People Chatter About Their Interesting Revenge Stories
17. Customer Won't Accept The Business Deal, So I Make Things Complicated
“So almost a couple of years ago I had a guy that emailed me back and forth for months.
He was pretty cool but picky beyond belief and couldn’t decide on what he wanted.
Finally, though, he ordered this ultra-deluxe, 4 player arcade machine wrapped in Star Wars graphics. He spared no expense, spending $3,000 plus $220 shipping.
The machine arrives in Melbourne 5 days later and he calls me up losing his mind. It’s been damaged by the freight company.
I send everything fully insured so I assured him it was ok, he’s covered. Please send me the pics of the damage.
It was only very slight, nothing cosmetic, but the console was a little dislodged as they must have stacked something heavy on it.
I assured the customer it could be fixed, I’ll contract a cabinet maker to come out to him and repair it at my expense, then I’ll go through insurance later.
Nope. he didn’t want that.
So I said ok, I’ll arrange for collection and have it brought back to me, and I’ll issue him a full refund including freight.
Nope. He didn’t want that either.
Ok, I said, what would make you happy then? It’s something easy to fix, perhaps I can pay you what I’d pay the contractor (about $250) and you can fix it?
Nope. He wanted a full refund AND he wanted to keep the machine too.
I said that won’t happen. Insurance won’t allow it as the damage is tiny. It’s like car insurance, they won’t write off a whole car for minor damage that can be fixed.
He didn’t care, he wanted a refund.
I said they won’t do it, and I certainly won’t pay out of pocket. Either I’ll arrange collection of the unit at my expense and issue a refund to him or we have it repaired.
Nope. He paid via XY Online Payment System and he’s putting through a dispute because the item ‘didn’t arrive as described.’ I advised him that XY Online Payment System’s rules also state that in order to get a refund, he’ll need to show proof that he’d sent the item back or arranged with the sender to have it collected.
Nope. He’s keeping it and getting a refund.
So I advised him that what he was committing were fraud and theft. Also, XY Online Payment System will freeze the $3220 in my account and I’m not at fault here.
That’s what XY Online Payment System does you see. If anyone lodges a dispute, they automatically freeze the funds in the seller’s account. It’s guilty until proven innocent with them.
It can also take up to 90 days to resolve, sometimes 6 months. I know, it’s happened before.
He didn’t care. The next thing I knew, I had a notification from XY Online Payment System. The funds were frozen pending the dispute.
The next step is stating your case to them. Providing evidence etc where they relay the info back and forth between the buyer and seller.
XY Online Payment System ALWAYS sides with the buyer, sellers are a piece of trash as far as they’re concerned. If it can’t be resolved between buyer and seller, then you can opt to have XY Online Payment System decide. But their decision is absolute.
I provided my transcripts advising the customer that I’d collect the item and refund him, and he provided them with a fake pick-up receipt.
As far as they knew, he’s done his part, now he’s eligible. So they ruled in his favor.
So this loser now got a refund and my $3000 machine. I was fuming, and he wouldn’t answer my calls or emails. I’m a big guy and I had a rough upbringing in a tough neighborhood, so I was about to jump into my truck, drive the 9***m south, knock on his door and watch him poop himself as I repossess my machine.
But my wife is the voice of reason and calmed me down and said to try legal avenues first.
Coincidentally he emails me 3 days later and says the computer in the machine stopped working. I replied ‘Which freaking planet do you live on where you steal an item then complain it doesn’t work?’ He loled me and said he had an IT guy.
A few days after that I get a call from a guy saying that his friend bought an item and the Hard drive is dead.
It was his IT guy, and I don’t think he knew the whole story. I asked him to find the serial number, it’s just the date it was built and the iteration, for example, 2312201901. He read the number out and I said, ‘Oh it’s in warranty, send it back and I’ll send a fresh new one,’ he bought it and sent it back.
Now note that he said the HDD was dead, that’s a good thing.
If it had been the computer, he could just use anything else and use the HDD as a backup. But since it was dead, and now I had his computer too, he has to buy a new system which would set him back at least $450 but he still couldn’t play games in it. You can download the apps but there’s a tonne of config work and button mapping etc.
IT guy calls me a few days later asking for the computer, and I told him the story and that nope, he can go screw himself.
He also loled and asked how hard it could possibly be to just download stuff.
See, what he didn’t know is that I have a little fail-safe built-in. The encoder I use isn’t mapped to the default keys on the apps.
I changed everything around on the hardware to stop people from trying to just clone it. It’s not hard to get around, but most people aren’t familiar with the nuances of emulators.
Inevitably, I get another call a few days later from a different guy saying that he’d built his own machine but couldn’t get it working. The symptoms were exactly that of trying to get my controls working on a different system.
It was definitely the IT guy fishing. I played dumb and said I didn’t know, sorry. Now, this guy had an empty useless cabinet, so he left me a one-star review on Google. It’s since been removed but it read something like ‘poor quality build, flimsy, the system doesn’t work, do not buy from these people!’
I was about to jump into my truck again and drive down to that jerk.
But again, my wife is like a bucket of ice water to my fire. So I wrote a long letter to XY Online Payment System attaching all of my evidence of his fraud. Then I responded to the 1-star review with attachments to the emails and his admission to committing the fraud.
Also, I displayed his name and email address to smoke him out.
He immediately called and said, ‘Look, no hard feelings ok, but I received a damaged item and I’m entitled to compensation.
Remove my details.’ He was getting spammed relentlessly, but he seriously believed he did nothing wrong, I told him to go screw himself and to enjoy his useless machine. I was still burning though.
I forgot about it after a few weeks, XY Online Payment System didn’t respond so I cut my losses and moved on.
But then something beautiful happened. It’s as though the universe aligned and said ‘Hey Abs, we’re not going to poop on you today, here, take this gift on a silver platter.’
I was on eBay looking for old non-working machines I can buy and refurb, there’s good to be made doing that. A one-day refurb could pull in over $1000 profit. He’s listed my machine! But contrary to his google review, the description was ‘marvelous hand-built arcade cabinet, built by a master carpenter, flawless finish and quality, missing computer. Good for a DIY project.’ (I’m not a carpenter by the way) he had it listed for $1100.
That was still $1100 pure profit to him since he got it free.
I bought it under my wife’s account and had it delivered to my home address. When I sent it, it was wrapped in about a 4-inch thick layer of bubble wrap. When it arrived it had a flimsy single layer less than 5mm thick.
The courier who dropped it off was the same guy who picked it up from me, we were good friends and he knew the story.
So I said I was going to damage it, make it look serious, but nothing I can’t fix in a few minutes. He agreed and said that he’d log the damage due to insufficient packaging. Insurance won’t cover it.
I knocked the panels out from inside so it looked like the machine had been crushed, realistically I only had to reset the screws and it was good as new, But it looked mangled.
Then I sent Melbourne jerkhead the pics and complained about the damage. He said it was insured.
I advised him the courier said it was insufficiently packaged and that it’s not covered, I want a refund, take this back. I knew he wouldn’t take it back, it was totally useless to him.
He said he didn’t want it and he’ll refund the freight. I said nope.
I can’t do anything with a damaged machine, if he doesn’t do anything, I’m filing an XY Online Payment System dispute under ‘item not as described.’ He wasn’t happy, played the victim, played on my sympathy still not realizing who I was.
Eventually, after offering me partial refunds and getting rejected, he relented and told me to keep it and he’d refund me in full.
He must’ve realized that his greed wasn’t worth it and it cost him nothing.
So now I had my machine back and I was happy this was over with, still angry at this guy’s audacity, but meh. That’s not the end though….it gets better, oh does it get deliciously better.
Someone at XY Online Payment System business had finally read my complaint. Since I do a lot of work through XY Online Payment System under a business account, there’s kind of a concierge service although not really, kind of like a priority service.
They actually went through my complaint, verified that his pick-up docket was actually a year old and unrelated, and read the transcripts of him intending to keep the machine and get a refund.
They refunded me in full. Now I had my machine back and $3k and he couldn’t do anything because he got caught for fraud. Can’t dispute stuff if you got caught being dishonest
He called me up losing his mind. I laughed and said, ‘Sorry mate, it’s karma, It’s purely up to my goodwill to refund you, go suck a doorknob.’
He pleaded and begged, swore a lot, pleaded more, and I said I’ll think about it.
Legally he had no leg to stand on. But I have scruples. I donated it all to charity on his behalf.
I sent him the receipt, he lost his mind some more, but now there were kids with food and clothes because of his jerkiness. Eat it, Michael.”
16. Can't Unclog Your Own Toilet, Entitled Tenant? Pay Up
Like, seriously, man?
“I own and manage several mid-size multi-family rental properties (apartment blocks). I’m very hands-on, and I deal with most day-to-day issues as well as the investment side. Great returns this way.
I choose most of the tenants personally, and most of them are great people – they appreciate my hands-on work and the fact I love my job and strive to provide the customer service that a good hotel would.
