People Come Out With Their Colossal Revenge Stories
25. Want Me To Make My Quota? Hope You Like Drag Queens
“Once upon a time, in order to make ends meet during university I took a job working at a bridal shop.
This shop involved mostly walk-ins who would buy dresses directly off the rack. If you’re from the States, you probably know the one I am talking about.
When I took the job, it was explained to me that the majority of my salary was commission-based. That didn’t bother me because even the base pay was decent at the time.
Besides, the lowest financial band to qualify for commission required me to sell ten dresses a week. Easy.
During my initial interview, I explained to my manager that I would need to get off work at 3:00 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays to attend all my classes.
Now if you’ve ever worked a retail job at all, you know that the daytime hours Monday through Thursday, as well as those evening hours, tend to be very low volume. The majority of all sales are made Friday through Sunday, with the casual shoppers coming in on Saturday and the serious shoppers coming in on Sunday.
Therefore, my manager had no problem with my needing those nights off every week. My schedule was set as Wednesday/Thursday/Friday during the day, as well as all day Saturday and Sunday.
However, within two weeks of being there, it became apparent that one of the older women I worked with DID have a problem with my schedule.
She disliked working the weekday evenings (and days) because those hours didn’t typically result in sales. Instead, most of our time was spent cleaning and restocking inventory.
At first, it started as a few nasty comments here and there on the floor. Then, she started ‘borrowing’ items from my bridal drawer (belly bumps, pins, hair ties, tissues, cough drops).
Eventually, she started telling the hostess to remove my name from the incoming bride inventory, claiming I was busy with another client when I was not.
The final straw came when she had to work one of my daytime shifts (I was studying for an exam), and one of my high-dollar brides came in.
Instead of ringing the sale through with my name as the consultant as per policy (the computer automatically registers who is the consultant), she removed my name and put her name as the consultant instead. That one sale was over $200 in commission. I was livid.
Of course, I brought it up to my manager, and that did not go as planned. Because the other consultant had more seniority than I did, my manager flipped the tables on me and claimed that maybe if I pulled my weight and pushed through more in sales, I wouldn’t be in this position.
Apparently, my refusal to take evening shifts during the week was upsetting to other consultants because they had to work those low-volume hours. (Huh? I was working all the daytime shifts!) Manager started badgering me that I needed to find a way to pull in more business for the bridal shop and close more sales, or she would demote me to a stockroom employee.
Okay, want me to bring in more business? Game on.
Now, I knew from previous interactions in the shop that both my manager and this consultant took moral issue with anyone associated with the alphabet mafia (LGBTQ+). For instance, we had a lesbian couple come in once looking for two wedding gowns, and the manager made them so uncomfortable with her religious talk that both brides left. Another time, the consultant refused to dress a male in a prom gown because it was an atrocity and disgusted her.
I, however, didn’t give a darn what you were doing with your merchandise after you purchased it, and I had a lot of friends in the alphabet mafia.
I immediately called one of my good friends who was a well-known local drag queen and asked him if he knew anyone in need of a special occasion gown.
I offered special consultations, complete with bra fittings, during the daytime hours I worked. On the first day, three drag queens showed up. The next, it was four. Saturday involved five drag queens, three lesbian brides, and a few flamboyantly gay men there for support.
It may have gotten out of hand on Sunday when a whole van of drag queens drove in from over an hour away JUST to see me (and start a ruckus with the religious nuts in the store). I had to take half of the salons to dress them, and I made a huge amount in commission that week.
The next week, a good number of my clients continued to come into the shop, always insisting on me and demanding I be listed as their consultant. The manager was ticked and the other consultant was disgusted, but what could they really do? All my manager asked me to do was increase my sales, which I had done in spades.
I ultimately left just a few weeks later, which was planned as I had graduated and taken a professorship at a state school some hours away. But I did learn from the assistant manager at the store that the alphabet mafia continued to flamboyantly frequent that store for their bridal and formalwear needs until it ultimately closed down six months later.
Remember to tip your waitresses, and don’t ever tick off the drag queens.”
24. What's On Our Menu, You Ask? I Will Tell You
“Back when the shutdowns had just started and most businesses in my area were curbside pickup, I got a job answering phones and taking orders in a café/deli. We were a pretty well-established neighborhood spot that had been around for decades under basically the same name.
We had a website/menu which came up when you googled us, with a full menu from which you could order online. I would say about half our orders were online and half came through the phone – it was pretty busy, and I needed to be able to get through the phone orders quickly, as well as deliver prepared food, double-check the tickets going out, and keep track of payment (no automatic payment system).
Unfortunately, our location being a college town and a pretty well-off neighborhood meant that the majority of our clientele were college students or entitled rich people, neither of who are fun to deal with (especially over the phone).
It was one such lovely day when the phones were ringing off the hook and we were inundated with orders when I got the fateful call.
‘Hello and thank you for calling ‘restaurant name’, this is OP speaking, how can I help you?’
‘Yeah, what’s on the menu?’
At this, I paused to take a deep breath. ‘Our entire menu is online, at ‘name of restaurant’ dot com! It might be easier to check there-‘
‘Can you just tell me what your menu is?’ The voice on the other end snapped.
‘Well, sir, we are mainly a sandwich deli and café, so we have coffee, soup, and salads-‘
‘Yeah, but what do you have on your menu,’ the man cut me off again.
Okay, he asked for it. I turned to our menu board and started reading as slowly as possible, beginning with the café section.
‘Weee haaave driiiip coooffeeee, aaand eeesspreeessooo, and moooochaaas, and laaaatteess, and americaaanoos, aaas weeell aaas caappucciinooos, maaaachiaaatos, ooooraange juuice, cooold breew, aaand leemonade.
We haave saaaaandwiches aaaaand ssaaaallaaaaddss suuuuch aaaa*s theee caaesaarrr, thee greeeek saaallaad, Reeuubbeenn, griiilled cheeeeeese, aaaand-‘
At this point, the man on the line interrupted me again.
‘Do you just have a menu online?’ he demanded.
‘Yes sir, as I told you before it is at ‘name of restaurant’ dot com.’
‘Great,’ he said and hung up.
I was honestly surprised it took him that long – I probably took over 3 minutes just to list those items. You waste my time being obnoxious and I’ll waste yours. And I assure you, I’m better at it.”
23. Never Work By Myself? Okay, Will Do
“Worked in retail about 20 years ago and Sunday was a terribly slow day for our store. We might have gotten 2-3 customers all day from 12 pm-6 pm that we were open and usually, they weren’t buying anything, just paying a bill (this was at a wireless store).
There were always 2 people staffed so that we could take breaks as needed, etc., and still have coverage. Well, one day at break time, my coworker left the store to run home (just a few blocks away) and grab some food. It was during that time our boss’ boss (the REGIONAL manager, Tabitha) came into the store and blew her lid at me.
