People Tell Their Bitter Revenge Stories
33. I Stood Up To HR And Got A Raise
“About a year ago, I was working behind the counter for a liquor store. It wasn’t particularly busy, and my boss was stacking shelves nearby when an entitled customer (EC) walks in. She gets several bottles of booze and comes up to the counter.
I estimate she looks under 20.
Me: ‘Good evening. Before I serve you, do you have a valid ID?’
EC: ‘I don’t need ID. I’m 25.’
Me: ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m required by law to sight ID from all customers that may be underage.’
EC: ‘Well, I don’t have any ID. Just sell me the booze.’
Me: ‘I’m sorry. If you don’t have a valid ID, I cannot serve you.’
So EC goes absolutely insane. She screams at me, calling me a fat piece of work.
(amongst other things)
Me: ‘I’m sorry that you feel that way, but I’ll have to ask you to leave the store.’
Still screaming invective at me and then the manager leaves the store. As this is not an unusual occurrence the boss and I laugh it off and get back to work, thinking no more of it.
So… Fast forward about a week. I’m working again when the boss calls me to the office to get a phone call from HR.
Me: ‘Hi. What can I do for you?’
HR: ‘We received a complaint from a customer that you were exceptionally rude to her on date (Q).
Due to this, we’ve signed you up for a mandatory course on customer service. It’s at (X) at (Y time and date).’
Me: ‘Hang on a second.’
I grab my phone and switch on the ‘record’ function.
Me: ‘Sorry. Could you repeat that?’
HR: Repeats.
Me: ‘My manager was here for that incident. He’ll confirm that I was not rude to that customer.’
HR: ‘Yes. He said that. Nonetheless, you have to attend the customer service course. It’s mandatory.’
Me: ‘Hang on… so you are trying to tell me that my manager and I are lying?’
HR: ‘No. But we got a complaint, so you have to do the course.’
Me: ‘So… let me get this straight. Despite the fact I was not rude to the customer, and my manager says that I was not rude to the customer and she was literally lying about it, I have to attend a course on customer service?’
HR: ‘Yes.’
Me: ‘Do you know what workplace bullying is?’
HR: ‘What?’
Me: ‘Workplace bullying.’
HR: ‘What? Why?’
Me: ‘You are punishing me for an event that did not happen. That qualifies as workplace bullying. I suggest you take me off this ‘customer service’ mandatory course.’
HR: ‘I can’t do that. You have to attend it.’
Me: ‘No problem. I quit. I’ll see you in court. I should mention that this call has been recorded for quality and training purposes.’
I put the phone down and chat with the manager for a few minutes while he tries to calm me down from the incandescent rage I’m feeling.
A few minutes later the phone rings again. It’s HR’s supervisor. We stick it on speaker and I record again.
HRSup: ‘What is this all about?’
So, I explain what HR told me, and he questioned the manager and myself. After a few minutes back and forth, he says, ‘Okay… I’ll take you off the course.’
Me: ‘That’s not good enough.’
HRSup: ‘What?’
Me: ‘I’m a victim of workplace bullying. I’m taking you to court.’
HRSup: ‘That’s hardly necessary. We’ve fixed the problem, right?’
Me: ‘No, I’ve been insulted and then been told that the company does not trust me, nor does it trust my manager.
I’d prefer to take my chances in court, as I have direct evidence of workplace bullying.’
HRSup: ‘What can we do to resolve this?’
Me: ‘Two things. I’d like a raise, and you to personally send a memo to everyone stating that they cannot just send people on ‘mandatory training courses’ unless there is actual evidence that wrong-doing has occurred.’
HRSup: ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Anyway, I got a small raise and a memo was sent out requiring review of customer complaints before any ‘mandatory training’ was required of staff. So I took the win. The boss and I had a good laugh about it, and he admired my bravery in standing up to the dreaded HR.
What annoys me the most though, is the thought of how many staff had to attend mandatory training for something that was entirely the fault of some EC.”
32. Don't Leave A Tip? Lose Out On Your New Job
“In 1984 I was working in a country club banquet kitchen when I looked at my watch. ‘Ten (hours) down; two to go,’ I thought to myself, and at that moment I decided I didn’t want to work in food service any longer.
My next day off I drove to the local community college, grabbed a paper catalog, and flipped through it, looking for a new career.
‘Computer Technician’ sounded interesting, so I enrolled. Turns out I had a knack for it, making straight A’s during two of the four semesters.
I found a job, but it only paid $14K/year, and even in 1986 that was lousy money.
I stayed with the country club, but now I was tending bar on weekends and 1 or 2 nights each week, and that’s when this story begins. The country club I worked at had a ballroom it rented out to non-members, so we had a lot of weddings and Christmas parties.
Sometimes during daytime weddings in the fall and winter, wedding guests would go into the member area to watch the football game. It didn’t bother anybody; the owners weren’t proud and would take anybody’s funds, while I liked them because they usually tipped better than the members.
Usually.
One Sunday some wedding guests were watching the game, and some guys at a table right next to the bar were talking. They were a little on the loud and demanding side, so I kept an ear out for them, so I was really paying attention when I heard one of the guys had just landed a new job and from hearing him talk, he was going to work for my company.
My ears really picked up when someone asked him, ‘Why’d you leave your last job?’
‘Ah, I got fired, but it was nonsense,’ and I didn’t hear what followed immediately afterward because customers at the other end needed serving. But I listened as best I could, and, honestly, it sounded like he was making excuses and covering up stuff.
I concluded if he got fired, he probably deserved it but I kept that to myself. They left after a couple of drinks and didn’t tip.
(I’m sure you know, but all servers & bartenders fantasize about getting even with people who stiff them on the tips.
I didn’t know I would finally get that chance.)
A few weeks later, a new Project Manager was making the rounds of the offices. He was a replacement for another PM who had received a well-deserved promotion. The new PM was keeping the old PM’s assistant (call her Jane), who I had become friends with as I worked directly with her instead of the PM, as needed. Jane was a full-time employee and a part-time student who couldn’t move to another state, and it was felt having her there would help out the new PM start out on the right foot.
I was called into my boss’s office and introduced to the new PM, and I recognized him as the guy who had just landed a new job. ‘Did a friend of yours get married a few weeks ago?’ I asked.
The new PM (call him John) squinted at me.
‘Were you the bartender?’
I nodded, then excused myself, to get back to work.
Several weeks later, I had reason to call Jane on an issue. We straightened it out, then, thinking I was talking friend-to-friend, I asked her how it was working out with John.
From her answer, it wasn’t going well. As I recall (per Jane) he would arrive late, get some coffee, make a few phone calls, foist his work on Jane, then spend the rest of the day reading the newspaper. She wasn’t happy.
‘I wonder if that was why he got fired from his last job?’ I said.
It just came out–I didn’t really expect to hear John was a lousy PM.
‘WHAT?!!?’ Jane yelled so loudly I didn’t really need the phone. ‘What did you say? What do you mean?’ and I told her the story above.
There was a pause after I finished, then Jane asked, ‘Are you serious?
Would you swear to this?’ I told her I would, still not really putting 2 and 2 together. This was my first non-restaurant job and I was pretty naïve about what it was like in the corporate world–suffice it to say, I was about to find out.
We made our good-byes, then got back to our respective jobs.
A couple of hours later, my boss came into our area and spoke to our team lead. No big deal, until my team lead called me over and told me to go with my boss.
I followed him out, and he wasn’t saying anything which was unusual for him, as he was a talkative guy. We went into his office and his phone was off the hook. ‘As far as I know, you’re not in any trouble,’ he told me.
‘When I leave, pick up the phone and say, ‘Hello,’ to Mr. Vice President, then answer all of his questions.’ I nodded, practically wetting myself, and he left, closing the door behind him. I sat down and picked up the phone.
‘Hello?’
‘OP, this is Mr. Vice President. Jane had some news about John that she says came from you. What can you tell me about him?’ I told him the story above, answering any questions he had. He asked if I had told anybody else about this; I told him I had only told Jane.
He paused briefly before continuing: ‘OP, you might hear from HR Vice President about this. In the meantime, don’t talk to anybody else about this, not even Jane. If anybody asks about it, send them to me. Do you understand?’ I told him I did and that was the end of the call.
I was slowly realizing somebody was in deep kimchi, but I wasn’t sure who . . . until about a week later, when Jane called me up. ‘I am buying all of your drinks for every happy hour for the rest of your life. John just got fired.’
I never asked why, but from some of the scuttlebutt at the next happy hour, I think they found some issues with his resume.”
31. Break My Cousin's Heart And Steal From Me? We'll Destroy Your Life
“So, my cousin had been going out this utter jerk for a good long while. Nobody approved of him because he pretty much only came around when he needed something or wanted a good time. We’ll call him John. Now, John and my cousin would fight constantly, break up and continuously get back together.
I never said anything to the guy because, eh whatever. She’s grown and can make her own choices. I just gave her my advice when she asked for it. So! A couple of months pass after their breakup and she and I are living together to help with rent cause we aren’t ready to be on our own yet (yes, she is still with him at this time.) Well, they go out to eat and leave me home by myself which I’m totally fine with.
