People Brag About Their Momentous Revenge
16. Won't Pick A Game Everyone Can Play? I'll Stop You From Participating
“Last year at my previous job, we transitioned to work remotely from home for obvious reasons.
My company reacted surprisingly and managers had weekly one on ones with everyone in my department(50+) to talk about how we were affected by the transition. As a result of the feedback provided they started giving us a 30-minute ‘fun’ meeting every Friday within groups of 15 people that they split us into.
This was all good and dandy except ‘Jalisa’ commandeered my team’s fun meeting every week and turned it into the Jalisa show.
She was a terrible employee, also had ADHD, and would have been fired due to her behavior if the department head wasn’t her best friend. She once spent 45 minutes prank-calling all of the employees just quacking at them on the phone. Didn’t meet metrics that week and blamed it on her school course load.
She was obsessed with the game Among Us. When our meetings would start she would talk over everyone yelling about what the code is for the game and that we all need to join as soon as possible to get it started. There would usually be 4 or 5 people playing with her, but the entire meeting was just everyone else listening to her game commentary or what Jalisa was ordering for lunch.
There aren’t enough spots in a game for everyone to join even if we wanted to.
Over a couple of weeks less of us starting joining the meeting and four of my coworkers just started hopping in a meeting with me just so we could talk instead of listening to the game. My coworkers reiterated that they hated the meetings too and it was annoying.
We were fine just talking to each other about life and really had a good time.
It was all good until Jalisa complained to the department head that not everyone was coming to the fun meetings but we weren’t working during the window. It was then mandated that if we weren’t going to be in the fun meeting that we had to get back in the queue and work during that 30 minutes.
Most of us thought that was a stupid rule since they weren’t working in the fun meeting anyway. I asked my boss if we could split our team meeting since many of us didn’t want to play a game that part of the team played every meeting. He told me, no, and that I just needed to discuss with everyone to decide what we would do as anyone who didn’t come but wasn’t in the queue would receive a write-up.
The next Friday a couple of people decided just to work through the meeting instead of going but I joined and asked if we could play another game instead. Jalisa immediately unmuted and screamed, “NO NO NO, I have to win this time. We have got the play Among Us. I’m sending the code now. QUICK, everyone join.”
I responded letting her know that there were still too many people to play and she said, “You never play anyways, you can just listen with anyone else who joins late.” At this point, I was fed up, but it was whatever.
I just muted the chat for myself and played on my phone. Later that week, we switched platforms to a video app that allowed me to mute other participants and block individuals from commenting in meetings.
The next few Fridays, I spent the entire half an hour muting Jalisa every time she tried to unmute and blocked her from commenting in the meeting. People who hadn’t spoken in those meetings in weeks participated and we played a game that everyone could join.
Everyone started coming again and Jalisa eventually stopped coming as she couldn’t figure out what was going on. My coworker Katie, who particularly couldn’t stand her, turned Jalisa in for not attending the meetings as she wasn’t working. Jalisa got a write-up and had to come to the meetings and sit in silence. IT couldn’t figure out why Jalisa couldn’t speak in the meetings.”
15. Blame Me For Stealing From The Business? You'll Wish You Never Did
“So after finishing a design program in school, I quit my temp job in financial services and started to focus on design.
A couple of friends were at a small events company that also had their own TV show, a video game, and lifestyle TV show, and they needed someone to help out on the show and do some of the other design work around the studio so that they could focus on pre-production.
Sounded amazing, so I went into their offices, sat with them for a chat, and started the same day.
At first, all was good. The boss seemed okay. He asked me to get a coffee with him (Let’s call him Drake) and kind of probed my background. I went to film school, worked as a camera assist and dop for a while before switching my focus to motion design and 3D.
This set off a lightbulb in his head and had me doing pre-production on the show.
I brought in a friend to help produce and everything went forward.
I worked on the show for about a year and a half, the show itself was fun, I got flown to E3, PAX, and pretty much every major local gaming and cosplay expo. Worked with a bunch of famous cosplayers and minor expo celebrities and had a great time doing it.
But during all this, I saw Drake slowly push me making jokes about me and the producer, inappropriate comments about our personal lives, angry outbursts for no real reason, the inability to reason or compromise, and later, saw how dodgy the business was.
Getting quotes from suppliers and then in the middle of the project calling and demanding they lower their quote or not be paid.
Making behind-the-scenes deals with sponsors of the show to take marketing budgets put it into the show but then split the bills with the marketing manager who made the deal, taking prizes that were intended as giveaways for the show and just selling the product on eBay to line his pockets.
All the while, I figured, I’ve been here a while, I see him burn people every day, but surely it won’t happen to me.
He owes me more than that. I’m making this show for him, did the title sequence, the graphics package, secured sponsors, organized social media, shot the show, edited, mastered, and delivered. Oh, how wrong I was.
Things started getting worse, a bunch of big events were happening, and in addition to the show, I had to help out with the events work. I was burnt out but had a trip coming up, so had to stick it out until it was all paid for and over.
I had already decided I was going to leave for my trip and not return to the company. In the weeks before my leave, the major event happened and during the event, something with some location audio went wrong, it didn’t really have anything to do with me, but he grabbed me by the collar and told me if I didn’t fix it he would kill me.
That was my ‘whoa’ moment. This guy is actually a sociopath. I figured I needed to take some precautions to protect myself as I still had a week until I’d be leaving and then I was out.
I started by packing all of my gear at the studio and getting it out of there. Each day I’d stay back late and pack as much as I could.
By this point, the whole show was operating on my equipment, my camera, my lenses, my sound equipment, my raids, my software licenses. So I got that all out. I then backed up every piece of correspondence I had from him, all my invoice emails, any requests in writing, any receipts, etc.
I got my last invoice in, and let him know that I was off and would see him when I got back (again no plans of going back, but best to keep that from him until my invoices were paid out).
On the day of my flight, he called me five or six times asking about footage from the major event. It was all stored on my drive but wasn’t scheduled to be cut down until well after my return. This was an insurance policy.
Technically I signed no contract with him, so I owned that footage. I called him and said it’s not scheduled to be cut down yet, but it’s on the server, knowing he wouldn’t know how to check that anyway.
A week into my trip, I sent an email asking why my invoices hadn’t been paid yet. I had previously asked that they are prioritized given my holiday, and he agreed. I was met with an email from the troll he hired as an ‘events coordinator’ but really she was just the receptionist with a fancy title.
She stated that there was an ongoing police investigation, as I had clearly robbed the office before leaving.
All of the equipment was missing, drives, footage erased from the server (not true), etc. She included a police event number and said if I didn’t return all equipment and pay the company $5,000.00, they would be pressing charges against me.
I laughed and fired back that all of the missing equipment is mine, but I’m happy to look over any receipts they have for it.
I immediately called the police and gave the officer the event number and asked what was going on. She explained that a woman (the office troll) came in and made claims that I had stolen from the business but had no evidence and was advised she would need to provide proof, but never returned to do so. I told her about them demanding I pay up $5,000.00 or they’d press charges.
The police officer took a statement from me in case it went further as this was a clear case of extortion.
I just wanted out, and they were willing to go to these lengths to weasel me out of what I earned killing myself for them? I was livid, to say the least. And I knew enough about their business to destroy them.
Step 1, I immediately sent my unpaid invoices to a collections agency.
They straight away fired off a letter of demand, which informed Drake of my desire to seek the unpaid invoices as well as legal costs should it come to that via the legal system. I got all of those backed-up emails together, that proved I was working on the days I invoiced them, and since my invoices are itemized by project, those emails should match with the specific projects I was working on.
Step 2, I start hitting him where it hurts. For starters their only software licenses were mine. Prior to my arrival, they were operating entirely on pirated software. I didn’t touch any of their software while doing work for them. 3D was handled on my own machines. We started doing post in the creative cloud and I left their pirated FCP licenses alone. So aside from uninstalling my own software and plugins from their machines, everything was back to the way it was before I left. So I reported his company to the BSA (The Software Alliance) and was surprised when I heard back immediately.
Drake was running 5 or so edit suites with pirated copies of Creative Suite, FCP, Microsoft Office, Maya, 3DS Max, etc. A lot of expensive software.
The guy who emailed me back asked if he could call me and basically told me that they often have no way of knowing if a company is using pirated software so they really rely on tips such as mine to go after companies.
I forwarded him emails where I had advised Drake that we needed a specific piece of software and the cost involved and his responses were he would CC me in and ask the ‘IT guy’ to pirate the software. This was pretty much all they needed to fully implicate Drake. The guy then asked me to let them know how many computers were in the office and I provided him with a map of Drake’s office, with locations for each computer and the server, and a list of all software on each machine.