She was screaming ‘Where is Chis? Why aren’t there two of you here? You can’t EVER be here working by yourself ever again!’
Tabitha stayed until Chris came back and he got the same earful. She was known to be an angry person so we didn’t really take it personally, this is just how she was as a person… terrible.
So fast forward to the following week and our manager Mitch heard about it and he said we had to follow her rules. Mitch was a good dude and knew how Tabitha was. So we did exactly as told. Some weeks later I arrived at my scheduled start time to open the store on a busy day.
We always got there at least 30 minutes before opening and this day, there were a couple of people already lined up outside. I was scheduled to work with Chris again this day and he called to say he was late. No problem. I sat in my car and the store didn’t open until he arrived, almost 2 hours later.
Customers were annoyed, most of them left and I got a call from the regional manager with an earful about not opening the store on time…
‘But Tabitha, Mitch had a talk with us and instructed us to follow your rules. Chris was the only one scheduled to open with me and so I waited for him so that I wasn’t working by myself.
Just like you said.’
Some more yelling about how I should have called someone or some other garbage that wasn’t actually my responsibility and she finally moved along to yell at someone else about something else. Chris got an earful too at some point.
Oddly enough, there was a team meeting called that week where Mitch told us the new rules were to open the store on time, try to have 2 people there at all times but use good judgment.
Tabitha wasn’t around for long after this (but not as a result of this) and Mitch eventually moved up to the regional manager position and then I think another promotion after that.
He was a good leader and grew the territory quite a bit before he left to go start his own business. He always fought for us and did the right thing by his staff. One of the best managers I ever had.”
22. Make Us Turn The Camera On? Hope You Enjoy What You See
“I really love my job. Excellent team, better than average payment, but sometimes a little strict on policies. We have been working from our homes for more than 2 years already, and as the return to office approaches the mandatory ‘turn on your cameras in all meetings’ is being observed more and more.
Today a lot of us decided to take a webinar that our HR offered to us, but since we are about to have a day off because of the holidays, deadlines must be met and I was working on a really difficult project… so I thought I could work on my mealtime, and eat while we took the long webinar (2 hours).
And so I did. I worked a lot, made a great advance, and ordered some food to my place. It arrived just in time, so I put the food on my plate and joined the webinar, with the camera turned off out of respect for the speaker and my colleagues.
I had ordered a cherry tomato salad, some roasted chicken, which I’m used to eating with bare hands, and some tortillas.
The webinar wasn’t even into 5 minutes when I received an email from corporate.
‘Please, turn on your camera.’
Now, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. And right as the mail arrived, the speaker mentioned how important trust was for everyone in the office, and that we should be more open to one another… so I decided I would comply.
I turned on my camera. And proceeded to munch on my roasted chicken leg, my hand greasy and all that. And also the cherry tomatoes juice falling on my chin… I started feeling like the Steward of Gondor, eating like that in front of my team.
Some of my friends started messaging me ‘Enjoy your meal!’ And then, some of the other coworkers who were in the same situation turned their cameras on! Suddenly the webinar was filled with people eating. The speaker made a brief pause, mentioned that they didn’t mind us eating, that what was important was watching our faces and then continued the presentation.
But I could see that our boss was really mortified. (Appearances are really important to them).
So.. perhaps there’s no fallout on this one. We got a really good laugh though, as we were commenting later how my camera was one of the first ones shown on the session and apparently everyone could see me eating my beloved chicken.”
Be careful when you assume.
21. Site Director Doesn't Want Shift Foreman To Correct His Mistake? Emergency Shutdown Kicks In
“This story took place almost 11 years ago when I just finished my apprenticeship and started working in a combined heat and power plant (CHP).
The CHP was a smaller plant with 3 boilers, one small one that would only produce hot pressurized water for district heating and two bigger ones that instead would produce super hot and pressurized steam to power a generator, and afterward, the partially cooled down water would be used for district heating.
During summer when demand for heating was low only the small boiler would be used and no electricity would be produced.
There were two kinds of Jobs you would be assigned to, either maintenance which had working hours from 7-16, or shift with a 3 x 8-hour shift rhythm.
During summertime, there was only a skeleton crew on shift time (one shift foreman and one normal worker) while the rest of us would either be on maintenance or take the time off to reduce the amount of overtime we accumulate during winter.
We had several people working in the office that would be ranked higher than us normal workers but above the shift foremen were only like 3 people in the plant, one of which was the site director.
He was extremely full of himself since he had a doctorate and put on a big boss act (to the point where I thought he was the manager of our CHP branch and only recently learned how wrong I was). He had a bad habit of visiting the shift workers in the control center talking to the foreman and ‘fixing’ some settings for pumps and boilers and then leaving back to his office.
The problem would be he would always put the settings close to the maximum or minimum of whatever he would ‘fix’ like for example the output of the pump that pumps the heated water out of the boiler stuff like that. So the people working on shift had to fix his mistakes after he left so the boilers would not shut down.
Okay with that out of the way to the actual story of malicious compliance and my indirect part in it. I had worked at the plant for almost a year and after my one-year contract ran out I would leave for higher education in a completely different field so I was somewhat running a zero cares given mentally.
I was on maintenance since it was summertime and got assigned to help the site director’s secretary prepare a conference room for some meeting and we got to chatting about random stuff but at some point, the topic of the site director himself came up and the conversation went something like this:
Me: ‘So is the site director always so uptight?’
Secretary: ‘I don’t know what you mean he is a very nice boss and everyone in the office likes to work with him.’
Me: ‘Oh really I never got that feeling when meeting him in the control center.’
Secretary: ‘Really how come?’
Me: ‘Well he just walks in, only talks to the foreman at best, and messes with our settings which we have to fix afterward but nobody dares to say something to him I guess.
After that, we did not say much more and I realized pretty quickly that I may have gotten myself into some trouble by talking so openly with her but I was so used to not really caring that much and during the conversation, I didn’t really consider my words carefully.
Well turns out the secretary told the site director what I said though to this day don’t know if she mentioned my name since I was never spoken to about this topic. The site director however was apparently ticked off enough that he walked into the control center the next day, did his messing with the setting, and then forbid the foreman to revert the changes because he knows better than anyone in this building how to run the plant.
The foreman did as he was told and did not touch what the site director changed. After about 20 minutes the plant had an emergency shutdown because the boiler ran out of water and was about to overheat. There were no repercussions for any customers since we had a big reservoir container at all times connected to the district heating net that could bridge the time until the boiler could be restarted but any emergency shutdown has to be followed up by a team from the main office downtown (probably so they can pin the fault on someone should it come to some financial hit).