I just clean up the house and play on my PS3 while I wait.
Well, it gets late and they aren’t back yet and finally, she calls me IN TEARS because apparently, this jerk has asked her to be his side chick because he’s married. Naturally, she’s heartbroken and looking for me to comfort her and I tell her to come on home and we’ll spend the rest of the night doing whatever she wants to cheer her up.
This worked for a bit. Then he came back and asked her to forgive him which, unfortunately, she did.
So they’re back together again but they’re fighting less. The topic of the whole side chick thing drops and because it’s not my relationship to get involved in, I keep my nose out of it.
At this point, he comes to visit or spend the night more often and she’s happy but I’m noticing every time he visits more and more of my things go missing. (Sometimes my teas, sometimes books, once my entire gaming console.) I was livid by this point because the only one who had access to the house other than us was him.
So, I’m helping to clean out the cars in the yard and what do I find in his trunk? My console!
It’s scratched up a bit but thankfully still works and finally, I’ve decided enough is enough. But I can’t do anything just yet because I need proof.
Well, my cousin comes to me again and asks for my advice. Apparently, she’s seen him texting and lying to his wife about where he is and texting this other girl too. Those two don’t know about each other apparently. Nor do they know about my cousin.
So she decides she’s just done with him and asks me what she should do.
We make a plan that she’ll bring me his phone and I’ll take screenshots of his messages with these women and send the screenshots to my cousin’s phone.
After that, we’d send the screenshots to the two women and sit back and watch the show.
He’s a pretty hard sleeper so it wasn’t hard to get the phone and carry things out. The hardest part was waiting for everything and actually having to talk to these women about why he was at our place and fill them in.
The wife was NOT happy. The other girl just kind of scoffed and hung up.
Apparently, the wife planned to have all his stuff packed and waiting for him when he got back so he got a nice surprise when he went back to her the next day.
We know she did because he came back and asked to stay with us for a while while he looked for a place for him and her.
My cousin refused and broke up with him.”
30. Despicable Customer Receives Coins As Change
“I used to work at a pizzeria. There was this one customer that everyone hated. She was really rude, complained about everything (every single order she ever received, she found something to complain about). And she wasn’t a normal customer, no, she would order essentially groceries from us by ordering disassembled sandwiches, for example, she’d order a chicken sandwich but with all of the ingredients separate and in particular amounts, with cutlery, butter, a side of grated cheese, 3 plates, oil and vinegar on the side, ‘medium rare’ toasted bread (whatever that means), extra packets of ranch, you get the idea.
But because it was all technically part of a ‘sandwich’ she didn’t expect to be charged for any of the extras and would complain.
She also refused to answer the door when delivery drivers got there and instead would leave the money in an envelope (exact change, no tip) under the doormat and wanted the driver to leave the food on her doorstep.
She also had weird specifications about where the driver could park (never in her driveway, only on the street, even when it was raining or she’d complain). Also, she didn’t want them to announce their arrival in any way (no knocking, no ringing the bell, no beeping their car horns, they needed to be silent or she’d complain).
Such a darn nightmare, this woman. And every time she complained, she’d try to weasel some free stuff out of us for next time. (Because of course she would!)
Anyway, one day she says she needs the driver to make change and she wants him to just leave the change in the envelope and not take a tip because ‘he gets paid already’.
So I tell my driver this and he says ‘oh I get paid, do I? No problem, I’ll take care of it.’ He goes on the delivery and comes back pleased as punch, doesn’t say a word about how he ‘took care of it’.
I get distracted, keep working, 10 minutes later I get a phone call. It’s the crazy lady and she’s FURIOUS because apparently, my driver left her the correct change of $5.85, in the envelope as she asked… IN PENNIES.
Such a genius. I had to put her on hold so I could laugh.
I get back on the phone with her and I said ‘ma’am, I think you’ll find that pennies are legal tender. There’s nothing I can do.’ After explaining that I am, indeed, the manager and the highest authority present, she got fed up and hung up on me.
That driver is still a king to me.”
29. Steal My Spot? Make A Scene
“We were on our way to attend a soccer match at the local sports complex – small town, nothing too fancy, but the place was always crowded on match day. Parking spaces were scarce and got filled pretty quickly.
Since we lived nearby, we chose to walk there.
So we’re making our way through the parking lot, headed for the entrance, and there’s an older gentleman driving a Mercedes, looking spotless and every bit like a well-loved car. The man had been lucky enough to drive up to a spot that was just being vacated, so he was waiting patiently for the other car to leave so he could take its place.
The moment the parked car backs up out of the spot, in comes this jerk in a sports car who promptly goes around the Mercedes, blocks it, and takes the now-vacant parking spot. The older gentleman understandably honks and gives him the ‘what the heck?!’ look.
The guy walks out of the car, and with a smug look on his face says ‘This world is for the young and fast, pal!’
By now there are about ten people watching the whole thing and eager to see how it unfolds.
The driver of the Mercedes smiles and shrugs, all in all looking like he’s just going to go away and try to find another spot.
Then, just as the younger jerk walks by his car, the gentleman turns his wheel and proceeds to ram the Mercedes right into the guy’s car trunk.
Cue shocked looks from everyone. The idiot doesn’t seem to be processing what just happened and stands there, mouth agape.
The Mercedes slowly backs up, slightly damaged bumper, lights smashed. The gentleman sticks his head out of the window and declares: ‘No, idiot. This world’s for the ones who are rich’… And drives off.
Needless to say, the guy tried to interrogate everyone there to get the vehicle’s license plate but didn’t manage to get it.
There was a small crowd there, maybe between everyone, the plate number could be found out, but I’m pretty sure most people felt like it was karmic justice and didn’t want to mess with that.”
28. Petty Customers Try To Return Stolen Merch
“A couple tried one day to return an expensive bottle of tile sealer at work.
No receipt of course. Apparently, the guy had done lots of unreceipted returns because the system denied the return when the cashier punched in his driver’s license.
The dude calls corporate to complain from the return desk. Corporate calls me to ask if the guy’s refund was being denied by me or by the system so I verify it is the system.
That’s the point I find out about it so I go into the LP office to watch them on camera. They get done at the return desk and go out into the store.
They wander around and pick up a few things. The girl is over at some high-priced and easily pocketable tool accessories so I watch her.
The guy comes back over to her and I send the tool department guy over to customer-service them to death. Eventually, they get visibly frustrated and move off. I follow them to an endcap where writing instruments are featured. Guy grabs a contractor’s pencil (flat pencil commonly used for marking lumber) sharpener, retails $3.48, and sets it in the cart.
At this point, the girl goes to the endcap and starts looking at a pink sharpie. Picks it up and they start walking to checkout.
Except the pencil sharpener isn’t in the cart.
I’m blown away. I follow with the camera to checkout and they put everything on the counter except the pencil sharpener.
They pay and walk out. I leave the LP office and go verify that the sharpener didn’t get put down in the 5 seconds the camera wasn’t on the cart and sure enough no errant pencil sharpener.
They got denied a refund for something they stole, are spending funds on products, and can’t make it out without sticking it to us in some way.
That kind of petty thing annoys me almost as much as somebody trying to push out high dollar items.”
27. Vandalizing Neighbors Got Busted By Premed Students
“This was actually quite recent (about 6 months ago). So to quickly tell about myself and my partner, (the coworker kind) I am a pre-med student who wants to be a forensic psychiatrist aka if law enforcement needs a human lie detector or to perhaps diagnose a suspect, I’m your gal. The other person is my wonderful partner, who for the sake of this story will be called B.
B wants to be a medical examiner (you know autopsies!) and he came from a different state to pursue medicine at one of the more prestigious schools. So B and I need to get a certain amount of clinical experience or shadowing hours as part of the application to med school and as a result, got paired together at a local hospital’s forensic medicine program and hit it off immediately but I digress!
Now on the actual story, it should be noted that I am Indian (like the country) and as my fellow Desis know, certain people in the community can be excessively jealous, petty, and/or competitive. The neighbors right across from us were that brand of Desi x100.
I live on campus and so does B in the apartments because being pre-med can be busy, however, I do have a car so I can go home, shopping, etc. and B often carpools with me. So I come home one weekend so I can help my mum plant some flowers for spring in the front yard and it was so beautiful when we finished. My mum had purchased some beautiful Hibiscus flower bushes and jasmine plants, plants that reminded her of the garden back in India and of her father (who had recently passed).
Both my parents the next day had to go to work and my little brother went to school and me back to uni and this is where things went down. I come back to my apartment and get a tearful call from my mother telling me that someone had cut all the buds off from the jasmine bush!
Of course, I comfort her saying that it’ll grow back and that whoever did it will pay.
Flash forward to about a week later, I again get a call from my mom saying that someone had messed with the garden again. I just so happen to be hanging out with B this time and B insists that we go check it out and that he wanted to help patch it up.
So we rush to my parents’ place and darn ‘messed up’ was an understatement. Buds were chopped and on the ground, a hibiscus plant uprooted, you get the idea. Of course, both of us lose our minds and convince my mum and dad to buy security cameras since both of my parents were planning to go out of town on a business trip and little bro was going to be coming to live with me in the meanwhile.
