People Pipe Up About Their Bold Revenge Stories
16. Wanna Keep Taking My Stuff? Enjoy Living In An Empty Apartment
“This was years ago.
So, I was with this guy from the end of junior year of high school. We moved into an apartment together after graduation. I started college. Got a couple of jobs. He got a job. Things were ok for a while.
But then, gradually, my stuff started coming up missing. A piece of jewelry here, some DVDs there. Cash from my purse would disappear. He started coming up short for rent or bills, and I’d cover it, while he griped about never getting paid on time.
So, I picked up extra shifts at work and basically never slept between constantly working and trying to study for my classes. I kept asking him what was up. I begged him to just tell me, and whatever it was, we could solve it together.
I cried and groveled, just for the truth.
It all came to a head in a three-day period. First, I pulled the drawer under the bed out, going after my ferret, who liked to hide in there and nest in my hoodies.
She jumped over the back of the drawer, and I had to pull it all the way out to get her.
Except when I did, I found an old-style metal lunch box duct-taped under the mattress. Inside, a couple of tiny pills, some powder… Well, that’s where all the cash was going, I guess.
Next, I went to my bank to take out some cash for gas and a few groceries, and it was overdraft. I got very angry.
I called him, and he denied it. So I made an appointment with the branch manager to look at the tape of who withdrew that cash because I knew it wasn’t me, and my card was still in my wallet. Yup. His dumb mug.
I thanked the manager and left. Finally, I get a call from one of my friends. She wanted to know if it was ok to sleep with my man. Apparently, he’d been telling her we were in an open relationship.
That was it for me.
I broke.
So, I took his dirty lunch box, snapped some polaroids of it, packed it neatly in a box, and FedExed it to his mother. Then, I went to his job. I left a letter for his boss including those photos and explaining that it concerned me, the ex being allowed to operate heavy machinery all messed up.
Said it’d be a real shame to get sued or lose his business.
I told my friend that if she wanted my trash (the ex), I was done with it, and she could pick it up wherever. Then I went back to the apartment.
While mentally thanking the ex for insisting his name, not mine was on the lease, I started calling friends of ours and explaining. They were unhappy and very willing to help. I had that entire apartment packed up and moved out before he got home from work that third day.
I took everything. Every dish, pot, and pan. Every towel, piece of bedding, and area rug. Every piece of furniture. I took every roll of toilet paper, the shower curtain, the mini blinds. I took it all. I’d bought it anyway, so it was technically mine to take.
I left him with a milk crate, and whatever clothing I hadn’t purchased. The stuff I’d bought him, I shredded. I put it all in storage. I went to campus to print a few things.
Then I went back to the apartment to wait.
He came back and found me sitting in that dark, empty apartment (I took the light bulbs) on that lone milk crate. I stood up and told him that I knew everything. And that obviously, I was done. I handed him the stack of information I’d printed on different rehab facilities in the area with one of the polaroids I’d taken clipped neatly to the front.
I told him I’d made sure he had nothing left to lose, nobody left to lie to, and that I hope I accelerated him reaching rock bottom, so maybe he’d get some help.
I left him with the sticky note I’d written his intake appointment on and the phone number of the contact person there.
I drove away watching him slowly sink to his knees in the middle of the road.
Follow up: it’s been some years since then. He reached out to me not long ago to thank me. Evidently, he did go get help when I left him no choice.
He’s a lineman now. With a family, a beautiful home, and a dog. He’s doing well for himself. I don’t regret any of it. Never have.”
15. Act Nasty When I'm Trying To Sell You A Truck? Pay An Additional $2,500
“It’s long but satisfying.
I was talking with another sales dad the other day at a scout cookout, swapping toughest customer stories, when this guy came up.
Glossary of jargon:
Spiff: arbitrary cash bonuses offered at management discretion
Pencil: preliminary buyer’s order used in negotiation. It delineates list price, discount, purchase price, trade value/payoff, and taxes/fees
CPO: certified pre-owned. If qualified by age/mileage/ownership, it gets a much more thorough inspection and earns an extended warranty for passing.
This happened about 5 years ago when I was selling cars, on a Saturday, just before lunch (the dealership catered lunch on Saturday, but I didn’t get to eat it). I sold a car to my first customer of the day which any car guy will tell you, if you can get one out before 11 on a Saturday, you should almost be mad if you don’t get a hat trick (3 sold in a day, typically hat tricks pay out an extra bonus.
At my store, it was $150). I’d already gotten some free cash in the morning meeting for a couple of perfect surveys, and my sale was the first one of the day for the store, which happened to be a spiff that day, so I’m riding high having already put $500 in my pocket before noon, with a real shot at doubling it before they turned out the lights.
‘It’s gonna be a good day,’ I thought.
I’d just finished stocking in my fresh trade and collecting my 1st sale spiff when the receptionist comes to my desk.
‘Hey, mypostingname, you’re really good with weird, angry, and weirdly angry customers, yeah?’
Wonderful.
Me: ‘Yeah, I guess that’s me. What’ve we got?’
R: ‘That couple over there that looks like it’s taking too long for the guy at Jimmy Johns to make their sandwiches.’
I sigh, put on my sunny customer service face, and greet the couple.
They’re older, but not old, probably mid-50s. They’re aloof and condescending as I bring them to an empty desk (my desk was on the ‘used’ side of the dealership) and offer coffee. They scoff and decline until they see the big fancy cappuccino machine.
The wife looks at me expectantly as I sit down, inviting her to help herself, reassuring her that it’s a very intuitive machine with several options, but I’ll be happy to help if she has any problems.
Hubby, CB1 for dialogue, hands me a folder.
Inside is a printout from our website.
‘I’d like to purchase this truck, please, at the advertised price.’ He says.
I say, ‘Excellent. Before we discuss rebates, let me double-check that we still have the vehicle in stock, it’ll only take a min–‘
CB1: ‘You don’t know your own inventory?!? This is very unprofessional. Hey, honey! He says he probably doesn’t have it in stock! Looks like we might have come all the way down here for nothing!’
CB2: ‘This would never happen at Volvo.’
This is going to be fun.
I mindlessly apologize/explain that we have 18 salespeople and over 650 cars on the lot at any given time, we sell 250/mo, so inventory management is literally a full-time job as I check the key track, see the key as checked in, and politely excuse myself to pull the truck around.
In retrospect, I wish I’d have paid more attention to the listing, as it would’ve saved some pain, but I just pulled the stock number, verified availability, and pulled it around.
Me: ‘Alright, let’s take a look.’
They follow me outside and I start my walkaround.
CB1: ‘This is the wrong truck.’
CB2: ‘This IS the wrong truck! I TOLD you you were asking for trouble trying to buy domestic.’
CB1: ‘I told you, honey, a darn Volvo won’t pull the camper. This is what we need.’
Me: ‘What do you mean?
This is the truck from the listing you gave me.’
CB1: ‘Christ. No. It’s. NOT. The listing I gave you was for a white long bed king ranch. This is a silver XLT. I get that reading is hard, you’d think that even a domestic car salesman would know his colors.’
Me: ‘First of all, there’s no such thing as a $30k king ranch and you clearly know that. Second, I don’t appreciate being insulted. Clearly, there’s been a mistake. Let’s go back inside and figure it out.’
CB1: ‘You have to honor your advertised price.
It’s the law. My wife is a lawyer.’
CB2: ‘I’m a lawyer and will eat you alive.’
Me: ‘Look, there’s no need to get hostile. I don’t get paid unless you buy, so it’s in my best interest to work this out.
I assume our web developer made a mistake with the pictures, but let me investigate and we’ll go from there.’
As I suspected, every word of text on the listing pointed to an XLT, as did the window sticker link. The web guy mixed up the pictures.
I found the pictured truck which had a sticker more than $20k higher, with fewer rebates. I printed both stickers and the fine print disclaimer at the bottom of every listing and spent 20+ minutes explaining, trying to talk sense, and fielding a myriad of threats and insults.
Things have gotten nasty, and I was ready to fire them, but when I went to grab the stickers, the last thing I heard from the desk was, ‘Don’t you DARE cut these jerks loose. Sell them a truck.’
I take it straight to the GM at this point, who comes out, takes one look at these people, decides it’s not worth it, and personally delivers a pencil showing a real $6k loss with the invoice to back it up.
We’re still like $17k apart and they’re holding ground, still threatening litigation despite knowing that they have no leg to stand on, and knowing that they were already stealing the truck they wanted at the offered price. Our store was part of the 3rd largest group in the world at the time, so we had lawyers, too.
We happened to have the exact truck they were trying to buy on the used lot. 1 model year older, 21kish miles, CPO, listed at $36,999. I flip them to that one, and we move to the used side. I show them the truck, and hubby is failing miserably at hiding his excitement by the end of the test drive.
My GM had told me to call him before I presented a pencil, so I did. To my chagrin, he cut the nuts off it and had me present $32,999, about $1k north of rough trade via NADA, and $2.5k south of the next cheapest similar truck within 300 miles, PLUS it was certified, which adds about $2k of value in warranty.
They’re still fixated on $30k, and here we pick up the conversation.
CB1: ‘I don’t care what the market says. I want to know what you paid for it, and then we’ll negotiate an offset from there.’
Me: ‘No. That’s not something you get to know.