The fallout that I witnessed at the time was mainly the site director being a bit of a laughing stock among us workers and him not coming into the control center for the time I was still working there. I left a few weeks later after my contract ran out and honestly didn’t think too much of it until I met an old coworker of mine (who is a shift foreman himself now).
He told me that about half a year after I left the actual branch manager had a meeting with all shift foremen and a while after that the site director was fired after it was discovered that he put almost all his workload on the foremen and some of the office workers.
Afterward, one of the most senior shift foremen was offered some advanced training in order to take the position of site director since they need someone in the position that actually knows how to operate the plant and they were doing most of his job already anyways.”
20. If You Want To Make It A Big Deal, Go Ahead And Call The Cops
“My usually-not-irresponsible teenager lost his phone and just realized it while competing in a district track meet he was invited to (discus). This fueled my urgency to find his phone more than its value or anything else.
I had my daughter use her find my phone app to see it at a local convenience store.
I refreshed the search to see that it was hovering around the space of the store and the parking lot, almost back and forth between two locations. I tell my daughter I’m taking her phone with me to the store to retrieve it in between my son’s events 100-meter discus and shot put.
I arrive through the doors Ala Kramer from Seinfeld, phone up and in hand like I’m on a timed scavenger hunt. The clerk gets suddenly shifty, looking at me then looking away then looking at his customer. Understandable with how I entered. I jumped in line, patiently waiting for the customer in front of me to interview the clerk about the state lottery system; a barrage of ridiculous questions that even I couldn’t write up.
Finally, it’s my turn, and now I’m the only customer in here. I also noticed that upon refreshing the app I was using, it hasn’t moved since I entered the store.
I begin with what would be a line of my own questions.
‘Hey my son lost his iPhone and this app says it’s near here, has anyone turned in a phone.’
Lying Clerk says, ‘Nope.’
I retort ‘Could you look around and see because I’ve refreshed this over the past twenty minutes and it’s here.’
Liar McLiarstein continues his poorly spun web of lies
‘I don’t know anything about it man so quit bothering me, you lost your phone get over it.’
‘Dude it’s here where’s my phone?’
‘If you wanna make it a whole thing go ahead and call the cops, see what THEY do.’
Oh, let’s do that.
Now I know that I can ping the phone to make noise, but I don’t know if he’s got it in his car, in the back room locked up, or somewhere I can’t go without getting arrested, like behind his counter.
I call the cops and explain the situation as well as my suspicions.
The police ask what app I used, if it’s active, and if I have any more evidence that it’s in his possession. I explained that I didn’t want to ping it yet until they could help.
They agreed to send a car out.
I wait outside at the next door Dutch bros out of his line of sight, hoping he was convinced I left.
The police arrive and I flag them to me, showing him the app. They also took my id which was weird but whatever.
We end up entering the store together as I ping the phone.
‘Blip moomoomoomoomoomoo, blip moomoomoomoomoo.’
It’s in his ‘office’ – he answers questions as he gets handcuffed. I get the phone back to the track meet in time to just miss him getting 2nd in discus.”
19. My Landlord Told Me To Go Ahead And Call The City Inspector, So I Did
“This happened in 2018, I just moved to a new apartment. It was a three-bedroom first-floor apartment and it had a finished basement. It had two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen on the first floor. It also had a bedroom (with a full bath) in the basement and a bar/gaming area.
It was also in a very nice area of the city. The apartment was owned by a corporation.
Honestly, we loved that apartment, until it kept having recurring issues in the basement. The carpet was wet from time to time, at first, the landlord would send a cleaner to come and handle it but it kept happening.
I asked them to check and fix the issue. They did not do it, I told him I’ll call the city inspector to check the building, they laughed at me and told me ‘go ahead, call the city inspector’, so I did.
I called the city twice until I finally was connected to the right department and they sent an inspector a week later.
The inspector found so many building violations. They told me they’d contact the building owner and would come again. The next day, the owner called and begged me to tell them what I know about the problem with the apartment. I told them that I sent complaints multiple times, they should check their record.
The city inspector, the owner, and the property manager came two weeks after that, the city inspector was whooping their butts. He laid it to them, it was bad. They have to deal with structural and foundational issues and some safety issues too. There were 4 tenants in that building including us, imagine it was a big colonial/multi-family home divided into four apartments.
They had to break the lease with all of us to fix the building. They couldn’t fix it with us being there. We were ready and already consulted a lawyer, we told them that:
- We want our deposit back before moving out
- They paid for all of our moving expenses
- They paid for our deposit at the next place
They could not kick us out, they could not rent the apartment after the inspections, there were four of us and we could all sue them for placing us in a dangerous building. In the end, they spent so much money to relocate us and fix the apartment.”
18. Maybe I Should Find Something Else To Do? Okay, I Will
“This dates back a few years. I’d recently started a new position as a senior architect/director (weird title – software engineering type position with a banking company).
About 5 months into this position, we get tasked with developing a new system for automating trades and analyzing risk for banks. The notion was that they’d submit their portfolio and planned trades, we’d analyze them, and send back a report so that they could appropriately manage their risk and potentially automate the trades that met certain criteria.
Unfortunately, the person in charge of the project wanted us to use a particular piece of technology that was inefficient and insecure. The guy liked it because it was a ‘what you see is what you get’ (WYSIWYG) thing where you’d literally drag out components and connect lines from one component to the next to create the flow.
We’d regularly have to create our own components, naturally, to do the bits we needed.
Everyone on the team hated this tool – we were already using it on a different product, and it was the cause of no end of nightmares.
When the product manager visited us to go over the plan and collect input, I took the opportunity to raise the concerns – especially security – and proposed an alternate solution.
Everyone was on board – the entire team, the manager, and the PM himself. So the PM talked to the project owner and the project owner agreed to give us one week to put together a prototype of our proposed change to show him.
The next morning, I get an email from him.
I guess he had called up a buddy who once, years ago, was on our team (but had not been briefed or privy to any of the discussions). This buddy said ‘oh, I like the WYSIWYG tool, they should use that’. And so the product owner sent out an email revoking the plan and directing us to use the original solution regardless.
Which… was a bad idea, but whatever, I did my job, and it’s not the first time my recommendations haven’t been taken. So I’m already mentally gearing up to figure out how to try to plug all of these security holes with the plan, and I get to the end of the email:
And if OP doesn’t like it, maybe he should do something else.
That night I went home and reached out to my contacts. Two weeks later I had a job offer from a far better company doing far more interesting work with a $40K pay bump.
Don’t threaten my job just because I was doing my job and offering technical advice.”
17. Told Me I Was Fired? Okay, I'm Sleeping In
“I used to work for a national soda company. My job is to swing by stores several times a day and restock the shelves from supplies in the backrooms.
The 4th of July is by far the busiest day of the year as most stores have big sales. At the time I worked a common sale was five 12 packs for 10 dollars.