So we help them install the cameras, fix up the garden, and then call it a day.
Several days later, both B and I go back to see and review the footage with the parents and recall those trashy neighbors? The footage shows the husband and his eldest son coming in wreaking havoc on the garden by uprooting plants and stuff.
Now, this ain’t the first time they’ve displayed their hatred of my family. The elder son, who is in my little bro’s grade, picks on him at school after bro beat him in a robotics competition to design an invention. When my parents bought a new lawnmower that was wireless, they bought the same thing.
When I got a haircut, the wife copied the haircut and insisted that she looked way better at a party. All in all, my family got so many weird vibes from them in the past that it was not as shocking as it was upsetting.
My mother planted that garden for my late grandpa!
So rather than involving legal action, B and my family decided to show the tape at the annual HOA neighborhood block party, where you could make your own films, perform music, etc. Since one of the people in the neighborhood was a detective it would seem fitting, plus mum wanted to humiliate the people who vandalized her memorial garden so that way the entire neighborhood would know what crappy people they were.
So I and B submitted the tape under the title ‘The Comeback’ and attended the party.
So as we were all enjoying the food and entertainment the tape was projected in front of almost 40 families and the husband had to pay a hefty fine for vandalizing property and pay my parents a fee to replace all the stuff they messed with while his son was let off with a warning.
Either way, it was satisfying to see the sheer horror on their faces when we exposed them for the turds they were. Of course, they now hate us even more and now the other people living in the neighborhood installed their own security cameras as a precaution in case something similar happens again.
The only thing that made me and B feel bad though was the fact that their sweet younger son started crying at the party and that he has to have jerks for a family.”
26. Keep Scaring Me And I'll Finally Stand Up For Myself
“When I was a kid I was extremely easy to scare with jump scares, and I HATED them.
I would always enter fight-or-flight mode whenever something jumped out at me, and then I’d be really mad afterward. When my buddies caught on to this they made it their business in life to jump out at me and scare me any chance they got.
Despite my hate of being scared, I was a HUGE fan of Halloween and I had a Halloween party every year either close to, or on, the big day.
Naturally, this was the night when all my friends would do their darnedest to scare me so bad that I would bolt and run.
They succeeded a few times when we were all under 9 years old, but something shifted in me the year I turned ten, and none of us knew it until it was too late.
As usual, I had my big Halloween party, as usual, all my buddies were there, and as usual one of them wanted to try and scare the pants off me.
About midway through the evening, I went down the hall to use the restroom and while I was in there my friend (I’ll call him Aaron) scampered down the hall after me and hid in a darkened doorway. I came out of the restroom, started down the hall, and Aaron jumped out at me and grabbed my arm.
Ordinarily, something like this would have made me bolt like a little idiot, but for some reason that night the Flight side of my Fight-or-Flight got turned off. The moment he grabbed me I whirled and punched him square in the face without even thinking about what I was doing.
It was all pure instinct and after impact, I realized what I’d just done and freaked out. Aaron wrenched his mask off and was clutching his face and groaning (or so I thought) and I yelled for my dad, concerned I had really hurt my friend.
My dad and all my other friends came running down the hall to find out what had happened, my dad flipped on the hallway light. I am instantly horrified, thinking I busted his nose, but as I’m spewing apologies to him I begin to realize he’s not groaning, he’s laughing.
He grabs me by the hand I’d punched him with and yelled ‘What’re you apologizing for?! That was freakin’ awesome!’ and he yanked my hand up over my head like I was a boxing champ and starts telling everyone how cool it was of me to just haul off and slug him.
If you haven’t guessed, Aaron was a pretty cool kid. He thought it was great that I’d suddenly found the courage to defend myself. My dad helped get him cleaned up and inspected his nose. Thankfully it wasn’t actually hurt but I still feel a wave of guilt when I remember the sight of his face and remember the feeling of my fist hitting him in the schnozz.
I’ll always be grateful to him for handling it so well, and encouraging me for standing up for myself, but I still feel so guilty about decking him.”
25. She Called The Police And Ended Up Getting Arrested
“I had a terrible roommate while I was in college.
Dirty dishes left in the sink all the time, wet and dirty laundry left all over the kitchen and in the laundry room. The whole apartment smelled like rotten salmon.
Wild parties thrown without my knowledge or consent, coming home from work at 2 AM to a whole host of people I didn’t know from someone strung out and wasted on the couch my family had given me.
Waking up the next morning to the whole place trashed, beer cans, and random illegal paraphernalia left everywhere.
I moved in with my significant other the day I came home to my front door kicked in, literally kicked off of the hinges, like a gaping mouth begging for someone to come steal all of my stuff.
I texted her to ask about it, and she said that one of her friends had done it.
I started packing when no one was home, but before I did, I loosened every single bolt on her dining room table and chairs. I also purchased a few jars of almost-expired mayonnaise and dumped them into the tubs of dirty laundry that had been left piled in the living room for the last week.
She and a host of her friends arrived at the apartment as I was moving my things, and sat down at the dining room table to start drinking. The whole darn thing collapsed and she lost her mind. I kid you not, she called the police.
She ended up getting arrested for paraphernalia.
… I still miss that couch.”
24. Despicable Teacher Got Fired
“9th grade Honors English class. The teacher didn’t like me. The only teacher I ever had didn’t like me (others would get frustrated with my lack of effort at times, but still liked me as a person; she just flat out didn’t like me).
One of the reasons was that she didn’t like athletes because they would miss her class regularly for travel for games. And I played 3 sports, so I was missing a good bit. Now, I was also missing academic stuff like math/science competitions and quiz bowl tournaments, but she was particularly bothered about missing sports.
Case-in-point: She would intentionally double the amount of homework due the day after long away games knowing that the players wouldn’t have the time to finish it all. And shocker, she didn’t check homework every single day, but always checked after away games.
I’ve written about her before, but she also would give me 70s and low 80s on papers without any red marks on them, but people around me would have red marks all over their paper and would have 90s.
After one particularly low grade on an assignment that I knew I had actually done really well on, I inquired about it. Her exact response was that I was only doing 70% of my ultimate capability and the others were doing 90% of theirs. So I specifically asked, ‘Does that mean my paper can be better than someone else’s but be 20+ points lower?’ And she said yes.
And to show this wasn’t just me misunderstanding things, she recommended me for an advanced writing class a year earlier than students were supposed to be able to take it.
So if those two things weren’t bad enough, she gave us an opportunity for extra credit toward the end of the year.
We had to go to a local college’s rendition of Antigone, write a 2,500 word paper on it and tie it into what we discussed in class on the play, and also turn in our ticket and playbill. It was due on a Monday and the play was only going on Friday-Sunday, so there was no way to turn it in ahead of time.
But I was going to miss class that Monday all day for an academic competition, representing the school. And it was the biggest one of the year (like had to place Top 10 in a previous competition to qualify). So it’s obviously an excused absence.
I told her for an entire week prior to the play that I was going to miss on Monday, and she told me multiple times to turn it in first thing Tuesday morning.
So I go to the play, write the paper, go to the academic competition Monday and place 1st in one category and 2nd in another, and then Tuesday morning before basketball workouts at 7 am I go to her room to turn in the assignment. She refuses to take it because it’s late, and she ‘didn’t recall’ ever suggesting that I could turn it in on Tuesday (she told me 4 times).
Her reasoning: (1) Another student that missed the competition was able to turn it in. But that student lived across the street from the school. I lived 20 minutes away and couldn’t drive. (2) My mom was a teacher at the school, so I could have just sent it with her.
Except I had been told to turn it in Tuesday, so there was no reason for me to think to have my mom turn in my assignment for me, plus she has her own students and classes to worry about. (3) I could have done the work Monday evening, which wouldn’t be fair to the other students.
So I went into the metadata for the paper that showed the last time it had been saved was Saturday afternoon. She still refused to grant me any credit for it. So I was out the $25 for the ticket, the time that it took, plus it really inconvenienced my mom who had to pick me up Friday from practice, rush me home to shower and change, then rush me back downtown for the play, and then come pick me up again 2 hours later.
So my mom was pretty annoyed about it, too.
This teacher also prided herself on the fact that nobody had ever made an A on her final exam. She thought she was the toughest teacher ever (really she just loaded students up with a bunch of busywork).
So the last day of class she gave a few minutes at the end of class and asked ‘What’s your biggest wish?’ to the class as a whole. I piped up ‘I wish for an A on the exam’ and she laughed and said, ‘Yea, and I wish for a million dollars and not to have to deal with you anymore.’
So, all of that sets up the final exam. It’s 100 questions and then a 5 point bonus question that asked those generic ‘What was your favorite part of the class? What did you learn? etc.’ We got 2 hours to take the exam, and students that finished early had to wait until 1 hour was up so that there was just one group of people getting up and leaving rather than being distracting throughout.
So I finished the 100 questions in about 20 minutes. So I spent the remaining part of the hour just blasting her in the bonus question.
I said that I’m not sure I learned anything and pointed to her never making any comments on how to improve my writing.
