lived in an area right along the Texas/Oklahoma border in a fairly rural area. My dad primarily worked in pipeline construction.
One day, my dad noticed someone had purchased a very large property not too far down the road. Turns out that the new neighbor was actually from the suburbs around Columbus, Ohio and had just won a lottery prize. The man hadn’t won the jackpot but had won a smaller prize around $2 million.
My dad was also originally from Ohio, so he decided to say hello.
A few days later, he meets the lotto neighbor. We’ll call him Jim. Jim starts telling my dad about his dream to build his own self-sustaining homestead far away from the rest of society. Jim was very interested in prepping and convinced of a soon-to-come global societal collapse. He used his lotto winning to purchase the land and begin building his homestead.
My dad honestly didn’t find this that odd because many people in the area had some tendency toward independence and those prepping shows were popular at the time.
About a year later, Jim reached out to my dad to ask for help with a construction project that involves burying a large water tower in the ground. My dad is a little confused but decided to go take a look.
Turns out, Jim bought an old water tower (about 15 feet in diameter and about 15 feet high) for the purpose of reusing it as an underground shelter. Jim had recently completed the build of a prefab home on his property and wanted the water tower buried partially under the new home with a trap door built in a closet to access it.
My dad immediately thought this was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard and proceeded to tell Jim all the potential issues with his plan.
Jim cut him off and told my dad that his contractor for the home had basically told him the same and so had several others he’d contacted to try to get them to bury this water tower. However, Jim believed this was simply laziness on their part and had the utmost confidence in his plan. My dad left, but a day or so later, Jim contacts him again and asks about paying my dad to let him rent some construction equipment he had on his own property.
My dad again goes over with him what a bad idea this is and how no legitimate crew would ever do this for him. Jim brings up using my dad’s equipment and illegal laborers. My dad decides that, well, if he’s determined, he might as well make a few bucks off lotto winner Jim. He quotes him some ridiculous price to rent his equipment and says he can ask a guy at work he knows about gathering up a group of illegal day laborers.
Jim agrees to the crazy price, and my dad gets in touch with a friend who had a crew of day laborers.
A bit later, my dad asks his friend about how the project is going. He tells my dad how nasty Jim treated the workers, how stupid the whole plan is, and how his specifications for how he wanted this built were completely idiotic.
Whenever they’d offer up suggestions or point out why something he wanted was wrong, he’d essentially shut them down and use a bunch of racial slurs. So they buried the water tower and built this secret entrance exactly as he wanted, knowing it was completely stupid. He mentioned they only completed the job because Jim was paying them way more than they were used to making.
Everyone agreed Jim was a jerk but all the more reason to gouge your prices.
A year or so goes by when my dad gets a frantic call from Jim. It had rained quite a bit, which was unusual for the area, and now the entire ground floor area of the back of his home was bowed upward about 2 feet. My dad goes to Jim’s and takes a look around, realizing what has happened. Given that they had essentially just buried a large hollow object underneath his home, the rain caused the water tower to be pushed upward and right through his first floor.
My dad explained the situation, and Jim immediately lost it, starting to rant about how he should have never used those laborers and how he was gonna make them come fix it. My dad mentioned how that was probably impossible since most of them go back and forth across the border, but Jim was livid. My dad later found out from Jim that his insurance would not cover the damage to his home because he had buried a water tower under it without telling anyone.
He mentioned trying to sue the insurance company, but that went nowhere. He also tried numerous times to find the day laborers but was told that you get what you get when you hire illegal workers to do a project that would never have gotten a permit.
Over the months afterward, there was a lot of fallout for Jim, and he couldn’t even live in his home due to the damage.
It eventually was torn down to be able to remove the water tower from beneath it. He burned through his lotto winnings pretty fast, so he didn’t have anything left to rebuild it. He ended up selling the land and moving away about a year later.”
14. Don't Ask Questions? Okay, But The Entire Production Line Will Be Ruined
“A few years back, I was working in a food manufacturing facility. I was a newer hire and basically what you’d call a grunt.
I was only there because they hadn’t figured out how to automate my job yet.
This particular company was a great place to work and our sanitation programs and general cleanliness were world-class.
In addition to doing our normal daily equipment cleanings, we would be doing scheduled heat treatments a few times per year on every piece of equipment. The thought was that some pathogens could start to become chemical resistant, so every so often we would cook the life out of the equipment in an oven.
Nothing would survive, it would be like starting over. Not a bad idea. Many companies do this, particularly meat packaging plants.
My foreman was a bitter woman. She would throw you under the bus and berate you every chance she got. Unless that is, you were one of her friends. They got a free pass.
She was tasked with helping spearhead this heat treatment project.
We had a temporary enclosure made out of very heavy mil plastic sheeting and a steam wand teed off the plant’s steam boiler piping.
We tossed a couple of temperature probes in the enclosure. This whole thing was a proof of concept before the owner dropped a fortune on a gigantic oven big enough to fit a few medium-sized cars in, for heat-treating equipment.
So my foreman delegated the task of trialing the heat treatment process even though it was her project. She wasn’t very bright, so she made me do it because I was the new guy. We had an entire production line shut down for a week. I had to move every single piece of equipment across the building and steam cook them one at a time.
Some of these machines weighed as much as two tons. I was lucky to get a couple of pieces of equipment done per day.
I told my foreman that the heat was too much for the food-grade grease in the bearings, the hydraulic systems, and the moisture from the steam would destroy electrical components.
She didn’t care. Very rudely she told me not to ask any questions and just do what I was told.
Being a foreman in an industrial environment, I could not believe how mechanically inept she was. This was not the first time she had directed us to make bad decisions with expensive equipment.
“OK,” I said.
I spent the next 4 days getting paid over $20 an hour to destroy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. All the bearing shields blew out, all of the seals on the hydraulic motors failed, and I destroyed the contents of a few electrical panels along the way.
The problem was that the temperature probes were placed on stainless steel pieces of equipment. If the surface of that equipment was 175F, the air inside the enclosure was well over 250F near the top of the enclosure.
Heat rises bro!
The maintenance department was absolutely livid. A dozen pieces of equipment needed total overhauls. Sensors were damaged, electrical contacts were corroded. Everything was covered in hydraulic oil from the fluid expanding and rupturing the housing and disconnect seals.
It was a nightmare.
Our plant manager was understandably upset and wondered why my foreman didn’t call him after I ruined the first piece of equipment so we could stop and reevaluate the process.
I didn’t catch any heat for it. ….And my foreman, later on, was let go for personal misconduct.
(A bunch of us were questioned by upper management about some other incidents, namely having a relationship with a subordinate.) I’m sure destroying a bunch of equipment and incurring a week or so of lost production time didn’t look good on her resume either.
For those of you asking, I did my due diligence and I felt guilty about what I did, but I wasn’t risking being fired for insubordination. I talked to a foreman on another shift and our maintenance supervisor but my orders remained the same.
I was a new employee and I had no idea how to get in touch with the owner or other people in higher management.