You don’t demand to know the cost of anything else you buy. You could literally go to CarMax tomorrow and turn a small profit at our price. Even if you weren’t stealing this truck, and you absolutely are, my time isn’t free.
I–‘
CB2: ‘We don’t give a CRAP about you. We want a great price, and we’re not there yet. Do better.’
Me: ‘You absolutely ARE at a great price, and given the abuse I’ve endured, you’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to budge one cent off my price.
I have a baby at home.’
I know this next comment is going to sound embellished, but I swear to JESUS it’s verbatim.
CB1: ‘I couldn’t care less if your baby lives or dies. Take a thousand off or –‘
Me, holding back rage: ‘We’re done here.’
CB1: ‘What?’
Me: ‘You heard me. We’re done. Get out of my office. Now.’
CB1: ‘No. I’m buying a truck.’
Me: ‘NO. YOU’RE FREAKING NOT. I’VE BEEN VERY PATIENT AND YOU CROSSED THE LINE. GET OUT RIGHT NOW BEFORE I LOSE MY FREAKING MIND.’
CB2: ‘Typica–‘
Me: ‘NOW!!!’
They stood up and I half herded, half shoved them out of my regular office and out of the building. I immediately got lit up by the desk managers, and I let them speak their piece. Then I told them what was said, and suddenly we were a united front.
I was shaking, I was so angry, so I was told to remain in the tower until I’d calmed down. I was HOT, so it took a good while.
I was still there when CB1 called about 20 minutes later to whine about how he was treated, and he caught an earful from my manager.
He still wanted the truck, and my manager still wanted to sell it, so he put the guy on hold and asked me. ‘I’ve gotta sell the truck. What do you want me to do? I’ll do the paperwork if you want, but you’re still gonna have to deliver.’
Me: ‘Nah, that’s alright. Just tell him his price expired when he got himself tossed, and there will be no negotiations when he comes back. If he wants the truck, he’ll pay what we ask. Don’t tell him the price and mark it up to $2,500.’
He laughed, nodded, and set it up. I got the deal jacket ready, brushed off his feigned apology, and made him fill out the credit app in silence before I showed him the buyer’s order.
CB1: ‘This is WAY higher than it was before!’
Me: ‘Yes, sir. It is. Sign here.’
CB1: ‘WHY?!?’
Me: ‘Jerk tax. Sign or go home.’
He glared at me, I stared into his eyes and didn’t say a word for a good 30 seconds, then he picked up the pen and signed.
I remained cold but professional through delivery and managed to treat him like any other customer I didn’t particularly like with my sold follow-up.
He remained a jerk every time I spoke with him, but he ended up inadvertently being my biggest source of referrals. Evidently, he told everyone he knew about me charging him a jerk tax, and he was such a notorious jerk that it made his circle want to buy from me.
Over the next year, I sold 7 cars to people he knew.
If anyone is interested, I did make my hat trick that day, but it didn’t come until shortly after close.”
Another User Comments:
“Do you find that older people are harder to deal with?
I (69F) bought a new car a year ago. My hubby and I arrived at the dealership and were greeted by an obviously seasoned salesman. When we said we were interested in test driving (specific car), he turned us over to a much younger salesman (he looked college-age).
I test drove the model I was interested in and said, “I want this car. How much?” He quoted $3k under my budget, so I said, “Fine.” No-fuss, no muss.
I suspect that the first salesman just didn’t want to deal with a couple of geezers haggling over pennies.
But I could be wrong.” SagebrushID
14. Treat The Nurses Like Garbage? Deal With The Consequences
“I was still a nursing student then, but because I was in my last year, I worked as an RN. And all of that was years ago.
The people are:
Senior Nurse- My Nursing instructor, a real cool cat, a woman you shouldn’t mess with
New Resident- A real snobby daddies boy straight outta med school
Cool Attending – Basically doctor Cox from scrubs
Other Nurses, nursing students are just siding characters here
So we are an academic hospital, so we’ve got a nursing school and new doctors come here to make their residency.
New Resident was this kind of snobby young doctor everyone hates. He depended on the nurses for stuff like laying catheters, putting IVs in, etc. But on the other hand, he talked down to the nursing staff and well just flirted with the young nurses.
Male nurses (like me) are just men who were too dumb to become doctors. Yeah. Really loveable kind of guy.
We had a new patient with some allergies and so on.
New Resident: yeah and give the Patient please the (risky) medication (He wasn’t allergic to that, but it was really possible that he could be.)
Senior Nurse: Yeah I have to intervene. The Patient could have an allergic reaction to this-
New Resident: Hey, do you have a medical degree or do I? How about doing your Job, NURSE!
It got silent. Deadly silent. Like in western when the two gunslingers face each other.
Every nurse, doctor, staff in earshot was deadly silent. All eyes lay on those two.
Senior Nurse: (smiles) Fine. Right. You’re the doctor. I am the nurse. (left)
New Resident celebrated this as his big victory. It was like in prison when the newbie defended himself and gained a bit of respect.
But then came her petty lil revenge. Most nurses were at the front desk during that night shift. Just talking, drinking the third cup of coffee, making paperwork, and so on.
Senior Nurse: (come to all) Hey. You may have witnessed what happened with the NR.
We are JUST nurses you know, maybe we should for his patients only do the minimal effort, as he is the doctor and we are JUST nurses.
Everyone liked that. So we did (don’t worry. Nobody died, we are not in the ICU with the deadly cases).
He was the last one to receive the files he requested, his X-Rays took longer than the ones of the other doctors and no nurses were getting him anything nonwork-related when he asked for (we don’t have to, but if a doctor asks really nicely we get him a cup of coffee, etc.)
And then it comes. The glory day of revenge. It was after a round with the Cool Attending.
New Resident wasn’t done with some of his diagnoses because he had to get everything himself. All of his X-Rays were at the front desk. No nurse was bothered to get it for him.
He had his hands full with laying catheters and putting in IVs because most of the time he asked a nurse, and well, no nurse had time for him because they had some paperwork to do, make some beds, change some bedpans, bring a patient to the X-Ray.
After all, you know, we are just nurses. He had to work overtime more often to finish his work. He was not happy.
New Resident: Cool Attending, a word, please.
Cool Attending: (sipping his coffee while looking at an X-Ray) yes?
New Resident: Where can I complain about the nursing staff?
Cool Attending: (puts down the X-Ray. Crosses his arms) If you got complaints you go to me first.
New Resident: I think the nursing staff is against me, really.
Cool Attending: Well no surprise newbie. You treated them like garbage. I tell you now one thing they didn’t seem to have taught you in your fancy med school.
The Nurses are nearly running the hospital. And YOU screwed up with one of the senior nurses and now YOU have to deal with it. The whole ‘the attending comes to rescue’ ended after med school, you understand me?
New Resident: (he looked like that shocked Pikachu meme.)
Nearly the whole staff was watching this. The senior Nurse was pleased. New Resident came crawling to apologize to her later that shift. Now he doesn’t get the minimal treatment anymore. But not the maximal treatment like Cool Attending, he’s still a little jerk, but Senior Nurse taught him a valuable lesson.
Don’t mess with the Nurses!”
13. Sick Or Not, I'll Still Show Up To Work Like You Requested
And without taking medicine since it’s “banned” at work.
“My first job post-college was as a barista with a large coffee chain. Now the chain is global, but when I started slinging coffee, it was less than 200 stores. The manager of the store was super passionate about coffee and got a job in the corporate office working with the coffee buyers about 6 months after I started.
Most of us working at the store were either in college or had recently graduated.
It was a good job with benefits, stock options, free coffee, flexible schedules, and a generally good culture. Some people were hoping to eventually get into corporate and build a career while others were working there until something better came up.
All in all, it was a solid team; we worked well together, the store exceeded its numbers, and while not without the occasional issue, everything was operating well under the previous manager.
That all changed when Debbie became our new manager.
Debbie was new to the company.
Her father started a regional chain of tire stores, and she previously worked for him managing the stores until he sold the chain. Debbie had been fast-tracked to become a regional manager for the coffee chain but needed to put her time (3-6 months) in the stores to learn the business.
Debbie was a stickler for company policy, but her true passion was in enhancing them.
At our first staff meeting, she reviewed some of the policies with the team, then augmented them with her own caveats. The one that is germane to the story is regarding drinking at work.
Now, the company policy was that people in the stores should not be under the influence of booze. Debbie, however, added her own details that she didn’t want anyone working if they’d had a drink 10 hours prior to their shift and that she didn’t want anyone “under the influence of anything, not even cold medicine.”
I’m not sure if there was an incident that prompted this expanded understanding of the policy, but it certainly took a reasonable policy and moved it well into the absurd.
The no drinking 10 hours prior to your shift was particularly harsh on those who worked the early shifts.
We needed to be there at 4:30 am, which means that we couldn’t have a drink after 6:30 pm the night prior. I wasn’t a huge drinker, but that just struck me as absurd. But the not under the influence of anything was pretty egregious considering we were selling stimulates by the cup.
Cue the malicious compliance…
It’s winter season where everyone gets sick, and I wake up at 3:45 with a cold.
I was scheduled to open the store at 4:30 in the morning with another co-worker. Sticking to the policy, I don’t take any medicine and open the store up as per my schedule.
I must have looked like death warmed over because several customers asked if I was okay that morning. My co-worker volunteered to work the bar leaving me the register (easier job) since I looked like trash.