Really easy to get this as I still had access to their servers and could remote into each computer.
Step 3, I discredit the business. I put out some business reviews on Google so that people would know what kind of shady operation Drake is running. I filed a copyright claim against their showreel since the entire reel was made up of projects I did for them and I never signed over those rights.
I commandeered a web player service they were using to host and monetize the TV show and removed each episode and deleted the account. I took over their Twitter page and posted info about how the company would rip off clients. I emailed a couple of major games expo’s who he had partnered with for both the events and TV show and let them know about how he would regularly have me alter footage to make it appear as though he was delivering on contractual obligations, (comp in twitch.tv logos to make it seem like he was live streaming events, add banners where there weren’t any, etc.).
Minor things, but things these companies were paying him to do. I even adjusted the “About Me” part of the website. And it wasn’t very flattering.
Now I still had a friend working there, so was informed of every reaction. Every time he shouted my name in anger I knew about it. The BSA fined him over $60,000. When Drake heard the news, he threw his iPhone against the glass wall in his office smashing it.
I received a very nice reward for turning him in.
He held out on paying my invoices until the very end sending threatening emails the whole time and demanding that I pay him for the trouble I’ve put him through. It went to court, I didn’t need to attend. I won the entirety of my invoices as well as the cost of taking him to court.
He basically paid for me to sue him.
That year was the last year for the show, likely had trouble getting sponsors after I emailed all of them about the way he was selling rewards on eBay and sent them a link to his eBay store page. He also no longer had involvement in some of the major gaming expos he’d previously done events work for, – those two losses would have cost him a few hundred grand a year.
The page on the website was up for months, when he found it, he again smashed his phone, this time though, he didn’t have a glass wall to break, as he had to move out of the very nice office with water views to a small trashy office in a strip mall. I think he was having financial difficulties.
It was on this night that he called me and threatened to kill me.
I celebrated his call by deleting all of the footage I had taken of that major event, the budget for the event was over a million dollars, and a lot of that footage was the only proof he had even done the event. Five camera operator’s footage, crane footage, drone footage of the venue, all recorded sound from mics, all gone.
Knowing he’d never be able to get that back was great.
Plus his threatening phone call along with the extortion attempts that were on file was enough to get a restraining order put out against him, and I cannot wait until he inevitably messes up and tries to do something again.”
14. Bully Gets Knocked Out Cold
“I went to a small school with about 80 students. In my class, there were 12.
Although our numbers were small, we still had the classic bully archetype.
Let’s call him Christopher. Christopher was one of those kids who felt like he could do whatever he wanted to anyone else, and he would be absolved of all blame if he finished his routine with ‘It’s just a joke.’ Basically, he was a grade-A horrible person.
Enter the second major character. There was also a disabled kid in our class. Let’s call him Todd.
Now, Todd was fond of asking questions. It was just his own way of obtaining information. I know this might sound bad, but we got annoyed with him pretty soon. Hey, we were just kids. Now although Todd annoyed us, we still all looked after him. He was one of us, sometimes that was a good thing, sometimes a bad thing.
We basically ruled the school, and naturally, this power would go to our heads.
And it corrupted nobody quite as much as Christopher. We were playing rounders, (a UK version of baseball) practicing for an upcoming competition. Split up into two teams, and made to play against each other. I was kinda mad because Todd was on my team, and as you can imagine, he wasn’t the most athletically gifted.
We were losing, due in no small part to the other teams’ superior members.
I had lost interest, and only gave lackluster hits when it was my turn. Then it was Todd’s turn. I watched, just to see how it would go. And I looked at the other team. Christopher was pitching the ball.
He wasn’t even giving Todd a chance. He’d throw the ball at his feet, and burst out laughing with his team. Babe Ruth couldn’t have done a d**n thing with that kind of throw.
It went on for 3 minutes. Eventually, his own team got sick of him and told him to give a decent throw so Todd could strikeout and the game could progress.
He throws it, and Todd braces himself. We’re all watching by now. Todd has tears in his eyes, the kind of thing humiliation does to someone like that. And as the ball draws closer, the world moved in slow motion for me.
WHACK. Todd didn’t just hit the ball with the bat, he absolutely annihilated it. The BAAAANGGGGG was heard all over the school. It sounded like a bomb had gone off, localized entirely around the side of the bat.
So what does a ball do when it’s met with a force like that? I don’t know for sure, but in this case, it went back towards Christopher at Mach 3 speed.
I didn’t even see the ball on its way back. It was like a bullet from a pistol. When it got to Christopher, it hit him squarely in the eye. He fell down, out cold. One of his friends helped him inside, while the rest of us, both teams, cheered and laughed. We lifted Todd on our shoulders and gave him a hero’s support.”
13. Verbally Abuse Everyone? We'll Catch You Red-Handed And Make You Lose Your Job
“I live in a mining town in the great land of Moose, Black Bears, and Poutine.
Our town is surrounded by 3 different mining companies since our land is rich in precious metals. Basically over half of the people in our town work in these mines at some capacity whether directly or as a contractor. I took a job in late November 2015 as a janitor after leaving my security job because I found it too boring and wanted a job where the work is more active and the pay is a little better.
First day on the job (training for night shift), I was introduced to my co-worker who we’ll call Stickman. Stickman was an old guy in his late 60’s, has a rather large bald spot on the top of his head with gray hair that he ties up in a small ponytail, and wears those old 70’s looking sunglasses that he wears indoors and outdoors almost year-round (don’t ask why cause I don’t know).
It was obvious from the start that he didn’t take to me very kindly and was rather cold to me throughout the day, only ever spoke to me when he wanted to teach me something or do something. I’ve made attempts to break the ice by starting a casual conversation or share one of my beverages but no dice, he either ends the conversation quickly or doesn’t answer me at all.
“Whatever,” I tell myself, we’ll be on opposite shifts anyway so we’ll be out of each other’s way.
The night shift was overwhelming. Every single night first thing during a shift I’d have to clean the men’s dry which is where underground miners go and change into their work clothes, hang their wet clothes, and shower after each shift. It is a huge area of the main building, incredibly dirty with dirt everywhere after each crew and it stays at a constant 30 degrees Celsius.
I would be sweating buckets each night especially when I am cleaning the showers since the water I was using is hot water and the showers are an enclosed space so it gets humid very quickly (there’s four of them in total). In total it would take me around 6 hours every night to clean it, but that’s only 1/3 of the job, and the dry takes place on the second floor of the main building.
I had the entire main floor to clean and the main floor itself is a 12-hour job to properly clean in a 12-hour shift. As you may have figured, it is humanly impossible for a single individual to clean the entire dry and the main floor for each and every single night. I have relayed this to my supervisor who we will call Awesome Boss (AB) who simply told me to “just do the best I can” as their contract with the mine won’t allow them to hire a second nightshift janitor (something about a fixed amount agreed on in their contract).
I managed to come up with a routine that’ll allow me to do the bare minimum of cleaning for each room while simultaneously set aside days to allow myself to do a full clean up of certain areas, as well as use my experience as a security guard to document everything I’ve done and time-stamped when I’ve done them including my break times and that seemed to work for the mine management and AB but NOT Stickman.
Stickman had made it his personal goal every morning to walk around the main floor and then hunt me down to complain about every single thing that I didn’t have time to do. He’ll complain to me about things like bottom fill in a large garbage can, dust on the desks, sand on the carpets, offices that were not done due to lack of time, and other things that would eventually get done on the nights I set aside to do.
On some mornings, he’d get right in my face about it too, needless to say, it had put a lot of unnecessary stress on me on top of what I already have been working what is essentially a two-man job. Stickman would also constantly complain to AB and AB would dismiss Stickman’s claims and supported me and my documented notes as evidence. Regardless I was a sensitive (nonconfrontational) soul back then and I took Stickman’s harsh criticisms personally which made me break into tears one morning after one of my shifts after Stickman lost it on me and got in my face.
Eventually, despite AB’s dismissals and my documentations he even bad-mouthed me to his co-workers to which eventually THEY even started to approach me to get the things I didn’t have time to do done. They eventually stopped after I broke everything down with them step by step and backed everything up with my notes. But still, it made everything I don’t enjoy about my job even less enjoyable thanks to Stickman.