Anyhow, the problem each year is that there just isn’t enough space in stores’ backrooms to have enough product to last the entire day.
So what SHOULD happen is that drivers do extra deliveries to keep the product on the shelves.
Well, my boss has decided he doesn’t want to pay overtime on a holiday, so this year he has a plan. We will order more product than we have space for and put our product in areas reserved for other vendors and the store itself.
So July 3rd the load shows up. Right away it is apparent that there is just WAY too much stuff, even if I use space I’m not supposed to. And the backroom manager is annoyed at me because my pallets are in the way of everyone else trying to get their stuff in and out.
I call my boss and let him know this is never going to work, and they need to come do buyback on some of the pallets. He tells me to make it work and hangs up.
Cue malicious compliance. I grab a pallet jack and walk the entire pallet out onto the floor of the store.
This store has narrow aisles. I go to the soda aisle and drop the pallet. It completely takes up the aisle. Customers can’t walk in or out. Repeat about a dozen times.
Then I leave for the day. I get a call from my boss.
He isn’t happy with me. He wants me to go back to the store and somehow find space that doesn’t exist. I tell him I’ve already had a few drinks and won’t be driving anywhere. He tells me I’m fired and hangs up. Whatever. I’ve got other job offers.
And now I can go hang out at my buddy’s BBQ and watch fireworks.
I get a call at 6 am from my boss. He’s swearing at me because we start at 4 am on the 4th. I tell him he told me I was fired so I’m at home sleeping in.
He tells me he was just joking and I need to get to work NOW!
I tell him that I’ve already taken an offer to work for a competing company (not true but he doesn’t know) and they are paying me $5 more per hour than he is and 5 extra days PTO.
If he wants me then I want $6 more per hour and an extra 6 days of PTO.
He swears at me and hangs up. Whatever. Back to bed I go. 5 minutes later my boss calls again. He tells me he will do that but I have to leave now!”
16. Drill It So We Can Go Home? Now It's All Messed Up
“I’m a machinist and welder for the USAF and beyond what you can imagine from that, I also remove stuck hardware from aircraft or components when needed. We support a lot of agencies on base but operate out of the flight line.
A few years ago I was stationed in the Midwest and working on tankers.
I was a young airman and doing well enough to help with running the second shift. I was running the machine shop floor and managing the other airmen on shift while our shift lead was there to assist in maintenance and inspecting required repairs.
It should be said that I was known for my no-nonsense attitude and for getting into ‘verbal disagreements’ with anyone who tried to push us around and tried to get us to do something without following the right procedures.
I would tell anyone, regardless of rank, that it was not right and they can come back when they have the right paperwork.
I was called ‘The Destroyer of Dreams’ by my leadership simply for doing the right thing and making people’s lives harder for it.
Anyway…
On one particular Friday night, I was sitting at one of the computers in our office checking on what maintenance we had left or my email (I don’t remember). Our production superintendent walked in and said that some crew chiefs needed us to assist with a fastener they broke off in something.
I grab one of the newer airmen and we go out to the spot where the job is. Upon arrival, I have my airman grab the tools to remove the broken screw while I find out what happened. That’s when I met with the guy in charge out there.
We’ll call him Jeffrey. He was Master Sargent in the ANG (Air National Guard). He explained to me that they broke a screw off in the cover plate of the auxiliary power unit. I make sure that the job is in the forms that all aircraft have to track maintenance and get Jeffrey’s guys to put a job in there while I get to work.
When I get up there, I immediately discover that this drilling into this thing is not going to be viable. The cover plate is flat but is tilting back and forth on its axis whenever you put pressure on it. Normally you want to drill into something that is stable and moving around as you don’t want to damage anything.
We couldn’t get the darn thing to stop moving and I called down to Jeffrey to let him know that it would need to be brought to the shop to be drilled out.
He looked up and said it was not possible, and began to explain that it would be an 8-hour process to remove the APU just to get the plate out and over to us.
He proceeded to climb up and try to show us how to hold and drill the plate. My airman and I just looked at each other, we just tried this crap. I tried again to drill it, but the plate just moved around and started to get damaged.
I looked down and this is the conversation that followed:
Me: ‘Hey sir, this isn’t working and is going to come out.’
Jeffrey: ‘You need to keep trying. We’ve been out all night and want to go home.’
Me: ‘I’ll call my shift lead and ask for his advice because I don’t know if this is possible.’
I proceeded to call and my shift lead told me it needed to come out and told him how adamant the crew chiefs were. He grabbed our super and this man told us to give him a moment. He came back and said there were 3 replacement parts on base.
Do your thing.
I looked down and told the guys that we were clear to proceed.
Remember when Jeffrey told me that it was an 8-hour process to just get that plate out? Well, I guess those guys are about to find out what happens when you don’t listen to the subject matter experts of screw removal.
I begin to drill and have my airman try to hold the plate in place. What do you know.. it still moves around and drills off-center and into the threads and the cover plate. This makes the plate unusable and needs replacement. This took all of 5 minutes and now will take a total of 16 hours to replace.
I pack my tools into the bag and climb down and tell my airman to put the tools back in their box. What followed was the best moment in my life so far…
Me: ‘Sir we tried to drill it as you wanted and the part is damaged.’
Jeffrey: ‘So… We’re good to go and replace the part?’
Me: ‘No sir, the screw is still in there and we damaged the part trying to drill it. We went through the threads and into the part. It’s messed up.’
He simply looked down and sighed, and told us guys to pack up.
We went back to the shop and got ready to go home.
From what I heard the guard guys were hazed by the active crew chiefs for making them come in on the weekend and not listening to us.
I continued to be a pain to those that dared and was stationed somewhere else a year and a half later to Asia.”
15. I Gave My Work To A Coworker And Ended Up Playing Solitaire For Half The Day
“My previous job was a cycle counter at an old factory, which went out of business two years after this story happened.
My direct supervisor was unpredictable. He would throw temper tantrums if any of his employees didn’t listen to him, and other times I was pretty sure that he had no idea how to do the job that he was assigned. He even went as far as to give another one of the cycle counters his password so that they could approve their own counts.
Back on track, there were a few of the stockroom clerks (each assembly line had its own stockroom, and one or two people to manage it; which the line workers would bill and check out parts from) who would pretend that they didn’t have any work so that they could spend all day doing personal things.
Instead of checking their work to make sure that was true like a supervisor should have, he approached me. Here’s how the conversation happened, approximated of course since this was almost 10 years ago:
Supervisor: ‘Stockroom Clerks 1 and 2 don’t have any work to do!’
Me: ‘Yeah, and what do you want me to do about it?’
Supervisor: ‘I’m wondering if you can give them the rest of your counts for today.’