At 6:30, Debbie arrives, to allow the two openers to take their breaks.
Debbie immediately goes into the back room to do some manager stuff leaving the two openers to continue working just as the morning rush is picking up.
Debbie finally gives the two openers our breaks about 45 minutes late. (Against company policy.) She also puts me on the bar since drink orders are starting to back up.
I explained how I wasn’t feeling well, but she wouldn’t have it. So, I plow on, feeling worse and worse by the minute. By this time, a few more co-workers have arrived, but Debbie was still sequestered in the back so we were short-handed.
At about 9:30 in the midst of our second-morning peak, I decide I’ve had enough, and I lock my knees. In my fatigued state, it only takes three or four minutes before I start to wobble and see the sparks at the periphery of my vision.
I take a quick look behind me to ensure there isn’t anything dangerous, then I fill the biggest milk pitcher and set it steaming. I close my eyes, squeeze my legs as hard as I can and relax into the impending blackout.
When I came to, there were several customers peering over the bar at me, and all my co-workers were staring slack-jawed at me.
It was right then that the large pitcher of milk boiled over, shooting a large dairy geyser into the air.
“What happened?” was all I managed to say before Debbie ran out onto the floor. I slowly got up and tried to return to making drinks as if nothing had happened. Debbie intervened and took me to the backroom before eventually sending me home.
Of course, there was an incident report that needed to be filled. In it, I reported how I didn’t take any medicine as per the policy outlined at the staff meeting on X date.
The district manager got involved, corporate HR got involved, co-workers corroborated my story, and Debbie’s fast-track career stalled out for more than a year.
The policy was changed along with some others regarding sick days.
Nine months later, I’m working for my former manager as a coffee taster, and Debbie is still managing an underperforming store waiting for that district manager role. When I left the company four years later, Debbie had made it to the district manager level but not the regional manager role that she was originally fast-tracked for.
Debbie also had a policy where she wanted everyone to call in sick 24 hours before their assigned shift and find someone to work the shift for them.
(I didn’t get into this policy because my story was getting long.) If you didn’t do this and failed to show for your scheduled shift, you would be written up, no exceptions.
The effect of her policy regarding sick days made it pretty much impossible to take one, especially for an opening shift. If I were scheduled to open Wednesday, I’d have to know that I’d be sick (and call the manager and get my shift covered) by Tuesday at 4:30 in the morning.
But in reality, it would have been Monday afternoon or evening. At the time, cell phones were fairly uncommon (i.e., not affordable) for people working a retail job which compounded the complexity of arranging a sick day.
To me, I felt that I was complying with two fairly stupid policies that day.
I chose to create a monumental scene in order to drive the point home.”
12. We'll Make Your Work Life A Living Nightmare
…until you resign.
“Although my part in this revenge was kinda small, it was the nail in the coffin for this jerk.
I was hired in a smartphone manufacturing plant as a mechanical engineer, this was my first job as an engineer, so I was kind of excited…
until I met a technician. We’ll call him Z-man. Z-man was a technician that was very angry that they “hired a b****y engineer” instead of paying him more.
I want to make clear that the more I knew him, I found out that not only was he very lazy, but he had only two tricks that kept him here: he had one of the few laptops with the files to program the assembly robots and knew how to speak English well.
Addressing both points, he did not know how to program really, just to change some parameters.
Also, we are in Mexico, and there are different levels of English among technicians and engineers, and he obviously had the upper hand on most when speaking English, but he was downright terrible at writing in English and Spanish.
Most people struggled with his fluidity of speaking English, even against other engineers and educated people (he was deported from the US). He used it to intimidate other technicians who weren’t fluent in English and behaved like their supervisor (spoiler alert: he wasn’t).
He soon found out, however, that he couldn’t do the same with me because not only was I as fluent as him (if having a more “Mexicanized” accent), but I also knew how to write better than him (not joking, he made awful mistakes in any language).
He was manipulative and lazy, but I could not do much about him because I was not his supervisor, even if I was above his rank and in the same department.
Also, his direct supervisor was not allowed to fire him. There was even a legend about the previous manager firing him before the manager quit.
“Mysteriously,” all the data from the robots disappeared, and Z-man had a copy by “coincidence” and was re-hired by the new manager. Even the previous manager told the new one he was making a “big mistake.”
Another thing I would like to add is that I’m not making justice on how much of a jerk he was.
He would call other departments to fix problems that were our own department issues, making enemies with these people.
Anyway, two years after dealing with this jerk, but not directly, his direct supervisor quit to move to another company, and by the same time he left, I put my two weeks notice for a better paying job.
My direct manager said, “Hey WorldBlackened, could you please be the supervisor of both teams for the next two weeks?” I said, “Sure” and hauled butt.
While my department was well behaved and needed little to no supervision (no joke, there would be times they would even pressure me because I taught them most technical stuff to make them independent), the department Z-man was in, was in complete anarchy.
But ironically with Z-man at the top, sending “weaklings” to do his job. I even told him he should leave the lab if he wasn’t writing a report, complaining while complying (he spent too much time in there watching YouTube and delegating his own tasks).
Weirdly enough, my boss was tired of him and told Z-man to get a job in two weeks. He panicked and went to the department he made enemies with to plead them to hire him. They told him to do a test and submit the CV.
This is where we found out how much of a fraud he was: He made a CV with not only tons of grammar mistakes, but also he claimed he graduated from the University of Florida as an engineer, a HUGE lie that was easily testable.
Also, the test was leaked and in very simple engineering questions that probably middle schoolers could solve half of it. He failed with a 0.3%, not a 30%, A 0.3%!!!
The “enemy” department still told our own, “Yeah, we’re going to hire him… Don’t worry about it.” Little did we know, it was a setup for Z-man.
They exploited him to do any and every job. Ironically, even some that were related to our own department! He was exhausted, this was their way to exploit him to force him to quit.
Now, this is a part where I cannot prove anything, but the situation was pretty obvious: One of our machines stopped working, I was the only on-site engineer left at this point, and the technicians were struggling to make it work.
Since most of their experience was with mechanical issues, they were limited on what they could do.
We saw from a window Z-man laughing at the technicians not being able to make the machine work. Desperate, the technicians asked for my help.
Little did they know, I was a mechatronics engineer, meaning I had some electronics background.
So I ask them to ask the electric engineering department for a multimeter for basic checks since they tested all of the mechanical issues and most of the electronics were not only sealed but also the machine was not the property of the company, so only basic repairs and diagnostics could be done.
That’s where I found out a presence inductive sensor was not “working.” I will not go into a lot of detail, but these are very basic with most of the signal handled by a basic bipolar junction transistor, of which there are two types: NPN and PNP.
Today I cannot remember which type was which in this case, but for the sake of the story, let’s say the non-working machine had a PNP sensor.
I asked them to check another machine that was working to see what label the sensor had, and sure enough, it was an NPN sensor.
We swapped it, and it worked perfectly. Just as we were testing it, Z-man walked by the window to see the machine working, and his face was of panic and sadness. That’s when I knew that was his last-ditch effort to return to the department.
It seems that he was going to extort the department into rehiring him once again by sabotaging the machine. Just in case, I did a crash course training for the technicians to do basic electronic diagnostics, so they could handle the situation better.
That Friday was my last day, and two weeks after, I was contacted by a technician that I still am friends with after so many years: “Hey, dude!
Z-man resigned! He couldn’t handle it anymore!” “What? Did he have something wrong with him?!” “Nah! He just found out what working really meant.”
I can’t feel pity for him. He tried to make a living nightmare of his colleagues and my technicians. I did my best not only to protect them but to make a stand against him, and I would like to believe it worked.
It has been one of the highlights of my professional life, even if I cannot add it to my CV.”
11. Mess With My Cat? How About I Screw Up Your Life?
Harm the cat, lose your partner.
“This story is not mine but my partner’s, who I’ll call Hunter, and for those wondering why, Hunter was his old nickname on Discord.
He has changed it, but I still call him that because it fits him). He loves animals, especially cats. He has 3 dogs (not all of them are his since his parents live with him) and had 3 cats up until the story began. He has a neighbor who I’ll call Jo (fake name).
Jo had a partner, Mary (also fake name), and a daughter, Sammy (I don’t think I need to say that again), and an important fact: Jo hates animals even though he has one.
So, Jo tried to poison my partner’s dog twice (luckily she recovered) and then he poisoned one of his cats who sadly died, and Jo bragged about it as if he had done something amazing for hurting my man in such a way (Hunter is known for being a tough man, like, for real; he’s really known in the city as well).
When he told me what happened, I knew that going to the police wouldn’t make any difference. I live in Brazil, so the police here don’t care for “minor” cases like that. He already tried to do so when Jo first poisoned his dog but to no avail, so I told him to get revenge and even showed him revenge subreddits so he would know what to do.
Now comes the sweet sweet revenge: Jo basically depends on his woman; she’s his gold mine, and without her, he’s all alone, and yet he betrayed her, and Hunter found that out. He followed him and saw Jo hooking up with a woman in his car, and then he knew that would be enough, so he learned when Jo would leave at night to go see this woman to plan his revenge.
One day, he saw Jo leaving and left as well but not without inviting Mary and Sammy (who is already over 18) first. He said he would go to the store and asked if they wanted to come with him. They said yes, and as they were going, Hunter said he saw Jo taking the road that leads to the other woman’s place and asked if they wanted to follow him.