I said my favorite part of the class was it finally being over and not having to deal with her anymore and brought up a number of other little things that happened on top of that mentioned above. And I said that she was by far the worst teacher I had ever had and that the school is worse off with her teaching the entire 9th grade.
The bell rings for the hour and I’m the only person of the entire 110 students to leave at the hour mark. Now, on exam days the teacher doesn’t proctor their own exam so that they are available to answer questions or if the classes are split among different rooms. So I have to wait for my mom to finish proctoring a different exam, so I’m just sitting out in the breezeway.
The teacher finds me, holding my exam, with tears in her eyes, and tells me to meet her in the principal’s office. She then storms off, so I head over. As I’m waiting there I recount what happened to the soccer coach who is sitting there cause he made some comment about ‘surprised to see you sent in here.’
Eventually, she comes back in with my mom, who she pulled out of proctoring an exam, and we all go in to see the principal. She’s crying, screaming, literally choking every minute or so. After about 45 minutes of me spilling everything I’d gone through that year (all things I’d already vented to my mom about plenty of times), the principal finally looks at her and goes, ‘How much was the question worth?’ She said 5 bonus points, and he says, ‘Then just don’t give him the bonus points.’
So I made a 98 on the final instead of a 103. Missed 2 questions. Every other student got the bonus points and the next highest grade was an 81.
Thinking she would get the last laugh, I noticed a few days before grades were due that one of my assignments from the second week of class all the way back in August had been dropped 10 points.
My final grade ended up being 94.4 which was a B at the time. But I couldn’t prove that she had altered my grade, I just had them all in a spreadsheet to determine my grade ahead of time (should have been a 95.2) but nothing that would prove anything, since I could have just typed it wrong (I didn’t).
The summer after the school decided to change to a 10 point scale and so 90+ was an A, so my B became an A. She also had to have her homework assignments each week signed off by the department chair and she had to start accepting assignments via email.
2 years later she was fired after other students started having real issues with her. Prior to me the administration just thought it was a case of ‘students complaining about the hard teacher.’
Still think she deserved every bit of it, but I certainly didn’t think it would set in motion her getting fired. Though, again, she deserved it.”
23. Sister Likes To Mess With Me, I Just Returned The Favor
“My sister used to kick my butt on the regular. She had mad anger problems and would go berserk over the littlest things. One time I turned the light on while she was trying to sleep, she beat me up and I ended up going to prom all banged up.
All through the years, I never hit her back. I was a super-sensitive kid and if I ever hit back, I ended up crying to my mom about how I loved my sister and hated to hurt her.
After I graduated, she had calmed down a bit, but she still had issues.
Coming back from a small party one night and she is back on her old habits, just getting mad over something stupid and going totally crazy over it. We get home and get out of the car and I say I’m driving home. She keeps saying I’m ‘too wasted’ even though I’d only had 2-3 mini beers.
She grabs the back of my shirt and I’m so annoyed at her, I turn around really fast with my fist out to hit her arm or something. She immediately lets out a blood-piercing scream and drops to the ground. She runs inside and wakes up our mom and dad.
Turns out, I hurt her nose pretty bad, but my mom and dad kept saying it couldn’t be that bad because I had done it and that she must have really been messing with me for me to have done something like that after all these years of her beating on me.
I felt so awful, I cried and tried to say sorry, but I don’t feel so bad now because she always says I’m the reason her credit and stuff are bad and that she still has collections agencies calling her over the ER bill.
I ain’t paying that thing. Consider it payment for the years of abuse.”
22. Cheeseball-Obsessed Bully Gets What's Coming To Him
“In 3rd grade, there was this kid that loved Planters Cheese Balls.
He had them in his lunch just about every day. His grandma would pack a nice lunch for him with a sandwich, cheese balls, and circus cookies. He would eat the cheese balls and whatever drink he had, then smash everything else with his fists and throw it away, earning the nickname Joshua A.
Cheeseball. He was a mean-spirited kid whose hero was Freddy Krueger, so I generally avoided him.
One day for no reason that I’m aware of, he said he was going to kick my butt after school. I left class late to try to avoid a confrontation, but in the middle of the playground by himself, between me and the exit of the school, stood Joshua.
I approached him and, without even saying anything, he walked up and started kicking my shins. Not hard, but hard enough that I really didn’t want him to continue kicking me. I waited for him to kick at me again, then reached down, grabbed his foot with both hands, and flung it in the air as hard as I could, like a caber toss.
I heard Joshua smack the asphalt, then he started screaming and writhing around on the ground. I stood there for a few seconds but decided I really didn’t want to stick around and get in trouble, so I just left him there wailing. He was at school the next day, so he made it home okay.”
21. Fight Me For A Guy? Get Blocked
“This guy I really liked was in a long-term relationship. And we knew each other through friends but only started really talking after his significant other went behind his back several times and they broke up.
Fast forward to 2 months of me and him being together, she decides she wants him back and starts trying to text him and message him on social media but he blocks her (starts messaging me and when I don’t reply, messages my friends, I had to block her for a while too.) So she shows up at his house one day while I’m there to give him a note, (his roommates answer but no one lets her in) so she just gives the note to pass on and he reads it, is like whatever, gives it to me, says I can read if I’m curious or just tear it apart, he doesn’t care.
So of course I read it. And it says stuff about how I’m just a rebound and how she’ll wait and, one line she wrote saying ‘one day we’ll be on our couch in our apartment and look at each other and know we made it.’
I ended up keeping the note and forgetting about it till I was going through some stuff about 8 months later while I was moving. Well I ended up not being just a rebound and we are still together almost 2 years later but you best believe I took a picture of us on our couch in our apartment smiling and labeled it ‘finished moving into our apartment!
we made it.’ (of course I unblocked her after she stopped bothering us so she’d get reminded every now and then we are still together and since she’s still blocked on his she’ll only see mine) I look at the picture from time to time and chuckle at my little inside joke.”
20. Be A Jerk To The Airport Staff? Board The Wrong Plane
“A few years ago, I was at my city airport, about to board on a very short (50-minute long) airplane trip to another city. I did the whole procedure, registered my tickets, sent my luggage to be wrapped, and stood still in the corner. Now, this is important: I was dressed in a white t-shirt and a black pair of pants, looking really formal, so I looked like someone from the airport staff, especially because I was standing close to the airport map, staring at nothing waiting for my flight.
I heard a commotion in the hall next to the check-in area, looked there, and then I saw him: the jerk. The dude was giving everyone in the airport – staff and passengers – a very hard time, demanding priority in the check-in service and making a huge scene.
Apparently, he was too wealthy to just wait in line like everyone else. He screamed so much, one of the staff girls actually cried. I heard he was trying to get a flight from Curitiba to Campinas (two cities in Brazil), which was exactly the flight I was on.
So I saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to avenge the poor girl and the rest of the staff: I went to the departure section and just stood still next to the place where you go to board the planes, with those ‘tubes’ that connect the building to the planes.
Anyway, I stood in the long corridor, and when he came close to me, I asked him ‘Are you sir flying to Campinas or Rio de Janeiro?’
‘Campinas,’ he said in that disgusting voice.
‘That way,’ I pointed to one of the entrances of the tunnel to my left. If he made it past this point in the building, it meant that somebody already checked his ID and ticket.
So nobody would question him when he got onto the plane I pointed, which means that he was not going to Campinas. Actually, God knows where he might have ended up if he didn’t realize he was on the wrong plane.”
19. Mom Thought Her Ex-Husband Was Going Broke
“My mum married this much older guy clearly for his money. After his funds started drying up she soon got bored. One day she argued with him over something really stupid, about him not washing the dishes, and said she was off for a few days to her daughter’s (my sister).
She came back a week later to find he had packed her bags, changed the locks, and without a bother told her to get lost, which completely backfired on her.
She then somehow emptied his bank account (a few hundred quid) and she started telling family and friends he hit her and often, which I assure you he didn’t.
A month or so later she was clearly regretting the awful stuff she did. Went over to his house to try and make amends only to find out his young Thai bride had moved in. My mother flipped, tried to attack them both, and even tried to stab him.
During the divorce, he offers her a 5k settlement as technically they were married when his new ‘lady friend’ moved in. Mother thinking this was the last of his cash agreed. Assuming she had the last laugh she was pretty happy with herself until she found out he had sold up some investment for 200k she had no idea about and shipped off to Thailand to live happily ever after with his new wife.”
18. Meddle With My Work And Make A Scene? Get Fired
“I worked at an international PC warranty repair company for over a decade. We’d service pretty much all the major PC brands as well as a few TV & Apple products.
One morning I got a work order for a customer’s PC that’s having an ethernet issue but with a twist. The PC was actually located at a local Best Buy in the Geek Squad area. (Side rant) while it’s not uncommon for us to go to a repair shop to do a warranty call, BB’s policy of charging the customer for labor that’s covered under their warranty is kind of garbage.
I call up BB and am told to come in any time and where the PC would be located.
I arrived around 10 am and proceed to replace the motherboard of the system (after verifying the issue). Meanwhile, one of the Geek Squad ‘techs’ puts me in his sights.