This is the part of the story where I would like to add a new player into the mix whom I’m going to refer to her as “Cat Lady” (I swear, she’s important to the story). Another tidbit of background info, Cat Lady is one of the Security Guards who works the nightshift. I would give the guards ‘special treatment’ during the nights as while they work they get a lot of foot traffic especially during the day (and a lot of foot traffic means a lot of sand) and they make a lot of garbage since these guards are stationed in their office 24/7, so I clean up the area and garbage’s for them every night so they can have a clean environment to work in.
I often chat with the guards while I clean and Cat Lady was one of them, I told them about Stickman and his verbal abuse towards me and Cat Lady was the one who saw firsthand how Stickman was treating me. As for why I’m calling her Cat Lady is because she had a larger than an average adorable cat (larger than average as in he’s just a bigger than your average house cat and not obese).
Fast forward a bit and AB finally put me on day shift on the opposite rotation of Stickman, it was then that my female coworkers realized that I wasn’t at all like what Stickman painted me to be and in fact, I was a better and more hardworking person than Stickman. It was then I began hearing some… “interesting” things about Stickman from the women he’s worked with, such as keeping a secret “stash” of cleaning supplies (which explains why I sometimes start shifts with less cleaning supplies than I normally get), mixing bleach and another cleaning product which essentially creating tear gas (which is a huge no-no in mine policy/safety and our WHIMS safety training highly advises against mixing chemicals), secretly sleeping on the job, smoking in non designated smoking areas (which is both illegal and against mine policy), and of course showing favoritism to the opposite gender.
I relayed what I had heard from the girls to AB but AB said that without hard evidence or documentation of these occurrences there’s nothing he can do. That was until…
The company had hired a young new female cleaner, she was a hard worker and was immediately paired with Stickman to train as his new partner, we’ll call her Bubbles due to her bubbly and energetic personality.
Stickman was given the task to train Bubbles on waxing the floors as he is the only one who knows how to strip the old wax and put new wax on the floor (he never trained me since we don’t get along). Now in order to strip the old wax off the floors, you need a special chemical to strip away the old wax, however, the chemical in question is very corrosive and can severely burn skin on contact.
Stickman knew this but decided to proceed with the process of stripping the old wax without PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) despite the risks. Worst case scenario happened and Bubbles received a nasty chemical burn that got her hospitalized for chemical burn treatment. Bubbles recovered thankfully however her knees were covered in scars that will never heal. Stickman, however, was written up for this incident, just so you know in order for someone to be terminated without legal repercussions the employee must be written at least 3 times before they’re terminated. This is strike one for Stickman, here is strike two.
We had hired a new guy whom we’ll just refer to him as “New Guy.” One of the female janitors volunteered to train “New Guy” and Stickman was temporarily placed as nightshift (He absolutely hated it and I had to use every ounce of being not to gloat at him in an “I freaking told you it was impossible!” kind of way, but the look of pure displeasure on his face was enough for me).
One Day Stickman blamed New Guy for something that he didn’t do and got right in his face and yelled at him with eyewitnesses nearby. New Guy had kept his cool and let Stickman finish his tirade before taking himself and his eyewitnesses to AB and then promptly quit soon after. Stickman received his second write-up and a stern verbal warning from AB.
The third and final nail in the coffin came from Cat Lady.
It was during the time when I was needed to work the night shift and Stickman and Bubbles were together waxing the floors (with the appropriate PPE of course). Stickman was once again verbally hostile towards me, and Cat Lady witnessed the hostility towards me. I cannot say for certain if it made her b***d boil but it was enough for her to decide that Stickman had to go.
She then waited for a window of opportunity for Stickman to once again screw up and screw up big time Stickman did. As I previously mentioned he had been smoking in undesignated areas but the undesignated area I hadn’t referred to specifically was the mechanic’s shop. The mechanic’s shop was in a separate building apart from the main building and Cat Lady was waiting for an opportunity for Stickman to go for his smoke break and sure enough she saw her opportunity when Stickman left with Bubbles to go to the Maintenance Shop.
Cat Lady grabbed her company-provided camera and followed Stickman to the maintenance shop and snapped the photograph with Stickman caught red-handed smoking in the shop. Stickman had noticed Cat Lady taking the damming photograph and pleaded with Cat Lady not to report him. Cat Lady ignored his pleas and filed the photograph in her incident report. Stickman was immediately let go the following day.
The last time I’ve heard from Stickman was that he tried to collect severance pay but was promptly denied due to the overwhelming evidence against him and he had also applied to a cleaning company that was our competitor at the time but was promptly refused and was forced to go on Employment Insurance.
Good Riddance I’d say.”
Another User Comments:
“I don’t understand how Stickman wasn’t immediately fired for the Bubbles debacle.
It was straight-up negligence & 100% avoidable.
In Australia, that’s definitely in the jurisdiction of Safe Work Australia (OSHA Enforcement) and Bubbles would be able to file for compensation.” RunOverRider
12. Taking Control Over An Abusive Employer Situation
“So, I was working at a 7-Eleven for just shy of a year. The store was a franchise, which means it was independently owned by a guy whose IQ was probably somewhere in the 80s. He treated us all like trash, and the only person who made more than minimum wage was the useless clerk he was two-timing his wife with (who, for some reason, made $15 an hour).
This guy never did anything by the book.
If he thought it would make him more, then the law didn’t apply to him. Nobody at the store ever got a lunch. We were barely afforded smoke breaks, and we weren’t allowed to eat while on the clock. In California, when you work more than 5 hours without lunch, you’re supposed to get paid an extra hour’s wages, which counts toward overtime.
We didn’t get that, either. On top of that, when he did payroll, he wouldn’t actually go by when you clocked in and out, he went by the schedule he wrote.
So if you stayed an extra hour or two to help out when it got busy, you’d be working for free, because the hours wouldn’t show up. Also, your schedule was subject to change whenever he felt like it.
There were several times he wrote me up for showing up late because he would change my shift without telling me.
So, here’s where the trouble starts. Whenever we would take expired food off the shelves, we’d come in the next day, and he had printed new expiration dates, pasted them on top of the old ones, and put the food back on the shelves.
This happened consistently, the entire time I worked there. Well, one day, I’d had enough of his nonsense. I called up the health department and reported him, then emailed corporate and filled them in on what was going on.
Well, word got back to him, and when I went in the next day, I’d received a “complaint” and was promptly fired. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never worked anywhere with a one-strike policy.
Here’s the thing, though.
Since the day I started there, I’d been keeping records. I had copies of every schedule posted, and every pay stub I’d ever received. I went to the labor board that day and picked up the paperwork I needed. See, when you don’t get lunches, and you don’t get paid the extra hour you’re supposed to, the labor board can force the employer to pay you what he owes you in one lump sum.
So I filled out the paperwork and turned it in.
My old boss wasn’t so smug when he had to make a check to me for $2,600. Right after receiving a hefty fine from the health department.
Now, I’m working to get the labor board to force him to hire me back under the whistleblower clause. If he has to re-hire me, he also has to pay me back lost wages for the past few months.
Also, my old co-workers get lunches now.
Was the revenge sweet? It felt freakin’ awesome! But that’s not why I did it.
I did it because that jerk was going to keep on exploiting his employees and customers to make a buck and keep being a worthless human being, and I felt like unless I did something, he was going to get away with it.
I simply could not abide by the idea of him suffering no consequences for his actions.”
11. Better Hope I'm Not Your Boss One Of These Days...
“This story begins when I was a freshman in high school.
After school on most weekdays, I would walk to my uncle’s house to babysit my little cousin. My cousin was about 2 or 3 years old at the time and liked to go to the public park that was directly in front of my uncle’s house.
It was a simple park, about the size of a football field with a playground in one corner and the rest was all grass.
One particular day, my cousin is begging me to go to the park so I take him.
For a while, we were the only ones there. My cousin was too scared to go down the slide from the top by himself so I was picking him up and letting him slide from about halfway. He was having a great time and laughing.
Soon a lady comes up with her daughter and they start playing on the swing set.
Well, the lady was sitting on the bench and her daughter was trying to play on the swing set.
Now here’s an important point to the story. When I speak with my little cousin I speak in our native language. He can understand English, but I’m just so used to speaking my native language with my family that it just happens naturally. So I’m speaking to my cousin trying to encourage him to go up to the top of the slide and he’s on his way up psyching himself up.
Then I hear the lady yell out:
Lady: ‘Hey you need to speak English when you’re around me.’
Me: ‘Huh? I’m just telling him to –’ She cuts me off.
Lady: ‘THIS IS AMERICA WE SPEAK ENGLISH HERE.’
Me: ‘Uhhhh, I’m just trying to play with my cousin, he doesn’t speak English too well…’ (I lied he understood English)
Lady: ‘I don’t care!