Mary said yes without hesitation and so they did. When she saw Jo doing his business with the woman, she got out of the car, walked towards his car, opened the door, slapped him right across the face, and yelled at him saying that everything was over and saying that she was going to divorce him.
She then threw all his things out of her house, and he went to live with the other woman, and now he’s basically her pet, and it all could have been avoided if he left my man’s pets alone.”
10. Refuse To Do Any Work On Our Project? I'll Set You Up To Fail
“This is an old story. I was like 12 years, and I loved creating games. Nothing impressive – things like Breakout, Pac-Man… The best game I made was a simple pong with special abilities and an impossible mode, but I loved sharing it with my friends.
Anyway, my teacher Stefan divided us into groups of 4 for a group project. I was paired with Hans, Karen, and Anna (a friend). Hans and Karen were brother and sister. However, I and Anna soon discovered that Karen and Hans were not going to help.
They didn’t respond to texts or to messages through MSN, and in class, they talked about their new toys or the Pokemon they caught on their Gameboy (I had Pokemon Blue and loved that game myself.) They eventually said to just send them a text of what we have to say during the presentation.
Hindsight being what it is, I did wait too long to complain to the teacher. I waited 2 weeks to talk to Mr. Stefan. I and Anna both complained that Hans and Karen were not doing anything and that we would like to present as a duo instead.
Stefan, however, thought it was unfair to split the group up as the others “would not have enough time to prepare their own presentation.” So he told us that we would present with 4, and he would score accordingly.
The week passes, and the presentation was on Wednesday.
We present our project and did pretty well. We gave them the simplest lines to say, and that was that. On Friday, we receive our points (points were given after every presentation was given), and strangely, I and Anna received a 7/10, and Hans and Karen received an 8?!
Oh, did I mention that Mr. Stefan was good friends with both Hans and Karen’s parents? When we asked for clarification and mentioned that we deliberately gave them the easy/less important part to present, the teacher claimed they worked “equally” on the project; yet, they deserved a higher grade.
This made me so mad. Immediately, I thought of telling my parents, hoping they would be able to do something or go straight to the school director. But then a light popped off in my head. They loved my previous game (nothing much; just a maze game), and my next game was almost finished. Remember the pong game I talked about earlier?
So I finished creating my game and created a separate game for Hans and Karen. In their games, I put an extra piece of code that simply created a file called “stupidfile.txt” in their AppData folder. The file was 1kb, but it kept being created as long as the game was running (so you would have “stupidfile1.txt,” “stupidfile2.txt,” etc).
I didn’t expect this, but the game was a hit. There was an impossible mode that I created where the NPC was always able to dodge abilities and hit the ball. It was meant as a joke, but my friends would time how long they were able to survive against impossible mode.
This included Hans and Karen who, to be fair, were not bad at it.
Now for the result everyone has been waiting for. We had to do a presentation about historic events outside Europe. To make it so there would not be two of the same presentations, we would choose between several subjects given by the teacher (not Mr. Stefan; he taught French).
Hans chose the American Civil War, Karen the Russian Revolution, and I chose the warring states period of Japan. Hans and Karen were, however, already complaining that their pc was getting slow, and it was a new one. Strangely enough, their drive was getting full fast (any guesses why?).
But we all started on our assignment.
The time comes for the presentations, and I see both Hans and Karen sweating bullets. The first day passes, and the teacher calls out Hans and Karen to present. They try to get out of it as they wanted to present last, but the teacher wouldn’t budge.
I can’t remember what he said, but this is a good representation of his presentation: “The colonials in America were unhappy with Britain’s rule and revolted. The Americans won.” His presentation lasted for less than a minute. Surprised the teacher asked if Hans did any work.
Hans sheepishly confessed that because his drive was full that weekend, and he accidentally deleted the folder containing His and Karen’s presentation and research, they got nothing. Unfortunately, they had already used a similar excuse to get extra time for a history task and promptly got a 0 on their presentation, that combined with the fact that they were already barely passing history dropped their score to a 3/10 failing them completely.
Now about the Belgian school system. In Belgium, there are 2 mandatory schools: elementary school from 6-years-old to 12-years-old and high school from 12-years-old to 18-years-old. This was my first year of high school. We also have divisions ASO which is more theory than practical; this was more preparation for university.
TSO which is a balance between theory and practical, still with the eye on preparing for university. Lastly, we have BSO which is more practical than Theory. This was not in preparation for university but more to directly start working. Because of the system in place when you failed an important class, you had to redo the whole year again or drop down.
So now Hans and Karen had the choice to redo ASO 1 completely or continue in TSO 2.”
9. Damage His Car And Try To Blame HIM? Pay $1,000
“It was 3 in the morning, and my entire family was asleep after a long ride back to our hometown. While having one of the most pleasant dreams that involved having expensive cakes and fine drinks, it was rudely disrupted by the sound of our family’s car alarm, and my father went out to check out what happened.
Apparently, our neighbor was intoxicated and had fallen somehow. He hit our car hard enough for the alarm to activate. The entire issue could have been solved with a simple apology and everyone could have gone back to their own lives, but if that happened, I wouldn’t be telling this story.
Our neighbor was known to be a rather proud person and had loudly declared a few times that no one had ever won an argument against him in the past. So it was not surprising when he decided to push the blame onto my father when he realized everyone in my house was watching him.
My father tried to talk things out and ask if he needed help, but the possibility of a peaceful discussion was going down pretty quickly when we saw that our neighbor’s face was about as agitated as a fish out of water. None of us knew what was going on because as far as we knew, our car was parked in front of our house and there was nothing wrong with that.
It also didn’t help that our neighbor looked like a centipede that lost 98 legs and could barely stand properly without trying to use our car as support. Their conversation went something like this.
Father: ‘Are you okay? Do you need help?’
Neighbor: looks around, ‘YOUR CAR!
I FELL BECAUSE OF YOUR CAR.’
Father: ‘Uh… I’m sorry that happened.’
Neighbor: ‘MOVE YOUR CAR OR I’m CALLING THE POLICE.’
Father: ‘Go ahead, my car’s in the right place.’
While we were waiting for the police to arrive, his outbursts had woken up nearly everyone in the vicinity of our small neighborhood, and our neighbor was loudly exclaiming how he was right and how my dad didn’t know the rules here because he doesn’t live here.
My father kept his poker face up all the way till the police came.
My neighbor then granted himself a glamorous show of him being arrested in front of everyone with the charge of being a public nuisance, for causing damage to someone’s property with mischief as well as driving under the influence later on after the police found out there was no way he walked home from the bar 30 kilometers away.
Although his fall only caused a small dent on the car’s boot with slight damage to the paint job which would have been easily fixed, my father got $1,000 in payment for damages.
We had a great dinner the next day which consisted of… expensive cakes and fine drinks.”
Another User Comments:
“Only a person who is intoxicated that thought he had never lost an argument would call the police on himself. Now he has lost an argument in view of everyone plus he has damages to pay plus fines for the public intoxication charges.
And if the police start finding a video of him driving under the influence then it just escalates from there. And with all the cameras around, there is a strong possibility of this happening.
Now everyone can remind your neighbor of this little incident every time he starts with “I’ve never lost an argument.”” nickis84
8. Tell A Smart Kid They're Wrong? They'll Prove Ya Wrong
“This was WAY back in primary school, I was in 5th grade, and was VERY book-nerdy. My parents were book nerds themselves, “The holy book” in our house was “The Lord of the Rings.” I, of course, read that (with a little help), The Hobbit, and all the Harry Potter books that came out by then.
For my present on my 9th birthday, my parents bought me a “Biology-and-Sciences” encyclopedia, which was a series of not-that-heavy, yet not-that-childish (the drawings were pretty detailed and gruesome) books on various different subjects.
I was encouraged to continue my book reading during classes by most teachers, as the principal herself was very pro-“self-teaching” and all that.
There was one teacher though, I’ll call her Rita, that HATED me for ignoring her in class and reading, even though I was allowed. I was always getting grades in the high nineties, so she really couldn’t do much.
The thing is, I LOVED her class, as she was teaching about “sciences,” which was my favorite subject.
Never bothered her class, always answered her pop-questions meant to throw me off with respect, and was correct most of the time. I was seeing that as a challenge, and she even received praises from my parents to the principal for challenging me so.
At the end of 5th grade, we received a project to conduct a study on our favorite animal and show it to class.
Now, this being primary school, you’d probably expect Dogs, Horses, Cats, MAYBE something from a zoo, like a lion or a tiger.
Me, being the book nerdy type, looked up interesting animals on my encyclopedia and found the Albatross. With a wingspan of 3.7 meters (12ft for my western friends), it was majestic in its pictures, describing its aerodynamics and habitats.
So, that’s what I wrote about. When it was time to talk about our projects, I went up and started in my well-rehearsed ‘trying to be serious and adult’ voice to introduce “The Albatross! The bird with the longest wingspan in the world!”
Not one sentence after, Rita cuts me and declares, “Sit down kid!
There’s no such animal, and clearly, you haven’t prepared at all! It’s a 0 for you and learn to study instead of reading your fantasy books!”
I was shocked. Never in my (albeit short) life was I humiliated like that. I answered without thinking “What? No, you’re wrong!
The albatross is a real bird!”