He started by telling me each and everything that he perceived that I was doing wrong and that if I were a real tech, I’d be working for Geek Squad making $11 an hour. I tried my hardest to ignore this kid (I’d guess his age to be around 19-ish) while I continued to work.
For a solid 2 hours, I worked on this system while listening to his quips and jeers about me. The entire time I cannot get this system to see the network through the ethernet (WiFi was working just fine). I’m on the verge of giving up and requesting a depot from the PC brand when this kid jams his elbow into the center of my back.
I turned around to face this little idiot when out of the corner of my eye I see it… the reason this system isn’t seeing the network. I tell the kid to get his manager.
Once she arrives, I ask nicely if any other PCs were having ethernet problems and she confirms that 3-4 were.
With a smile, I look at Little Jerk and say ‘First off, the reason this machine, as well as all the others in this area, aren’t working is because the drop point (where the network cables come down the brick wall into a wall box) is busted and is hanging off the wall by a single cable.
Second, if I were more of a jerk, I’d have you arrested for assault. In case you hadn’t noticed, there are multiple cameras pointed at us that will clearly show how you hit me. Finally third, if YOU were a real tech and not some self-righteous jerk, you’d be working for us making $35 per job.’
As I gathered up my tools and parts, the manager asked Little Jerk to come into the manager’s office. A few days later I had another call for a different PC at the same store and was greeted by that same manager who told me that Little Jerk was let go shortly after I’d left due to his assault (verbal & physical) of me and that they’d gotten the dropbox fixed. As thanks for not getting the police involved, she offered me a $50 best buy gift card.
To this day, I cannot fathom how that dropbox could have been that badly damaged and nobody there noticed.”
17. Make Fun Of My Little Brother? We'll Call The Cops
“I was 8 or 9 standing in the candy aisle at the local Walmart with my 5-6-year-old brother. He was born with a significant bald spot on the top of his head (scar tissue from a burst cyst) and had corrective surgery at the age of 3 which still left him with a hefty jagged scar.
While waiting for him to pick out his treat, two women (I had no scope for age at the time but I would put them in their 40s and old enough to know better) stopped behind us and started making fun of my little brother’s head.
To the point, he starts crying, uncontrollably. I grabbed his hand and pulled him away just in time to run into a store clerk. She asked what was wrong, and rather than tell her the truth I told her I thought I saw one of the women put something in her purse without paying for it.
For some reason, I knew this would cause them more trouble than just ‘they were mean to my brother.’
The clerk called security and the women were escorted to the customer service desk at the front of the store, yelling about racism and how they were going to sue.
Lo and behold both women hand unpaid products in their bags and coats… Cops were called, my mom kept telling me how proud she was of me and my brother kept looking at me with some kind of confusion and awe. He knew I had lied, but somehow I was right.
I still kind of feel bad that I accused someone of theft and got them arrested…”
16. Copy My Answers? Copy The Nonsense Jokes Too
“Freshmen year biology I was always a very studious student. The teacher and I saw eye to eye on everything, and his humor was top-notch. I caught his favor so much that he even gave me an A on the final – the final that I didn’t turn in.
Why didn’t I turn it in you may ask?
Well, this kid was always a royal jerk to me and my friends, and probably wasted about a third of the total learning time in each of the classes he took with me. Now I care about that time – I’d rather learn semi-interesting facts than listen to a teacher squabble with a pot of bubbling testosterone.
On top of that, he was a standard bully, encouraging others to rip on close friends and circulating vicious rumors, he even terrorized a close friend coming to grips with their s*******y so bad, they stayed closeted until well after high school.
Well, the final rolls around and I hear him talking with some friends; he was on his last leg, his parents had had it with his slacking, and if he failed any more classes, he wasn’t just going to military school; if my memory serves, his parents would send him all the way back to the country they were originally from.
A devious thought appears. I’d never been one to hold a grudge but this guy, this guy I hated. And this guy? This guy also had the nerve to ask me for help mid-test.
There was his mistake.
I made up so many terms I may as well have answered the written portion in a different language.
The multiple-choice was a flurry of random answers along with every stupid joke answer on the test. After he turned his test in, I simply waited till the hour’s end, slipped my test in my folder, and bid both him and my favorite teacher a fine summer.
I never saw that guy again.”
15. Pick On Me And My Friends? We'll Get Our Revenge
“Way back when I was a kid there was a bully that used to pick on my friends and me. He was a big fat kid, outweighed us by probably 50lbs, and a real jerk.
I went to a school with a lot of typical rednecks; the kind that wears all camo, listens to country music, and things like that. Anyway, he’d do the usual bully stuff, like take your hat and throw it or knock your stuff off your desk when he was walking by.
Just minor annoying stuff but he would do it constantly every day.
One day in the early spring as the snow began to melt, the school was giving out notices to be careful in the yard because there were large sinkholes everywhere and they didn’t want anyone to fall into them.
So, my group of friends and I went out to the yard one day during recess and found the biggest sinkhole we could find.
The one we managed to find was about three feet wide and roughly knee-deep. I can’t remember whose idea it was to do this but I’d like to say it was mine.
What we did was cover it in snow and make it look as much as the ground around it, going as far as to put footprints in the snow to make it look like it was walked on.
After a few minutes, we saw this bully walking around and called him over, making sure to position ourselves so the pit was between us and him.
The result was amazing. He ended up landing face-first into the ground and falling into the pit, drenching himself all the way up to his stomach. My friends and I just started howling with laughter and being blown away our plan worked.
A teacher saw the whole thing but he knew this kid was a jerk and just ended up kind of laughing when he told on us.
He gave us a minor talking to and I don’t think this kid ever picked on us again.”
14. I Gave The Car To My Wife, Not To A Liar
“Years ago, I used to be married to She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-(In-My-Family). For the purposes of brevity, we shall call her Alice.
Somewhat significant age gap when we got married: I was 27 and Alice was 19 at the time. We had our share of ups and downs, and during one particularly hard time about a year after we got married, we were sunk in credit card debt and had to move in with her mother, who had a whole bunch of chronic medical problems and no insurance.
Stepdad is a shade tree mechanic (who was not bad at it, actually), but couldn’t get regular work because he had medical problems all his own. Move in, cut some costs, help the family. It’s the right thing to do, right?
Problem was, Alice and I couldn’t seem to both hold jobs at the same time.
She would******** off a week before I would start a new job, and vice-versa. After about 9 months of this, I was like, screw it, Imma gets ALL the jobs.
I get a job working weeknights. I get a weekend job. The temp service I signed up with was really aggressive and got me decent (weekday) jobs on a regular basis.
The only problem was, these jobs were over an hour away from her mom’s and I’d be so dead tired from working, I’d crash at my brother’s place which was 10 minutes away from the next city over. I’d only be able to go home to see Alice every few days, then have to get up a few hours later so I could beat the rush hour into work.
Four months pass, and we find ourselves slowly inching from the red into the black.
One day, Alice lets me know that she got a job. It’s about 20 minutes away, and only I have a (working) car. She has friends that can give her a ride when I’m not home, and I take her to work or pick her up every chance I get.
This goes on for about a month. Finally, she says, ‘I think I need my own car.’ It’s all good, she’s an independent girl, and I can see how hard it is for her to be so dependent on other people. I do some quick math and figure it would take about four months for us to get enough funds together to get a decent beater that won’t die in a year.
She nods her understanding. I see her disappointment, and my man-pride cannot take it.
I level up and go beast mode. I start taking side jobs (mostly construction) with a friend of a friend who plays on a per-day basis to fill out the times when I have blanks on weekdays when the temp agency hasn’t got anything for me and I pull double shifts for the weekend job.
I sleep an average of four or five hours a day.
Three weeks later, I have purchased a car for her, a cute little 4×4 that I saw on Craigslist. Mechanically sound, but was super dirty. I park it at a friend’s place and over the course of a week, give that grimy bugger the most comprehensive cleaning of its life.
You could have eaten off the wheel wells, I kid you not. My good buddy Nathan springs for some cheap but nice visuals (wheel paint, seat covers, floor mats, etc.) and we make it look even better. When we move it out of the garage, my friend’s mom swears it can’t be the same car and I have to prove it to her.
I leave my car with Nathan and drive home in her car.
The timing is perfect. I’m about 10 minutes away from home when Alice calls me on my cell. She wants to go get some groceries. I let her know I’ll be there in a bit and park by the curb one house down.
I knock on the door and tell her to come out so we can go. She steps out and looks around.
‘Where’s your car?’
‘Left it at Nathan’s.’
‘What did you drive?’
‘That.’ (I point at the car.)
‘Whose car is that?’
‘Yours.’
She takes a couple of seconds to process that single word. Then, her jaw drops, and Alice runs back inside screaming ‘MOM, OP GOT ME A CAR!’
A couple of years go by. Alice has learned how to use a manual transmission because Her Baby has one.
Between myself and her stepdad, Alice has learned to change the oil herself and even took an active part in replacing the brake pads and all four shock absorbers on Her Baby. She bathes Her Baby herself. She has learned to take care of Her Baby.