It was a huge company that employed thousands.
I don’t know the exact way it panned out they obviously don’t tell us why our boss is gone. I am sure this incident didn’t do her any favors.”
13. Can't Check To See If You Received My Fax? I'll Send 500 More
“This happened about 5 minutes ago at my local DMV/MVD. I’ve been here for the past hour and 48 minutes and finally saw someone who bumped me back into the queue while my insurance company sent proof of insurance.
I have an email sent about 15 minutes ago but that apparently isn’t enough.
Anyways, there’s this gentleman standing reading out numbers even though they’re announced over the loudspeaker. While I’m on the phone with my insurance company, I approach this gentleman to ensure that they’ve received the fax so that I don’t have to call again.
Instead of double-checking or even politely declining, our docent decides to make a bit of a scene. ‘No!’ he exclaims. ‘We only take faxes of your insurance as a courtesy and you need to sit back down and wait for your turn in line!’ I’m a little taken aback, however, I want to make sure that everything is okay, so I ask the docent, ‘In the event that the fax didn’t go through, what happens?’
Well, this was apparently the wrong question for our docent as he lashes out screaming, ‘That isn’t our problem if it doesn’t come through you’ll have to come back a different day because we’re closing, I suggest you have them send it a couple of times.’ I’m a bit dumbfounded so I walked away telling my insurance agent, ‘Wow that’s possibly the biggest jerk I’ve ever spoken to in my life.’
The agent chuckles and I tell him the docent asked for the fax to be sent a few times, could he accommodate that. My agent looking to make good on customer satisfaction asks, ‘He never did specify how many times right?’ Turns out my insurance company has an auto fax system so they could send as many copies of my insurance as they wanted.
What if someone mistyped and wrote 500 instead of 50?
That would be a real shame, wouldn’t it? Filling their fax line while 500 faxes came through. Something so petty that only a child would do? Well, unfortunately, I’m a child and the MVD/DMV is currently receiving 500 copies of my insurance. Hope they get at least one of them.”
Another User Comments:
“Any system that relies solely on fax or snail mail for documentation is archaic and not consumer-friendly (I’m looking at you, Equifax!).” Tempest_1
12. Asking For Permission To Enter The Breakroom... Every Single Time
“I used to work an awful retail job in LA, and the boss had just hired a new assistant manager. Picture a blonde Karen who appears to be in her 40s but tells everyone she’s 33, who has just divorced from her Beverly Hills doctor or dentist husband, and now has to actually WORK for the first time in her life to support herself and her four children.
During her first week there, this super-smart lady left her Louis Vuitton bag open on the break room table instead of locking it in her assigned locker, and someone stole $200 from her purse. Not saying it was her fault; it was definitely the thief’s fault for taking something that didn’t belong to them, but Karen’s response to it was just stupid.
Assistant Manager Karen then told us that as a new policy, NO ONE could enter the break room without HER permission so that she would know who was going in there and when so that if anything else was stolen, she’d have a clear culprit.
I’m not sure how she intended to enforce this during the times she wasn’t in the store, but maybe it didn’t matter if OTHER people besides her got stolen from.
(For reference, this was the first theft any of us had seen since being at the company. I don’t think they ever caught whoever it was that stole from her because we were too cheap to have security cameras in our “break room” — which was an old single-room bathroom with the toilet ripped out and a table & lockers put in — but part of me really wouldn’t be surprised if Karen had misplaced the $200 herself or had never had $200 to begin with.)
Well, we obviously didn’t like Karen strutting into our workplace and trying to limit our access to our own break room, so cue Malicious Compliance.
Every time our hands were sticky, and we needed to wash them in the break room sink, we interrupted Karen.
Every time we needed to take a drink of water, which we were only allowed to do in the break room, we interrupted Karen.
Every time we needed to sweep something up, but the broom was in the break room, we interrupted Karen.
Every time we had to throw something away, but the trash can was in the break room, we interrupted Karen.
Every time we needed to restock a product that had a box of it sitting in the break room, we interrupted Karen.
Karen could barely get her own inventories and paperwork done because of how often we needed her “permission” to open the break room door.
She ended up getting so frustrated that the “new policy” lasted about three days, and she quit soon after that.
I now have a much better job that doesn’t involve retail in the slightest.”
11. Close All Deals We Can To Meet The Quota? Will Do
Guess they don’t know about quality over quantity.
“This happened back in 2010. I had started working for a cemetery/funeral home combination a couple of years before this all took place. We had around 10 salespeople on our team and worked for a major corporation. At first, we had an amazing sales manager, Jim. He had actually worked at that location as a sales rep years prior and understood what we dealt with each day.
He was extremely supportive and brought a great work culture to the team.
Jim encouraged us to help families to the best we of our abilities—and sales were simply a byproduct of that process—so everyone involved benefited, including the families we served. We were so successful that Jim received a promotion in 2010 to a Regional Market Manager position in a different area, leaving us without a Sales Manager at our location.
The rest of the sales team and I speculated that the company would bring in another manager from a smaller location to help continue our success. Instead, they decided to hire from outside the company. The guy they chose to replace Jim with was a sales manager from a major insurance company—we will call him Jerk. While Jerk had a background in sales management, he knew close to nothing about what it was like in the funeral industry, and he had a style of management completely unlike that of Jim.
At first, some of us tried to make him aware of the team culture we had in place, and how things would basically run themselves if he would simply maintain what Jim had accomplished. Jerk became very dismissive and went as far as putting a label on the bottom of his coffee mug that read “The Boss.” Any time someone would try to speak with him about the mistakes we believed he was making, he would take a sip of his coffee, thus showing the label.
It was basically a “Forget You.” While this succeeded in shutting down complaints, it also alienated him from the sales team.
He would also often brag about his past achievements and fail to acknowledge the current success of our team members. It didn’t take long before morale started to decline and sales performance began to slow. This was when we found out why Jerk changed industries.
It became clear that Jerk had a drinking problem. He started disappearing around noon and would return a couple of hours later smelling of booze and appearing red-faced and very relaxed.
Jerk also hired a new sales rep to join the team. She was far different from the rest of us. She was young, good-looking, and very very smug. She was a well-endowed woman, that apparently had just the right assets to gain Jerk’s approval. We shall call her B.
B had a background in business-to-business sales and did not mesh into the family culture we had developed over the years. Her arrogance made it clear that Jerk had big plans for her to be promoted quickly through the ranks.
It was about that same time when we also heard of an incident involving Jerk during his two weeks of training at Corporate Headquarters. Jerk allegedly fell asleep while watching the Super Bowl and left the bathtub faucet on in his hotel bathroom.
It was running long enough to overflow the tub and flooded two rooms below his—one of which was the hotel’s IT room—causing around $20,000 in damages. This knowledge combined with Jerk’s apparent drinking habits told us a lot about how he handled stress.
As morale continued to decline along with our sales revenue, Jerk became more and more irritated. We had daily sales meetings, and his desperation began to show.