There are some exceptions. One of my tenants is a charming young woman with a good job, a friendly and easygoing demeanor, but has a total jerk romantic partner.
It was a six-month battle to get him on the lease since he lives there full-time now and from what I see, doesn’t contribute to rent. Not my problem though.
Until I get a call from him, politely (odd – he’s not usually polite) saying he clogged the toilet and asks if I can call a plumber or fix it before his lady gets home.
Happy that he is being polite, I went on over and was there in 20 minutes. It turned out he had dropped a bottle of hair gel into the bowl, and for some reason flushed it. It was jammed in the P-trap of the bowl, just out of sight but within reach.
I got on my elbow-gloves, reached in, and pulled it out. He stood watching me with this s*****g steve smirk on his face.
I suggested that next time he just reach in and grab it himself before calling me.
He looked me dead in the eye and said “I don’t reach into toilets dude, I’m going to school so I don’t have to touch other people’s poop.”
I told him “You’d be surprised how much that pays though – your bill will be in the mail.”
I went home, called three plumbing contractors, and asked them each what their emergency service rate was – the average was $180.00 for the first 45 minutes flat.
I sent a bill to the scum-bag tenant for $180.00. He refused to pay, I filed a dispute at the tenancy office and included in my evidence the three quotes I had received.
I got my judgment today – $180.00 plus the $50 filing fee.
A LL is allowed to charge a market rate to repair the damage that a tenant causes intentionally or through negligence. Now he knows that.
Next time he will reach into the toilet himself.
All he had to do was keep his dumb mouth shut, and I would have fixed his problem for free…”
15. Don't Think I Can Legitimately Pay You? Two Can Play At This Game
An eye for an eye.
“So I’m on the train heading into the city to attend a lecture (I’m a 21 y/o student, male), having a pleasant enough morning.. it was maybe 20 minutes to 9. I missed my usual quarter past 8 train which is normally crammed full of morning commuters, but not to worry as class didn’t start until 9, and I usually stop by and grab a bacon roll and a cup of tea.
I’d make it to class with 5 minutes to spare if I gave up my bacony goodness (tragedy, I know).
I had just recently upgraded my bank account and got a new debit card that allowed me to use the card to pay for my train tickets on the train. This was handy because the machines can be slow and I have missed a few trains in the past when using my old debit card that only worked on these machines, not the handheld one that she has on her person..
so I thought why not use this opportunity to test out the new card.
As I said it was the train after the usual busy commute, but the carriage was still at least ¾ full. The ticket inspector comes by, and she’s a middle-aged English woman (I live in Scotland) who I have seen before and have noticed that she can be very rude and obnoxious, and thinks she’s God’s gift because she has authority on the train.
She starts to check people’s tickets, tapping her feet and huffing with impatience at people who have to dig around in their pockets to find their tickets before she can move on, clearly not pleased that people don’t have them at the ready.
I’m sitting there with my earphones in, minding my own business with my new debit card at the ready. As she approaches me and asks to see a ticket, I flick out one earphone and tell her what type of ticket I need and where I was going.
Around this time we were going through a tunnel so there was a bit of reverberation of the sound of wind gushing through the carriage. She asks me to repeat myself because she claims she couldn’t hear me, so I repeat my request. Now I don’t know if she had hearing problems or being English she couldn’t seem to understand my Scottish accent (which isn’t very strong at all) because I had to repeat myself a total of 3 more times!
Each time I was progressively getting louder and louder until I was almost shouting, and I could see other people on the train looking up, clearly curious as to why I was talking so loud, proving that they could hear me just fine. Finally, she understands what I’m trying to ask her, and then says in her most nasty, condescending tone… “WELL IF YOU MAYBE TOOK OUT YOUR OTHER EARPHONE WHILE TALKING, I MIGHT BE ABLE TO HEAR YOU BETTER.”
I sat for a couple of seconds in confusion, absorbing what she just said… it didn’t make sense, but all attention was on me and her now, and I could see confusion at her statement registering on other nearby passengers’ faces as well. Not one for confrontation I swiftly apologized and handed her my debit card.. she huffed and whipped out her card machine, but it seemed like my morning was only going to get worse because my new card got declined. I have funds in my account but later that day I learned that I had to call/text a number to activate my new card which I forgot to do.
She was visibly irritated when I asked her to try and ring it up again, but no luck.
I’m starting to get a bit red in the face cause at least half the train is looking in my direction, some people were looked sympathetic towards me, others just smirked at my misfortune… Luckily I keep 20 pounds behind my phone cover in case of emergencies, so I ask her to bear with me while I take my phone out of my pocket and crack open the case, then present her with the 20 note.
Now maybe it was because I was a young male, or maybe it was because the note was behind my phone case, but when I handed it to her, she snatched it off me and then HELD IT UP TO THE LIGHT and scrutinized it for literally 15-20 seconds to see if it was fake.. this is strange cause it has never happened before and I have used many 20 pound notes to pay for a ticket before.
I ask her if there’s a problem with the note, to which she replies in a loud voice ‘I’ll tell you in a minute boy’ – OH SHE DID NOT JUST CALL ME BOY.. you could cut the tension in the carriage with a knife, all eyes were on this transaction at this point.
Finally, she seems to accept my note as legal tender and digs around in her purse for my change.
I received a few coins back, a 5-pound note, and a 10-pound note.. as she handed me the change she started to walk away.. but I saw my one and only chance at revenge so I loudly said ‘hang on a minute’… and you can probably guess what happened next. I held those notes up to the light, scrutinizing them so intensely it seemed like I was going to burn a hole right through them..
as I did this, the entire carriage erupted in laughter, and the old couple closest to me started to applause which spread throughout the majority of the spectators.
The ticket woman’s face turned a deep shade of violet. she hastily made her way to the next carriage, not even bothering to check the remaining people’s tickets. Justice was served, and I felt absolutely amazing..
and that was my favorite day ever.”
14. Since My Cleaning Isn't Suffice, You Can Do It
“So this story is a few years old. I was in college at the time and summer vacations had just started so I was home. Now I love both my parents very much and I am very thankful for all they have done for me. I’m a doctor because of them but that said they can be……..tough to deal with.
Now I need to tell you that my mother really, really wants the house clean.
But she can’t really do it herself so we have a housemaid who comes every day, vacuums the house, mops the floor, and dusts off everything.
Now back to the story. As I said I was home for summer vacation and it was at this time that our housemaid got pregnant and had to leave work. So my mother cleaned the house herself. So when I arrived I got the job.
I vacuumed the house and mopped every day while she dusted the counters, etc.
So now my father is a retired army colonel and has nothing to do.
The man has worked in the military most of his life so is definitely a strict dude but he and I get along just fine. But he definitely does like to poke and tell me where I miss while cleaning.
Now this happens every day with him constantly telling me that, “If you can’t do it well then don’t do it at all. I’ll do it.”
Now I always shrug that off as I know he doesn’t really mean it and if I stopped he would never do it himself.
But after like a week or so I finished vacuuming and was about to mop when he called me (quite loudly) to the kitchen and showed me how badly I clean (there was dust behind the refrigerator) then he told me to move the fridge and vacuum behind it.
I did. And then went on to get the mop.
He watched me like a hawk the entire time I mopped. Making sure I don’t miss a single inch.
At the end, the same line: “If you can’t do it well then don’t do it at all. I’ll do it.” I was finally done and said “fine.”
He stood there for a solid minute like he was contemplating what has just been said realizing that he would have to really do it tomorrow.
But not to back down he said “GOOD! I’ll show you how it’s done.”
Next 2 days no cleaning was done and when my mom saw the dust that had built up (there is construction happening in the neighborhood) needless to say she was angry and asked me why the house was like that. I explained everything and then she smirked and said that she will talk to him.
The next day, my father tried to clean the house and got visibly tired so I offered my help but the proud man doth require no assistance. So I just watched as he slowly, slowly made his way through the house looking more defeated after each room. Finally, when everything was done and clean (I really wanted to just go in each room to nitpick but the poor man had suffered enough) he got sooo tired he went to bed and fell asleep.
Needless to say, he never said anything about my cleaning the entire month (then my mother got a new temporary maid for the time the old one was on leave).
But this is my story about malicious compliance and how I got my father off my back.”
Another User Comments:
“I still can’t get over the fact that they had a maid that cleaned the entire house, the maid left, and it took three people to then clean the house, and then they hired one new maid to do the work of three people.” navydude89
13. The Work Has To Be Perfect? You'll Be Waiting A While, And It'll Cost More Than Expected
“A few years ago I worked for a diagnostic company named after a certain mythical firebird. This was a veterinary diagnostic company and I was a cytotechnician. My job was to perform CBC counts, evaluate cerebrospinal fluid, fix tissue in formalin for the histologist, make fecal smears for our microbial team, slice brain matter and fix it into paraffin blocks you name it. I even sorted sperm for dairy farms that wanted to have their breedings result in fewer males.