MIL’s medical problems are mostly manageable with meds now, and stepdad is getting almost regular work thrown his way by friends and previous customers. We have moved out of her mom’s place, and I’m only working two jobs now. Credit card debt is down by 80%.
Alice also has a steady job and is thinking of going back to school.
And then I find out she is two-timing me.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. There is no third time. There must be payback. My man-pride demands it.
A week after the nuke drops on our marriage, I’ve worked out the problem. She’s already gotten her stuff and moved out by then.
I call her up to meet. Lunchtime, her work. Just to talk, I say. There’s a little pseudo-eco-industrial picnic area right by the building she works at, and there’s a fair amount of foot traffic (ie, witnesses).
There’s some chitchat, and she makes a vague appeal to work things out by dragging my dead dad into it. Oh god naw. You don’t have the right to do that. You had a one percent chance, but that just flat out dropped it to zero.
I cut her off mid-sentence.
‘I’m taking the car. Your car.’
‘Wut?’
‘The pink slip is in my name. I’m taking back my property right now. And if you don’t hand over the keys right now, I’m going to report it stolen to the police.’
‘But you gave that car to me!’
I’d been talking in a normal, conversational tone up until this time. Her betrayal rams into my chest for the thousandth time. My voice hardens.
‘I didn’t give the car to you. I gave the car to my wife.’
Her brain still isn’t firing on all cylinders. She asks, ‘B-but how will I get to work?’
‘… Get your man to drive you.’
I’m still looking at her. Her face goes slack as she realizes that I am. Not. Kidding.
I take the keys, get into Her Baby, and drive off.
I look at her as we pass. She still has the same look on her face.
And I drive all the way home with the biggest soul-eating grin on mine.”
13. Be A Rude Customer? Talk To My Manager
“I used to work member service at a place where, you guessed it, you had to be a member to shop.
There were two options: basic and plus, and we were constantly rated on our ability to push people to get the more expensive plus membership.
So one guy comes in and walks to where I’m standing behind the counter and asks about joining. I start to point out the two memberships and their different benefits when he cuts me off saying,
‘Listen, I know you gotta do the whole spiel nonsense but I’ve got my own pair of eyes for reading and if I have any questions about it I’ll use them.’
He was talking about the piece of laminated paper we used to visually show the benefits to new members.
Of course, his attitude was the usual type we saw, that ‘I pay your salary with this membership fee so stay in your place’ approach.
I shut up and handed him his application, and as he filled it out he began to ask questions about the different memberships.
I wasn’t having it after his rudeness, so I didn’t answer at all for a minute or two before he finally looked up and demanded I answer him.
Shrugging, I said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought those were rhetorical questions because you said you wanted to use your own eyes.’
He got a bit red in the face and went right off on me. This is a fairly wide desk I’m standing at and there are actually three other employees of the same position at the desk to keep lines low. He eventually walks away from me because I’m still refusing to answer his question and approaches the only other girl of us four.
‘That jerk isn’t going to have her job much longer. Now answer my goddarned questions!’
‘I’m sorry, sir. You told my coworker you didn’t want her to tell you the spiel nonsense and that you had eyes for reading if you had questions. Here’s the information for you to read.’
This went on twice more for each of the other coworkers until he demanded a manager. The manager heard the full story from both sides and then answered the guy’s questions himself. We didn’t get into trouble and the manager agreed the guy asked for it.”
12. Try To Fool Me With The Bicycle Price? Lose A Sale
“I collect vintage road bicycles, of which one showed up on our local Craigslist for $100, being sold by Greedy Bicycle Lady (G.B.L.). It is an upper-entry-level road bike by one of the better English manufacturers of the 1970s. At best, it’s worth $300 cleaned, fixed up, and perfect.
As it is now, $200-250 tops.
I know a good deal when I see one, so I email G.B.L. with my phone number and tell her I can come by within the hour and buy it. Shortly thereafter, I receive this response in my inbox:
‘Ok, so I now realize that the bike is worth more. I’ve upped my price to $200. Give me a call if you’re interested.’
It’s not as good a deal as before, but it’s still a bike I’d like to have in my collection.
This time, I call her to confirm an appointment time.
I haven’t been talking to her for 30 seconds before I am informed that the price is now $350, based on the latest inquiry she has had, which has been ‘numerous.’
I don’t mind a bit of friendly competition, but this is ridiculous.
Sure, she has a right to getting what the market will offer, but deals cannot be made with sellers that cannot stand behind their word. I ask if she’s willing to stand by this price if I commit to driving halfway across town to pick it up right that minute.
‘No.’
‘Lady, I doubt you’ll find anyone willing to put up with this nonsense. I could drive across town and find that you’ve doubled the price by the time I get there. Good day.’
I think it should be noted that I’m really not interested in the bike anymore at this point.
Vintage road bikes were unusually common in my city at the time of this story, and I knew – with time – I could put my efforts towards something much nicer (and I did, with the acquisition of two chrome Schwinn Paramounts shortly thereafter). Not to mention that my collection was already quite sizable (at the time, a fleet of over 15 classic and vintage road and touring bicycles.)
But back to the story. My last email seemed to end any hope of further discussion… but too many old movies have taught me that the greedy person is the easiest to have ‘fun’ with. Especially when ‘spare’ email addresses are close at hand. No longer was it about the bike.
Within 10 minutes, G.B.L. had a $500 offer from Mr. A, ready to come by. And 5 minutes later, Mr. B just had to have the bike for $750. And thus G.B.L. told Mr. A that the price was now $850. So Mr. A confirmed that he’d match that offer, while Mr. B dropped out.
But then Mr. C pops up: ‘will buy now no questions asked $1,500.’
And of course, G.B.L. will take Mr. C’s offer any day of the week. But Mr. C can’t commit to showing up until the weekend – almost a week later.
That’s fine with her. Mr. A, however, soon gets an email with the new $1,500 price. Mr. A can match it.
But Mr. A drops off the face of the earth come his appointment time the next day.
So she tries to get Mr. C back, who confirms for that weekend… then drops off the face of the earth too.
The day after Mr. C. misses his appointment, Mr. A gets back in touch with our greedy bicycle-owning friend, who apologies for his ‘family emergency.’ He makes an appointment for the weekend after.
… and Mr. A misses that appointment too.
In the meantime, Mr. B wants to know if she’ll do his $750, as the ‘ad still appears to be up.’
… and Mr. B doesn’t show up for his appointment.
And thus begins a vicious circle of emails from Bicycle Lady to Mr. A, B, and C, as she desperately tries to get at least one sucker with more funds than brains to her doorstep, following three weeks of runaround.
Of course, nobody ever replies – and by this point, no real buyers from Craigslist are willing to bother with her nonsense either.
And so the bike disappears off Craigslist. But almost exactly a year later, G.B.L. posts the bike back up. Same seller name, new pictures, nothing done to improve the bike’s condition.
The asking price is a flat $500.
Thus I emailed her from my original address (as myself), just to be a pest:
‘Remember me, lady? When you want to talk about that $200 price again, give me a call. Maybe you’ll actually get to sell it this time.'”
11. I Knew My Alarm Clock Rang The Whole Night
“This happened 6-7 years ago; sometimes I would talk of this to my friends and family as small talk.
I was an international student who was studying in Australia as a part of my degree program in Wollongong, NSW. My dad was awesome enough to place me in a dorm (room for a single tenant) surrounded by nature so that I could study properly in silence.
As the dorm is an international dorm, there are many kinds of students from different backgrounds and ethnicity around the world to socialize with. My first week at the university went on without an issue. The problem only came on the second week as students (also my dorm neighbors) in my dorm were beginning to hang out together and going out late at night to clubs.
Sometimes heading out at 1 am. I wouldn’t mind if they’re heading out silently but these students are ladies who would scream about dresses, makeup, etc. I would get woken up in the middle of the night with their obnoxious chit-chatting and door slamming.
I told the student heads about this (students who were assigned in the dorm to keep awake at night so that they can attend to students in need), but it didn’t help at all.
It only got to the point where I had missed classes and formed dark spots under my eyes that I decided that I need to do something about it.
My chance for revenge came when one of my friends invited me for a sleepover at his house in Sydney during our study break. ‘Finally, I get to have some quality sleep this time,’ I sighed as the clubbing ladies still made noise in the middle of the night.
But, it was a good opportunity. I had this equally obnoxiously loud alarm clock that I bought from IKEA back in my home country. I set my alarm at 4 am when I knew they’d already be coming back and would be sleeping for their next class presumably in the afternoon.
I wrote down a note, ‘Off to Sydney~! Not available!’ You know just so that the cleaning ladies won’t wait outside my door to vacuum my room. And off I go for 3 days!
After 3 days, I came back to my dorm. As I took out my keys to open the door to my room, one of my neighbors (also one of the clubbing ladies) caught me, with a black spot under her eyes, ‘Do you know your alarm rang for the whole night?
I couldn’t sleep a wink.’ I only replied with a mere, ‘Oh.’ Since then, my neighbors stopped having parties overnight. All is well.”