It was clear that the corporation was pressuring Jerk to improve sales and that his job was in jeopardy. It is important to note that Sales managers had the ability to give team incentives in order to motivate a team when necessary. While Jim had occasionally offered incentives, it was never anything like what Jerk offered our sales team at that time.
We tried to explain to Jerk that it was a slow time of year for sales and that pushing customers too hard often ended up with less than ideal outcomes in the end.
Jerk was having none of it! He promised that he would take the entire team out to celebrate if we hit our sales quota for the month. His incentive was a riverboat cruise for each salesperson plus one guest each if we simply hit our quota for the month. He said that if we had any customers that were ‘on the fence’ that we should do whatever we had to in order to close the deal. We all agreed to do just that.
For the next week and a half, we called every contact we could and pushed every deal towards a contract until we hit quota. We never sold anyone anything they didn’t actually want, but we simply pushed to get it done sooner. The end result was we BARELY made our quota for the month. Jerk quickly took pride that he had pulled it off and made his quota for the month and booked the riverboat cruise as he had promised. He even arranged for a limo ride to and from the cruise.
My wife and I, however, decided to drive ourselves. We are not big drinkers, and normally wouldn’t even go on something such as a riverboat cruise, but there was no way I was going to miss out on what was about to unfold. You see, what I also heard was that the Regional Market Manager for our area, the person that hired Jerk, was also going to be present on the cruise.
I also knew that Jerk would make sure there was a full bar available on the company dime. I was right.
My wife and I agreed in advance to have one drink each and to do a little dancing together—as we rightly deserved. However, what we really came to do was sit and watch. As expected, Jerk showed his true colors by drinking up a storm and running up a HUGE bill for the company.
Better yet, was that B and her partner celebrated to an extreme. At one point, she and her partner were dancing on the dance floor as we and the Regional Market Manager looked on. We all watched on; some of us in shock, some in amusement.
At the end of the cruise, my wife and I walked back to our car. B and her partner were passed out and sprawled on a park bench on the dock.
Jerk was trying to round everyone up to the limo.
The following Monday brought the new month, and our sales tanked! We had burned through every lead we had the month prior and were left sitting at our desks with no leads. During each sales meeting that followed, Jerk became more and more desperate until he finally flipped out in the middle of a meeting.
This alarmed one staff member—not me. Jerk was called into an HR meeting that resulted in his termination. B disappeared around the same time.
Things at that location continued to take on more of a corporate vibe, so I left that job a few years after that. About five years later, I saw Jerk living out of his car with two small dogs at the local bus station.
We locked eyes for a moment, and I just smiled. I really do wish him the best, but I also hope he learned something about humility.”
10. Outsmarting An HR Woman With The Union Guidelines
“When I was a senior in high school, I started working as a cashier at a grocery store. While this was not my first job, it was my first one where I was part of a union and learned about some of the pros and cons of unions (mostly pros like regular raises, breaks, holiday pay, etc.). We had a woman there who was basically our human resources person, and we did not get along even before I worked there.
I will call her Sally.
I came in for my interview and Sally was not there and had left work for the day. I remember apologizing and saying, “I must have mixed up the days. Is there any way you can find out which is the correct day for my interview?” but the manager on duty advised me that I was correct as they had checked the calendar in her office, and she had written it down, and so he, the front end supervisor, and the other manager who came in to start his shift all interviewed and hired me instead.
I later heard through the g*******e that she was working two locations and really wanted to be hired full time at a larger store which would have been a promotion for her. Instead, she was placed full-time at our location only and didn’t get promoted. Her missing my interview was the final nail in the coffin for her as this was just one of a long list of mistakes she made.
She was always making excuses for why I couldn’t put in to be transferred to another department when they were hiring people for those departments like bakery or deli and kept me as cashier even though it was lower pay. Even so, I came back to work there over my winter break for college (I had gone away to college instead of commuting) and also during summer break.
Anyways, our union states that after a certain waiting period (I believe it was 3 months), we get “holiday pay” for working Sundays and holidays. (It was time and a half.) We also are entitled to a raise every 6 months, and being away at college is not supposed to affect that since we join the union before leaving and come back on our breaks and still owe our dues during those times when we are still part of the union but away at school.
I got my first paycheck stub for the summer and noticed I did not get my holiday for working that Sunday nor my raise! I spoke with a coworker who advised me to speak with the store manager (he was one of the ones that interviewed me and always looked after his staff) since we were between union reps at the time. He was a born problem solver and told me right away he can fix the payroll error for me and make sure that I got not only the proper wage from now on but that I would get back for the time I should have gotten the raise but didn’t.
As far as the holiday pay, though, that had to be taken care of by Sally since she was in HR and he suggested we go see if she was free and speak with her.
She just spoke to both of us in a condescending tone about how this was union policy that I had to start all over again with seniority and that I had to earn that holiday pay again by being there for 3 months.
He pointed out, as did I, that I was getting this holiday before leaving for college and even over the winter break that I had worked, but she just kept saying to me, “It’s union policy.” My manager calmly tried to negotiate with her and get her to correct and even stated that other employees had not had to go through this. I finally just raised my hand to silence them both.
“Okay, so you are saying that I can’t get my holiday pay even though I was before I left to go back to college at the end of January, due to union policy, correct?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said with a long dramatic sigh that was meant to say, “Like I have been telling you.”
I nodded, grinned, and stated, “But union policy also states that I don’t have to work holidays or Sundays and that I can’t be penalized for refusing to do so, correct?”
My manager grinned at me like he was very proud of me as he saw exactly where this was going.
“Well, um, yes, that is true,” Sally said looking a bit nervous.
“Okay, well then, here is the compromise: since union policy states that I can’t get the holiday pay for working Sundays and holidays, for the rest of the summer, I will not work any Sundays or holidays, and per union policy, I am allowed to do this,” I said with a shrug.
She immediately started laying on the charm about how I am such a “great worker” and that they “really need me to be there to help out with Sundays and holidays.” But I pointed out that they had plenty of other employees who were getting the holiday pay that they count on, and I would be glad to return to working holidays and Sundays once I got my holiday pay for doing so.
My manager commented that he and I needed to change the schedule and casually mentioned how this was going to be hard as he now had to take me off for next Sunday and Monday (as that Monday was Memorial Day), and it was a Thursday but that the store would just have to make it work if they couldn’t find anyone willing to come in.
Once she had left for the day, he called me upstairs to his office to help with the schedule since I had to work so many days each week. I walked in to find him and another manager there grinning ear to ear and telling me how proud they were of me for how I handled that situation.
On Memorial day and the Fourth of July, I got a call asking if I can come in because they had other people call out sick who were scheduled. I just calmly explained that I was no longer working Sundays or holidays and that Sally could explain why.
Before the end of the summer, she found a new position and quit, and the new HR person was much nicer. One of the first things she did was make sure I and a few other college students who had similar issues with the holiday got our holiday pay reinstated, and when I requested a transfer to another department, she gladly asked around and had me put in the health and beauty aids department that same week.”