You speak English when you’re around me and my daughter.’
So, I’m mad. I’ve had my experience with racism especially post 9/11. I’m just here with a child and he was visibly having an awesome time playing at the playground.
There was no reason for this lady to impose her nonsense on me. So I decided to screw it. If she wants me to speak English, here have it.
Me to my cousin: ‘Hey let’s ignore the witch,’ and continue to speak in my native language to tell him to slide down
Her: ‘WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME?!?!’
Me: ‘Oh, I called you a witch because that’s what you’re being.’
Her: ‘OMG I’M CALLING MY HUSBAND HE’S GONNA KICK YOUR BUTT!!!’
At this point, I feel the need to try and get out of there so I start telling my cousin to go.
While I’m trying to leave she keeps yelling and screaming at me about how her husband is on her way and he’s gonna kick my butt blah blah blah and even says she’s gonna call the cops. Anyway, I leave and get home.
I was paranoid for a few weeks after that incident, thinking the cops were going to want to talk to me or something.
I avoided the park for a while.
I told my uncle what happened and he agreed that I should avoid the park for a while too.
Now we’re in the present and it’s been over 10 years. I’ve graduated from high school and got a job at this plant. The thing about this plant is that it’s one of the few places in my city that pays well over minimum wage.
A lot of the people in my city try super hard to get into this plant, but few do.
Most people end up moving out of my city or commuting over an hour where all the good jobs are at.
Another important note and I’m not trying to brag or anything, but through a series of promotions I got due to actually having computer skills and being at the right place at the right time when certain key people retired, I ended up becoming the #2 at the plant.
I have a really good plant manager who has a lot of faith in me and he’s taken me under his wing.
So one of my job responsibilities is hiring people and making sure they get trained properly. A couple of weeks ago we had to let go of one of our office ladies because of reasons. So I called up the placement agency I use and let them know I need an office administrator type person on Monday.
Monday comes around and guess who shows up? Yup, you guessed it. It’s the outspoken lady from the park. She, for whatever reason, doesn’t recognize me but be assured I recognize that evil woman.
Her face is ingrained into my brain. I go through the typical introductions and pass her off to Human Resources for a bit to make sure she fills out some paperwork.
After all that I give her a tour of the plant and let her know which areas she’s allowed to go to and which areas she’s not, etc. I pass her off to the ladies in the office and let them start training her. That’s most of my interaction with her.
I’d pop by the office throughout the week to see how she was doing and get any updates on her performance.
I start to think about what I’m going to do. Do I want to keep this lady on staff? Is it even worth taking any revenge? If yes, what should I do?
I finally made my decision on Thursday. See, through my conversations with her, I’ve found out she’s been wanting to get into this plant for a LONG time. This was like a dream job for her.
The placement agency was sending her over an hour away to commute and she’d end up quitting and letting the agency know she preferred a shorter commute. I decided I’m going to lead her on and make it seem like she’s going to be staying with the company before letting her go unexpectedly.
So on Thursday, I set up an appointment with her to finish up some training.
I just had a PowerPoint presentation I went over with new employees. In the training, I get to talk to her a little more and ask her if she’s been living in the city for a while.
She says yes and I ask her what part? She mentioned she lives near the park near my uncle’s house.
I let her know, ‘Oh! I used to go to that park all the time!!
I used to take my little cousin, but I stopped because I ran into this awful lady one day who threatened to have her husband beat me up because she wanted me to speak English.’
Her face changed. It’s a weird thing I noticed. Her face went from kinda happy to straight scared.
I think she finally remembered me. I concluded the training and didn’t say anything else.
Friday came and she showed up to work. When she went to lunch, I called the placement agency and told them to call her and let her know not to show up after lunch, we won’t be needing her anymore. I could do this because she wasn’t an actual employee, we just had a contract through the agency and didn’t need any valid reason to let her go.
There was also just something very satisfying about firing someone while they were at lunch. I’m sure the office ladies aren’t too happy with me because they’re going to have to retrain a new person starting Monday, but it’ll be okay. Bye Felicia.”
Another User Comments:
“Perfect combo of professionalism & savagery! I would’ve loved to see the look on her face when she realized who you were.” MsMedieval
10. Hide A Huge Detail About Yourself For A Year? I'll Tear Your Life To Pieces
“I thought I was in a slightly tumultuous but overall fun relationship for a year.
I had gotten out of a 12-year relationship when I met Slimeball. He was so charming and handsome I thought I won the lottery! He was super pushy about saying, ‘I love you’ first and defining our relationship. He introduced me to his family. His niece started calling me Auntie.
He tells me about his 3 children and their mothers and tells me about how the mother of his oldest hates him and is keeping him away from the kid.
But then things started getting weird. His ‘ex’ started calling ALL the time, multiple times a day. They had children together, but the grandmother had custody.
I was told, to make it seem normal, that both of them had jobs where they traveled a lot, so they signed legal guardianship over to the grandma to make schooling and emergency issues easier.
Then the mom moved down to the city we were living in for ‘work training.’ She was moving down permanently without the kids. When I asked why the kids weren’t coming, I was told they need to stay in the same school. Um, they are 6 and 4. I’d say staying with parents is more important at that age than their peer group. It was weird, but I’m cool and it wasn’t my place to tell them where their daughters should live.
He worked out of town a lot. So, when he tells me he’s going to Oregon I think nothing of it.
After a week in Oregon, a lot of stories aren’t adding up, like his phone is always dead even though he carries a power bank with him. THEN one of his ‘friends’ starts posting cuddled-up selfies with him. I quickly put 2 and 2 together and dump him for two-timing me with this chick in Oregon.
After I dumped him I made a messy post on his social media wall, when the mother of his oldest child sees it and she contacts me and lays out the truth!
He never contacts his oldest daughter, even though he has her cellphone.
No one is keeping him from her.
He owes $20k in back child support for her as he has never once made a payment.
He moves around a lot and works under the table, so the mother was never able to collect garnishments or anything.
He has a huge criminal record, all these charges I knew nothing about!
His ‘ex’ who moved to our city was his of 9 years who was very much still in a relationship with him and they willingly gave up the 2 children.
There is a FOURTH child!?!?!?!
He and the mother conspired to pin the paternity on another poor sap and it’s been 17 years now that this other man has been paying for a kid that is not his.
Oh, and I was this slimeball’s side chick.
His family knew and played along in the lie and included their 10 and 16-year-old children in the lie!
His chick in Oregon is actually his star-crossed lover from childhood!
And every time they would try to be together, one or the other would end up in jail! The Oregon chick ALSO has criminal record highlights.
This shocked me, so I paid for a criminal background check which is how I learned of their records.
I PROFUSELY thanked the ex for telling me the truth about the situation. I mulled on it for a bit trying to convince myself to simply consider myself lucky and just walk away with my dignity intact.
But then he’d be winning and I knew I had everything in my power to come down on him like Thor’s hammer.
I gave the ex ALL of his info – SSN, State ID#s, current and past known addresses. With this, she contacted her state’s Child Support Services. He will now have his driver’s license revoked and can’t get one regardless of which state he moves to until he is current with his past payments. If he ever gets a real job 25% of his wages will be garnished. He now has a warrant for his arrest in the state his oldest kid lives.
He’s trying to play house with his new partner and contacted the mother of his oldest to arrange a meeting with his kid and his partner’s child. The mother is ‘playing nice’ and pretending it’s a-go. He is planning a trip to visit his daughter. He will not see her, at the ‘meeting,’ he will be seeing the police and they will arrest him for failure to pay, and he won’t get out of jail until he pays a sizable chunk of the $20,000 past-due PLUS bail!
I gave the ex his info THE DAY BEFORE his federal tax refund was set to go out.
She was fast enough at getting his info to CSS that they INTERCEPTED his full tax refund and now, for the first time, has to pay something for his child. His past due child support is also going on his credit report.
I know the name of the business his ex-brother-in-law owns, so I dropped a dime to the IRS.
So, he’s losing his only steady income soon and can’t get a job at Walmart due to his criminal record, and if he DOES manage to find someone that hires without criminal background checks he will lose 1/4 of his paycheck.
I told this story to two of my ‘hacker’ friends and they got into contact with hackers more talented than themselves and are now going to ‘take care of’ a few more things for me – like finding the guy who was conned into paying for a kid that’s not his!!”
Another User Comments:
“”Men” like this infuriate me. Our relationship broke down when my son was 2 months old. From that first month she left, I was helping to cover his expenses. Despite a year of exypoo’s nonsense, I STILL PAID EVERY MONTH. Despite her refusal to let me see my son, I STILL PAID EVERY MONTH. She threatened to involve the police when I tried to pick him up for a holiday weekend.