Now, I loved the work. It was dirty work don’t get me wrong. I dealt with everything from gallon jars of horse urine to chunks of flesh torn from cancer-ridden dogs. Even a polar bear head from a suspected smuggling case! My proudest moment was confirming pregnancies, including being on the phone with a zoo while I confirmed the pregnancy in a lovely wolf eel named Matilda.
I was an overnight tech so I didn’t interact with the bosses (pathologists, microbiologists, etc). I took care of the emergencies and gave any critical data to veterinarians on the case, but most of the time it was stuff that could wait for the pathologist to wake up. The chief pathologist got the worst cases, and he was a jerk.
I was to have all of his slides, data, and patient files arranged alphabetically ON HIS DESK by 6 am.
And he meant by 6 am.
I came in at 6:05 because a chunky sample had clogged the Advia, and he was sitting at his desk in complete and total darkness. Waiting for me. He switched on the lamp when I walked in and gave me a heart attack.
Now, this chief pathologist didn’t like me. I’m loud, I have crazy hair and stretched ears. We’re laboratory workers.
No one from the public interacts with us, so the dress code boils down to “as long as it’s lab safe you’re good.” Being an ancient chief pathologist with the withered soul of a dementor, he didn’t like this.
He hated that I was gay, that I joked around with coworkers. In his mind, this was austere work, and we’re never allowed to have any fun, ever.
So he began sending back my slide books. This man would wake me up at 9 am after a 10-hour shift, and ask why sample 106542 was chunky. As in, he thought the b***d on the slide was too thick to read and demanded that I re-make it for the next morning. Now, I take pride in my work. People trust vets to diagnose their pet correctly and it’s my job to help Fluffy recover just as much as the vets.
Not to mention I saw repeated draws, so I knew a few patients by name alone.
I asked a few other techs to give feedback on my slides and got approval from them before sending them up to the Dementor.
He began sending back whole lots of slides to the point where he was doubling and tripling my work for the night. The clients began to notice; I wasn’t spending as long on sperm sorting and the dairy got angry.
A few fecals had to be delayed. Always the same feedback from the Dementor. “The slides are too thick!!” “I can’t read the slides!” “You’re killing patients!”
He once marched downstairs and actually threw a book of glass slides at my head. “Don’t freaking send them up here until they’re perfect!” He snarled and marched back upstairs. I was petrified, holding a tray of urine and covered in broken borosilicate glass.
Not send them up until they’re perfect? Absolutely, sir.
I shoved my non-emergency cases off on a coworker who needed more sperm, urine, and fecal practice, and I threw my back into making b***d and CSF slides. My tissue was eagerly taken up by a coworker who wanted to learn histo, so my work was covered. Since everyone hated the Dementor, it wasn’t hard to get folks to help me.
I pulled slides the Dementor had made personally and set that as my standard. Presumably, he’s able to read his own freaking slides.
I did them over and over again until they were PERFECT. No cells were ruptured. No streaks. Dyed to perfection, labeled clearly as anything I could label. These were slides that could have gone to the gosh darn museum of hematology.
They were actually better than his.
I send a 300 slide lot of perfect, beautiful, lovely slides to my boss. He admires them, compliments my work, and I get the paperwork packet ready. Not only do I organize it by alphanumeric patient name and number, but I also organize it by ER cases on top so he doesn’t have to hunt for them. I ask the veterinarians for patient records and attach those.
I put them each in their own lovely case folder labeled with the patient’s number and name.
I send this gorgeous packet up to the Dementor EXACTLY at 6 am.
He’s of course, waiting.
He picks up a slide, sets it on the microscope, and immediately I see him stop. They’re beautiful.
You can see every white b***d cell. The pathogens stand out like I had freaking asked them to.
I’m standing there with a grin on my face, thank him for his time, and go downstairs to gather my things.
I’m woken up again. This time by HR. They ask me to come in, and nervously I drive to the lab. I find out the Dementor is accusing me of wasting the sample, as I had essentially used up most of the sample prepping the slides.
After all the other techs had pawed the tubes, there was only enough for one or two re-test runs. There were other technicians’ names on histo fecal and urine reports, so some of the other doctors got a little fun.
I tell HR about the Dementor screaming at me not to send the b***d slides until they were perfect. Since I am committed to the health and well-being of my patients, I pulled slides the Dementor had made and followed his standard.
By his own standards, the slides were, in a word, perfect.
HR immediately turned on him and asked him why he would ask me to be written up for performing my job. Dementor grumbled something about the samples, but since there was enough for analysis he couldn’t really nail me on anything.
Unfortunately, the Dementor did eventually win and get me fired. He complained about everything under the sun, including things like asking why diarrhea samples were streaked (uh, nature of the beast) but I never heard anything about any b***d samples I ever handed him ever again.
And since pathology labs keep example slides indefinitely for reference, those beautiful slides I made will be standing next to his for eternity. I hope that puts a burr up his butt as much as it helps me sleep at night. I like to imagine he has to pull those perfect slides to reference a case, and purses his leathery lips at the initials on the slide.”
12. Clueless Karen Has No Idea How The Lottery Works
“This happened about 8 years ago when I worked at a gas station while in school.
This happened during some time when the Powerball had a fairly high jackpot, nothing crazy but higher than normal. Some info on the lottery for those unaware, you can fill out a sheet with your numbers, and have multiple sets of numbers you pay $2-$3 for each set on a ticket.
This is run through a machine and a receipt is printed, at that point, the store is charged for the entry so the customer needs to pay for it.
You can choose to have the same numbers run for more drawings after, you just check a box for how many drawings you want. If you run a ticket through the machine twice it just makes a duplicate for the same drawing, so I guess if you win you win twice as much (excluding the jackpot), but not really something anyone would do.
This woman, Karen, came in with a prefilled ticket. I greet her and she just drops the ticket on the counter without replying.
Karen: “I need this put through the machine 20 times.”
I look down at the ticket, 5 sets of numbers all with PowerPlay. 1 drawing of this costs $15 so if she wants it to draw for the next 20 drawings it would cost $300.
But what she said she wanted was the same ticket 20 times all for the next drawing.
Same price but not what people normally want.
Me: “Ok did you mean you wanted this to run for the next 20 drawings?”
Karen: “No, I said I want you to put this in the machine 20 times so I have 20 individual tickets.”
Me: “So you want this all to draw at the same time?”
Karen: “Yes that’s what I said.”
Me: “Ok, I just want to be sure that’s what you want, so these will all be duplicate tickets all drawing on Friday?”
Karen: “Mmmhhhmmm.”
So I take the ticket and run it through. Out pops the confirmation ticket and receipt. I look up and she just says, “Yep keep putting it through.” I do this a few more times and just ask.
“Ok again, you’re sure this is what you want, they will all draw on Friday only?” Karen just sighed and confirmed yes. I kept going and sometime after the 12th or 13th one she says: “So do I just keep these for all the drawings after Friday?”
Me, stopping feeding the ticket into the machine: “No these will all draw on Friday only and be done, just like you requested. Again do you mean you want them to run on every drawing afterward?”
Karen now confused: “Yes.”
Me: “Ok, that’s why I was asking so many times, these will not do that, they will draw once and be done.”
Karen starts saying well that’s not what she meant and she doesn’t want the ones I already printed off and says who would want that?
Me: “Exactly why I asked you so many times I’m sorry but you need to buy these as there is no way we will be able to sell them.”
Karen: “No I won’t, I want the ones I asked for.”
She was starting to get upset and at this point, our awesome assistant manager (AM) who was nearby stepped in.
AM: “Excuse me ma’am but I heard our employee ask you several times before he started and he even explained the difference to you.
We cannot sell the tickets printed out, which he only did after you repeatedly stated that’s how you wanted them done.”
Karen started to look like she was going to bolt out the door at this point so AM added: “…And if you don’t, we’ll have to treat it as theft and call the cops.”
Karen finally relented and bought the tickets.
She then used the remainder of what she had to buy the tickets how she intended to, just not as many draws. She left without another word. She honestly wasn’t that bad but she did have some attitude like she knew everything.
Still, I hope at least one of her numbers won on that first drawing so she’d get back most of what she spent.”
11. Be Unfaithful To Me? You'll Have A Little Piece Of Me Everywhere
Small revenge but very effective.
“Living with a guy from the age of 19, I was besotted. He was a little older than me, and a drummer. As a teenager, I was bowled over and besotted, and it was only a couple of months after we met that I moved in with him.
We’ll call him PBB for Ponytailed Brummy Boy.
I really, really loved him. Even when he told me he was still in love with his ex (who had been unfaithful to him) and would insist I should do the housework and shopping and cooking even though we both worked full time because it was his house, he earned more than me, and I didn’t pay any rent (all of my wages went into his bank account in his name).
In case you missed it, I loved him, I really did, even when he’d started to go out and, gasp, happen to iron his own shirt. Wearing aftershave. Even when he went out “For a couple with the lads” then stumble in the bedroom at 3 am, hardly able to stand … His excuse? “Someone had spiked his drink.”