10. Never Mess With A Man Holding A Hot Fry Basket
“Oh man, this poor kid I used to work with at Wendy’s… Kevin… He was a juvenile delinquent, he was a few years older than me, a little bit bigger than me, had nasty tattoos on his neck, and supposedly was out of jail on work release.
He tried to be a tough guy and bully me whenever we worked together. Stuff like generally talking smack unprovoked, getting real close up in my face, and that stance where you puff out your chest and pull your arms back like you’re gonna swing.
The most irritating was when he would walk right up in my face then flinch like he was gonna throw a punch at me, then just laugh and say some rude nonsense.
I got along with just about everyone at work, and he did somewhat, but we just did not fit together.
One day the exchanges between us were so apparent and obviously stressed, everyone working was talking about me fighting him. I dispelled these rumors as I wanted to keep my job – but my destiny on this day said otherwise.
First was the backdoor incident. The store had a large back door with a peephole in it, and it could only be opened from the inside.
There was a buzzer outside that employees would push if they wanted back in. Well, Kevin was locked outside and his patience while awaiting his re-entry had run out. Instead of tapping the buzzer, this guy was mashing it and holding it down while everyone inside went nuts.
We were all busy and I was running to the back to grab some heavy boxes. Holding these boxes I was gonna open the back door while I walked past. I tried to push on the door but it wouldn’t open. I leaned into it but couldn’t push much more cuz of the boxes I was holding.
I was in a hurry so I yelled ‘GET BACK IM GONNA KICK THE DOOR!’ He did not hear me over the loud constant buzzing. I gave that door a swift THIS IS SPARTA kick and it opened about 3 inches then bounced closed again. Huh!??
I kicked it again and it opened, revealing a bashed-up and somewhat upset Kevin.
He had been trying to look in the peephole when I kicked the door. I had just hurt his nose. He was angry… Immediately I started apologizing and backing away from him, but he came at me like a rabid monkey.
Quickly we were surrounded by employees and separated. I was told to go upfront and manage fries and to not come into the back part of the store until Kevin left.
Then the final event, less than 10 minutes later… I was working on the fries which entails grabbing a metal basket out of boiling hot oil and dumping the fresh fries into an adjacent tray.
I was doing this and everyone around me was talking about how I just messed up Kevin’s face. On his way leaving our store, he decided to come right up to me again and try to instigate a fight while I was dumping some fresh fries.
Kevin pulled his signature move of flinching at me like he was gonna throw a punch. I retaliated by returning my own flinch with the basket I was holding. I didn’t actually hit him with an incredibly hot fry basket… But I forgot about the boiling hot oil still clinging to the basket.
When I flinched at him and shook the basket, tiny flaming hot drops of grease splattered his face and neck.
I had just hurt his nose on accident, then threw boiling hot oil on his face on accident. Instant fight. He was an absolute mess.
He left and I got sent home. That was it. No charges. No questions from my manager(s) after. No more being scheduled with Kevin. Not even any paperwork about 2 vicious assaults and fights on the same day. I felt really bad but simultaneously kinda justified. Both incidents were honest accidents that could have easily been avoided if he weren’t such a jerk.
I still felt like the outcome was worse than reasonable.”
9. Being Nice Didn't Work For Me So I Became A Jerk
“I messed with this girl who bullied me for many years in elementary and middle school.
We became ‘friends’ to ‘solve the problem’ which only worked half the time and I only did it because my logic was, people don’t hurt their friends.’ So I did, and she bought it. We stayed ‘friends’ the rest of the year and then we drifted apart.
This idiot thought we actually were friends, and about 3 days ago I announced that I was leaving the school for many reasons. (not the bullying; I told them that they weren’t even remotely important and I wouldn’t make such a huge change in my life for them.) And her friends (who also bullied me) are all like ‘why?’
So I broke it to them, being as cruel as possible and every time they said how ‘cruel I was being,’ I said, ‘I’m not being mean, I’m being honest. No one cared when you were hurting me. You always hurt me when I never did anything bad to you.’ I pointed out everything they did, and I even said, ‘well I don’t give a darn if I hurt you, you deserve it.’
I told her how I would never want to befriend a horrible person like her, asked her if she would befriend someone who hurt her, how I only did it so she would stop hurting me, how I never even cared for her, and how she was now nothing to me.
Her friend asked me my opinion of her and I didn’t hold back either. They were shocked, how could the once nice, polite, and cowardly girl suddenly become like this? They even asked me when I became like this, and I said ‘8th grade’ and I said that I realized the whole ‘people will be nice to you if you be nice to them’ was nonsense, and how you actually have to be mean or people will treat you like garbage.
I do firmly believe that to a certain point. Being nice or polite never worked for me.
They went away after about 30 minutes of this. Part of me feels like a jerk, but screw it, this is the only mean thing I’ve done to them and they’ve been mean to me for 9 years.
They were totally crushed, and even I was shocked, but I hid that feeling.”
8. Commander Revealed Our Prank
“I had a Sergeant when I was in the army who everyone hated. All of the Joe’s/lower enlisted, the rest of the NCOs, the platoon sergeant, even the punk Lieutenant we had at the time hated this guy.
He would smoke the dog poop out of guys for things that, before he showed up, we would never get smoked for. Things like having your hands in your pockets when it’s cold out and you don’t have gloves. Walking with a lit smoke, even if it’s only a few feet.
The dumbest thing ever that most NCOs would ignore or verbally consult a soldier on immediately.
Anyways, we went to Germany in 2014. Before we left, one of the other Sergeants hatched a plan to get that idiot good. He wanted to make a fake sick call on me for sleepwalking.
Had my roommate say he found me on the balcony outside our room in just my boxers. We faked the sick call slip and the plan was set. He bought it hook line and sinker.
Most of our time in Germany was spent in the field fake-fighting against the Norwegians and some other European militaries.
We were left almost two weeks after the training finished with nothing to do. Time to truly put this plan into action.
I would stay up late and walk around, bumping into people’s bunks, hard enough to wake them up. They’d walk me back to my bunk and I’d go to sleep.
Word started spreading, my commander wanted to see me. The NCO who hatched the plan came with me and he laid it out for our commander.
‘It’s an elaborate prank to get back at him for being an insufferable jerk,’ the NCO says.
‘So you don’t actually sleepwalk?’ my commander asks.
‘Not at all, Sir,’ I answer.
‘As long as no one gets hurt. I’ll keep it a secret,’ he says.
Two days before we leave Germany is go day. My section sergeant was going to stay up and watch a movie on his tablet.
I did the same on mine. Around 2 AM, I walked over to their bunks and started to pace. One of the guys woke up, started to get out of bed to walk me back (he wasn’t in on the prank) when my section sergeant told him to go back to sleep, he’ll handle it.
I stood next to the sergeant’s bunk for probably fifteen minutes trying to compose myself. I couldn’t keep from laughing. Finally, I got myself together.
I leaned over his bunk, grabbed him by the shoulders, and started shaking him. In my best Christian Bale as Batman’s voice, I began shouting
‘DO YOU?! DO YOU KNOW THE WHEREABOUTS OF THE STRANGLER?! DO YOU?!’
He wakes up, screams in the least manly way possible, and yells for our section sergeant, who jumped up from his bed and escorted me back to mine.
The next morning at breakfast, I act as nothing happened. The sergeant sits down next to me and a moment later was joined by our section sergeant.
The sergeant begins asking me about my ‘condition’ and if I’ve ever been violent before while sleepwalking. ‘Yeah, a few times. Beat a friend one time before he was able to wake me up.’
Then our commander sits down and says ‘Oh, so you guys finally did it?’
‘Did what, Sir?’ the sergeant asked
‘That prank they were planning on you.’
My section sergeant and I were deflated, we sunk in our seats. We wanted to keep it going until we got back to the states.
‘Oh, god.’ He saw our faces ‘You hadn’t told him it was a prank.’
No, we hadn’t. Screw you very much, Sir. It was a fitting end to it though, I’m not sure how much longer I could have actually kept it going.”
7. Be A Rude Receptionist? Let's Give Your TV Away For Free
“I used to be in sales for a startup in London, UK. I had to call up potential business customers day in day out.
Anyone who has done sales knows that it can be very tedious and is only made worse when someone is rude on the other end of the phone or hangs up without hearing what you have to say.
Well, I had had a bad day and I called up this phone number and a receptionist answered (we call them gatekeepers in sales because their one job is to defend from sales calls). This lady just didn’t want to hear anything I had to say and she hung up on me.
So I called back a second time, and she hung up on me again as soon as she realized who it was.
And I tried again and, lo and behold, she hung up on me again!
So I was fuming by this point. So, I went onto gumtree (like Craiglist) and listed a large 60 inch TV under the category of freebies.
I said that unfortunately, I needed to get rid of it because I was moving abroad. I then put the receptionist’s number as the contact number! And then I clicked publish and it went live!!
So, it was the end of the workday and I went home, leaving my work mobile in my locked drawer at my work desk.
When I turned up at work the next morning, everything seemed fine. However, I suddenly realized that the Gumtree advert was still live. She would have been inundated with calls about the free TV all night long!
Just as I go to check my phone I see that I have about 10 missed calls from the receptionist. Then I get a call again!