She then stated that if I ever want to see my son again to take her to court. Guess what, I STILL PAID EVERY MONTH. I took her butt to court, settled that nonsense up.
Good on you for taking him to task.” ermergerdberbles
9. Steal From Me? I Have Proof
“Back when I was 14, my sister was still regularly trying to get me to give her money. I tried once to write out an I.O.U. to see if she’d sign it in front of dad. And she pretty much reacted exactly how I thought she would. By blowing up at me and then crying to mom. And mom pretty much always sided with her till I got dad involved. At first, my sister was begging to borrow from me.
But I called her out that she’d never pay it back. That’s why I made the I.O.U. After that, she just started parroting our mom’s words of how girls need more money than boys. And that I should just give it to her.
This awoke the more petty side of me. I knew Sis was practically salivating over the bills in my safe.
And she’d do almost anything to get at it. So I came up with a plan to try and make her stop. I updated my ledger for how much I had saved and walked into the living room while holding it. Then left it on the coffee table and pretended to go to the bathroom. I left the door cracked and saw my sister pick up the ledger and start reading it.
And she looked angry. Then she put it back where it was and left the room.
Now for the next part of the petty revenge I took. I found my dad’s old camcorder in the basement. It was from the 90s. But it could record 6 hours of footage on one VHS tape. So I hid it in my room under a pile of laundry on my bed. Then I put a $20 bill on my dresser.
I generally shut and locked my door when I left my room because of my sister’s past actions. She’s an opportunist by nature. So I knew exactly what she’d do. It took three attempts with my leaving my door ajar before she took the bait. I pretended to forget to shut my door before going out to work odd jobs or go for a bike ride.
On the third time I went back to my room, the $20 bill was gone. And I pulled the tape out of the hidden camcorder and put it into my bedroom TV with a built-in VCR. Not even one hour after I left, she came sneaking into my room, saw the bill, took it, and ran.
I immediately called my mother and told her Sis stole from me again.
She flatly denied it like usual.
Me: “Sorry Mom. But this time I have video evidence! She stole a bill from my room.”
Mom: “So what! You should have locked the door or put it in your little safe!”
Me: “That’s not an excuse and you know it. Especially after everything that’s already happened. Now you know how that’ll go down. Either you get Sis to give me back what she took, or I’ll call Dad right now.
And you and I both know what he will do.”
Mom (Face contorts): “Fine!” (Leaves to get my sister. Then comes back dragging Sis by the hand.)
Sis “But I didn’t do anything! Let me go!”
I just hit ‘Play’ on the VCR remote and said, “Really? Then what’s this?”
Sis: (Starts tearing up seeing herself on camera taking the bill)
Mom: “Give it back…”
Sis: “But I don’t…”
Mom: “..Give!..It!..Back!” (Said through closed eyes and teeth)
Sis ran to her room and came back with the $20 bill. She crumpled it up and dropped it at my feet saying, “I hope you choke on it!” before blowing me a raspberry and slamming my door shut.
After that my sister barely asked me for cash at all because I was still wanting her to sign an I.O.U.
and started begging more from Mom, who hardly ever gave her any unless Dad took away her allowance for the month. And they both avoided me for a while. Getting my mom to make Sis return the $20 was a huge blow to both of their egos. And it finally made my sister start seeing that she couldn’t get what she wanted from me anymore.
When I told my dad what I did later on, he got a good laugh out of it and said I shouldn’t have baited her.
But it was a good way to teach both her and mom a lesson they didn’t soon forget. Sadly I don’t have the tape with the recording of her stealing the $20 anymore. It mysteriously disappeared not long after this incident. Likely my mom or sister threw it away.”
8. Only Work Part Time In Case There's Limited Work Next Year? Lose Your Only Employees
“I must confess I have a profound respect for people who do not take nonsense from their employers. You are my heroes, and so, I hope my story can help someone else.
Ok, so first some necessary background info: I live in a small country and I am an engineer in a very niche field. Where I live there are about 15-18 people in my field in the whole country.
Also, unions are a good thing here and most companies are fine with unions. The employee benefits from this but so does the employer since the rules of the game are very clear. Clear for most people as my employer was about to find out…
My story goes like this and it took place late 2019 until late 2020:
My team consisted of 3 people (me included) and one on our team, our mentor, was ready to retire two years prior to this happening, but he stayed on because… you know, co-dependence issues I guess.
We had 10-12 years of experience each, we were just younger and more inexperienced than our mentor who has 40+ years of experience. I really envisioned us taking over the team soon-ish.
The company is a large actor where I live but things had not been going too great (for the shareholders) for some 6 months prior to all this happening. Knowing this, I decided I’ll not ask for a raise in my annual performance review to show I am a team player and explicitly state this to my boss’s boss, Mr. V.
All is fine and well. For 3 months.
Then the bomb drops. One fine autumn day in 2019, I was called to a meeting with my boss, Mrs. G. Mrs. G told me that they didn’t expect there to be enough work to go around for my team next year, so they wanted to cut me down to a part-time job, working only 80% (that would be about 4 days a week), starting 3 months hence.
I immediately ask if this is also the case for my other co-worker and if our mentor was going to retire. Well yes… but no. My co-worker would also be offered 80%. Our mentor was going to be working 60%. And I am like, what?! He really wants to retire, you know? Well, he is not yet, says Mrs. G, because of reasons. And stuff.
Ok, so I sign the new contract but feel bad about it since I was really trying to be a team player and did not feel my employer was taking responsibility for us employees but only thinking of the shareholders.
I also get the feeling that they do not see me or my co-worker taking over the team any time soon despite us not being novices in the field. I immediately start planning for the future.
After this happens, I start asking around if other employees are also facing part-time employment due to no projects in 2020 (as one does, you want to know how others are doing right).
Nobody. Else. Is. Getting. Part. Timed. And everybody else is appalled. Just us three… We are singled out for some reason. Some of our colleges even say that they have had stints of no work for months without any actions taken in this regard.
There is now general displeasure in my team towards our employer. Since our mentor just wanted to retire and let us do the job, there would not have been any reason to have us younger engineers working part-time really.
But no, because of reasons. And stuff.
Ok, so what to do? I have a family and two kids, mortgages, and the lot, and this will be a blow to the family income. So I start planning to do some work on the side. Since I am an engineer, I can do consulting, right? My employment contract says no. BUT! If my employer can not or will not offer me a full-time job, the union contracts say I can do what I want with the rest of my time, and my employer can not interfere.
I also have the right to refuse more work from my employer because I may have other obligations. Me 1 – 0 Employer.
I open up my own company. Buy a domain, make a web page, start calling, writing, and letting people know I am available for consulting. Of course, I checked with the union lawyers beforehand if this was ok. Which it was. Totally fine. They told me that since my employer laid me off and rehired me part-time, I could do what I wanted the rest of my time.
This would not have been the case if I had requested part-time employment. Great! I go to work for myself then. Me 2 – 0 Employer.
Almost immediately after our new contracts take effect, my employer starts noticing there is more than enough work to go around and asks me to work more hours. No, I say. Unfortunately, I have other obligations. I really didn’t; I was just making a stand and forcing them to recognize their own mistake.
Time passes. My savings account drains in about 3 months’ time, but we manage to cut down on our expenses, so it’s not rough seas but still not smooth sailing by far. Income is a bit on the low side although I manage to get some consulting done in my own time.
I switch from sourdough bread to stale-boring-white-bread. Go from good beer to Bud light to no beer… what you have to do, you have to do.
No more fine roasted coffee from the small shop on the corner, only what sludge I can get at the supermarket and brew at home (ugh!). But this is temporary I tell myself.
And then it happens. I get a big job and start moonlighting to get it done, working evenings and weekends. And this is when everything hit the fan because word got out.
I get an angry phone call from Mrs. G’s boss. Mr. V. and we have a “heated conversation” over what I can and cannot do. The conversation was something like this (in short terms)
Mr. V: “Think of how this reflects on our company!”
Me: “That is not my concern here Mr. V. I have bills to pay and mouths to feed.”
Mr. V: “This is not what we had in mind!”
Me: “Hey, you laid me off, man! You should know the rules of the game. You can not dictate what I do in my spare time. Perhaps you should have thought it through when you reduced my hours, you think I was happy to lose income and would not try to remedy my financial situation?”
Mr. V: “You can work more hours for us then!”
Me: ” I have other obligations now, can’t let down my customers.”
Mr. V: (very angry now) “You should consider your next steps carefully, young man!”