Rita: “Oh? You think you know more than your teacher? Fine then, ‘mister know-it-all’ – show us proof!”
Me: “it’s in my book at home…”
Rita, being smug: “OF COURSE IT IS, know what? Why don’t you come tomorrow with your little ‘book’, and show all of us how stupid you are!”
At this point, I was crying, and most of the kids were laughing at me. I don’t blame them, it’s freaking PRIMARY SCHOOL and a kid is being humiliated in front of everyone. I might’ve laughed, was it someone else.
I couldn’t stay in class and ran home from school (it was right on the other side of the road and back then, kids above 9 were not uncommon crossing roads by themselves), my parents were called and rushed home from work, worrying, just to find me crying and hugging my dog, Nala, and holding my biology encyclopedia.
After calming me down and promising me I wasn’t in trouble for running home from school, they heard my story and immediately called the principal, and told her everything. Of course, she heard a VERY different story from Rita, but she agreed with my parents that it was HIGHLY UNUSUAL for an 11-year-old book-nerd with high grades and no problems with behavior, to RUN AWAY FROM SCHOOL.
So, she made an agreement with me and my parents; “if she wants you to prove her wrong in front of everyone, that’s what she’ll get.”
The day after, I was entering class sheepishly with my book as a shield to hide my face behind.
Before class started, there was an announcement that called all kids and staff to the central courtyard for a lecture. This was not that unusual, but no one expected that at 8 AM, most of the time it was called during or right after lunch break.
We went out, and there was my principal, the janitor with a mic and amp, and Ms. Rita herself, smiling daggers at me. Behind them, was a black-tarp-covered stand (important later).
As everyone settled down, the principal called “OP, can you please come up? Everyone, this is OP from class E2, and he has a VERY special animal to talk about.”
Some polite clapping and the principal hands me the mic.
I start giving my lecture, doing my best to keep my voice steady, and as I do so the principal stops me.
Principal, taking out a different mic; “wait for a second OP, I think some people here don’t know that Albatrosses are real. Do you have any proof?”
Me: “yes ma’am, I’ve brought the book like Ms. Rita asked me to.”
Principal: “Well, that’s good and all, but not every book is considered factual. What kind of book have you brought?”
Me: “An encyclopedia about Biology” showing the book to everyone.
Principal: “Wow, that’s a very good book to have!
But OP, I think some people, maybe even our Ms. Rita here, can’t see your book from that far. How about we show them a picture?”
At this point, both the principal and the janitor pulled on the tarp, revealing a large picture, hastily plastered to a board, of the Albatross!
This was rewarded with claps and oohs from the crowd, though I felt mine was the loudest.
Principal, smiling at me: “how about this, OP? I know you’d love to tell everyone about your bird. Would you like to write on this board and we’ll place it in your class?”
I smiled back and nodded yes enthusiastically.
I never saw Ms. Rita after that year.
Ps., Years later my parents filled me in on their side of the story and told me that the principal ORDERED Rita to apologize to my parents and to personally print and post the picture on the board, or she would be fired.
I imagine the hours she had wasted looking it up, (that was WAY before Wikipedia) getting a photo of the Albatross, and making that sign. Always cheers me up.”
Another User Comments:
“Sadly, a teaching license doesn’t require intelligence. In grade 10, we had an AMERICAN supply teacher for social science.
She was talking about the different US states one day and got to Arkansas. She pronounced it are-kansas (as in Kansas). One of the guys in the class politely said – I think it’s pronounced Arkan-sas, Miss. (tall A). She got extremely mad and arrogantly snapped back – “I AM American!
I know how it’s pronounced! YOU are nothing but a bunch of stupid Canadian kids!” We were stunned but let it go. When she tried to rewrite our local history and again got angry when we corrected her. We complained. She was gone the next day and never returned.” Waifer2016
7. Bratty Little Sister Gets A Spicy Cake For Her Birthday
A birthday to remember!
“This last year my younger sister really went on a power trip. She became bossy, selfish, and all-around a pain in the butt. It really stung when my birthday came around and instead of baking me a cake like my mother asked (as per tradition we always have a homemade cake for our birthdays, parents included), she ordered something online.
It not only came a day late, but it also said ‘Happy Birthday (Rude Word)’.
I couldn’t believe it and screamed at her. Not only had we had to move my birthday celebration from the day off to the next, but then I have to see THAT on my cake?!
Needless to say, I lost my mind after that and went crazy on her butt. At least until my older brother, who had driven up for my birthday, had to restrain me while our parents read my sister the riot act.
I honestly don’t know how I annoyed her, other than the fact I never let her boss me around (rule of the house: no bossing the other around).
So I was pretty upset that she’d do something so cruel to me on my birthday after a very awful year. (At least we were able to return it and get a more decent one, but still).
Which led to my revenge: a bad birthday, for a bad birthday.
When her birthday came around she told me I had to make her a cake. So… I told my Mom that I would make her a cake.
But my sister never specified what kind of cake, nor that I had to bake it.
Her birthday rolls around, our brother is on FaceTime, and I walk in…
With an unbaked cake, in the pan.
Sis absolutely loses it, screeching, while dad and brother are laughing hysterically and Mom has her face in her hands, shaking her head.
Of course, I say something along the lines of ‘Oh, I’m sorry. You just asked me to make it, not bake it,’ all while smiling sweetly.
Sister’s fuming still but then gets smug when Mom tells me to bake the cake. But remember… Sis didn’t specify what kind of cake.
So I bake the cake, and it’s late at night when I finish decorating it. A simple, ‘Happy Birthday’… with a few decorative flames.
Sis doesn’t like the flames but is happy she’s getting cake on her birthday.
I serve her a slice, but keep the rest of the family from having any…
And the look on her face as the hot, HOT spices hit was PRICELESS.
I had spent all my free time searching for a recipe of revenge and found one published online that includes chili peppers, extremely hot spices, and basically made her the hottest cake I could find.
And I mean HOT. Sis has always been sensitive to spices, but the way her face went red and her eyes watered said it all.
Long story short, she had her mouth basically burned and wasn’t able to taste anything for days. I got in trouble of course, but it was worth it to know that I got her back. And she’s been knocked down a few pegs; Mom had us sit down and talk a week after my revenge, and Sis finally admitted that she went a little (very) crazy.
We’re now leaving each other to ourselves.
But I doubt anyone will ever forget the ‘Spicy Hot Cake Revenge’.”
6. Can't Pay Your Bills Or Follow Restaurant Regulations? Prepare For Some Big Life Changes
‘I am a quite young guy (now 23) and started a small company with a few friends (about the same age).
We had some common interests in IT-related work, so we decided to make it official, but for us, it is more a hobby than a job (we just generate enough revenue to be at the 0$-mark end-of-year, working weekends and evenings mostly) as we all are employed in our main jobs and earn quite well despite our age (no conflict of interest).
I have a neighbor (I am living with my parents in a small village in the country-side) that manages a small non-profit youth club out of his own pocket mainly for school children to hang out on Friday evenings with their colleagues and enjoying some music and party (a room probably around 100m2 in the school building, fitted with a small bar, lights, DJ-equipment, 2kW PA system, etc).
I was helping him out to manage this youth club when I was at school and from then on. We would rent out the equipment and offer DJ-ing services for birthday parties, weddings, (school) concerts, etc. for quite cheap prices.
Through some colleagues of my neighbor, we got offered a gig to rent out equipment and offer DJ-ing services in a restaurant.
We met with the restaurant owner (Let’s call him RO) and got some backstory about the restaurant and RO. The location of the restaurant struggled hard the last few years, as it is quite remote in the countryside. RO doesn’t have much experience in running such a restaurant, nor anything to do with running a business.
He was before a “normal” office worker (don’t quite remember what exactly tho) and at some point thought he can make a living with this restaurant (he rented it for quite a high price) serving mainly food and some basic drinks. He started with that about 3 months prior.
The interior of the restaurant was quite old with not a lot of effort put in to make it attractive for anyone wanting to come there. The kitchen wasn’t quite up to standards (they are quite high in the country I live in). Food was basically frozen and just heated up on-demand, the “chef” in the kitchen wasn’t a real chef, and RO was losing quite a lot of income from running this restaurant.
RO planned to organize musical events every weekend to get more customers into the restaurant. Some weekends, RO had some small one-man bands organized, another was planned for DJ-ing, etc.
I and my neighbor decided to give it a try for some time and set our price (it was quite low, probably about $150/weekend with 2 people working 6 hours two evenings).
No big problem about the price, as it is also more of a hobby and not income. After a few weeks of doing this, probably about 10 people (max probably 20) were there on average a day on weekends. That’s not a lot; the restaurant had space for 100 seats and definitely didn’t cover costs.
RO approached me after some time to ask if I (actually my own company) would be interested in creating a website for said restaurant and run some advertisements on social media. I agreed – why not; we haven’t done such a thing so far, and we are willing to learn what we need to do (of course letting him sign a small contract).
In about 2 hours, I had set up a small WordPress site with the menu, some pictures, etc., and hosted the site for him. For the advertisement, I required prepayment of the amount RO wanted to invest into it, just for safety. Total of this job was probably around $500 ($100 for ads already paid), but then when we sent him an invoice, he mentioned that he had difficulties with paying it.
I agreed to a payment of $200, and the rest can be paid overtime by RO.