I pick up and as she starts to talk, I realized quickly it’s the receptionist irately (having made the connection that I did this) talking so in a panic I hung up! Karma’s real, eh?
Oh, also I took down the gumtree adverts after the call.”
6. Try To Cut My Phone Credit? I'll Use Up My Load
“So I was living with Mother/Step Father through culinary school. After the many bad substance-related decisions on my mom’s part and the drinking decisions on the stepdad’s part, I figured that as soon as I was out of school I would move back to Minnesota, where my sensible half of the family resides, against the wishes of my mom.
My mom has paid my phone bill with my stepdad’s money through high school and even the 2 years of school after. She used this as an excuse for child support (a way for her to snake her way around paying my dad actual money for child support).
Jump forward to when I’m back in MN, my mom calls me to yell at me for telling stepdad about her choices and says she’s shutting off my phone for ‘lying’ to stepdad. The only thing is I showed him the illegal substances she sold me, so there was no questioning it at foot.
Good times with the fam. Stepdad sides with her, I can’t explain why. After she shut off my phone, it seemed I could still rack up data and texts, just no calls. I should note that I definitely didn’t have unlimited everything, far from it.
So I spent the remainder of the billing cycle racking up as many data charges as possible, going full LTE and roaming while at my buddy’s cabin, I GPS’d every car ride, playing music vids on YouTube, updating apps, wanking it to strictly HD videos, even going as far as deleting Spotify when I went to bed and re-installing it over 4G so I would have my playlists for when I showered in the morning.
This goes on for a little over 2 weeks, and when my phone was finally shut down and I could no longer send texts or rack up data, I had managed to scrape into the triple digits of data overages.
106 gigs. Now, this would have 3 outcomes, either there was a multiple-hour conversation with the phone carrier that involved swearing and high b***d pressure, or they just footed the bill.
Or even better, after multiple hours on the phone with the carrier, they would still be denied a refund. I don’t know which of the 3 it would have been, I’m fine with any of them. Haven’t talked to my mom or stepdad since, been about 6 months.”
5. Have Fun Cleaning The Persimmon Juice Off Your Jacket
“There was a neighbor kid who lived a few doors down from me who was kind of a frenemy. He was three years younger than me, so while I don’t remember exactly why we were sometimes not all that friendly, I’m guessing it had to do with ten-year-old me seeing him as an annoying little brother.
There was one afternoon that we were fighting about something that has been lost to history. I remember pretty clearly that we had gotten off the bus together and were trading insults/arguments as I walked up my yard.
The house where I grew up had a persimmon tree in the front yard.
I suddenly decided to pick up a gushy, possibly rotten persimmon and throw it at this kid.
It was the one time in my childhood that I actually threw well. The persimmon hit the side of the jean jacket he was wearing, and I said something like ‘have fun cleaning that up.’
Whatever he had done to annoy me (and knowing me at that age, the controversy was probably my fault), he didn’t deserve having his jean jacket permanently stained by one of those darn nasty persimmons. I feel bad about it now.”
4. Trip Me Multiple Times? I'll Make You Cry
“A few years ago back when I was in a relationship with this one girl at my university, we were goofing off outside around campus.
She kept trying to trip me constantly. It happened over, and over, and over again and eventually, I hit the pavement and cut my chin up. You might be wondering how I could fall for it, she would literally shove me with her hand from behind and throw a leg out.
Real sweet girl, I promise. So after the fifth time or so I muster all of the sincerity I can, look her dead in the eye, and say, ‘Hey, hun, I really don’t think it’s funny, can we please not do that to each other anymore?’ – I had done it on occasion but not today.
She nods, we embrace, say our love-yous to each other, and then she says, ‘Hey let’s race to that building!’ I stare at her for a moment and follow it with, ‘You just hugged me and told me you love me and now you want to trip me in my most vulnerable position?’ She promised she didn’t and that she wanted to make it up to me, so I agreed.
We get down to race and I let her run, not trusting her once more. She comes back, swears up and down she won’t do it, so I say, ‘Okay but I’m gonna win this time for real.’
Win I sure did, this dumb idiot goes as fast as she can straight to the pavement because my inner psychopath reared its ugly head in a split moment when I threw my leg in front of her.
Starts crying, meanwhile, I’m trying not to laugh my butt off while also feeling terrible because I really hate seeing her cry.
She was sweet but revenge was sweeter.”
3. Lying Principal Said They Caught The Culprit
“When I was in elementary school I enjoyed throwing wet toilet paper onto the ceiling and watching it get stuck for days, then the principal finally said something about the situation because a janitor got injured trying to remove the paper from the ceiling and couldn’t come to work until he recovered. The principal made an announcement, she threatened to kick out the student and made up lies, to scare the culprit (me) into confessing the crime.
She would say things like parents are going to jail, and we already know who it is, so if you confess now you will not get in that big of trouble. I was young I didn’t know what to do. I was 7 years old at the time, so I didn’t say anything but I was really nervous for a whole week.
Then I asked the principal if they caught the crook and she said ‘yes we did!’ with great pride. Now that I know she was lying the whole time, I had to take revenge because of the fear she instilled in me for the past week.
Another week later during lunch recess, I went to the second-floor bathroom to commit the crime. I spammed the wall and ceiling with toilet paper, ripped out the toilet paper rolls and jammed it in the toilet and clogged all the toilets and flooded the bathroom and left the sink running, and quickly left the scene.
The next day at the start of school the principal had all the students rally up in the yard to address what had happened. The principal was flaming angry, she was cursing and legitimately threatening the culprit with acts of murder. She was so insistent on catching the criminal she held up the students in the yard throughout the whole day, during lunchtime they had the cafeteria lady bring the lunch out to the students.
It was a really hot day, all the students were getting grilled alive. The teachers were not enjoying it, and one teacher in our school was complaining to the principal that this is too cruel for the students. She held us up till the last hour of school left and dropped the hunt.
We all went to our classroom, my teacher was annoyed because she was laying in the sun as well. So for the remaining hour, she just yelled at the students, and made some students cry in fear.
I intended to challenge the authority with my crime and I was annoyed at the humiliating trash talk the principal said about the culprit (me), so my pride as the criminal was hurt.
I didn’t want the students to get caught in the crossfire of my war against the principal, so I felt bad about that.
Another thing I felt bad about was that minutes after the act of my crime a kid needed to poop, but because the bathroom was clogged, he had to go to a different floor bathroom to poop in.
He couldn’t make it in time, so as of result, he popped his pants, and became the laughing stock for the next week. I felt bad, so I became his friend throughout the year.”
2. Bathe Me With Tomatoes? I'll Teach You A Lesson
“When I was in 8th grade, my class went to a large garden to clean it out in the spring to get ready to plant.
The garden was used to grow food for homeless shelters in the area. There were lots of rotten tomatoes. I threw a tomato at a guy in my class. He threw one back. It was funny. We threw a few back and forth. At one point I blasted him in the face really good.
He got very upset and the game ended. So I thought. Out of nowhere he came up behind me and covered me with several mashed-up tomatoes completely covering my head and it went down my shirt. Everyone was laughing at me. I was really mad, but this happened as we were in line getting back on the bus.
So I could not get even.
We get back to school. It’s time to go home. I loaded every book I had in my backpack. Came up behind him and just crushed him in the head. His head was crushed between the locker shelf and 50lbs of books.
His glasses broke and cut up his face. A bunch of girls started screaming. I thought I messed up big time. So I ran out of the building and got in my mom’s car. I said go, but all of a sudden 10 kids were hitting on the car telling me the principal wants to see me.
I got a week’s suspension. He missed a week of school. I always felt bad after that. He changed after that. He stopped talking to people and just kept to himself. He changed schools the next year.”
1. Steal From Me? I'll Mess Up Your Car
“So I used to sell substances when I was young, like 18 or something.
I had this friend whose birthday it was, so I gave him an ounce of it (back then around here that thing was 2 bucks a gram) and not to be outdone, another friend wanted to also get him some good stuff, so he asked me to front him another ounce.
That was like 50 bucks. I was young and naive, and trusted this guy and didn’t realize he had grown into a piece of work, and alas, I never saw my payment.
So one night, I went to his house and smashed the car that his parents bought him.
You see, his parents thought he was going to school, and so were paying for his apartment, not realizing it was an addict’s crash pad and that he had dropped out and he was letting essentially other addicts live at the apartment. I knew if his car got messed up he would turn to his parents, who would then find out what he was doing and cut off the gravy train.
It wasn’t so much messing up the car as it was his parents asking questions (‘why would someone do this? What is our son involved in that this would happen’) and figuring it all out.
It worked.
Shortly after, he was living at some trashy piece of the trash crash pad with a bunch of other addicts of different sorts, broke.
I shook him down for my 50 bucks, but never got it back, so I let it go. I really only did that because if I suddenly stopped caring about my payment he would figure out who destroyed his car. Somehow he caught on that it was me that had done what had been done, even though I told no one, and he and another guy came and kicked my window in at my apartment.
My apartment repaired the window free of charge, and that was the end of that.
It was one of my proudest moments.”