Me: “Mr. V, I shall do that, thank you for calling” (“You pompous jerk!” I silently added.)
What then followed was a phone call from me to my union explaining the situation. Later that week, my employer got a phone call from the union lawyers who spoke to Mr. V and the HR department telling them what they can and cannot do.
And I just kept working for myself. Mr. V. is now very unhappy, stops greeting me when we pass each other in the hallway. Me 3 – 0 Employer.
Two months later, I hand in my resignation. Three months after that, I am gone. And to rub salt in the wounds (as they say here, is that a general expression? I don’t know… please do tell me if there is another expression in English for something to increase an already painful experience!) something remarkable happens…
My co-worker (not our mentor mind you) asks if I would want to partner up and start a new company together. YES! I say, for it was a great idea! Co-worker hands in resignation a month after I handed mine in, and we start working in our own company full time. People that depend on our services are very happy about us entering the market as independent consultants.
Business takes off. Me/us 4 – 0 Employer.
The aftermath: My former employer has had an opening for our jobs since August 2020. Our mentor told me last month he has (finally!) put down his foot and is retiring at the end of the year as he’s turning 70 soon. They will thus have gone from 3 people, in a very niche field, to zero in less than two years because of bad managerial decisions.
It did not come as a surprise to me that there were no others available in the market. Since it is a niche field, I know almost every person personally, so I could have told them that everybody seemed happy with their current employer… Being a manager must suck… Oh wait… that’s me now!
B.r. from the manager.”
7. Threaten A Lien On My House? Your House Is Mine Now
“This story begins almost a year ago.
I received a call from an unknown number on my cell phone. It was an automated message to call an 888 number in regards to serving me papers.
I knew right away this may have been a collection agency. Googled the number and confirmed it.
Now I have to disclose I did have identity theft almost 20 years ago. To this day, I occasionally get calls from collection agencies trying to collect on some debt from 20+ years ago that was cleared. Now most of the time when I get these calls, I ask for their address to send in a dispute letter including the accompanying data for proof that I had identity theft.
Granted, they should not be calling me, but they apologize and I don’t get another call. Plus, they usually mail me back and say they closed the account.
Well, I go to call this person and I got to say the call was interesting. This woman answered and I gave her my information. She started rattling off a debt that was back in 1995. I let her finish and I told her that I had no knowledge and there was identity theft.
And as soon as I said that, she freaked out. She kept saying she knew the debt was mine and I’m going to pay. I kept telling her that I wanted to mail a letter. But she flat out refused. When I told her I knew my rights, she said that I had the right to pay the debt.
She then said that she is going to put a lien on my ‘huge pretty house’ (her words) and she was describing the house to the letter.
She also said she is going to put a lien on my Lexus that she ‘sees’ in the driveway. And she said that my gate in the front won’t stop the repossession. She then hung up.
Now, I knew better. All she did was get my info from public records and then saw my house on Google Street View. My guess is that she tried to push this intimidation on other people that know better.
So far it appeared to be a very disreputable company. I also had phone recordings when I called in. And they were legal as I asked her if phone calls can be recorded for quality control purposes. She said of course. And I said, ‘Thank you, I’ll take that as my consent.’
I would have just let this go and just say this lady was crazy.
But I kept getting the automated phone calls and I couldn’t block them as they were unknown. I Googled the company and I thought they were in Ohio. There were a couple of flags that led me to believe this was that the person who owned this company in Ohio was being indicted with charges as an attorney. I placed a complaint with the Ohio Attorney General. They couldn’t find any information on what I was submitting.
They did call the phone number I gave them and the attorney general told me they would stop them from calling me. But that is all the attorney general could do. I also complained to the Federal Consumer Finance Bureau who is supposed to be looking into these issues. But they blew me off.
Well, three months later, I called this number. I had an idea of maybe pressing buttons when I called in to see if I could get more information about the company through the interactive voice response.
Well, that paid off. As soon as I pressed ‘0’, I got a different company name. I Googled that company and got tons of complaints. This led me to the company existing in NY. I complained to the attorney general of NY with all of my new info.
I did quite a bit of research over the next couple of weeks and found out a whole bunch of information, like the owner’s name.
I found out that the address where the company no longer received mail was at the owner’s address, their bank account, etc. I then got another one of those unknown phone calls. But this time, it’s a different company. I’m sure you get what I am getting at – the company just keeps changing the name, but the parent company still calls. I finally had enough of this.
I get a private investigator involved and they were quite satisfied with all the information I had so far. So I let him do his business. Well, he calls me back saying that this company isn’t even registered and it’s run by this one lady. I find out that the rude lady who I was talking to is the supposed owner, but not running a legitimate business.
I got a process server to file a claim in NY. Granted, I think I could have done it where I was at. But I was heading up to that area in NY anyway as I had some family reasonably close. The problem was she was not able to be served. The house which she owned, she was not able to be served at. Either she was not there or was staying somewhere else.
Well, my private investigator started sending out friend requests to her and the people on her friend’s lists. And then she accepted the friend request.
My private investigator found out that she was unfaithful about a month ago since she posted that stuff. The private investigator gave me an idea of trying to reach out to her and if he can lead us to serve her, I will give him $500.
We did that and sure enough, we were finally able to serve this lady at her parent’s house about 20 miles from where she was at.
I fly up to NY and since it’s small claims, it’s just me and this lady. For some reason, her mother is there too, but she is not representing. I give the judge all of the info I had over the months and how she broke the law.
She broke debt collection laws and made threats over the phone. After the judge heard all the trouble I had with these calls and how she hid her identity purposely, the judge gave me the maximum amount of $3,000. In NY, small towns and villages are limited to $3,000. After the case, I heard her mother loudly whispering (but I heard it) ‘You better hope he doesn’t take your house.
Your great grandfather built this with his own bare hands.’
I was thinking, ‘Hmmm, it would be sweet revenge if I could actually put a lien on the house..’ Well lo and behold, I found out the house had a second mortgage attached to it. With the property value of the house and if it sold, I wouldn’t end up getting the lien since the secondary mortgage was almost as much as the house.
My private investigator calls me five months later and said her house is going into foreclosure. I get a proxy to bid for me. But as in most foreclosure actions, the bank buys it back as an REO. I decided to send in a low ball offer to buy the house a couple of months later. The bank accepted my offer. My guess is that it’s a small town and trying to get the right market was an issue.
You may be wondering why I even bought this house? Well here’s why. This jerk threatened to put a lien on my house with no merit. Well, guess what, I took her house! It was completely worth it. It didn’t cost me too much. The house is actually in decent shape, just a little small. Plus it will be a nice summer home when I go to visit my relatives.
Oh, and I decided to rub in salt to the wound.
I sent a letter to her parent’s address letting them know I took the house. I told them that if their daughter wouldn’t be in the business of scamming people, they may not have lost the house. I also go to find out that the Attorney General of NY is now investigating this lady.
I hope they throw the book at her! Not going to mention the collection agency, but if you stopped getting phone calls from them, you’re welcome!”
6. Don't Steal Cookies From The Computer Nerd
“So this happened a few years ago… my office went to the open layout plan. They got rid of cubicles and basically, it turned into what we called the “call center.” Desks lined up next to each other and no privacy from coworkers.
Each person gets a laptop, a dock, and two monitors on arms. I get placed next to this gentleman I’ll call John. John was a fairly nice guy. We got along pretty well. He is probably 10 years older than me.
One day my coworker, I’ll call Dan, showed up to talk to John. They start chit-chatting and I decide to stroll to the cafeteria to see if they had any freshly made peanut butter cookies.
And oh boy they did, still warm too. It should be a crime to sell them because they are addicting.
I make my way back to my desk and Dan is still there. He says something to me and we start chatting. I place my cookies on my desk and turn to engage in conversation with him. We talk back and forth a minute and he says he has to go.
Not wanting to waste the warmth of those delicious cookies I turn around to find them… not there. Hmm… did I misplace them? After a bit of searching, I come to the conclusion I didn’t. So I scope out my coworker’s desk for signs of my cookies: empty plastic wrap, crumbs, etc. nothing. I ask my coworker John if he saw them and he denies any involvement but I wasn’t buying it.
A bit of pressure and he cracks, says he stole my cookies as a joke and gave them back, none were eaten.
No harm done right? Wrong. They were cold. I wanted those darn cookies still warm and here I had three miserably cool but still pretty delicious cookies. So I verbally vowed revenge.
Now I like to consider myself technically inclined. So my revenge couldn’t be raged fueled but cold, like my cookies, calculated and intelligent.