I even still loved him when he came in at 3 am, with his ironed shirt all creased, aftershave on, and with a shag tag glowing from his neck … His excuse?
“My mate Steve did it to me for a laugh.”
I moved into the spare room in protest, surely he would come in, apologize, change his ways, promise not to go out as often, not come back wasted?
Nope. This stalemate went on for 2 months, I still loved him, but moved out to my parent’s house at the age of 25. I just moved a few things out with me, just my cassette stereo (lol, a couple of decades-old this story) and my clothes.
I even left my beloved cat behind, on the agreement when I get my own place I can come back and reclaim him.
For some reason he let me keep a key. I realized only a couple of days later I had forgotten the lead for my boom box. I knew he was going to be out with the lads at the time I was driving back from work, so deliberately timed it when he wasn’t at home.
Pre mobile phones, I’m not having the pain of speaking to him, too much, I love him. In and out, the job is done.
I walk in, something is wrong. The house is clean. Not clean, but clean.
Wait, what’s this on the mantlepiece? A generic love card, no occasion but you know the kind a la Roger The Rabbit “How much do I love you?
Let me count the ways!” Inside was neat flowery writing “Dear PBB, I love you so much, from –.”
Slowly, I see the cassette answerphone machine is flashing with a message. My curiosity turbocharges me over there, O little red flashing light, what can you tell me? The female voice purrs “Oh, PBB, I had such a luuuurvely night last night, I can’t wait to do it again soon!”
Looking around the room, two wine glasses.
By this time my head is like a volcano. I run upstairs to the room and there’s a freaking WEDDING RING next to his side of the bed! What the heck!!
I am shuddering, crying, drive back to my parent’s house in bits. I walk in the door, sobbing so hard and loud my Mum asked if I had been mistreated ..
I couldn’t talk for the snot bubbles of anguish. Why doesn’t he love me?
We talk, and I want revenge, but more than petty.
I plot. I plan. I think of sewing prawns into the hems of his curtains. Too much hassle. Cutting his clothes up? Not my style. I am too subtle for that. I want long-range passive revenge.
Dad got a van.
We went the next day (Saturday) with the cat basket. Everything that I had bought and left behind I was going to take. Only things that were mine. That was the only rule.
Side note: PBB used to half-work every Saturday at a music store in town, talking drums and stuff.
He was screwing the owner’s sister. I recognized her voice and name from the love card.
So, I took the washing machine I had bought 3 months earlier – did I mention he was a drummer – I replaced it with a washboard and thimbles he used for percussion.
I took the tin of Christmas ham that was out of date in the cupboard. I took the cutlery as it was Eternal Beau and I bought it from Argos.
I took the teabags, as I had bought the last lot.
I took the double bed and mattress, and I took my cat.
Just before we left, I told Dad to sit in the van, I had my own special goodbye to say. The previous night I had found every single printed photo of his face. This took an hour, before camera phones, etc, I cut them all up and ripped them into quarters. I hid handfuls under carpets, inside vases with dried flowers, behind picture frames, under ornaments, back of cupboards, inside the freezer ice cube tray, and behind the bath panel.
Nothing obvious to the eye.
Whilst I was in the bathroom, I opened the cabinet and saw his precious Joop aftershave. I crouched over the toilet, peed in it, and put the top back on.
Finally, I took the cassette recording from the answering machine, stopped off on the way home at a phone box, rang the music store where he always hung out on a Saturday, asked to speak to him, and said in a calm, controlled voice:
“You have one week to tell her husband. Or I do,” and hung up.
I sold the bed the same day to a bloke down the pub, sold the washing machine cut price to an elderly neighbor, and resettled my cat into my parent’s home (he loved it there).
I had a phone call at 3 am when he got home to see he had no bed or washing machine and spat down the phone that I was an “Evil vitreous jerk.”
3 months later part 2 came into play. I started to call his friends, pretend I was wasted, giggle and confess I had peed in his aftershave, so eventually, word got out what I had done, but it was too late by then.”
10. Business Partner Gets What He Deserves
“Needed to make a throwaway for this one since it’s still in process.
So my other half is a 50/50 owner of a business. Things were going great for about 4-5 years.
My other half is the quiet numbers person who is actually running and steering the company. The business partner is the face guy the one who gets out there and is known as the guy attached to the company.
At the point where this takes place, the company is expanding like crazy and the loudmouth guy, we’ll call him Archie, starts to focus on making the company only about him so much so that people who don’t even know anything about our product, say things like “it seems like he just wants to be rich and famous.” He’s doing this because he doesn’t really have a job anymore cause the company has grown beyond the usefulness for him to do anything other than be a talking head.
Literally, every other company in this industry (a very close group) has ended up hating us because of this person. Archie is loud, obnoxious, self-absorbed, thin-skinned.
Anyway, I start working a minor unimportant job on the retail side of things (officially hired not working under the table a real job) where Archie is in charge. Not one positive thing comes out of this guy’s mouth.
While he’s around, you hear him insulting other staff, and others in the industry, belittling people, and starting into minor bits of harassment.
Then there was the conversation he has with me out of the blue about not telling anyone who comes in how I’m involved or that the owner and I are married, so “I should only mention that we’re gay if someone asks me first.” Cause it makes us look bad.
At this point, I’m livid. I try very hard not to bring anything home but I’m very upset and he starts to know he screwed up. A month after this happens, I’m late twice due to bad accidents due to the weather.
He pulls me aside and says, “This isn’t working this is why I didn’t want family here. I thought your job would be temporary.
When can you leave?”
My other half is angry but I ask them to stay uninvolved as it just proves Archie right. Exactly a month passes with no mention as I’m looking for work. He asks if we can go for coffee and talk about progress. I say it’s tough for work and I’m still looking for something.
I say let’s meet every two weeks until I’m ready to put my resignation in.
We agree, handshake, and things are good. Working with him is fun again.
A week later he comes in on his way out the door and says, “So we’ll pay you out to the end of the month. We’ve hired a new girl and we’re giving her your shifts (2 days left in the month) and you’re done.”
So here’s where I get petty.
The industry we’re in is very heavily regulated by certain governing bodies and one of the rules is you can’t have a DUI on your record. I happen to know if he has a DUI he will be forced to sell his shares of the company.
The next night after this we all go out. He has about 5 drinks and drives the company van home.
I call the police and report a swerving vehicle giving a good description of the vehicle (not hard to, nice big cargo van with company branding) and the route I see it taking.
He gets pulled over, gets a DUI, and is in the process of trying to fight it.
In the meantime he’s been removed from his official positions in the company, is embarrassed amongst the community, and blew so far over there’s no way of getting a slap on the wrist. He will be forced to sell his half of the business.”
9. Here's An Idea: Don't Cut Off Your Employees' Bonuses
“In 2000, I was working for a financial firm: 1800 employees, with a sales force of 200. I was one of the salesmen. We had our annual meeting in April.
It was a big affair. Most of the employees attended, and the CEO gave a big speech about how the previous year was the best in the company’s history, blah blah blah. The next month, May, we each submitted memos basically justifying why we qualified for – or should qualify for – bonuses at the end of June.
Our compensation is based on a predetermined formula. You sell X amount, you get X bonus. You sell Y amount, you get Y bonus.
It wasn’t one amount; it was set at different tiers. It was a predetermined formula in black and white. Everyone on the sales floor had a copy. If you didn’t make your bonus, you knew exactly why, and by what amount you missed it.
The company had been around for over 30 years by then and was known for generous compensation and had never before played games with bonuses or payments.
So I wrote out my memo, as per usual, explained the sales growth in my territory over the course of the previous 12 months, and what percentage my sales were out of last year’s total sales.
Coming off the company’s best year ever, it should have been a slam dunk, right?
All of us were excited about how much we’d have coming in June.
June rolls around and my bonus is zero. ZERO. But it’s not just me. It’s all over the sales floor. Less than 20% of the sales force got bonuses, and everyone was LIVID. All the supervisors were dealing with angry subordinates, the sales manager was too, and even the VP and director above him.
Everyone was furious and insubordinate, angry accusatory emails were flying, and the company was facing a mutiny. It got worse when it came out that the supervisors were offered bonuses that they could determine for themselves. Most of them took them but a couple – knowing their subordinates wouldn’t be getting anything – refused. My supervisor took his.
When it came out, he tried to explain to his sales team how he felt it was justified and how hard he worked.
He ended up with people screaming at him about how they felt the same but they didn’t get anything.
So for a week or so, things on the floor came to a stop. A lot of people just didn’t show up and the ones that did were angry. I came in and started reading Monster.com ads at my desk. I also stopped selling anything or answering my phone.
When confronted by my boss, I told him that as soon as I got the bonus my sales justified, I’d start working again.
Until then I’d be coming in late, reading and responding to want ads, and leaving early. He could expect me to keep that up until I found another job or was fired.
The following day I was sent to the regional sales manager’s office.