Another User Comments:
“”Would you please show me in our contract where it says I have to start over in seniority, pay, and benefits?” handing her your copy of the union contract. “Oh, and as this is a conversation regarding my work status and could have possible disciplinary consequences, I need my steward present before we can talk.”” El_Cartografo
9. Refuse To Work With Farmer Neighbor? The Property You Bought From Him Will Go Down In Ruins
“So this didn’t happen to me but an attorney that I work with regularly as part of my job.
He moved from a very high COL area to our rural community. Sold his $2,000,000 house, paid off and inherited from his grandparents, and bought 50+ acres with a huge house in a bedroom community that has a lot of dairy farms. He always used to say how it was much better living up here, both in terms of the lifestyle and monetarily, as his urban $2,000,000 house had property taxes in excess of $40,000 / year.
Now, in addition to the huge house, the property was mostly fields, 40ish acres, and had a 10-acre or so large woodlot. After he moved into his new house, the attorney was approached by his neighbor, one of the area dairy farmers. The farmer told the attorney how he had a handshake agreement with the former owner of the attorney’s home/property. The farmer would mow the fields for hay 2-3 times per year and would harvest a sustainable amount of trees out of the woodlot.
In exchange, the former property owner got 10% of the chopped wood, which was more than enough to heat the house all year long without having to run the oil boiler for anything more than hot water.
The farmer wanted to keep this arrangement going, as it had worked out well for both parties for over a decade. The attorney thought the former owner was being taken advantage of and refused to do a handshake agreement but told the farmer to give him a week to draw up a proper contract.
The farmer was not overjoyed with making this out to be more than a gentlemen’s agreement but agreed to come back the following week. The attorney decided that what would be “fair” was that the farmer should pay him $1,000 each time he mowed the fields for hay since the farmer would feed the hay to his cows for “free” otherwise (completely ignoring that the farmer was using his own equipment and time to do the haying) and that the lawyer deserved 50% of the chopped wood, not 10%, or at least the 50% of the revenue the farmer got from selling the excess chopped wood (again ignoring the equipment and time investment of the farmer).
As you can guess, the farmer refused.
This all happened in late 2019 when the fields were rather bare and the supply of chopped wood for the house was full. Well, here comes 2020, and now the fields start looking like garbage because none of the other farmers will pay to hay the fields. In fact, after speaking with the first farmer, all of the other area farmers are unwilling to mow the fields unless the attorney pays them $1,000 per mowing.
And, of course, come wintertime the attorney’s woodpile is depleted and he has to use the oil boiler to heat his entire home, costing well over $300 / month in winter heating costs.
Now we come to early 2021, tax prep season. The farmer, being a good and dutiful community-minded citizen, informs the town that he did not cultivate any of the attorney’s land for the entirety of 2020, nor did he know of any other farmers who did.
Well, as it turns out this is a big deal because in our state, farmland is assessed at a much lower value than a residential property and additionally has a separate and lower tax rate. The attorney’s land had previously been entirely zoned as farmland, except for the house and a few acres of lawn around it. Now, the town sent out an assessor and rezoned the entire 50+ acres as residential, which more than tripled the taxable property value and imposed the residential tax rate rather than the much lower farm tax rate.
The attorney was quite surprised and furiously told me, and everyone else we work with, all this past week how he’s going to sue the town because they now expect him to pay $50,000 / year in property taxes.”
Either way, if you don't use farmland for its proper use, there's no reason the town to assess it as farmland. As a lawyer, one would assume he'd have at least a passing knowledge of that fact...but his entitled attitude got the better of him. I can only hope that the farmer didn't take too much of a loss that year.
8. Get Absolutely Everything Done Before Clocking Out? It'll Cost You Big Time
“This was over 12 years ago.
The workers in these industries have always been heroes in my book.
About 2 years into my previous career, I had gotten tired of working customer service (cashiering), partly because you’re constantly being watched, and other departments hate on you because “you don’t know how tough my department is.
You have it so easy up here.” (Physically, yes, mentally/emotionally/working all random shifts/dealing with Karens/knowing item codes/knowing & enforcing company policy, etc… big no.)
So, there’s an opening in the produce department, and I jump on it. Being based on seniority, I easily get the job.
At first, things are pretty straightforward. I get trained to be the opener of the department.
Other than having to be at work at 4 AM, stacking bins of watermelons outside in 100+ (F) degree heat, and constantly having to lift 50-pound boxes of various, awkwardly shaped vegetable boxes, the concepts aren’t difficult.
Keep the product full and appealing, and don’t forget to rotate!
Then things begin to change. Corporate is tightening the labor budget because sales aren’t where they want them.
Labor is getting tighter and tighter each week. Naturally, as labor declines, we can’t get stock out fast enough, or we run out of time to order sufficiently, and sales dip. Round and round it goes.
After a while, we go from having a manager, full opener, a mid-shift (between 4-8 hours depending on the time of the month), sometimes a second half-shift (usually a rookie or someone from a different dept to help out), and a full closer (28-36 labor hours per day)… to having a manager and two full closers (24 labor hours per day) every day, no matter how busy or slow.
On top of that, the manager doesn’t touch much of the product because they come in early in the morning, and when we leave for the night, everything has to be full. Now, this makes very little sense to me because that means all the fresh product sits out all night (some is refrigerated/watered). So, we have to pull things like strawberries that are extremely perishable just for her (the manager) to put back out in the morning.
This is a big warehouse-type store that’s infamous for its great product quality, not Costco or Sam’s Club big but same idea. As time goes on, we fall more and more behind. We are struggling to keep up. Now she is irate because things are not as full as they used to be.
“You can’t leave until everything is finished,” she told us.
Every night, all the displays must be full, the load has to be broken down (we get 6-12 pallets of fresh product daily), the backroom has to be swept, all the product in the backroom condensed, and any extra cleaning or other duties she’s assigned that day. Oh, and she loads up all the 6-wheelers we use to bring out product with stuff we don’t need because she never leaves the backroom before we get there, so we start out behind.
Months of this, I’m racking up so much overtime, it’s not funny. I’m talking an average of 1-2 hours of overtime per day, 5 days a week. Same for my partner. We almost always work side-by-side (shift-wise, not literally), but he makes more, and they don’t like how expensive he is.
The only bright side for me is my partner has seniority by about 15 years, so she blames him for everything.
However, she won’t tell me directly if I’m doing anything wrong. She’ll leave a nasty note for me to find later before she leaves for the day, but that’s it.
Any sane person would realize this is not possible to do by ourselves. It doesn’t matter! The day after we both put in 11-hour shifts, she scolds us on how could the two of us put in 22 hours combined and still not get everything done.
We explain everything we had to do, but we’re ignored, and I’m starting to become checked out mentally. So, she tells us, “You have to leave on time!”
So, every night, we’re faced with a choice: do we stay and actually finish, or do we leave on time? Doesn’t matter.