Me: ‘They’re not trained to do it, and if I give my work away, I won’t have any for the rest of the day. Though I wouldn’t mind going home early, I rode in with someone else who won’t leave until 3.’
He sighed and left my office. I went out and did the actual counting for the afternoon, and there’s quite a bit of work to do once I was back at the computer, including checking the counts against what’s supposed to be there, and if the count is lower, look at its history to make sure the part doesn’t have an alternative location or an incomplete checkout.
I didn’t make it back to my office before I was stopped by the stockroom clerks just outside of my office, who I got along with and who were good at their jobs.
Coworker: ‘Supervisor is UPSET and on the verge of throwing a temper tantrum like he does.
You should give the other stockroom people your work.’
So after I talked with him about it for a bit, I went back up to my office and called my staffing firm to clear it with them first. They okayed the order so I went down and met Supervisor at the desk of the other two stockroom clerks.
And watched them start to blindly enter the counts into the computer. I sighed and went up to my office and played Solitaire for the rest of the day. My supervisor walked by on a few instances and didn’t say a word.
The fallout was a bit boring, there was a good backlog of corrections to deal with, which mostly I had to.
But a few weeks later at the daily safety meeting, one of the head managers had stopped by to head it off. He discussed a few bullet points they added to the briefing, one of them was along the lines of:
Manager: ‘And don’t assign work to employees who aren’t trained for it.’ While staring directly at the supervisor.
Reprimands and write-ups were done in private, between the parties involved, so I didn’t know whether or not he was written up for it. But he was in a very bad mood for the whole week after the actual situation, so I think he may have been if it wasn’t something that happened in his personal life.”
14. I Must Wear Shoes In The Building? If You Say So
“I (30F) used to work for a company that outsourced a lot of graphics designs/media work to other local contractor companies. Normally my manager (49M) would be the one to visit these contractors with a brief and storyboard designs, but occasionally I would attend instead.
We’d been working with this particular contractor for a few weeks and on quite short notice I was asked to cover a meeting. No problem, I said, I get along well with my manager, and he’d even loaded our van with all of our material (3-4 flipcharts and 8 or 9 small boxes of blank product templates).
I’d not visited this particular (graphics consultancy) contractor before but when I arrived, it was clear that they’d drawn inspiration for their office layout from Google. You know the type – colorful wallpaper, beanbag chairs, arcade machines in the break room, etc. Everybody was dressed casually – jeans, t-shirts, trainers.
I didn’t think anything of it until I was shown to the room where we’d be having our meeting. I think they’d called it the ‘inspiration activity suite’ or something, no doubt where they’d do office yoga at lunchtimes or something. There were three employees from the contractor in the meeting, and just me from my company.
Anyway, I straight away noticed that the floor was that soft rubber style that you normally see in gyms and children’s playpens. I was in my standard office attire, which included a pair of high heels. I could clearly see that this floor was not high-heel-friendly.
To be respectful, I went to take my heels off before I stepped into the room. I was asked by one of the guys, who turned out to be their illustrations director, ‘Please put your shoes back on.’
I politely pointed out that I didn’t think my heels were suitable for the floor, and perhaps I should leave my shoes at the door?
I was told again, in a slightly less friendly tone, ‘You must wear shoes at all times in this building.’
I politely smiled and said that’s fine, would there perhaps be a different room that we could use, please? This time I was told in a pretty direct tone, ‘This room is fine, we never have any issues when (my manager) visits so I think this is suitable.
Can we focus on the project instead of critiquing our PPE (personal protective equipment) policy please?’
That little dig annoyed me. I’m a customer in their office, I’m the only one wearing heels in the entire building, and I’m trying not to ruin their trendy office space.
Plus, there was no industrial equipment in this office – what was their PPE policy if everybody was wearing jeans and trainers?! Anyway, I took two steps into the meeting room and could feel my heels sink instantly. Well, too late now, it’s a safety policy, I thought to myself.
The malicious compliance? I set up each storyboard several feet away from each of the others and moved them around a few times in the meeting. I brought in all the boxes and laid them out on either side of the room, even though we didn’t need the boxes for this meeting.
I made as much effort as I could to walk around and be as animated as I could through the entire session. At the end of it, I surveyed my work. I’d left little heel imprints everywhere I’d been walking in the room. The floor wasn’t technically ruined, but it was definitely less sightly than it was before I walked around on it.
I’m not a big lady, I’m 5’7″ and about 160lbs, but obviously, the soft rubber floor wasn’t designed with stiletto heels in mind.
I’m not sure if the contractor guys had figured out why I had originally asked, but they seemed a little bit quieter when we shook hands at the end of the meeting.
They even offered to let me wait in reception and they’d bring all the storyboards and boxes out themselves. ‘Just grab a coffee,’ they said. ‘We’ll get your equipment for you.’
I visited their office again a few weeks later with my manager (I purposely wore flat shoes that day!) and they had put a sign up outside that particular room saying ‘NO UNSUITABLE FOOTWEAR’.
By the time we’d finished the project about 6 months later, the rubber floor had been removed and replaced with a more traditional carpet. I’d like to say there was more to the story, but I never went back to their office, and they lost the contract for not being able to deliver the required samples for 3 separate projects.
Perhaps they weren’t wearing the correct PPE.”
13. Client Wanted Me To Escalate The Issue, So That's What I Did
“Yesterday I got an email from a client complaining that they can’t log into our software.
He sent me a tiny blurry screenshot, but I figured out that the problem is they can’t connect to the machine where the software is installed. A common issue for users but very much Not My Problem.
For context, my company sells software, but it’s installed on the client’s hardware and it’s the client’s responsibility to ensure that the machine with the software is running, it’s accessible from their private network, etc. So what I should have done is tell him there is nothing I can do and tell them to contact their own IT support.
However, and this is entirely my fault, I tried to be helpful. This is a new client and he seemed like a decent person if not very tech-savvy, and this kind of issue usually has an easy fix.
So I replied: ‘Hello client, the software is working fine, the issue is you’re not reaching the machine so there is something configured incorrectly on your end.
Can you please check that in the settings the IP address is xx.xx.xx.xx? Can you check that the port is 34567? Can you check that this option is turned on? Please do this and let me know if it solves your issue.’
I couldn’t do these things myself because I don’t have access to this client’s pc, however, it was literally 3 things I told him to do, and I sent him screenshots and a step-by-step guide on how to open the settings menu.
Five minutes later he replies he’s done that, it didn’t work, and to fix it ASAP.
Now, users always lie, and I get the feeling that he didn’t follow my instructions at all. His reply was too quick. Also, 99.9% of connection problems are caused by the IP or port being wrong, and the other 0.1% are the weird esoteric bugs where you need to call in senior developers.
So I ask the client to please send me a screenshot of the settings panel to double-check (as I’m pretty sure he never opened it, to begin with).