She said she’d heard about my work stoppage and asked me to explain myself. I told her that if she heard about it from my supervisor, then she already knew why I wasn’t working and I didn’t need to explain it again.
She tried buddying up to me, being friendly, then being stern, then being angry.
I kept my composure and told her that the longer the company held out on my bonus, the longer it was going to miss out on sales from my territory.
I then gave her my average daily amount of sales from the previous year, quantified what the total loss would be for a week of me not selling, and how much cheaper it would be just to pay me what I was owed and get me back to selling.
Then I thanked her for her time and told her I’d be leaving work as soon as I left her office.
And I did.
The following day I came in, checked my emails – some of which were farewell emails from coworkers who quit over their stolen bonuses – and sat on monster.com until I was told to go to the office of the national sales manager. He’s the gatekeeper – he’s in charge of all 200 of us.
He told me he understood that I was upset, and could see why.
I asked him if withholding the bonuses from 80% of his sales force was his idea or someone else’s. He didn’t answer. He did tell me that I would be getting a check on Monday, and could I please go back to work now? I told him I’d be going back to my desk, but work wouldn’t start until the check was in my hand.
When I went back and checked my emails – yup, more defections.
The next day an email went out to the entire salesforce: management had taken a look at the numbers, re-evaluated the financials, and determined that June bonuses would be issued shortly. The email also apologized for the delay and reminded us that as salesmen, we were the core of the company and our hard work was appreciated. I also received another email, this time from the national sales manager, who told me while bonuses were scheduled for Monday, he’d be walking my check to my desk the following day.
The following day I showed up, sat down, and shortly afterward the national sales manager walked on up and handed me my bonus check. I thanked him and handed him my resignation effective immediately. In my resignation letter, I requested that a check for my unused vacation time please be cut and given to me before I left the building. When he finished reading it I told him I’d clean out my desk while I waited for the vacation check.
While I was doing that, one of my coworkers also resigned effective immediately. We were walked out at the same time and ended up getting to the bar across the street.
I learned later from coworkers that remained that even though the company issued the bonuses, they lost about 20% of the sales force in the following two months.
Gotta love corporate greed.”
Another User Comments:
“I had something similar happen to me. The company I worked for had its best 2 years ever. Went from 24 million in sales to 72 million. If we hit 35 I was owed a $33k bonus. So it comes time for the bonuses to be paid out and they stalled. They said it just took time to prepare. I knew it was nonsense. For the next 3 months, I went back and forth each week between the CFO and the VP asking when I was going to be paid.
Finally, I get the call to see my VP. He hands me a $2k “discretionary” bonus. I blew up. I pulled out my signed contract that showed how much they really owed me. It took another two weeks and the threat of a lawsuit to finally get paid. I quit the next day.
Nobody else that was supposed to get a bonus did. Then again, none of them fought back either.
I come to find out that a couple of weeks later at the company town hall the VP thanks the employees for making him so rich.
In the next coming months, the CFO bought a ranch in Montana. The president bought a Ferrari. The VP bought an Rs4 Audi and the majority partner bought a huge home in Kelowna.
The great thing though is in the years that have followed I went to their biggest competitor.
In those years I’ve managed to take away many of their best clients to the tune of over $50 million in lost business for them. Screw you Scott!” zoomzoom42
8. Steal From Me? It'll Cost You 20 Times More
“I was married to a very OCD and pragmatic man.
For example, for him, a big romantic gesture had been to leave me alone for 24 hours at the hospital right after I had our son, so he could go pay bills and mow the lawn (20 years later I do understand he really did express love this way.
But that’s another story.)
I was in dire need of physical contact because he’d never touched me unless he wanted (very bland) hookups, and also never ever kissed me.
The story is not about him, it’s only a preamble.
So, I divorced him, not just for what’s above mind you, I felt alone and unloved in this relationship. I just wrote about it to explain the state of mind I was in when I met this other person that we’ll call PS.
PS was the total opposite, he was very in tune with his emotions, he was very, very intense (this will be important later). He really expressed love as I thought I needed.
On our first time out, the waitress asked how long we had been together since he was so into me and touching me.
He made me feel amazing. He had a huge house and a rather flashy lifestyle, so I assumed he was really well off.
He told me he owned a car wash and a phone marketing company.
Fast forward a bit, at this point we had been going out for about a year, and he had just asked me (and my son) to move in with him.
I wasn’t 100% sure but he prepared the room for my son nonetheless. As I started spending more time in his house (still keeping mine) I also started to see strange behavior.
He’d be up all night but sleep all day, I also overheard a few phone calls where he was telling people that they owed him and needed to pay but the conversations didn’t fit with a carwash or phone marketing business.
At some point, he told me he was having financial problems.
He said huge clients were late in paying and that it was jeopardizing his house payments.
So, I, stupid me, offered to help. I’m missing a part of this story because it started as me offering help with the house since we were there a lot (still had my house tho) but it ended up with me lending him 25K. I cannot for the life of me remember that progression.
The loan was supposed to be for 3 weeks he said.
I’d have it all back in 3 weeks. 3 weeks…
That 25k$ came from my retirement savings/son’s college fund, so I had to pay a fine to access it.
It also took me 10 years to put aside. Those savings were very important to me.
During those 3 weeks, I went out to have drinks with my friends… and found him out with another woman. I saw him French kissing another woman… I said nothing, went to his house, packed my stuff, and left.
So anyway, I thought he’d be an adult and would still reimburse the 25k at the end of these 3 weeks. Big mistake.
Someone I knew told me he was glad I left and proceeded to tell me about him, he said PS was a junky, hooked on substances, hence why he was so intense and so into his emotions. That also explained the erratic sleep/night patterns but the final blow what when he told me PS was also a con man.
A “Specialist” in defrauding older people by phone, his so-called “phone marketing company.”
In the beginning, I wasn’t sure I believed it, but then bits of what I had overheard in the last year started to make sense, And I realized it was all true. Back to this later.
I tried getting my funds back many different ways, none worked, I was at the end of my rope, and since it was in my years post-divorce (and right after the 2008-2009 economic crash as well) I was poor as heck.
So this is what I did.
1st he had given me access to pay bills online (not to his bank accounts, but to his emails), so I was able to investigate ALL his accounts with the same password, I printed/screenshotted every little bit of information. I found proof that he was indeed scamming people and found the people he “worked” with and even the name of the person at western union who facilitated the transfer.
I found out he was an organized criminal. I also found out he did this between the two countries. I started preparing for strike 1.
Strike 1
So, for strike 1, I printed his face and the face of everyone working for/with him (from their online profiles,) in defrauding people and left hundreds of flyers in his neighborhood. I also called the hotline for financial crime prevention in both countries and gave very specific details and names.
(know that even if he had given me the funds, this goes against my core values and I would have done the same thing either way) at this point, I was preparing for strike 2 too.
Strike 2
I was dumb in lending him my savings but I least I did it the right way, I wrote a check, I wanted proof just in case.
It would turn out to be a great idea.
On the check, I had written that it was a loan. (Thank you, Judge Judy, for this tip.)
Since he didn’t pay me back, I prepared an invoice and sent it to me from his hacked email.
When the time came to do my taxes, I filed the 25K as an expense using this invoice. (I have many freelancers, I slid him as one of them) And it passed.
Don’t ask me how I got his Social Security Number, I can’t remember, but I ended up having access to it, and ratted him out to the IRS for hiding income. I found out later on through friends that the IRS started investigating him for unpaid taxes, I heard he had to pay 38% taxes on that 25k + pay a 20% fine for not declaring income.
At this point I was satisfied, I figured 9500$ in taxes plus +5k$ in fines was 50% of what he owed me, at least he didn’t get away with it all.
But remember I told you on the check I had written that it was a loan. So it took about 2-3 years, but I took him to court and won (he didn’t even show up), so he has to reimburse the full 25k plus court fees (plus what he owes to the IRS so it’s 39,500$ that he was to pay for not reimbursing 25k.)
To this day I still haven’t seen a cent, but the rest of the story makes it worthwhile.
For a while I thought the financial crime call I made had no effect, now the cherry on top.
What I didn’t know at the time is that the IRS would team up with the Wire Fraud division and look at EVERYTHING he did, they were not able to catch him on the wire fraud, but since the house he had did not fit with the funds he was declaring, they got him on tax evasion and gave him a certain delay to pay back taxes, (I heard it was only 3 months, but I don’t know if it’s accurate.)
They got him so good, they ended up freezing his accounts, and he LOST HIS HOUSE.
The bank foreclosed it. And his debt to the IRS is still open, we are not in the US, so he won’t go to jail for this, however.
But my 25k that he did not want to repay ended up costing him over half a million dollars. And since you cannot go bankrupt for a debt you owe to the government, I’m happy to tell you that at 40 yo, he had to move back with his parents and ask for welfare and will probably be paying this for the rest of his life!
This story is not finished however, I just learned that he now has a job as a concierge in the apartment building of his parents, so I’ll be contacting the court to have what he owes me taken directly from his pay.