We can’t win. If we leave on time, we didn’t get everything done.
A couple of times, a supervisor (her boss) came in and saw things not full, and she got in trouble. But if we stay, that’s overtime, and we all know how triggering that is to management.
Eventually, I’m expecting my first kid, so I get a second job that complements this one in the industry and allows me to service 24-hour locations, meaning I can do it immediately after my shift ends (or after a power nap in the car).
I’m pretty exhausted and losing patience after a few more months of this (backroom produce coolers are awesome places to vent/cool off, by the way!), but I love a challenge.
Careful what you wish for!
The results: eventually, we get a new store manager. While this didn’t improve corporate policy, this guy turns out to be the best manager the company had ever seen (literally won Manager of the Year and got promoted to District Supervisor).
He fights corporate on their labor policy and proves that the store is more profitable when he spends more labor to make it more appealing and offer superior customer service.
The produce manager got forced to transfer stores because my partner had complained to the union about her unreasonable demands and targeting him with harassment since she always blamed him. He was also Mexican (legal, in case you were wondering) and over 40, so two legally protected classes.
Years later, I was visiting her new store on a training assignment, and she had also been demoted to customer service (oh, the irony!) where I believe she still is today.
Once my kid is born, the new store manager lets me take all my paid time off. And we all lived happily ever after… almost. I did get promoted in the customer service department a few months later, but that only led to more stories for another day.
I think this may be something of a double malicious compliance, but it’s a no-win because you can’t comply with both. This is probably the most satisfying ending to all my stories, in my opinion.”
7. Won't Let Us Park In Your Driveway To Make A Delivery? Enjoy Your Wet Packages
“To explain, I work for a national wine retailer mainly as a delivery driver. We offer free delivery straight to your door when you order from our store.
In the past, this meant maybe 10 deliveries every few days to our local catchment as most people purchase in-store; however, because we have been shut to customers for the last few months, it means between 30-40 deliveries per day, 6 days a week.
Onto the customer; let’s call her Susan. Susan orders regularly (a bit too regularly) and has made it abundantly clear to both our drivers, our store manager, our customer service team, and HQ that we are unequivocally not allowed to maneuver onto her driveway during deliveries. Her house is at the end of a cul-de-sac with a driveway technically shared between 5 houses as a sort of branching design, so it’s quite a way from the main road.
I had the pleasure of delivering during a particularly stormy day. The wind was driving the rain sideways, instant flash flooding across the county. I was soaking wet after the first stop, and this was now only number 24 of 39. I was already not a happy bunny when reading the next address. My heart sank as I realized I would be carrying large crates of beer and boxes of wine by hand roughly 100 feet to Susan’s front door (about 7 relays in total).
Rolling up to said address, my head went “screw it,” and I reversed the van all the way to Susan’s house. I braced myself against the seat to open my door into what I can only imagine a lonely sock feels like inside a washing machine.
My glasses were instantly blown from my face, and as I scrambled to find them in the rising inches of water, I hear a scream from above.
Terrified that some poor person had been gusted into the upper atmosphere, I whip around to see Susan, protected by an umbrella, leaning out of her bedroom window shrieking at me to get my van off her property. I shout back that I have a delivery for her. My words are snatched away by the wind, and I point to the logo on the van, but to no avail, Susan continues her harpy like a crescendo.
Fine, I think to myself, if I can’t park on your driveway, you can come and pick up your booze from the road.
I give Susan a sarcastic salute, jump in the van, and park back on the main road. Content, Susan meanders her substantial mass down to her front door and opens the porch in anticipation.
While staring dead at her, I open the back doors of the van and begin neatly stacking her boxes on the road in the biggest puddle I could reach.
Susan EXPLODES at me. Though, through the gale-force wind, I can’t hear the particular words of abuse she’s screeching. I give a cheery wave, hop back in the van, and wheel spin-off, heart pounding like my bungee cord had just snapped mid-jump.
The rest of the day is going wetly, and I get a phone call from my manager. Susan has called in to file a complaint against me, ordered that I be fired, and called me a bunch of highly offensive and derogatory names, as well as insulting the wider company and questioning the effectiveness of female delivery drivers, to my female manager.
She was SO offensive that my manager couldn’t get out of her what the actual problem was and ended the rage dial by calmly explaining to Susan that she is no longer a customer with us and to never contact us again.
Just to clear up a few things, Susan’s house had a free parking space opposite her front door, so I would not have blocked anyone else in.
I left the delivery on the pavement, not in front of potential traffic. This was in the UK so no HOA. The engine would have been off during the delivery. It’s also a small van, the size of a normal car. Susan has never given a reason for not allowing us on her driveway, and no one else ever has.”
Another User Comments:
“Yeah, used to do this with deliveries when I worked for a supermarket and for a hardware shop a few years after that.
We didn’t do deliveries, officially, but if they were on my way home (or if I was off out that night), then I’d take their shopping on my route and drop it off for them.
Most of the time this worked out just fine; they thanked me profusely, and I went home/off out as planned.
A few customers seemed aghast that I would park on their driveway to deliver 3 or 4 boxes of groceries.
One lived at a farm, had a cattle grid, and wanted us to walk all the way down “so to not disturb the cattle with the vehicle.”
I kept on taking groceries to people, but for those that complained, I left them at the curb. When they came into the shop to tell the manager, they’d back me up and say, “We don’t do deliveries.
If he’s delivering, it’s off his own back in his own time and in his own vehicle. Either cut him some slack or don’t bother asking him to deliver.”
Slightly related was a paper round I had as a teenager, a guy left a woman’s groceries at the curbside. As I was delivering her newspaper, I decided to help and carried the shopping to the front door and put the paper through the letterbox.
A few minutes later, I heard footsteps running down the driveway.
“What do you think you’re doing with my shopping?! You leave my things alone! Don’t you dare touch what isn’t yours!” and suchlike, as well as a complaint to my boss.
Her paper always went missing after that one.” byjimini
6. Give Me A Task When I Warn You What Will Happen? Okay, I'll Still Do It
“This story happened a few years ago while working in a kitchen in the city I live in. My boss was your typical lonely intoxicated dude. Creepy compliments to the staff and inappropriate conversations with them as well.
Abusive to anyone working under him and a lack of respect for other management when he felt he was above them. He ended most nights by disappearing during the dinner rush and slamming a 24 case of beer by himself at home.
My friend and I worked Tuesday to Saturday close shifts every day for a year. We became best friends through the suffering of this man’s abuse.
We could never do a good job in his eyes. Nothing was ever clean enough or good enough for him. He had this opinion that we never tried hard enough and we must be slacking off when he’s not there. He decided the solution to his problem was to assign us extra cleaning. Since most everything was already perfectly clean he decided to ask us for two things: scrub the grout between the tiles and clean the foam ceiling inserts with soap and water.
These had to be completed, or we were going to get written up.