The next email I get from the client is extremely angry, he says the settings are fine (no screenshots), that this is a huge issue because he’s not able to work, and if I don’t know what to do he wants the issue escalated immediately to someone more skilled. He’s also cc’ing my boss and my boss’s boss, which ticks me off — not because I’m in any trouble, my boss is great, but I’m a senior team member and somehow my male coworkers never get people questioning whether they know what they’re doing.
So I do as he requested and I escalate the matter to the highest authority, which is to say the head of the client’s IT. Said person is a lazy incompetent who most likely configured something wrong and now might take a week to get around to fixing it.
I make sure to cc the client’s boss as well, I flag it as urgent, etc., etc. I also tell the IT guy that the client already checked the settings and so he should run this and that time-consuming diagnostic tests… With some luck, he will do that, once he gets around to reading my email sometime next week.
Of course, I didn’t bother sending the email to the general IT team address, so there’s no chance that some lowly help desk person will fix the issue in a timely manner. It’s been 24 hours so far, for something that could have been fixed in 10 minutes.”
12. Don't Feel The Need To Promote Any Of Us? Fine, We'll Stick To Just Doing Our Job
“To provide a bit of the backstory: This happened about four years ago now. My coworkers (two others) and I were delivery drivers for a large foodservice company. The lead driver at the time was let go, leaving just myself and my coworker. Naturally about a week after he was let go we started asking our managers when they would be opening up the lead driver position for applications.
Their response was simple and expected. ‘Not right now, we have a lot going on as we’re moving into the busy season and we still need to clean out former employee’s crap.’
Not a big deal, there was a lot of stuff to clean up after the former lead was let go.
He had been stealing from the company, totals were missing, the truck was thrashed and he had been using the truck storage facility as his own personal storage unit…we had a lot to deal with.
As for the two of us working there: I had about 3yrs on the job experience and my coworker had almost 5yrs in the role.
As far as I was concerned he should be the one getting the promotion. Longer tenure, wife and kids (just me and my cat at the time) and the promotion was an additional $1.50/hr. No brainer on my end but he and I both had a feeling they’d want to put me in that position since the big boss butted heads with him a long time ago and they didn’t see eye to eye and I tended to be a bit better with inter-office politics.
Well, about three months after the lead was let go, things settled down and we brought up the issue again. When will the lead position be posted? $1.50 an hour adds up fast and on a flat 40hr work week (4/10hr days classified in a 5/8hr work week) meant at least $132/paycheck and more depending on OT, and we almost always had 10-20hrs of OT a check.
Do the math.
When asked again about the position, we were told the same. ‘We’re working on it, just be patient. As soon as we can we’ll open it up and we’ll make one of you the lead.’
Well, this irritated both of us but irritated my coworker even more than me b/c he felt like that position should have already been his.
He’d been doing the routing for the day off the clock (only a 10 min phone call), handling mechanic appointments as we were a satellite operation 4hrs away from the DC, communicating with warehouse staff, operations management, purchasing equipment, and supplies from local stores, etc. I offered to reach out to management, put in my 2 cents, and spur things along.
He declined my help as he didn’t want to butt heads with the big boss again and possibly risk his job. No problem.
So we continued to wait. After 8 months, $4,224 of base additional pay with no OT neither of us was getting my coworker was getting quite fed up.
Typically he only talked about something bothering him when he was really ticked off, and he had been talking about this almost every week for a month. So he called up the manager again and asked when they were going to open up the position for applications.
The response? ‘You two been doing a great job down there, everything’s being handled so we don’t feel the need to create a new position.’ Oh yeah, this ticked us off big time. This was not creating a position, that lead position had been there for years before he was let go.
I once again offered my assistance and opinions on how to speed things along and was declined again…that was until he called me two days later after stewing on it and told me to do what I want. So I did.
The next morning before unloading the trucks we sat in the office, drank some coffee and I told him what we were going to do.
We were going to do nothing. We were going to field every single phone call, question, concern, and issue and pass it on to the big boss. He doesn’t think we need a lead, so we’ll just be drivers. So without providing any notice to the manager or the sales reps.
Here are a few examples, but you’ll all get the point.
- Routing? Call Big Boss
- Issue with delivery? Tell the customer to call the sales rep so they can call Big Boss and he can call us to have us go back and fix it.
Something we normally would just do.
- Head mechanic calls us to say we need to schedule a DOT or service? Nope. Call the Big Boss, tell him he needs to call the local mechanic or schedule it yourself.
- Customer calls us requesting early delivery on route?
Nope. Tell customer to call sales rep, who will need to call big boss who will need to call us to okay it. But we may not see that call or message for a couple of hours, can’t talk on the phone and drive.
We passed every single phone call and issue off to him. For us, it wasn’t a big deal since we could just handle things then and there. A simple ‘go back and pick something up’ would take two minutes. Customer texts us directly, we do it.
But we’re just drivers. So we ignored the customer and responded back that we couldn’t do that anymore and that they would need to call their sales rep. This made it a 15 min task at the minimum but was usually around an hour or two before we could get back to the customer.
The fallout? We didn’t even make it through the first morning before crap hit the fan. As soon as the first issue popped up our sales rep called me asking why the customer said I couldn’t do something. I told her the story and she was super annoyed. Not at us, at the big boss.
I apologized and reassured her it’s not personal, but if they won’t pay my coworker to do the job then we will just do what we are paid to do. My sales rep said she will get this taken care of, but she REFUSES to work with big boss.
She’ll quit before that happens. Serious threat from someone with 25yrs on the job. A couple of hours later my coworker and I got a call from the big boss. He apologized, told us he was wrong and that he would open up the position for us to apply, and asked that we go back to what we were doing.
We told him no. Until that position is posted, the applicant is selected and one of our pay stubs shows the increase in pay he can continue to handle the phone calls but thanked him for the apology.
We carried on our merry way and the next day big boss called us, told us the position was listed and asked us each to write up a letter of intent for why we felt like we deserve the position and they would consider our letters and select one of us.
Fantastic! Progress! My coworker pretty much wrote down in his letter that he’d been doing that work for 8 months, he has the seniority, contact information, and knowledge so he felt he should be considered. I submitted nothing, told my coworker he should have been promoted 8 months ago, and sealed the envelope.
I of course got a phone call the next day from the big boss asking why I didn’t submit my letter, and I told him just that. You should have promoted my coworker 8 months ago, and I don’t want the position. Took a few days but arms were twisted, and my coworker got his well-deserved promotion!
The real push was the sales rep. We found out a couple of months after she had called her vice president, told him this was bogus, and refused to have to work with big boss since she couldn’t stand him. Well, the vice president of sales got together with the vice president of operations and made the magic happen.