The thing is, he has NO idea I’m the culprit of all his bad fortune and he recently sent me a message telling me he misses me, that I was an angel for him and that he regrets what he did…
Well, not me loser, not me!”
7. I'll Be GLAD For You To Kick Me Out Of Assembly
“This is a story from my high school years.
Now, before I write anything, to my American readers, before you start explaining the law to me and calling my story fake, I want to emphasize: this is Africa – we have rules, we have laws, but unless you’re murdering someone, they’re really more just guidelines to follow than anything else.
So, a brief back story; they’re not really crucial to the plot, but it paints a nice background. Any of those that read the story about my Evil Stepmother knows that by age 14 I was living alone in my father’s house and making a pretty comfortable living renting out his rooms to students, therefore, needless to say, for me, high school was a blast.
Now I’m not going to lie and say I was a good student, I was anything but. I mean I never drank or smoked, but I skipped school almost more often than I attended. When I rarely did show my face, I’d often just go sit in any class that I felt like, whether I took the subject or not, sometimes I’d just go to school for recess and go home again after…I was really living the dream of any B-average student.
What’s more, I hardly ever got in trouble, even when I got caught the teachers would kinda just brush it off and let me get away without so much as a slap on the wrist. Most of the teachers either loved me or had long since realized there really was nothing that could be done about me, so they mostly just humored my antics.
There was, however, one teacher who saw through my “charms.” He was the first language teacher, never my favorite or anything, but I truly held no ill will towards him, in fact, I kinda respected him for being the only one that actually bothered calling me out on all my nonsense. Although this seldom did him any good, because whenever he threatened to call my parents, the obnoxious kid that I was, I would just ask him, “Uhm, which parent?
My mother in heaven or my father somewhere in Africa? If you manage to reach either of them, could you please ask them to check in once in a while?” and this would kinda be the end of the conversation because as arrogant as I was about it, my argument wasn’t untrue.
Onto the day of the actual story. I was in my senior year and still attending classes on an on and off basis, but attending more than I did in the past. I wasn’t trying to change my ways or anything, but I was in the process of putting together a 4-hour long video of our high school years and realized I had skipped so much that year, that I hardly had enough footage to use for that segment.
On this particular day though, I had picked the wrong day to attend and ended up having to attend the assembly. This did not sit well with me as I had a personal gripe against our school principal for something that had happened in my sister’s senior year and therefore I refused to show him any kind of respect; he later got canned for having an affair with the PE teacher, so karma, but I digress.
Now, as arrogant as I was, I do maintain that I wasn’t actually talking as loud as the language teacher accused me of, but I will openly admit that I wasn’t paying any attention to the principal’s speech, because I hadn’t done so in 4-years and definitely wouldn’t have done so that day, so maybe I was, who knows? He wasn’t an unfair teacher or anything.
Nonetheless, the language teacher pulled me out of assembly and forced me to go stand outside. So I stand there waiting, several teachers pass me, one asks why I’m not inside, I answer that the language teacher kicked me out, they say “oh okay” and continue about their business. Later, the assembly ends, the students exit…and I’m kinda standing there waiting to be called to the office or just for some kinda consequence, but nada, nothing, zilch.
So I walk back to class thinking, “Uhm, that was freaking awesome.”
Cue the malicious compliance, so the next week rolls around; I decide to attend school that day, assembly time comes, the other students enter, I hang back and when the doors close, I’m still outside. I hang around again, later a passing teacher again asks why I’m not inside, I once more answer that the language teacher sent me out and she again walks away without saying another word.
The next week, I do the same thing, but this time instead of hanging out where the teacher told me, I just take a leisurely stroll outside, getting fresh air and an extra-long recess while the other students are stuck inside that boring assembly.
The week after, I got extra ballsy and invited a friend to try it out with me, he agreed and when the bell rang for assembly, we both just hung back while the other students entered the building.
So now I actually had company for this extra-long recess. This was like the best discovery ever.
Needless to say, I never set foot inside the assembly hall again; I wish I could say the same for my friend, but after 2-weeks he had grown paranoid and started attending again – chicken.
I would have loved to have ended this story by saying that the language teacher eventually caught me and I could have told him that he was the one that sent me out, but that moment never happened.
Even though I was in the wrong and I knew it, I still would have loved that argument.
Just a brief epilogue, the language teacher actually ended up marrying one of the girls in my class (yes, I thought it was weird too, but he wasn’t that much older than us) and I was very close to her sister, so he and I had a nice chat at his sister-in-law’s wedding and I apologized to him for being a jerk back then, so we’re cool today.”
6. Make Fun Of Me For How I Talk? I'll Get The Principal Involved
“I’ve lived in Germany almost my entire life, yet through a twist of fate, I grew up learning the English language as a native speaker, since my father emigrated to Germany from the USA.
As such, I’ve always had an American accent when speaking English and I’ve never met anyone who thought they felt the need to complain about it.
Every time a teacher asked why I spoke English so well I replied that I am a US National by birth because my Father is from the US. All my teachers seemed quite impressed, except this one Hag, half a lifetime ago… If there ever was an award for creepy Anglophilia, she’d be neck-deep in honors and certificates.
Instead of encouraging me to speak more so that the other students could learn proper pronunciation from an actual native speaker, like many other English teachers at my school back then did, this woman thought it necessary to berate me for “speaking in such a horrible and filthy manner” and “cure (me) of that insufferable atrocity of an accent.” Mind you, these were actual quotes from this woman.
My dad was no help at all. He was fairly ignorant about me being bullied by one of my own teachers, and even went so far as to yell at me to “s*****t up and respect my elders.”
So, yeah, I stuck it up. It didn’t help that I also wrote in American English (you know, color instead of colour, tire instead of tyre, cookie instead of biscuit, that sort of thing) and the Hag had the audacity to write these “mistakes” up as double errors, meaning I got twice points deducted for spelling errors that weren’t even actual errors!
I was so fed up with this woman and it wasn’t even two months into the school year.
But my revenge was sweet and succulent and came so unexpected because all my classmates and the teacher seemed to think I was just letting it all happen to me.
I remembered that I still had one of those old voice recorders that use magnetic audio cassettes I used to play with as a kid.
I dug it out from my old toys and tested it to see if it still worked and the capabilities of its built-in microphone.
I guess you can all see where this is going. From my allowance, I bought a bunch of record-able audio cassettes like they were going out of style, and for the rest of the semester, I would secretly record every single English class, carefully label and catalog the tapes and even transcribe any pertinent passages.
I also made copies of the tapes, just in case an authority figure would want to make them disappear. I played it doubly safe because I knew from experience that the school administration liked to ignore complaints students had about teachers.
About a week before the grades for the semester were announced, I went to the principal’s office and requested that he let me see him.
I laid out my case in excruciating detail, showed him the transcripts, played the copied tapes, and answered all his questions. The Principal listened to me and in the end, thanked me for bringing this issue to his attention. But I knew from his tone of voice the whole issue would be ignored, at best.
At worst, the principal would only talk to the hated English teacher about me, which would exponentially increase my suffering at her hands for daring to blab about her treatment of me.
I had to take a gamble. I told the principal flat out that should this issue not be resolved in a proper manner, I would pass all this evidence to the state department of Education and Culture (SDEC), along with a letter stating that this teacher’s behavior is not only tolerated but encouraged at our school, as evidenced by the lack of disciplinary measures taken when teachers bully their students.
Since it was common knowledge that our school already was under the scrutiny of the SDEC for other reasons I shall not divulge here, adding another case to the mountain of issues could very well cause an avalanche.
The day came when we received our mid-term report cards. It was the last period of the day and as it so happened it was also our English class.
The Hag handed out everybody’s report cards and lo and behold, where my English grade should have been there was nothing but a small dash.
At the bottom, after the usual quips about behavior and class participation was a note that stated the following, translated from German: “Due to unjustified and unfair behavior towards xxx by Mrs. Hag, the School cannot with good conscience give an appropriate estimate as to xxx’s English grade this semester.”
The Hag also said that she would not be returning for the summer semester and that we would be getting a new English teacher. In a moment of smug, petty vindictiveness I raised my hand and pointed at my report card, where the missing English grade was.
When the Hag came over to my desk I looked her dead in the eye and said: “You know how the Revolutionary War ended. What made you think this would be any different?”
The look on the Hag’s face was priceless. The best part: I knew she couldn’t do anything about it because at that point anything she said against me would only add to my case.”
5. Steal My Work For Your Portfolio? Your Agency Will Find Out
“For a while, I worked as a web designer in a small ad agency serving a very niche industry. Previously, the design team had no creative lead and were all sort of operating independently across varying clients.
We decided to hire a creative director to fill that gap, and I was given the task of sorting through and giving first-round interviews to find the person who would later become my supervisor.
Two candidates, in particular, stood out from the rest for very different reasons. One was exceptionally talented, an all-around nice guy, and somebody who generally would have been great for the role.