The next day rolls around, and things are not as clean as usual for close since I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the tiles all night. Bossman took this as a personal attack and unloaded it on us. I proceeded to explain that scrubbing it isn’t getting it any cleaner and there’s nothing I can do.
I also showed him the one tile that came out of the floor. He grabs a butter knife and cuts all the grout out around one tile. It was black and crumbled and filled with oil. I tried explaining and showing him that he was going to ruin the floor, but he ignored me. After proving to himself it was possible by completely removing a tile, he told us it had to be done by the end of the week.
Here’s the malicious compliance. Despite me telling him that it wasn’t working, he insisted he was right. I told him many times it would ruin the floor and he didn’t listen. So that night, I spent a few hours doing exactly as he showed me until there was a large portion of the floor with loose tiles. He was disappointed that I only got about one square meter of flooring done and wanted the rest done by the end of the day.
Commercial kitchens are huge, and these tiles were small. So I decided to focus on the mainline where everyone works. I got about 75% of the main working area de-grouted in two days and left the loose tiles in their place.
The floors in professional kitchens are designed to drain water in a specific direction and be smooth enough to clear all debris when swept. Since the tiles were all loose on the floor, sweeping and mopping only pushed dirt and brown water into the holes where the grout used to be.
Upper management came into work for the weekend, and they all had to stand on this wet stinky mess of tiles that was hard to balance on. It wasn’t long before they asked what was wrong with the floor. Instead of saying that he made a mistake and asked us to do exactly that, he blamed us on the spot. Saying he would never clean a floor like that and we must be stupid liars.
Just truly a classic piece of trash.
I never got around to soaking the foam ceiling boards, sadly. Since I guess he realized how stupid it was. I never got any petty revenge either. I left feeling like bad people truly do just get away with being bad people.
Skip to 6 months after I had left the company. I get a message from a friend who worked there as well.
She explained that she had written a letter to HR detailing this man’s harassment and weird inappropriate comments to her and others in the workplace, and in private, she mentioned she had included some things I had told her.
He was fired on the spot. No discussion or chance to prove himself. I’m not sure if they already knew he was like this, or maybe they just knew that no one would make up a two-page 5 paragraph letter about him for no reason.
He left the country immediately after losing his job and filled his social media with photos of him in suits with captions like “heart of gold.” I still resent this man but enjoy thinking about this story from time to time.”
5. Don't Want Help Even Though You're New Here? I'll Leave You To Do It On Your Own
“I worked in a pharmacy dedicated to sending medications to nursing homes. Since this is often difficult to do just by hand, there were machines that could help out. I often helped use the machines to package the meds.
A new coworker joined my team. She was pleasant enough, but for some reason, I could not tell you, even to this day, I hated her on sight. Apparently, the feeling was mutual, though we were able to work together cordially enough.
Since the machines, while super useful, were also prone to breaking down, a lot of manual intervention was required to ensure smooth operation.
Since it’s a pharmacy, we also had to keep track of the medications being used on it (which means counts, often done nightly, particularly with more expensive medications).
This information is relevant.
I had been at this job for a few years, so I was reasonably experienced with the use and maintenance of the machines. My coworker wasn’t. This is also where I point out that my coworker is older than me.
So, my coworker had been at the job a few weeks and had received some training, so my boss at the time told me that it’d be okay for her to shadow me while I worked but also to make sure she did some of the work on her own, so she’d learn via hands-on experience.
This also meant I couldn’t leave until my coworker did since she hadn’t been given the go-ahead to be alone with the machine.
Goody.
It went more or less okay for the majority of the shift. I let my coworker do some of the work, as ordered by my supervisor, and she seemed to be getting it.
However, for some reason, she wasn’t relying on the computer, which had kept track of all the medications used (and their corresponding slots) to do the nightly count. Instead, she was literally writing down every single slot and medication by hand, to count later.
“Coworker,” I said, “you know the computer keeps track of that–”
“I know it does, OP, but I don’t seem to get how to do it!”
This is toward the end of the shift.
My nerves were fried from having to deal with her, and I was tired.
“You do it like THIS, Coworker.”
(shows her)
“I don’t get it, OP, so I’m just going to do it by hand.
You younger people don’t seem to have a problem with computers, but I do! Let me do it by myself!”
People. The process to see what had been used was literally two clicks of a mouse button. I had shown her once at the start of our shift. Our supervisor had shown her during initial training. Another coworker had shown her while she was training.
I. Was. DONE.
So, I let her do exactly what she wanted. I let her write down every canister by hand, every med by hand, and let her count by hand.
I even offered, as a show of good faith, to help with the counting, but again, “NO, OP, I’ll do it! Let me do it by myself!”
Fine.
As a result, we ended up leaving an hour after our shifts were supposed to end.
That’s an hour of OT that we hadn’t been authorized to take, for the record.
The next day, my supervisor asks me why I’d stayed so late last night, so I told her very honestly that my coworker didn’t want my help finishing out the necessary counts last night. My supervisor immediately went and ripped my coworker a new one.
The day after, my coworker didn’t come in.
We all found out she’d quit, effective immediately.
Good riddance, I guess.
BONUS AFTERMATH: I also found out the day after I had to stay so late that the counts my coworker did were wrong. All of them.”
4. Just Leave If That's How I'm Going To Be? Okay, Bye
“I used to work at a small manufacturing plant in the shipping department, up until a few months ago. Now the thing about this plant is that due to some well-intentioned mishandling by the previous owner, the plant is currently owned by the bank.
Because of that, the plant manager doesn’t really know too much about the day-to-day running of the plant. He mostly just makes sure the plant isn’t losing the bank anything until a buyer can be found. Thankfully, there was a good floor manager and a good shipping manager to cover the shortcomings.
Then the plant closes down for a bit. When we reopen we learn that the floor manager is retiring immediately and won’t be returning.
But that means the plant manager is now the floor manager as well. Additionally, all other managers and office staff are now working from home. So on top of the floor manager, the plant manager now needs to handle any issues that arise that are too pressing to contact someone off-site.
The structure of the shipping department is this: There’s the shipping manager, who is now WFH.
There is the shipping supervisor who comes in early and leaves around 3ish. Then there is me. Who came in around 10 and left when the last truck to be loaded came. Meaning that after 3ish, I am the de facto head of shipping.
At some point, I could see the writing on the wall. Layoffs were coming. Very possibly the whole plant closing. Needing something more stable I found another job.
Now I hadn’t given my 2 weeks yet because it wasn’t set in stone yet. (May as well have been, but until I have a piece of paper or email that says I have the job, I don’t have the job.)
I had one co-worker on the production floor who liked to push my buttons. I’m typically not the type of person whose buttons you want to push.
I’m not particularly imposing but I’ve been told by guys twice my size that when I get mad I’m scary. Anyways, on this particular day, he decides that the best way to push said buttons would be to walk into the forklift lane as I am passing to grab product to ship. Multiple times, I’m forced to slam on the brakes, causing me to spill a couple of loads.