Coworker thanked me for the help, bought me a couple of t-bones, and said he never wants to get on my bad side.”
11. You Think I'm Out Of Line For Not Working 12 Hours? I Won't Be Coming Back
“My first job was at a terrible office supply store often associated with staplers. Started under a great GM who got transferred to bail out a failing store….our new guy was fresh from corporate, with a name like Joe or John… most generic overly smiling white guy who spouts corporate slogans.
Well, he drove off all the cashiers except little old me who was a fresh-faced just out of high school idiot. He blocked my transfer to be a tech (approved by the old gm) and as I said ran off every cashier. Well, it came to a head one day where he scheduled a tech to cover the register for closing…..and the tech didn’t show because why would he?
He didn’t want to sit at a cash register.
Naturally, he tells me I have to stay there until someone comes to relieve me. Being young I just went with it but had a time I had to be gone by to get to class.
That time comes, I make a fuss, and a manager comes to relieve me instead.
He decides I’m out of line not staying past a 12-hour shift and putting class above work. He lays into me about this and how a customer heard me complaining (not like he let me take breaks anyways so I had nowhere else to complain).
It culminates in this big what was probably supposed to be an inspiring speech about what motivates me….to which I say frankly money… what else motivates a minimum wage cashier to work there? This makes him quite upset as he babbles that it’s not a good enough reason.
Demands I go home (my shift is well past over and I got class I’m late for) and look deep inside myself, and I better find another reason or else! Or else this job isn’t a good fit for me, and he wants it to be a good fit or else because he sees big things in my future… manager things!
So naturally, I change in the bathroom and go to class, think long and hard…and come back to hand in my 2 weeks as clearly I wasn’t a good fit….then a day later after a terrible closing shift I just don’t come back….even told the closing manager, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if I just didn’t come in to open tomorrow?’ which was met with a very serious stern ‘Don’t even joke like that it’s not funny!’
To which I replied, ‘Who said I’m joking?’ before walking away and never speaking to them again.”
10. Force Me To Take A Lunch With No One Else To Open The Doors For Employees? Okay, Enjoy!
“Some backstory… Okay, so I am a grocery assistant manager, and in my supermarket chain that generally means two things, besides what you would expect job functions of such a role to be…I work overnights while we are closed (which I love) and I am the person with the keys to the store to let employees in and out (which I hate).
My shifts start at midnight.
They are supposed to schedule 2 keyholders during the night shift, specifically so that lunches can be taken. In our state, they are supposed to be taken between the 3rd and 5th hour of work, or the employer must pay an hour of OT.
Well, besides store management (who wouldn’t be caught dead on an overnight) there is me, and two other keyholders… my fellow assistant, whose schedule they changed to only be overnights on my days off, and a produce clerk, who comes in at 4 am three days a week.
This means a MINIMUM of two days a week I am the only keyholder on duty during my lunch window.
Malicious Compliance time….they started bugging me to take a lunch, they were getting flagged from corporate about my OT hours. I said ‘So you want me to work during my lunch to let people in or out’.
They aren’t dumb enough to say yes to that, they said, ‘Well you know what times people are scheduled so plan in between.’
They are right, I do know. I know the people who are always early or late, I know the floor cleaning company has no set time they show up, and I know when the smokers are scheduled for their breaks.
And I know there is no 30-minute uninterrupted window for me to take a lunch. After telling the store leadership this, and them not listening, I decided to show them and started taking my lunch.
The first night, after I got cursed at by a smoker for not leaving the break room to let her out during my lunch and she missed the chance to smoke on her break, I explained my situation to her and got her to redirect her yelling at store management when they showed up.
The third night the floor company called our store during business hours to complain about their rep having to wait outside for 15 minutes to be let in.
One night later, a bakery clerk left and went home after them being 5 minutes late meant I wouldn’t be answering the door for 20 minutes.
That was the last night they made me take a lunch as the only keyholder there.”
9. Don't Want To Let Us Out Of A Lease? I'll Pay In Quarters
“We all do stupid stuff in our 20s. Well for me, it was moving into a shoddy apartment with my fellow mental health risk friend. We were both well aware that we may have to break the lease at some point, so we found an apartment that was (just barely) within our price range and had the option to break the lease early.
It was okay at first. There was linoleum peeling up in the bathroom, and if we didn’t wipe down the windowsills and particularly the far corner ceiling of my bedroom, then we would get mold. But this is Oregon, and as a ‘food stamp family’ as I was called in school, I am familiar with mold.
No biggie.
Then our washer, which we were paying an extra $100 a month to have in our unit, started leaking. We put in a maintenance request and tack on the peeling linoleum as well since they’ll already be in our unit to fix the washer.
They patched up the washer and did a lazy job ‘repairing’ the patch of linoleum.
A month later the linoleum, since they had not actually fixed the underlying problem of the peeling linoleum, had come up again (the corner sliced my foot open) and the bathroom sink, washer, AND dishwasher all had problems of one kind or another.
They came in again and said that if we wanted them to fix that patch again it would cost $450 to replace the whole floor (the patch was like a 2-foot square) so that just never got repaired.
Two months, 3 hospital trips for my ex-roommate, a still broken dishwasher that was unusable, a leaky washer, and a close call later (roommate has POTS, fell down the stairs) we put in a request for accommodation to be released to our respective parents on the grounds of mental and physical disability.
They denied the request, simply offering to move us to a downstairs apartment. They don’t want to let us out of this lease even though my roommate had almost cracked her head on the stairs? Fine.
I went through the lease agreement to figure out how much it would be to break the lease.
And I quote ‘fee to break this lease is $1.50 (1.5 times rent if left blank).’ Someone either messed up the paperwork or figured that no one would read it.
So I put in a 30-day notice of intent to move out. With $1.50 worth of quarters in the envelope.
Aftermath: they tried to tell us we couldn’t move out because it is 1.5 x rent, not $1.50. Threatened us with lawyers. Called their bluff, suggested they reread the lease agreement they signed, paid my half of the repairs, and haven’t heard from them in like 3 months.
(Still keeping all the emails and such in case I get a letter from a lawyer, still have zero intention to pay that 1.5 x rent).”
8. Don't Want Me To Work My Notice? Okay, I Won't
“About 5 years ago, I was working in an organization that was super toxic. So much so that we were a revolving door – most employees stayed only a few months. To counter this, our management put 3 months’ notice into everyone’s contract including existing employees (it’s not strictly illegal where this happened, but very unusual).
I believe the idea was to make it harder for employees to find a job outside as employers didn’t usually want to wait for 3 months. However, this didn’t work as people simply quit and waited for a month or two before starting their job hunt.
I was there for almost 4 years. I needed the funds, so I put up with whatever harassment was thrown at me. My boss was a guy we’ll call Vince (not actual name). Now Vince was not particularly good, but he sometimes respected the fact that I was the most tenured grunt in the organization.