At some point, we heard that RO actually “lent out” $50K from the “chef” he “hired” (he didn’t get paid for working there) to help pay the bills. Even the one waitress working there hasn’t been paid since she started working there.
Also, the payments for our gigs were getting delayed for some time by RO.
A bit concerned about this, I and my neighbor continued with the gigs, knowing that we probably won’t get paid. One evening, RO approached me again to ask if I (in the name of my own company) can help out with some technical stuff at his home.
Sure, I did, prepay, $40 an hour(still very cheap) for setting up some e-mail, fixing some printer issue, etc. at his flat. When I saw RO’s desk, I was blown away from what I saw there all around: hundreds of unpaid invoices, bills, reminders (including 3rd reminder to pay some bills), etc. that weren’t small things (for ex: reminders for rent of restaurant and his own flat, internet, mobile phone, even federal reminders).
I finished the job and went to my neighbor to tell him what I have seen in RO’s flat.
After that, my neighbor and I decided to decline any further gigs that were planned, and I (in the name of my own company) declined any further work RO requests and sent some reminders for our still open invoice ($200).
We didn’t get any compensation from RO after that but wasn’t hurting too much as it was just some free time I spent creating the website. After some time, I took the website and email server offline for the restaurant.
And then comes the real revenge:
I and my neighbor did some further investigation on RO and found quite some interesting things: RO had tried to run two restaurants before but failed miserably and had to file for bankruptcy, RO hadn’t registered the current restaurant as a business, RO doesn’t have a license to sell booze in the restaurant, and some other details.
We also had some talks with the “chef” of his restaurant that lent RO that $50K, and we advised him to ask for his cash back from RO, and take legal advice / go to court for claiming his cash because otherwise it may be gone completely (if not already).
With that evidence, we started to write some anonymous reports to federal administrations: tax office, trade office, health department, employment exchange, etc. And then we waited.
A few days later, it started: Different departments were inspecting and searching his restaurant (and of course had to close it), searched his flat for files about the illegal business, questioned the “chef” and the waitress, and finally, RO got arrested.
I couldn’t really follow up what actually happened after that with RO (because of the anonymous tips, and I was away from real-live for a year, military service), I only know that his partner left him, some cash was paid back to the “chef” and the waitress (from his retirement funds), and I think RO ended up in jail for some years, but not sure how long.
I (from the side of my own company) didn’t bother to try getting what RO owed us as it simply wasn’t a big deal and amount for us. Seeing him go down and have his life ruined was more than enough for us as a “payment.””
5. Refuse To Pay Me What I Deserve? I'll Take It To The Department Of Labor
“I had a great job I loved. Got paid decently, had a wonderful window office with a view, great supervisor; I was just happy.
I didn’t get along too great with my other co-workers, but no worries; that’s because I liked being left alone to get my job done.
One day, our supervisor announces he’s leaving to move on to bigger and brighter things.
I was really bummed.
He was cool and kept up the morale. Shortly after he leaves, they promote this horrible vile creature to manager. She was a selfish and bad manager, so I’ll call her BM.
BM hated me. She never really worked with me and refused to talk to me.
She went as far as ignoring me in the hallway when I said hi; she would just avoid eye contact and walk on.
If I ever made a “mistake,” she would hold a group meeting to have me tell people what I did, then she would tell me it was all wrong, I messed up bad, and told everyone I didn’t even understand basic things and the right way to do things.
Well, I understood the right way to do things. Any mistakes were mostly due to miscommunications or me overthinking, not because I didn’t understand the basics.
But she never talked to me about it, only would publicly shame me. Oddly, I was the one she always went to if someone else made a huge mistake because I would methodically work to repair everything (even though she claimed I was incapable of understanding anything).
BM made my last few months there awful. I was working my behind off since we were understaffed and the only other person who could help just went off to work on his own project.
When we finally got new people, I was in charge of helping to train them.
Once they got slightly trained up around came review time. I was worried because BM hated me, so I knew I wouldn’t get my full bonus.
I had been reporting her to HR for the way she had been treating me and was told, “You should look for a new job.” Well, I sit in for my review and am flat out told I didn’t understand how to do my job, didn’t understand the basics of the industry, and was pretty worthless.
Wait. I did all the work and kept our department afloat for months, I trained the new people, I repaired their mistakes, but I’m the bad one? I could go on, but needless to say, BM seals the deal.
I was done. I typed up my rebuttal to the review (stating the lies she told me and attaching pages of proof).
I printed it out, along with a resignation letter, and left.
(I work in an at-will state and company policy doesn’t require a notice.) I had already been job hunting and had an offer, so no need to stay.
And now for the revenge.
I am always a fan of ‘covering your butt.’
I save copies of emails, timecards, everything. When my final paycheck came in, I realized I was short-changed on vacation time. No biggie in a way, a quick call to HR, and I would have had a check the next week.
Except HR were the ones who failed to do anything about BM when she was humiliating me and lying on my review. Instead, I reported them to the Department of Labor.
They must have been a bit backed up at the time because it took them nearly a year to get to my case.
That was fine by me. You see, the longer a company goes without paying you, the higher the fines, and the more they owe you. Not only did I get my missed vacation time paid out, but they had to pay me extra to make up for withholding that pay for so long, I made up a little for the missed bonus.”
4. Demand I Take Your Course? I Won't Even Try
“When I was a senior at school (and this is going on 35 years ago now), I got pretty good grades – there’s no real secret: I was bright, my parents made sure I worked my backside off and I was really lucky to get into a great school (it was an exam+interview to get in).
My parents weren’t well off so they made sure I worked at school because it was the best opportunity I was ever going to get.
So time passes, and I’m doing fairly well in school – top streams for everything, took Maths ‘O’ level a year early so I could take the ‘AO’ level when most people were doing ‘O’ – this was all set up for doing 6 ‘A’ levels in 6th form, so it was a big deal and most of the teachers knew who was doing it.
Mr. P took me for Spanish in one of those streams, and one day he asked me to stay behind. He started to sell me on taking another ‘O’ level at the same time I was taking Maths ‘AO’. I was interested, thinking it was Spanish (I liked Spanish) but no…
Mr. P was trying to establish another course for himself as an RE (Religious Education) teacher, and he was doing it by showing the headmaster (the principal) that he could take a small chosen group of people through a year’s instruction and get them to past the exam.
He’d been doing it apparently for a couple of years now, and every single student had got an ‘A’, or at least that’s what he claimed. He made a big deal about how the perfect record was really important to establishing RE as an exam course (rather than a couple of weekly free periods) at the school.
The thing is, even then I was not at all religious – Brown suits were the root cause, but the upshot was that I wasn’t even vaguely interested in studying for a year, learning stuff that I didn’t care about when I had real things to worry about like Thermodynamics and Stoichiometric equations…
I politely said ‘No thanks.’
He got insistent, I was ‘ideal’, I’d ‘regret it if I didn’t take the opportunity’, it would be ‘good for my grades’, etc., etc.
‘No thanks, I’m just not interested. I have to go now,’ – and left for my next class.
That night he phoned my parents. This was the unforgivable sin, if you’ll pardon the pun, because my mother is religious and she jumped on it.
Parents have a lot more leverage than teachers, or at least they did in my day. Long story (ed: omit the screaming matches, the tantrums, the sulky silences, etc.) short, I ended up doing RE.
So every time I turned up for that darn class, taking away two (2!) precious ‘free periods’ every week, I resented what was happening more and more. Eventually, it focused on a hard-as-diamond hatred of the subject and of Mr. P. All the time, I kept my head down, did the work, and smiled for the camera.
My in-class grades were good.
Where is the malicious compliance, I hear you ask? Well, it was partly in the last paragraph, the sweet smiling on the outside, the boiling anger on the inside, but mainly when it came to exam time. When my exam results came through, I had 7 ‘A’ grades, 3 ‘B’ grades, and one ‘F’.
On that RE paper, I had written two things: my name, and in clear writing: ‘it doesn’t seem very Christian to force people to take tests.’ I left that face-up on the desk so Mr. P (the main exam invigilator) could read it when he collected it, then got up and left, 5 minutes after the start.
I made sure to smile at him on the way out of the hall – he couldn’t follow, of course…
He never spoke to me again. I didn’t take Spanish for A level (3xMaths, Physics, Chemistry, and GS) so I didn’t have to interact, and I always behaved as if nothing had happened if we passed in the corridor.
I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think he ever took another group of people through an accelerated RE course again.
My parents weren’t happy either – but I stuck with ‘you said I had to take the course and do the exam, and I did.’ They never said I had to try hard in the exam, they (like Mr. P) just assumed I would.
They got over it a lot faster than Mr. P did.”
3. You Break It? You Buy It
“I work at a pub and one night this complete, absolute jerk of a woman comes in. No, that’s an understatement. She was a demon made entirely from fragments of nightmares, with the sole mission to give waitresses a taste of what nightmare for servers might be like.
Working as a server you learn to read people (not judge them, but understand what they expect from you and assess their level of needs), and she was totally the type who expected a server to be her servant.
It was almost a year ago, and I had only been working there for about a month, I can’t recall everything she did, and by the end of it, I was so angry & rattled I think I blocked most of it out.
But it started with her just rolling her eyes at everything I said and asking ridiculous questions. She asked what was on the nachos and I told her, I did not, however, mention olives because there are no olives on the nachos, in fact, there are no olives in anything on the menu at all.