Eventually, I explode. I don’t remember what was said, but I went off on this dude. Eventually, the plant manager comes over trying to quell the situation.
As I explain the situation to him I say something to the effect of, “I could have killed him. I still might.” To which the plant manager responded with, “If you’re going to be like that, just go.” I looked at the clock and noticed it was close to 4, meaning if I left, no one was there to load the trucks.
And while the physical act of loading a truck is simple enough, the system to record everything was not. And it wasn’t something you could do later either. It needs to be recorded at the time of shipment.
Naturally, I looked back to the plant manager and just blankly replied with an OK. I grabbed my things and left. The second I got to my car, I called my supervisor.
He and I are really cool with each other. You could even say we’re friends. He also hates the coworker in question and is not too fond of the plant manager. I told him what was going on and he told me that he was off the clock and doesn’t deal with work stuff from home, basically telling me he was with me without saying it.
The shipping manager was the next call. Now she is one of the nicest women I have ever met. And she will defend her crew to the death. And apparently, unbeknownst to me, she had started vacation the day prior and would also not be dealing with work stuff. (Normally she would absolutely deal with this even on vacation.)
Now both of them knew I was leaving and that I didn’t care about the repercussions.
The plant manager didn’t.
I don’t know exactly what happened from there that day, but I do know that of the 12 trucks scheduled to ship, only 3 did, and that’s because they showed up before I left. It’s also worth noting that in our line of product, if something that was our fault causes the customer’s production to shut down for any amount of time, the company gets fined. (Contractually, not legally.)
In the end, that coworker never did mess with me again, and the plant manager ended up being a lot nicer to me too.”
3. Can't Handle A Little Bit Of Heat? Here's A Boring Bite To Eat
Since you don’t like spice…
“So, my husband and I live with his mother. She basically sits in her recliner and takes advantage of me working, my streaming services, and my eventual frustration at things not getting done, so I do it myself.
My husband is disabled, and it’s hard for him to do much more than laundry and some dishes and light cooking. I work 50+ hours a week in a restaurant.
The food my store serves isn’t the healthiest, so I try to only bring home leftovers as a treat for me not having to cook.
Now, I have a very midwestern, German, hearty way of cooking.
I make a lot from scratch, but I also know how to utilize condensed soups and elevate a hamburger helper. My husband loves my cooking, and I’m always having him taste-test things. We love cooking together and have always been experimental and up for trying new things.
However, this stopped when we moved in with his mom because she’s very, very picky. She used to cook her share, and we would get by that way.
But slowly over time, she got lazy and now won’t do more than microwave ramen or make a sandwich. It’s fine. Whatever. But my husband can’t stand up long enough to cook a whole lot either, so it falls on me.
10-hour day on my feet be darned. I revel in my husband’s enjoyment of my cooking. That brings me joy.
So, he has a new favorite dish of mine that I can’t tell you the clever name of because it’s named after a certain situation we are dealing with as a country, but it IS clever. For it, I utilized (mostly chicken) condensed soup since flour and butter were hard to find. I had plenty of powdered milk in the freezer, and we had plenty of frozen veggies of all kinds and a butt load of rice for the dish.
I usually use cream of mushroom or celery and a couple of cans of mushrooms with peas and carrots – all creamy and good over rice.
But last week, I was doing my weekly grocery shopping and saw cream of broccoli and cheddar cheese soup. That sparked an idea because my hubby looooves broccoli soup and cheese. So, I made the fixins with that along with a bag of frozen broccoli.
Oooooh, was he happy! And it was good.
Anyway, a few days ago, my hubby lets me in that my mother-in-law was complaining about my cooking. This was not the first time. I hear all the time about how I don’t do things right, or more like, not how SHE does it. I went on a cooking strike for a while until she whined about how she’s spending too much on takeout.
Like, REALLY!? There’s a full pantry, and you are getting take out every day!?
She complained that my meals were “too heavy” and had too much salt and pepper, and she didn’t like all the cream sauces I’d use.
Yet, she eats like three servings.
So, cue the malicious compliance. I didn’t go on a cooking strike this time. I made dinner tonight.
My husband wanted chicken and broccoli with rice again. So, we went to the store. We got the stuff and came home. The plan all hatched in the car, and my husband thought it was brilliant.
I must also add that my husband and I both love spicy food but generally only add chili sauce or extra spice to our individual plates because my mother-in-law doesn’t like spice (relevant later).
I cut up the chicken, but I saved about half a breast worth (huge breasts of frozen chicken, like turkey-sized). I cook most of it with copious amounts of garlic and butter and ranch powder like always.
But in a separate skillet, I only added olive oil and her chicken. No salt or pepper or garlic. I sauté it up and set it aside. I then make the cream sauce and add most of the broccoli.
I saved about half a cup and steamed it. I made the rice like always but reserved a half-cup of plain rice and added the rest to the fixings and mixed it up. My husband taste tests and tweaks.
And then he surprised me. He added black pepper and our favorite chili seasoning to it. I’m wide-eyed, and my mouth is watering.
I dish up the plain rice, broccoli, and chicken into a bowl and hand it to my husband.
My mother-in-law can’t be bothered with coming to get her own dinner. We must take it to her. He’s giggling like a child. I just smile and feel satisfied that maybe she will like her dinner now.
I dish up a bowl of fixins for myself and head to the bedroom where binge tv is waiting.
I hear the exchange though.
“Here’s your dinner, Mom.”
“Oh, well what’s this? I thought Godiva was making fixins?”
“Oh, she did. But I told her what you said after her last batch, and she wanted to make you something more to your palette.”
“Well, why did you tell her that? I told you that in confidence.”
“I didn’t want to set her up for failure, and she wants you to like her cooking.
So, I told her, so she’d have a chance to fix it.”
“Oh, ok. Well, thanks, I guess.”
My husband joins me. All grins. We eat, and he hears her shuffle to the kitchen.
“Can I have a little cream sauce for my chicken?”
Husband replies, “Go for it. But I did put black pepper and chili powder in it. We didn’t think you’d want any so we added our spices.”
“Oh. Ok.”
I think she ended up adding some salt or something but no cream sauce. She ate it.
She then let us know that she was thinking of making dinner tomorrow since I always do the cooking.
Gotcha! Go for it. I’m not a fan of her cooking either, but I welcome any day that I don’t have to cook.
I guess you could also file this under petty revenge as well.”
2. Fill Up All The Nacho Trays? Tons Of Nachos It Is!
“This story comes as a result of a combination of me trying to get promoted, my social anxiety, me being clever, with just a hint of trying to spite another supervisor.
I was a supervisor at a movie theater a few years back. I took over a regular non-supervisor shift in concessions, so there was already another supervisor working with me. This supervisor and I (we’ll call him Adam) were on pretty good terms. We get told by a senior manager (we’ll call him Kevin) to fill two rolling racks with premade trays that we put nachos in.