After a month of quiet contemplation, enough time for him to forget, I found the perfect tool: a wireless mouse. I slapped that dongle in the back of his dock, where he would be none the wiser. Now I could mess with him whenever and however I wanted. But I had to be smart about it as to not get caught or do something detrimental to his work.
For example, coworker would come over to chat with John, John turns his chair to chat, I secretly get to work by pulling out the mouse, open an unrelated application like windows media player, (which was on his taskbar) and hide the mouse. He would turn around, confused, and continue his day.
Another example would be lunchtime he would get up to warm his lunch without locking his computer.
He would have some applications open and I would minimize them. He would come back and mumble under his breath and act confused.
More subtle things would be changing where his cursor was in a word document or email, since he was a keyboard looker when he typed, he would type his current thoughts in the wrong spot, and it would take him a few seconds to realize his “mistake.”
This went on for weeks. Some days I’d hit him several times and others none. No harm done. Except… he started getting paranoid. Since he knew I was technically inclined he would ask “what could make windows media player start?” I asked him what he was talking about and he let me know what his computer was doing. I gave him some puzzled looks and plausible reasons like task scheduler.
He then started keeping a log of these incidents.
As time went on I became bolder in my revenge. Instead of waiting for him to get up or talk to a coworker, I would do it when he would be writing on paper at his desk or looking at his phone. Cue my screw up. It was about 7 weeks in when one day he was playing with his phone when I went to change his cursor location in an email and he saw it move!
He looks at me, sees my hand under the desk, and says “I suspected it was you!” The ruse was up. I admitted it. He laughed, checked the back of the dock, and found the dongle, and then it hit him. “This was because of the cookies, wasn’t it?”
And that is how I gained a reputation of being a Cookie Monster.”
5. Try To Frame Me For Your Theft? It Won't Go Well For You, Manager
“This story happened around 6 years ago when I worked for a retail company I will call no-op. Jay was well known to be a thief by the base staff and some of the lower levels of management. Unfortunately, she was a golden girl to Mo and Travis, and we never had any solid proof; we also didn’t get pay docked, etc. unless it was over a certain amount (which it never was,) so staff never had a real incentive to try and find proof.
One of Jay’s favorite things to steal were vouchers for shopping because you were just supposed to rip them up and put them in the safe; there was no official way of counting these to return them to the company, so she could use them again in a different store and get away with it.
This particular day was Halloween, and I was on ’till 4′ – the only till with no cameras on it.
Mo came up and paid for her shopping with some gift vouchers she had received at a store manager’s meeting because the store was doing really well. I served her and no one else touched my till all day because I was the main person on the tills for this shift. We closed up for the night and Jay took the registers to be cashed up, I went out to the pub with friends and had a good night not knowing what was coming.
The next shift I’m on, Mo calls me into the office and tells me that the vouchers she used were not in the safe and she knew that it was my till. She wanted me to return the vouchers and would not press charges or put anything on my file if I just returned them immediately, I of course did not have them and testified as such, but she didn’t believe me.
I went looking everywhere, the bin under till 4 and the bins outside, under the tills, and on the floors around the tills – just in case I had dropped them or put them somewhere dumb while trying to sort out cash. etc. Roughly an hour later, Jay comes in, hears what’s going on, and offers to look as well. She ‘finds’ them in 30 seconds flat, somewhere I had already looked. I essentially hissed out, “What a coincidence that as soon as Jay looks there, she finds it immediately, how coincidental,” seething with white fury as I knew she was now framing me for her own theft. She could have ‘found’ them in the office and made it a simple mistake but no, she made me the fall guy for her own idiocy.
I tried to plead my case to Mo and Travis, stating that I wouldn’t be dumb enough to steal vouchers that I knew were Mo’s because I was the one who served her; one of the other Team Leaders (Paul) knew fine and well it was Jay and tried to tell Mo and Travis that I was being set up, but… She was the golden girl and could do no wrong while my name was mud as far as they were concerned – heck, they thought Jay had caught me in the act.
This meant war.
Over the next few months, I got really friendly with Jay, flirting outrageously with her and basically pretending like I really respected her and that we were good buddies. It took me a while to work my way into her trust, but once I was there, I knew I could catch her stealing and prove it. We wasted off a load of Christmas chocolate products that hadn’t sold, and I put them in a bag to be put in the bin.
Jay said we should take them home (against company policy and seen as stealing) because they were just going to waste otherwise. We were stood underneath a camera, just outside of its range, so I said, “I don’t want any, but if you want them, you can have them” and put them on a trolley just inside of the camera’s range (I had studied the camera angles in great detail preparing for a moment exactly like this), I saw her look at the camera, down at the trolley and back to the camera before walking off to get her stuff.
I warned my colleagues not to take any of the chocolate even if offered and had an evil grin on my face which my colleagues commented on. When Jay came down she nonchalantly picked up the bag as if it was her shopping, offered chocolate to everyone, and walked out the door with it.
Gotcha.
The next morning I arrived for my shift and put on the most somber face possible as I approached Travis, “You should check the cameras on the back door at approximately 22:21; I think you’ll find what you see very interesting.” He asked me to explain further and I looked over towards where Jay was (not even 5 meters away) and looked back, “I can’t go into further detail right now, but I would strongly suggest you go and look at the cameras for that time now.”
Travis begrudgingly walked off to do just that, and within 10 minutes, Jay was called into the office and her bag was searched, within the hour she was suspended pending investigation and within the week she was fired and barred from the store.
I got a full apology from the managers who didn’t believe me, who explained they genuinely believed it was me and had no idea Jay could have possibly been a thief.
Their jaws hit the floor after I explained that every member of staff knew she was a thief but that we didn’t feel like we could do anything about it. After going around asking people if this was true, I got another apology. Six months later, I was offered training to become a Team Leader myself. I took it but ended up quitting for a white-collar role in a different company before I finished my training.”
4. Be The Reason I Fail My Course? I'll Destroy Your Book Business
“This revenge story is two years in the making and is long, so my apologies. Two years ago I started a distance Ph.D.
program. My very first full semester in the program consisted of an intro course which is basically “Welcome back to school. Here’s how to do research. Here’s how to do APA citations.” A LOT of it focused on proper APA writing and one of the first assignments was just doing a simple abstract.
Okay, I can do that. I pull out my trusty APA guide which I had just bought online and complete the assignment.
And I get a D-. I was completely shocked. I’d followed the book to the letter. How the heck did I get a D-? I messaged my professor and told her I followed the book exactly and she did the academic equivalent of patting me on the head and saying, “Of course you did, dear.”
By this time I was thinking I was out of my mind.
I sent a Strongly Worded Letter to the APA that basically said, “What the heck is wrong with you guys selling a book like this?” They wrote back and did the business equivalent of patting me on the head and saying, “We’re sorry you don’t like our book.”
Then I started REALLY looking at the book. And I started noticing a lot of typos. Eventually, everything clicked and I realized “D**n…these are OCR (optical character recognition) errors.
This is a scanned and reprinted counterfeit textbook.” So I took a bunch of pictures of the errors and did what any good Internet user would – scribble on them in MS Paint with red arrows, put snarky captions on them, and upload them.
My first thought was “Wow, this poor seller got taken advantage of by whoever printed their books.” In retrospect, this was probably stupidly naive, but that seems to be a common theme in my life.
So I wrote them a very polite email and sent them the photos of the book and said, “I think you might have been provided a pirated version of the book.” Well, the seller didn’t appreciate that and wrote me back a SUPER nasty email saying that my suggestion that they were selling counterfeits was very offensive, all their books were brand new from the publishers, and that I was a jerk they were going to report to the police for slander.
Okay, I was pretty upset about the bad grade, but you wrote me back and swore at me and threatened to report me to the police? Now I’m angry.
I start by looking up their Amazon seller profile and I notice a couple of other people have reported that books received from this seller were missing pages or had other unusual issues.
This is the part where I went full Internet stalker.
I searched for their company name and found it was a registered LLC.
I got the address from their state’s listing of small business registrations (which turned out to be a fairly nice looking house per Google Maps) then looked up property tax records on the house to get the owner’s name. I found the owner on social media and found they had a business website listed under a completely different name that they’d shared all over their timeline – and their website was pretty blatant about the whole thing.
“We offer you deeply discounted prices by having books printed on demand.” Umm…I don’t think that’s how publishing works.
I reported them to Amazon (where I bought the book). And AbeBooks. And Biblio. And eBay. Basically anywhere I could find them selling anything at all I reported them. I wrote to the APA and apologized for my terse email and sent them copies of the photos of the book along with all the seller’s personal information.