The other, let’s call him John, had mediocre talent, came across as an insufferable, arrogant jerk, but had previous experience working within the niche industry that we serviced. He also had contacts within that industry that could lead to new business. Despite my strong recommendation to not hire John, his relationships in the industry were too compelling for our agency’s leadership to pass up, and they hired him.
It didn’t take long before the entire company started to realize John was a huge burden. He had no experience in anything related to digital design. Design for apps, websites, mobile, etc., were all completely and utterly beyond his grasp, but he used his position of relative power to make decisions on those projects that the entire design team refused to support, most of which came back to bite the company in the butt later.
The design team hated him because fixing and working around his screw-ups became part of our daily routine. The sales team hated him because he’d claim it took him unbelievably exaggerated amounts of time to complete even the most trivial of tasks (ex: 4 days to design a business card template), so they wouldn’t even assign him projects anymore. Work that was clearly his responsibility started to rapidly trickle down to the rest of the design team.
We’d be working late nights 4 out of 5 days a week because all of his projects that were in danger of missing deadlines would be re-assigned to us. Meanwhile, he’d be the first to walk out the door every day, right at 5 PM, without fail. On top of all that, the guy was absolutely, without a doubt, the biggest tool I’ve ever met.
Always right about everything, completely unbending on his idiotic opinions, and completely clueless that literally, every person in the building wished he would get hit by a truck.
I genuinely tried to work with him for about a year, until I decided that the job had become intolerable because of him, and wasn’t going to change any time soon, so I turned in my two-week notice.
About a month after I left, I heard that he had been let go from the job. Shortly after that, I noticed that he had changed his LinkedIn status to show that he was working for a new agency I had never heard of, also servicing that same niche industry.
I looked them up, and quickly figured out that he had started his own agency… a primarily digital agency… when he had NO experience in digital or interactive design and had literally screwed up every digital/interactive project he’d ever been on (I know because most of them were reassigned to me when he proved incapable of doing them himself).
I looked at the portfolio on his website and found literally project after project of my work.
He was using my work from the ad agency as examples of the work his agency could produce.
I briefly considered contacting him and requesting he remove my work from his portfolio for ethical reasons. But I could already hear his reply in my head. “As a creative lead, all work done by my team is an extension of my creative direction.” He’d used similar lines in the past to insert himself into receiving credit on successful projects he’d had zero involvement on.
So instead I sent an email to one of the partners of the agency we both had worked for, saying something along the lines of “hey, not sure if you’ve noticed this, but it looks like John is using your company’s intellectual property to directly compete against you… if I had to guess, I’d assume his next step would be to make a move at your client list.”
The reply was short and sweet: “Thanks for bringing this to my attention. He’ll be hearing from our attorney in the morning.” John’s website was brought down less than 24 hours later.”
4. Don't Take Advantage Of Your Position
“I have been a computer technician for more than 15 years.
I have worked on all kinds of computers. Everything from tiny point of sale computers to large rack server computers.
I had been attending a new church. I was trying to see a woman there, and this church was her idea. That relationship crashed and burned but that’s a different story.
Now we can start.
It was about 5 years ago. I had just sat through a long sermon about generosity and giving to those that need help.
At the end of the sermon Pastor Bob asked for an additional donation because the church’s roof needed repairs. And it would cost $20,000 US dollars. That’s right twenty thousand freedom dollars for a new roof.
After the service, I’m talking to the girl I’m seeing.
Pastor Bob walks over to me. I said hi and he introduced himself. We talked a bit. Pastor Bob asked what I do for a living. I tell him I’m a computer tech with a shop. As I’m telling him I have a feeling he already knows what I do. Pastor Bob asks me to have a look at his laptop. It’s being very slow.
So I agree.
I turn the laptop on and I hear a clicking noise. This clues me in it’s probably the hard drive. But I can still access the data. This is a good thing because it means I can probably recover the data. So, I tell pastor Bob the hard drive is dying and it needs to be replaced.
I also tell him I can probably recover the data.
Pastor Bob asked how much it would cost to fix. I tell him for most people I would charge around $250. However, I feel I can donate my time so I would just need $60 for a new hard drive. Pastor Bob agrees so I write up an invoice. New hard drive $60 labor $0, data recovery $0, and 2 to 4 days for repair. Pastor Bob signed the invoice.
Thus, I take the laptop to my shop.
I open the laptop. HP, why do you use so many screws and clips? I get the hard drive out and connect it to my recovery rig. I set up the recovery to clone the data to a new hard drive. But not the new one for the laptop. A high-end storage drive. I go home after locking up the shop.
The next day Monday I open the shop and check the recovery rig.
It’s working but it will take at least 10 more hours. So, I start work on the other tickets. Then at closing time I lock up and go home.
The next day Tuesday, I’ve had Pastor Bob’s laptop for 2 days. I open the shop and check my recovery rig. Good news recovery completed 100 percent data recovered. The report says hard drive developed to many bad sectors.
Now I have a choice to make. I could put a 1 TB hard drive $60 or a 120 GB SSD $60. Or I could pay some myself for a 240 GB SSD $100. I decided why not and put the 240 GB SSD in the laptop. I then clone all the data over from the new recovery storage drive to the new 240 GB SSD. An hour later the clone is done.
So, I check everything, the laptop works great and is exactly like how it was before the first hard drive died. Even the logins still worked.
Therefore, I call pastor Bob and tell him his computer is done. He says that’s great he will be here soon to get it. About 45 minutes later pastor Bob walks in. I show him his laptop working and much faster.
He loves it and signs the pickup form. He then pays me with a check for $60. It’s important he paid with a check. I do a bank run on Monday and Friday.
So that Friday at the bank. I am informed that pastor Bob’s check is void, what? Why? Pastor Bob had placed a stop payment on the check. Consequently, I called him and he ignored my call.
I go to church on Sunday. Pastor Bob gives a sermon about not lying. I walk up to talk to him and he avoids me. So, I leave and decide I’m going to write it off. I spent $100 and some time to do something nice.
A few weeks later a customer walks in looking for a new computer.
To welcome him I offer him a drink and go over his options.
I’m chatting him up and he tells me he is a contractor he mostly does siding and roofing. He is thinking about offering solar. That’s why he is getting a new computer. I ask how much does a new roof cost. He says up to about $10,000. So I ask him why would someone say $20,000. He had no idea. I thought it was strange.
I asked about the church. The contractor said it would have been simple and around $5,000. And he could probably do it for less. Contractor buys a nice new laptop.
Something about what the contractor said bugs me later. Why would pastor Bob lie and say $20,000 for a new roof? And why would he stiff me for $60? I then remember I never cleared the recovery rig storage drive.
I check and there it is Pastor Bob’s laptop data.
I look around, it’s slow and I’m all caught up on repair tickets. Fittingly I look around a bit. He had all of his logins stored in a folder on the desktop. Including sites for hooking up and online poker. Did I ever mention pastor Bob is married? I start printing his messages.
I look back and find pastor Bob had been hooking up with several women. He had been paying for his rendezvous from the church’s donation fund.
I am getting angry now. Then I realize he had hooked up with the woman I was seeing when I was with her. It was then I decided to break pastor Bob. I printed out all his messages and the women he hooked up with from the last 6 months except I refused to print the naughty pictures.
It was an impressive packet. I then decide I need copies of the packet. Therefore, I order 100 packets printed from a major online printer.
A few days later my order of revenge packets arrived. These revenge packets are amazing double-sided. Staple-bound, with a cover with pastor Bob’s face on it.
Now the conclusion and I think it’s worth it.
This church had a calendar of what the sermon might be about, and a perfect Sunday was approaching.
I go to church on that perfect Sunday. I show up a bit late. Everyone is in the church so I put a revenge packet on each car.
I have a few revenge packets that are in yellow envelopes. Fittingly I put them in the mail. I sent one to all the high-ups in the church, and I sent a special packet with some of pastor Bob’s naughty pics to pastor Bob’s wife.
I set the return address to the church. I also emailed a bunch of people the revenge packet from a burner email. A couple of weeks after I went back to that church.
Pastor Bob was gone so was the wife. Several of the women were also gone including the one I went out with. I asked one of the important people there. What happened?
The answer was amazing. I was told about the revenge packet and how everyone had gotten one. The day my revenge packet appeared, the sermon pastor Bob had given was about the evils of adultery and being unfaithful to your wife. Thank you, church calendar.
The fallout.
Pastor Bob was fired and shunned.
Multiple women from the church have not returned including the one I was seeing.
Pastor Bob’s wife is divorcing him. And she is the one that owned the house and cars. Pastor Bob is now being sued by several people including the one that fixed the roof. He never paid any of them. There were also rumors of a criminal case for embezzlement. No one has seen Bob in a while now. The church might close if they can’t find a new pastor.
Apparently, he also spent over $30,000 on online gambling.”
3. Mistreat Your Lady? Get A Bad Potato
“I work as a server at a very large restaurant chain that serves unlimited soup and salad as an entree. I was seated with an older married couple during a lunch shift.