Filling them is simple enough: unfold trays, place them on aluminum baking sheets, so they’re ready to be filled, and leave one slot empty between sheets. This part is really important because when we put nachos in the trays, we need the space, so the chips don’t break after we fill them.
So Adam and I fill the racks as we normally would and call it good.
After this, we roll them in back because we don’t need them right now.
Adam gets sent home around 2 that day (we were slow as heck), and I take over the stand as a supervisor. About fifteen minutes later, Kevin calls me in the back. Before I continue, let’s be clear that with so many managers, two senior managers, several supervisors, and about 60 employees, there is definitely some favoritism going on.
Adam was on excellent terms with Kevin, and they talked regularly like they were friends. On a good day, I was on okay terms with Kevin. He didn’t hate me, and he was pretty fair with me for the most part, but he wasn’t necessarily fond of me either.
Our overall professional relationship was pretty rocky. Overall, though, I still think he was a good guy.
Anyway, not the point. The point is, he calls me in back to tell me (just me, he made no mention of Adam) that he distinctly told me that he wanted those racks full, apparently more full than we normally make them. I would have loved to tell him that that’s what we normally do and that Adam said it was good. But, I was trying to get promoted at the time, so I didn’t want to challenge my senior manager.
Plus, my anxiety wouldn’t allow it.
So, the first thing I did after getting done with Kevin was to consolidate all the nacho trays as best as I could.
After that, we had one full rack and one basically empty rack. So, then I started assembling more trays and filling more sheets. This is interspersed with me trying to get daily jobs done, hopping on register to help out customers, and giving people breaks.
So, about an hour and a half after this, I used up all the clean trays we had. However, the rack still wasn’t completely filled per Kevin’s instructions. I didn’t want to bug Kevin with it because he had other stuff to do. I also didn’t know if he wouldn’t accept this as being done.
Something important to note before moving on: we used the baking sheets for a lot of things.
We used them to dump out batches of popcorn that we had accidentally burnt.
We used them for the first batch of the day, so people didn’t get sick off of the cleaning chemicals, and the last batch of the night, so we could close out more quickly. We also used them to place and pre-count frozen items, so we didn’t use the counters.
There were other things I’m forgetting about, but you get the idea.
Then in my desire to show motivation, relieve my anxiety, and just be clever all provided me with an epiphany, almost as though it were a sign from God Himself: I had used all of the clean sheets. There were still some dirty ones that I had not used but could easily be cleaned. Very easily in fact!
I then proceed to clean all of our dirty trays so as to fill the rest of this rack.
During this time, the closing supervisor (Katie) comes in. Katie and I used to have a very good working relationship. But in some months prior to this point, we had a falling out. We were still polite to each other, but the damage had been done.
So, after briefing her on what she needs to know (who on mid-shift has had breaks, which movies are busy, etc.) I tell her about Kevin’s directive regarding the nachos, and she vehemently disagrees. She makes the argument that if I use all of the baking sheets, we won’t have any for the rest of the week for all the other stuff we needed them for.
After going back and forth with her a bit, consulting a third supervisor, and bringing up the fact that Kevin outranks both of us, she says the magic words:
“Fine, do what you want. I don’t care.”
What I wanted was to not get chewed out by Kevin again. So, I use the rest of the baking sheets for the nacho trays. At this point, we now have none left for anything.
About an hour later, I see Kevin and tell him that I finished the nacho trays. He just says thanks and continues about his day.
So, of course, given the relative importance of having trays, this creates problems for the next few days. Concessions struggle to come up with baking sheets for when we need them, usually only having two free at any given point that they have to be washed immediately after use.
It also took until Friday (this all happened on a Monday) to sell out of the number of nachos we needed to have more than two useable baking sheets.
Oh, you’re wondering why we didn’t just remove the empty trays from the racks; it was because the managers only brought us the rack with full nacho trays.
At the supervisor meeting with senior managers two weeks later, Katie mentioned that using every single baking sheet was a bad idea and that it ought not to be done again.
It didn’t take her urging by any means, but it was never done again.”
1. Of Course I'll Give You The Password To My Computer
“Quick backstory is that in 2008 with the recession and housing crisis, my mom, siblings, and I had to move from Illinois back to Texas with my mom’s parents who had a house large enough for all of us. After about six months, my mom decided that it was suddenly okay again for my dad to see and talk to me after three or four years (no longer remember exactly how long) of no contact.
I’d been wanting my own computer since the only one we had was an ancient heap of junk that could barely load a single browser tab and had a tendency to crash to desktop if you tried to do more than one thing at a time. Also, it was shared between me and my two brothers when it did work and I really wanted something that worked and was my own.
My dad, being the exact opposite of all those usual baby boomer memes where they know nothing about technology, is very much a technology and computer guy, decided to build me a desktop computer for my birthday. The thing was a wonderful thing to have compared to our old one and since it was specifically gifted to me, it was all mine, and I wasn’t forced to share it.
I actually still own it, and other than having to replace the mouse and keyboard a few times, and the monitor a couple of years ago, it still runs pretty well, and I use it anytime I have an issue with my laptop. At the same time, my dad also helped me set up an email account that we could use to talk to each other when he wasn’t in town.
Anyway, my mom also loved the thing because it was better than her laptop and managed to get the password to it at some point in time and decided to go snooping through my email account and read through everything I was sending to and from my dad. It was a lot about school and complaining about some of the stupid stuff my mom was doing so basically the usual pre-teen stuff.
She was not happy about me complaining about her to my dad, and for a while, there was a big mess about the emails and my computer and her forcing me to give her access to everything.
After a while, she either forgot about it or stopped caring or something, and I got away with changing the passwords to everything (computer, email, etc) somehow.
Other than her snooping a big reason I had a password on the computer was that anytime her laptop broke or had issues she would want to use my computer to fuel her addiction to those stupid social media games that were so popular back then (fairly certain she still plays those things) and wouldn’t let me touch the thing for hours on end if she got on it.
Anyway, I’d changed the password a couple of times and ended back on the same password my dad and I had put on it when we first set it up. My mom’s laptop was once again broken, which meant she was back to hounding me about giving her the password to my computer.
I refused for a while, and at some point, we were in a Best Buy (not sure why I remember the store but not exactly why we were in one), and she was still complaining and whining about how I still hadn’t given her my computer password.
I think she threatened to ground me or something over the password if I didn’t give it to her, so I finally gave in, looked at her, and said:
“The current password is the same as it was when I first set up the computer.” Or something along those lines.
She kind of stared at me for a minute before saying that I still hadn’t told her password.
I responded with:
“I did what you said. I told you exactly what the password was without actually giving you the password.”
I honestly don’t remember what the result of this was anymore, but I thought I’d share anyway.
In case anybody asks how she didn’t know the original password if she’d gotten onto the computer before, my mom is one of those people that used to have a sheet of paper with website names, usernames, and passwords printed out and kept near her computer because, otherwise, she’d never remember any of her passwords.
I think the only reason she doesn’t still have one is because most computers now have an ability to save that information to themselves.”
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