But she told me she’d take the olives on the side, I told her the nachos actually didn’t have olives at all. Well, apparently she really wanted olives, because she couldn’t understand how this could be, or why I was doing this to her.
The whole time her perfectly kind and normal dining companions were giving me looks of sympathy, or ‘what the heck’ looks to each other after every demand or complaint she made.
It was somebody at the party’s birthday and I could tell she was ruining it for everyone with her attitude.
Anyway, all night I hoped and hoped for any small, slight chance to mess with her. I’d never spit in anyone’s food, but in this case, I considered it. Though she was so rude even that wouldn’t have been satisfying, it would’ve only been a personal triumph, but I wanted this woman to suffer.
For her to feel it and for her to witness instant, gratifying, karma. She complained about the ridiculous and obscure drinks she kept ordering. None of them were made right. She complained and complained and ridiculed and sighed. And was just generally the most unpleasant person I’ve encountered in my life.
But I did my darndest to kill her, with kindness. It was almost as if she was playing a character, an absolute parody of the worst restaurant patron ever, and I half-expected some guy to come out of nowhere, point to a hidden camera, and award me thousands of dollars for keeping my cool after all her nonsense.
By about the 6th drink (these were doubles) I finally got my chance to mess with her. I’d brought her a fresh drink, and as soon as I’d turned around she (or according to her, the guy beside her) knocked over the glass, spilling the drink and breaking the glass.
I grabbed a rag and cleaned it up, gathering up the glass, all the while being sweet as pie.
Then she says she’ll need a replacement and I reply with, ‘Unfortunately, I can’t serve you anymore.’ She angrily asks why and I say, ‘It’s house policy, once a glass is broken the bartender cuts off drink service.’ (total nonsense).
She concedes and sits the rest of her evening without another drink. At the end of the night, I bring her the bill and as SOON as I put it down in front of her she yells, ‘I want to see your manager!’ almost as if she’s so upset she might cry from how unfairly I’ve treated her.
So I go tell my manager (the owner/bartender) the situation, simply that she broke a glass after many, many drinks, so I cut her off. He goes over and completely defends my side. She tells him I’d been rude to her all night and that he should fire me!
He doesn’t give it any serious consideration, just tells me that what I did was absolutely the right thing in that situation.
The best part was that he’d refused to take the spilled drink off the bill, too (that is house policy. You break it, you bought it, jerk.)
Everyone else in the party apologized profusely for the way she’d acted all night as they came up to pay their bills, and tipped a good 20% to make up for it.
It may not sound as satisfying as it was, but that opening when she spilled the drink was a pure karmic triumph.
It felt like sunshine and justice were making love inside my brain.”
2. Accuse Me Of Faking My Mom's Cancer? You Lost Your Shot At Teaching Anywhere In The District
“This was in my grade 11 year of high school. My computer class had a year-long substitute teacher because our amazing teacher was out for a year working on a government contract.
Our previous teacher was outstanding. He had six different classes in our classroom all happening at the same time which were: computer repair, programming lvl1, programming lvl2, networking lvl1, networking lvl2a, and lvl2b.
He would give a lecture for each of the classes on a specific day of the week: programming on Monday, repair on Tuesday, and so on.
We would all work in our own groups, and everything went quite well.
The next year came around, and I found out that we had a sub for the year. I had two back-to-back blocks in this class ’cause I was doing two courses.
I wandered up to the class to see what kind of teacher we were dealing with, mainly interested because I was almost certain whoever they found did not have the credentials to teach at least half of those classes.
The new teacher was a foreign woman that none of us have ever heard of before. For the purpose of the story, we will call her Mrs. S.
I went and found my friends to tell them what I had seen. We were all optimistic ’cause from a very short conversation, she seemed quite informed and had a good background.
It didn’t last long. On the first day of class, Mrs. S introduced herself as a programming teacher who had been in school for four years. She went on to tell us about her programming experience in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access.
She then told us that the programming students would not be doing the Java and C++ course we had signed up for and would instead be doing database and Excel because those are what she learned, and she said, and I quote, ‘They will be more useful than C and The Java.’ She also went on to suspend all at-lunch clubs because she didn’t think high school students could be trusted with computers alone.
Understandably, some of us were quite upset about that considering that we came there to program.
She also did not give the repair people or the networking people any kind of support and completely stopped their lectures as well, preferring to let them figure it out themselves and ‘self teach’ without giving any of the resources to do so and occasionally throwing out a test pre-written by the last teacher for her.
This continued for about two weeks till one day she came in and said quite irritated that we would actually be doing ‘The Java’ now unless we wanted to keep doing database, so we switched to Java, and she basically left us out to dry from there.
Because she wasn’t teaching database anymore, she came to harass people in computer repair. First, she told us the shop room was too messy and made us throw out 90% of our training workstations and equipment because they were not important in her eyes. Equipment that did not belong to the school but actually belonged to the other teacher.
We took home what we could steal for safekeeping, but she did end up throwing out a few thousand dollars in equipment.
Then she started imposing stupid rules on us such as:
“You can’t have the computer on while you are troubleshooting inside ’cause you could electrocute yourself.”
Or
“You don’t need the case open to troubleshoot motherboard lights.”
Or my personal favorite and the scariest:
“Maybe you should change the power supply to 240v if you aren’t getting enough power.”
We followed most of her stupid requests as much as we could because she threatened to lock us out of the lab room and give us only textbook work if we didn’t.
Needless to say, it was a challenging time. One of the students in the networking area got fed up and started doing up his own course work and lecturing to us so that we could at least get some kind of use out of the courses.
To his credit, it was all very good, but Mrs. S had the nerve to force him into doing it from there on out and then turn around and give him low grades for not getting his own work done on time.
A few months of this very uneasy balance go by, and my mother comes down with colon cancer.
I have already had a handful of other family members suddenly taken from me by cancer, so understandably, this is a very stressful time. I was joking with my friends and trying to not break down over the whole thing. I had a very unstable laptop running Linux that would crash if looked at funny and had a horrible habit of corrupting the OS when the battery died because the reserve shutdown sensor didn’t work anymore (battery always read 0% but would go for an hour or two).
While I was working on the school desktop computer, I had a few pages open that I was taking notes in and a social media tab, so I could keep in contact with my mother ’cause she was in surgery, and I was waiting for her to come out.
I look over and the teacher is snooping through my laptop opening folders and closing windows and eventually pushes the power button in till it shuts down (which also usually corrupts anything I was doing).
The following happened.
M: What do you think you are doing?
S: You shouldn’t be on social media or writing notes on a personal computer during class time, especially when your grades are slipping.
Thanks for bringing that up in front of everyone…
M: That gives you no right to touch my stuff! You better hope you didn’t just corrupt everything!
This laptop breaks easily.
S: Then you shouldn’t have it out during class. Keep that tone up, and I’ll see you get a detention.
At this point, I am trying just to keep calm because if I get too emotional, I have a tendency to explode.
This is often made worse because of my mild autism. I took a second and replied in a calmer tone.
M: I’m sorry. I’m just having a hard time at home right now… My mother was diagnosed with colon cancer, and I am waiting to hear back.
And this is the part that REALLY set me off.
S: You don’t look like a kid whose mother has cancer. Quit making sob story excuses.
Are you FREAKING kidding me‽
It took every fiber of my body not to stand up and slap the witch right there.
I gave her the dirtiest thousand-yard stare I think I have ever done while also trying to not burst out crying. I spoke to nobody for the rest of the day till I got home, and people kept asking if I was okay, but I ignored everyone.
My mother was out of the hospital and home by the time I got there. I broke down crying and told her about my day, and her face was comforting, but you could see the fire of an angry woman behind her brown eyes. She told me not to worry and that it’d be okay.
A few weeks passed, and I was called into the office for a one on one parent-teacher conference someone forgot to tell me about.
There were all the teachers I had that year, good and bad: my learning assistance teacher, the VP, and the principal herself.
They told me that we were there to discuss my grade slippage as soon as my mother came. My mother was about 10 minutes late, leaving me to awkwardly sit with all these people. She comes in and is all smiles.
M: Sorry I am Late!
I got held late at the hospital.
Someone, but I’m not sure who, asked her why she was at the hospital and if everything is okay.
My mother answered in her happy way.
M: I was just getting my cancer checked on; I have colon cancer.
The room went cold, and her voice seemingly dripped with b***d when she said it. My computer teacher went pale and everyone in the room was giving a confused ‘what on earth did you do’ look.
My mother proceeded to relay me coming crying home about how I was treated to everyone present while Mrs. S tried to become one with the wall of the small meeting room.
She kept it short but to paraphrase added the following: “How dare you say something so careless to my son. I hope you are ashamed, and I hope you don’t get invited back for another year.”
She then returned back to her normal happy self and discussed my grades like nothing happened whilst half the teachers were still trying to figure out what just happened and told them that now she was out of the hospital my grades should improve again.
I just sat quietly the whole time and tried to suppress bursting out laughing.
After that day, she never directly spoke to me again, had instructions relayed through other people, or gave them to the class as a whole. She did her hardest to be nowhere near me and say nothing to me.
My grades improved quite a bit, and the year ended with me passing.
Mrs. S was previously offered a job at the school as a secondary computer teacher, but after all the trouble, the job was pulled back.