The wife was very sweet, but the husband was very clearly on a power trip. He didn’t allow his wife to change her order, picked her drink for her, and interrupted her special salad request by stopping her mid-sentence and having her present her face to him so he could pick off an imaginary piece of lint.
She was embarrassed but was keeping the peace.
Because we are a high volume restaurant, our production line is a well-oiled machine that requires all food to be run through the computer and turns tickets for us in less than 10 minutes.
However, servers build salads and portion out soups on their own to accommodate the demand for bottomless refills. The soup the husband ordered for both of them sometimes comes with large slices of potato and can be one of our prettiest meals if plated properly.
The first round of soup I served to them had all of the ingredients but was missing the large pieces of the pretty potato because it was closer to the end of the soup.
After serving them their first round, he began to make sideways comments about the composition of the soups. Asking if we had a new cook, insisting that the recipe had changed, telling his wife to take a look at her bowl because she had potatoes “this time” on their second round.
I approached their table to see if they wanted a third round, and before I could speak he turned and barked “YES” and rolled his eyes.
Cue petty revenge. All of my questions for the table were direct to her, and I prompted her with extra options, toppings from the salad bar, different drinks. A new cistern of this soup was brought out by the time I was pulling their third round.
His wife received the largest slices of potato, plated high and beautiful, and he received the chopped bits every time. The husband was disgruntled, but she was happy to engage.
He ended up stealing my favorite blue pen, but she left a nice tip under her last soup bowl. I can only hope that she felt seen during my short period of time waiting on her.”
Another User Comments:
“This one just made me feel bad. One meal’s worth of nice potatoes versus a lifetime of subservience.” CausticSubstance
2. Rent Me A Fake Apartment? Not Happening, Buddy
“So this happened a long time ago.
It was November 2009, and I was jamming to I Got a Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas, looking for a cheap apartment. I find a great ad on Craigslist and arrange for a viewing.
I meet the landlady; a portly shrew with a Bettie Page haircut. I wasn’t here for the company, however, but for the cheap room.
It’s not great looking, but it is cheap, so I tell her I am interested in it. She tells me the place is mine if I can get a deposit by the end of the day.
Sweet. I rip to the bank and grab the $450 bucks needed; a half a month’s rent. She and I cross-sign a standard lease and ask when I can get a key to move in, and she says a couple of days as the current tenant has yet to collect all of their stuff.
So, I am sleeping on the couch at a buddy’s pad for now, and so I just chill, seeing sites, enjoying the first few weeks in a new city. A couple of days roll by, and I haven’t heard from the landlady, so I get frustrated and leave a few salty voice mails, but alas I was ghosted.
Finally, she leaves me a voicemail and says she’s sorry, but she cannot rent the place to me.
I start to get angry. But I am a pretty cool customer, so I do the research, find out my rights in an unfamiliar new municipality, and discover that if someone backs out of a lease without a legal reason, the other party is entitled to double the deposit they placed, so I figure, she owes me about $900 clams.
I leave more messages and emails.
Again with the ghosting, not answering the phone, no responses via email either.
I get fed up.
Now, I had just accepted a new job, but it didn’t start until the turn of the month. I would guess it’s about the third week of November 2009. I have some spare time, so I hop on the bus, buy a magazine, and sit at the bus stop across from the rental house, and just, wait.
And wait. For a couple of hours, I waited, but man was it worth it.
I see her showing the unit to another smart Mark! I hold my cool and wait for her to finish with her newest ‘renter’, and make my way over to the house to confront her. As soon as she sees me, she starts to wail about how the tenant changed their mind, blah blah blah, and that’s why she couldn’t rent to me.
I’ve heard enough. I square my stance directly opposite this clearly upset charlatan.
‘Now you listen to me, you will get me $900 as required by law by the end of the day, or I will go directly to the police station and let them deal with you.’
She turned white. For a minute I thought she was going to puke on the ground right there in front of me.
She says, hold on, I will pay you. I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that was easier than I thought.’
She goes upstairs (the unit was a basement unit in the house she was living in), and I kid you not, hands me a wad of dollars and says, ‘Here, this is ruining my Christmas, but here!’ She almost pushed me off balance.
‘Thank you. Good day,’ I say, and I count it and walk away.
I didn’t turn around and look back, got on the first bus that stopped nearby heading back toward the direction of my friends’ house. Not until I was home did I calm down and realize it was going to be a sweet Christmas, all thanks to a lying phony cheapskate.
However, this is not the end of the revenge.
About a week later, I get a phone call from a friend asking me if the lady in the news is the same crazy lady I got the double damage deposit from.
I’m like whaaaaa?
Sure enough, it turns out this lady was running the same scam in parallel with a bunch of other victims. I am mortified, not just because I almost got scammed, but it immediately occurs to me that the payment I got was someone else’s stolen deposit, and they are homeless for the holidays!
I head right down to the police station, where there is, I kid you not, a line of crying people filing reports about being scammed by this woman.
I feel awful, and when it’s my turn, I get to the intake officer and start to give my story. I lay it all down, how I fell for it, how I left a snotty voicemail, how I staked out the rental to confront her, my demand of double the deposit back, my threats of legal action against her, and finally the skillful execution of the law by getting double the deposit back.
I tell the cop, I took some of what belonged to the other victims, and she looks at me and says, ‘Man, you were the only one smart enough to confront her in a reasonable way, you earned it. Don’t worry about it.’
A young lady who was now homeless and desperate couldn’t help but overhear, and as I am leaving the police station, she approaches me and says, ‘Hey, did you get your deposit back from that jerk?’
To which I sheepishly reply, ‘Actually I got double my deposit from her when I threatened her with the police..’
The girl blinks a couple of times, and finally grins, starts a slow clap, and announces to the other victims still waiting to give a statement in the lobby of the police station, ‘This guy took her for double the damage deposit!’ I cringed.
But then, in the most unexpected turn of events, the line of victims began applauding, I suppose with the realization that while their deposits were gone, someone had really screwed her back, and that made them happy.
They cheered, I felt better, the cops laughed, and we all (there had to be twenty people in all) had a joyful cosmic moment of holiday schadenfreude at her expense.
I left the police station with a clean conscience and a smile on my face and enjoyed every last penny of that worthless jerk’s nasty stack.”
1. Just Quit? I Will, Even If It's A Bad Time
“This happened about 3 or 4 years ago. I worked for a big grocery store chain as a front-end cashier. I had already had some problems with my company, as they had “promoted” me to later rescind said promotion because of a lack of training hours; one of my assistant managers had also been harassing me, giving me all of the nightly duties and favoring daily position assignments for her friends.
Finally fed up, I turned in my two weeks’ notice; I take the 2 weeks’ notice extremely seriously. Remember, especially in corporations, you are extremely replaceable: the point of two weeks is to give your company time to conduct interviews, have labor for the written schedules, and fill your incoming vacancy.
You are doing THEM a favor by not quitting on the spot. I submitted two separate two-week notices: a formal one that didn’t go into details and was meant as evidence of my resignation, and an informal one for my department manager explaining the poor treatment I experienced that led to my resignation.
I specifically told her to not schedule me with the bully assistant manager.
The first week goes with little problem. Two days into the second week, I arrive for my shift to find that the bully assistant manager has been scheduled as my manager-on-duty. Fan-freaking-tastic. I seek out my department manager and question why she has violated my condition. She explains that she has spoken to my MoD, and that “everything will be fine because I’m here.
So just work, ok?”
When I return to my department to receive my position, I see that I’m scheduled on the self-checkout station; this is by far the best station because you don’t have to scan or bag, just help older people who struggle with the machines and check IDs for drinks. Well, the bully assistant manager has commandeered my station because “her knee is bothering her.” I immediately smell nonsense, but say nothing as I head to my normal checkout lane.
Well, surprise, surprise, an hour goes by and the bully’s best friend has arrived for her shift. The bully’s best friend’s favorite position was easily the self-checkout station because, again, it’s easy, and she was even lazier than me; she also used the quiet moments to shop for her groceries (time theft anyone?) Suddenly, the bully’s knee is feeling 100% better!
She hops off the self-checkout, sends her best friend to the station, and hops on a normal lane.
I. Am. Seething.
Cue malicious compliance. Grocery stores have peak times, usually around 4-6 PM when people are getting off work. Working on a register during these times can be c r a z y, but I was also one of the faster workers so it’s no sweat.
My manager tells me to “just work?” Sure. I work my butt off. I give every customer the friendliest customer service I can and work accurately but quickly. My lane moves 3x faster than the other open lanes combined, and before I know it the peak has ended. Once sticking around for another 10 or so minutes, to confirm the peak has ended, I calmly shut down my register, clock out, and leave.
4 hours before my shift was supposed to end.
And I don’t come back. Because I was between high school and college at the time, I was one of the store’s most important coverage workers: I worked almost any shift, usually during peak times, which meant that my manager had to scramble to fill every single 8-hour peak shift she had given for the rest of that week”
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