They respond and say they’re going to send it to their legal folks and ask if it’s okay if they contact me for more info. Finally, I report them to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Today I happened upon my old APA manual and I started wondering whatever happened to them so I dug up the emails with the info and went looking. They no longer have seller profiles on any of the sites.
Their website has been taken over by a domain re-seller. The house appears to have been sold last year (which may not be related, but I’d like to think it is.) And the owner’s social media page lists them as now working at a place that turns out to be a PayDay lender.
I dug through their timeline and found someone asking in October of last year if they were still selling books and them replying with “No. Had to stop.”
Also, my professor raised my grade to a B+”
3. Nearly Kill Me On The Freeway? I'll Give You The Fright Of Your Life
“Ok…. I know how stupid this was and how bad it could have turned out first of all.
One night I was driving to my partner’s house and as I was getting on the highway, the guy in front of me was going like 15 mph to enter a 70 mph highway.
I was worried we would be rear-ended. So the first chance I got, I moved one lane to the left and shot around him to get up to a reasonable speed.
He didn’t take too kindly to this and came up on my side flipping me off and cursing me out. He was very clearly wasted. He then moves in front of me and slams the brakes, moves back to my side flipping and cursing, then behind me about 2ft from my rear bumper.
And just keeps doing this cycle over and over. For like 10 mins. Eventually, he threw a bunch of fast food, complete with a milkshake, at my car.
It was pretty late and there wasn’t a lot of traffic. Eventually, he pulled into the far right lane, which became an exit only. He slowed down to get a couple of last words in on me.
Up to this point, I had been pretty chill…maybe a head shake here or a furrowed brow.
Earlier that day I had also taken my partner’s little brother to shoot BB guns. Including a BB pistol that was an exact replica of a Colt 1911 .45acp. You’ve probably already figured out where this is headed.
I waited till he was already so close to the exit he couldn’t follow me or pull a REAL gun on me. Finally the last second I pull the gun up and yell something like…POINT BLANK SUCKAH!!!
or something equally stupid.
This guy’s jaw immediately hit his lap. He ducked down and when he did so, inadvertently yanked the steering wheel to the right…HARD…and about 200 ft short of the exit. His car went across the median, bottomed out, and tore his undercarriage up something fierce.
I immediately panicked. There was nobody anywhere near us, but I took the next exit and u-turned. I thought if the cops were looking for me they’d expect me to be heading the same direction.
I hid the “gun” in a culvert at the exit and headed back the same way I had just come. He was stranded on the side of the road…with police coming to him. I went down a few more miles and turned around again (so heading in the original direction again). I figured if the cops pulled me over it would be my word against a dude, and I didn’t even have the incriminating evidence anymore.
He was getting a field sobriety test.
Again, I know how dumb it was. I was young and stupid and would never do it again. And if he would have gotten seriously hurt, or worse hurt someone else I would still feel horrible.
But being that none of that happened, and the guy was such a colossal b******e prior, ehhh.”
2. Kicking The Loser To The Curb
“I found out around the end of April 2015 that this ex was being unfaithful, once again. Found out by looking through his phone (which he agreed to random checks to after the last incident). I hadn’t checked in a while so he apparently got too comfortable.
For some reason, I felt the urge that night to check his phone.
We had gotten an apartment together a few months prior that both of our names were on. That night, I looked through his phone and found that he was being unfaithful, yet again, with some random girl he’d met. He was bragging to one of his friends and said, “She knows our relationship is over.
We’re basically just roommates at this point.” As far as I knew, our relationship was going great.
I’d even spent hours that same night cooking him dinner and putting a brand new kitchen table together by myself because he was too much of a lazy butt to do it himself and I wanted him to have a nice place to eat for once.
After reading these texts, I woke him up and immediately told him to get out as we were done. He started putting on his pants and I said NO no, get out right now with what you have.
What did he have on? TIGHTY WHITIES.
His phone was in my name. All of our cars (3 total) were in my name. And I bought him the majority of his clothing throughout the years.
We lived basically on a college campus that had only one gas station which was a mile away. I was also the only one working, so all of our income was mine.
I kicked him out, no shoes, no phone, no wallet, no cash, no clothes, no car keys.
He walked a mile like that to the gas station to call his mom to come get him at 4 am.
I let him pick all his stuff up, a MONTH later, from the landlord’s all boxed up neatly. Immediately turned off the phone that same day and canceled his cards to my account.
He tried with all his might to get me back, stating that he knew I was the right one and he wanted to marry me. I said heck no.
I even got him to come clean the entire apartment a few weeks later while I napped after an extremely long day and he groveled. I woke up to tell him to get out again.
Not to mention I threatened to take his past domestic violence issues against me to the police (had documentation) if he didn’t pay half of the rest of our rent upfront since his name was also on the lease, to the tune of 3,000$ USD.
We live in a state famous for horse racing and he worked 12 hours a day for multiple days at the track (during May, the busiest time in the year for horse racing on the planet) to pay it while I was also there, dressed fabulously, drinking mint juleps.
It felt wonderful and I got together with my now-husband (who treats me great) the same week that I kicked him out. Best thing I’ve ever done. Just picturing him walking into a gas station at 4 am to ask to use the phone and call his mommy while crying still makes me giggle like a little girl close to 4 years later. Don’t be unfaithful to me, especially not the 5th time around or I’ll screw you over, BIG TIME.”
1. Meet Strict Drawing Requirements? Fine, But I'll Cause Delay
“I’ve finished my apprenticeship building buses I’ve done a stint of testing in quality and I’m approached to apply for the good in inspector role.
Never been approached about a job before which I was quite taken aback by, so yeah, let’s go for it. Get the job easily using a vernier caliper to measure one part and a quick interview.
Start the job and it’s going well, level of components for me to look at is steady and under control, and production getting what they want.
Anyone who’s been involved in engineering will know that sometimes drawings for parts are tied up to really tight tolerances which don’t matter or a feature that has little to no impact on the assembly.
There are parts which something like a radius (a curve on an edge normally to stop being cutting themselves) on an edge isn’t quite as big as it should be, but it’s there so no one is going to cut their hand. My boss sees my report on this part due to an investigation about something else and sees I’ve marked it as being a bit smaller.
My boss who has never built any of these buses or really knows where these parts go gives me a grilling saying that a radius of 3 instead of 4 is outside of the limit and I shouldn’t have passed them and quarantine them to be returned to the supplier to correct. I mention that this is a small thing that won’t affect the assembly or function of the bus, but he ain’t having it.
In comes malicious compliance. So I can’t release anything unless it’s 100% OK… Fine.
I start to implement this and within 3 weeks of this, our area is full and overflowing to the point that it’s going into the gangway. I’m getting constant calls about parts from production, materials, engineering, R&D asking for x y z parts which I tell them they have been quarantined for this reason which they find ridiculous, and demand I release them.
I say no; I’ve been given strict orders and I’m following them. The materials department also feed this back to the suppliers saying their parts have been rejected for x reason which I’m getting phone calls from suppliers asking about this (they won’t speak to my boss because they don’t like him and has little knowledge of assembly and manufacture of parts). I explain the same thing as I have done to the departments at my work, and the suppliers are furious and say they have been doing these parts like this for years.
I say sorry; I’ve been given strict orders.
A week after that, my boss is called to the head of quality and has a long meeting about the release of the product with various design engineers. After that meeting, my boss comes back to me and explains that I shouldn’t be so critical of small features that won’t necessarily have an effect on the assembly and that I’m damaging production.
I smile and say OK.
A couple of weeks later after our morning meeting on supplier issues, I’m the last one to leave which my head of quality is in the room and tells me he understands I have a good knowledge of how these buses are made and that my opinion on what will be OK or not is valid and valued.
For those engineers out there, you are probably thinking why not apply for a concession.
Well, the concession process was so long-winded, it required an engineer to review the concession to physically see the parts and how they fit, they then approve the concession which then goes to the monthly manager meeting which 5 managers out of however many had to sign it off to say it was fine.
To also change the drawing as well was a very long process that could take months for it to be approved.
Bit of a long one I know. 5-6 years down the line, I still think now how ridiculous the whole thing was because my boss clearly did not have a clue about manufacture or assembly. The only reason I think he got his job is that he will argue with suppliers until he gets what he wants, regardless if he is right or the information he is giving the suppliers is right.
From that guy, I never wanted to be that guy that was clueless, and from each rile that I have done, I have always made sure to really do my homework on the product and also if I didn’t know something that there is nothing wrong with saying explain it to me rather than try and fake your way out of it.”
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