The next year when our first computer teacher returned, he was furious to learn most of his equipment and personal books had been thrown out, but we returned the things that we snagged during the purge, but he still lost a few thousand in personal teaching stuff.
The school paid him back with $10,000, but he says he lost so much more than that in time and pre-set handmade equipment.
We told him all about the horror show, and he gave us all an extensive test normally given at the end of the year which the vast majority of us failed. We ended up redoing all the computer courses from the previous year because, in his words, she didn’t even teach us the basics.
That sub can no longer teach in this or the neighboring districts.”
Another User Comments:
“At no point did anyone think to tell a principal “This lady changed the class we all signed up for, she refuses to teach it.”
Or
“This new teacher is asking us to throw out all this equipment but the old teacher personally paid for it.”
This was an extremely frustrating read. In most schools I know, the kids argue over seat changes and you’re telling me this entire class, full of multiple classes at the same time, had not one person who even thought of complaining or arguing about this?
Maybe I missed something by accident because no one else seems to be wondering about this.
I’m astounded this sub even thought she could get away with this. To not actually teach the classes you’re hired to teach and get away with it because not one single person said a single word?
She had to have been the dumbest person to ever try to teach (and the luckiest since she stumbled on the one giant class that never complained, ever).” ohgodcinnabons
1. Here's Why You Shouldn't Bully Me
“This was a traumatic experience for me. There are holes in this story, but I will try to share as best as I can remember.
This is a story about a 15-year-old kid (me) who got bullied. Also, I live in the Netherlands.
Let’s get some context first because I also did some things which caused some people to mistrust me and also to show that I was a jerk.
A year prior, I figured I might be trans and became depressed. There was no one for me to share my feelings with at the time. I was recently betrayed by a kid I’ll call Scumbag who only put his name on a project we both worked on and claimed I didn’t do anything.
I later had a falling out with a friend who thought I was doing the same to him but was a misunderstanding. This issue was resolved, but he still did not really trust me.
I had fairly won a handicraft competition and wanted to receive the prize.
I didn’t know that the school wanted the winner to donate the prize to a charity. I still think it’s a nonsensical thing to do. I initially refused to donate but saw that classmates got angry, and I felt very guilty and donated the prize.
The story happens shortly after this.
This must have been my third school year, and I noticed a new kid in the hallway. I tried to make friends with him because I didn’t have many. We hit it off pretty well.
Now enters Scumbag who was in the same class as NewKid.
Scumbag started spreading all kinds of rumors about me to NewKid, causing him to mistrust me and not be my friend anymore. NewKid didn’t believe anything I said because of the context story #3, which Scumbag told him about.
I noticed Scumbag was trying to be one of the ‘cool kids’ but got bullied by them instead.
I had a falling out with those bullies a year prior and I figured they might have instructed Scumbag to bully me.
The same day, I got approached by TeacherBob who asked if I wanted to join his team for another competition, I forgot what the prize was but I think it was a scholarship + doing the graduation speech and all that.
I refused this because I have huge stage fright, I hate attention, I was depressed and still felt guilty about what happened earlier. I felt like I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t tell TeacherBob my reasons. TeacherBob asked if I was sure and I said yes.
He later asked New Kid which was fine because he was also a great student. He accepted.
NewKid told me, looked down on me, and asked if I was mad. I said he had done well. NewKid tried to rub it in my face and I approached TeacherBob because I wanted another shot.
TeacherBob in the end agreed but since he can’t simply undo his promise with NewKid, he decided to have a small competition to retrieve something. I forgot what it was, but it was needed.
I knew Scumbag had the thing we needed so I felt doomed from the start, I approached him about it but he wanted 70% of the benefits.
I refused because it was ridiculous and not worth it. He gave NewKid a much better deal and NewKid won. I simply congratulated him and gave Scumbag the finger. He then proceeds to rub it in my face every time I see him and creates more lies about me.
I tell TeacherBob about this but he does not believe me. It was 2 vs 1. TeacherBob would only believe NewKid and Scumbag because he figured I was salty about it. (I was)
Meanwhile, NewKid but mainly Scumbag were basking in their newfound success and got a bit more popular because of what they were working on with TeacherBob.
Scumbag made friends with the bullies now while still being NewKid’s ‘best friend.’ NewKid thought the Bullies were cool kids so accepted their ‘friendship.’
A week later, TeacherBob and NewKid accused me of destroying some things, I denied but Scumbag came and said he witnessed me doing it.
TeacherBob believed him and due to pressure, I said I did it. I afterward corrected myself but the damage was done. TeacherBob didn’t believe me at all.
They would cause me multiple times and I kept denying it from then on. In the end, I had no proof to show that I didn’t do it versus NewKid and Scumbag saying I did it.
I figured I always need to have an alibi from that point onwards. I still had few friends who I was in contact with, but had asked me for some distance earlier while at school because of ‘reputation.’ I asked them if I could hang around them as much as possible to prove to everyone I didn’t do all the stuff I was accused of.
They agreed because they also wanted to know for sure.
This worked, NewKid and Scumbag’s accusations became more ridiculous each time, including that I had hit him but I now had multiple people saying I didn’t do it because I was with them. One of those friends was the one from Context #3.
Scumbag tried to ruin my friendships by spreading more lies but failed. This went on for a while and friends realized NewKid, Scumbag, and Bullies were bad people. TeacherBob obviously talks with other teachers and now they didn’t believe me, I had approached one for help because she knew me well, I still got penalized and yelled at a lot because there was no proof supporting me.
New Kid and Scumbag continue the false accusations but I made sure to have witnesses or an alibi. They once accused me of doing something, but I was talking with a teacher about homework at that time they accused me of doing things. TeacherBob only believed those two but was proven wrong by said teacher.
All of these things hit my capacity and I was very depressed. I needed to convince TeacherBob that I was innocent. I tried to find TeacherBob alone, without NewKid and Scumbag. This took multiple tries before I got the opportunity.
I approached TeacherBob and I said I never did any of those things and that NewKid and Scumbag lied, instigated and escalated all the accusations.
He didn’t believe me at first but I convinced him to follow me so I could prove it. He just needed to stay unseen.
So I walked to the locker area, where I knew NewKid, Scumbag, and Bullies would be. This was all the way in the front, in view of everyone and the perfect position for me.
I greeted them in a rude way. TeacherBob was standing next to me around the corner, unseen.
At first, they thought I was going to fight them, but I apologized for being rude. NewKid and Scumbag immediately started hurling abuse at me, calling me afraid, a loser, a wimp, and rubbing it all in.
Classmates and friends figured by now they might be lying but saw me not doing anything in retaliation.
Scumbag was the kid who instigated NewKid to bully me so I hated him the most. I saw Scumbag whisper in NewKid ear and I saw NewKid readying their fist to hit me.
It took every bit of willpower in me to not react to their provocations. I didn’t move because I was in full view of TeacherBob, while he was still unseen.
NewKid walked to me and when he was about to actually throw a punch, he saw TeacherBob and his face went white.
Scumbag was still standing at the lockers with Bullies yelling at NewKid to hit me and beat me up. NewKid yelled that I set them up.
TeacherBob heard everything + many witnesses and was VERY mad and kicked both of them from his team immediately, NewKid was begging for apologies and another chance, TeacherBob said I could decide.
I was considering it because Scumbag instigated NewKid into doing all these things. While I was considering it I saw Scumbag have that disgusting smile as if I just gave him power again. I immediately refused, telling Scumbag to take that disgusting smile off his face.
NewKid realized what Scumbag had done, pushed him very hard, and blamed him. The bullies started laughing at Scumbag and NewKid because they got caught and because they lost everything.
I asked TeacherBob if I could get a shot but he just yelled at me and refused, I accepted the decision because I also did a few awful things in retaliation to NewKid and Scumbag.
Anyway, I had won and there was this flood of relief washing over me. I noticed later that multiple teachers were paying attention.
The aftermath: Scumbag tries to rile Bullies up against me but gets shunned and bullied instead.
NewKid actually gets depressed because he lost something he earnestly worked very hard to get.
His ‘Cool Kids’ friends shun him, telling him to get lost.
NewKid comes to me for forgiveness and wanting to make things right with me. NK had actually met a new friend during this whole period but he didn’t really know him. This new friend is a really good dude, I told NK I would never be his friend again, but that the new friend really wanted to be.
I also told him to get therapy because he felt depressed.
NewKid’s new friend actually thanked me.
Scumbag still tried to ruin me but I told him to get lost, no one trusts him anymore. I made sure that everyone knew what he did.
NewKid actually got therapy, apologized again, said that I was right about Scumbag and I forgave him.
Scumbag saw this and tried to apologize (take advantage of the fact), I told him to screw off for everything he did and for still trying to do. I don’t forgive him even today.
So in short. I had won. NewKid and Scumbag’s friendship was ruined. Everyone shunned Scumbag until graduation.
I had a talk with teachers afterward, basically me just yelling at them. After that talk, Teachers would patrol the student areas more often and lock classrooms.
There is actually a bit more to this story because I did some not nice things in retaliation but I forgot as this is about 12 years ago.
It was pretty traumatic, I remember feeling very isolated, lonely, and those uncomfortable eyes from everyone when they didn’t believe me. I still can’t believe that I was a pushover who let this happen to himself. Even today I will flip out when someone puts their lying words in my mouth.
A while later I found out through rumors that TeacherBob was Scumbag’s dad.”
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