Enter Rajesh (not actual name).
Rajesh was brought in from outside for ‘Strategically improving’ our division. This was quite strange given our division generated the most profits.
Within months, Rajesh made the environment even more toxic. He pulled Vince’s team under him and got Vince fired, and he actively encouraged us grunts to spy on each other.
Rajesh also had it out for me from day one (until late I don’t know why). He started making my life harder than the others. This culminated in him taking me aside and telling me that I was not pulling my weight.
Now at this point, I was doing quite well in the organization, plus I was doing a LOT of additional work since only I knew certain systems and processes (see: high attrition above).
So I was quite angry. I started looking out (I still wasn’t brave enough to quit and start looking). Fortunately, I was able to find a job that was willing to wait the 3 months.
So it was my turn to take Rajesh aside and tell him I quit.
Boy Rajesh was angry! He went from denial (‘You can’t quit!!’) to negotiation (‘what if I give you a raise at the year end’) to acceptance.
Thus I was serving my notice and working away like an honest bee (my usual work, plus the additional work).
At this point, I was called by HR and told that Rajesh wanted me gone. The insane part was that they wanted me TO PAY THE COMPANY for the 2.5 months shortfall in notice!
I obviously refused, then went back and checked the contract. Turns out a notice of fewer than 3 months could only happen through mutual consent, and the initiating party (company if they wanted me gone sooner, or me if I wanted to leave earlier) had to compensate the other party for the shortfall.
The next day, I stopped doing anything at all. I logged in and logged out my hours and did jack crap. Not my work, definitely not the additional responsibilities. Soon there was a complete meltdown all around. Rajesh would pull me into meetings and scream and try to bully me, and I would say nothing but smirk.
Then they tried to have someone else learn from me so that they could do what I did. Remember I said earlier how I was the only one who knew some of the old systems and processes? Well, now I claimed I didn’t really remember any of them.
So obviously there could be no handover.
Soon my workplace turned into a dumpster fire. HR/Rajesh smartened up and offered to buy out my notice if I cooperated and helped transition my work.
I refused.
Then, to twist the knife further, I started having meetings with fellow grunts (remember, everyone was always a newbie) and encouraging them to leave as well.
HR tried to get me to leave twice more, but I ended up serving the full 3 months (remember the mutual consent part?).”
7. My Sister Doesn't Want To Free Her Unpaid Maid, So I Got Her Fired
“Here’s some backstory: Many of you have probably heard of families with a strong hierarchy structure, normally with the eldest in the family having the most influence.
My family is one of them, except that my parents are addicts deadbeats so my eldest sister (31F, our Entitled Mother) raised all 5 of us. She is the boss of the family. She says ‘Jump’, everyone says ‘How high?’
The focal point of the story is my youngest sister (20F, who I’ll call Little Sister).
Most of us have a handful or at least a couple of memories with our mother before she lost her crap, except for Little Sister. For her, Entitled Mother is the only mum she ever had, and Entitled Mother knows how to take advantage of that.
All of us ‘noped’ out of our parents’ house as soon as we turned 18, except for Entitled Mother who waited until Little Sister and our brother were raised and in their mid-teens to move across the country (and soon found jobs and accommodations for all of us to move to the same state as her).
Little Sister begged for years to move in with her, but Entitled Mother always denied, saying that somebody had to take care of our father and because she and her new husband needed privacy and space. That was until Entitled Mother got pregnant. She got Little Sister to move in with her and she has been there for the past two and a half years, ‘helping out’.
Now to the story.
Entitled Father’s family wanted to visit for a couple of weeks, so Little Sister had to stay with me for that time so that they could use her room. (It’s worth noting that Entitled Mother didn’t ask or let me know about it, she just dropped Little Sister off).
One day she saw me studying for my master’s degree and said something about how she always wanted to go to college and this is how it went:
Me: ‘So why don’t you?’
Little Sister: ‘Oh, I talked to Entitled Mother about it but she said not everyone is the college type and that I wouldn’t have time to work, study and take care of Niece at the same time.
And it’s expensive.’
Me: ‘Most people work and study at the same time, and she can put Niece in a daycare. I’m sure it wouldn’t be that much more expensive than what she’s already paying you.’
Little Sister: ‘She doesn’t pay me.
She already gives me food and shelter and if I need money I just take a shift at work.’
And this is how I learned my sister was not only babysitting but also cleaning the whole house for free every day. She was even only working 8 hours a week at her normal job because she was too busy taking care of our niece.
Long story short, it took me weeks to convince her to apply to community college, and then more weeks on the actual process but she finally got confirmation she would start in September. All of that behind Entitled Mother’s back. She was planning on telling everyone the next time we all got together, which would be Independence day.
But before that could happen, Entitled Mother got everyone together at her house to announce that she was pregnant. Little Sister starts crying because now she wouldn’t be ‘allowed’ to go to college. Entitled Mother gets ‘deeply hurt and offended’ that she planned this behind her back.
I butt in. Our other siblings butt in. It’s just generally a mess.
‘How could you do this to me? Who’s going to take care of the babies? I can’t believe you’d be so selfish! If you like OP so much, go stay with her!’
These were all some of the things she said. She kicked me and Little Sister out, who stayed with me until they made peace. Both of our siblings reached out, one to say that I should have minded my own business, and the other to tell me she was on my side but wouldn’t say anything.
After that Little Sister moved back with her and didn’t go to college. But they agreed she would get paid 6 dollars an hour and be allowed to take more shifts at her job until the baby is born, and then go to real college after the child turns one year old.
I know it’s messed up, but all of them – especially Little Sister – worship Entitled Mother like a god. I waited a year to act on my revenge, making sure my sister had saved enough to live on her own.
First, what I did was research the legality of paying a homeless person in food and shelter.
In the US and depending on the state it’s legal as long as you do not cross the line and the person becomes an employee. For example, you can give the person a list of tasks you want done, however, you can not say that it has to be done in a certain amount of time.
You also can not request someone to be somewhere at a certain time. You can ask but not demand on the time. It comes down to a choice of words. Also, you have to comply with rental laws. If your local laws say that you must give 30 days’ notice to a tenant, then you must give 30 days’ notice to this person as well.
I had proof of all of the situation, several screenshots of Entitled Mother admitting not paying and not allowing Little Sister to move out/get a job and also admitting to kicking her out whenever she wanted.
All this technicality seemed worthless since no one would sue her.
But that didn’t matter, I just wanted to make sure that her boss knew that if she were to be sued, it would be a sure case.
Entitle Mother works for a civil rights attorney’s office, so discovering she has a literal modern-day slave would probably get her fired. I could have just created a burner email and sent it all to her boss, but then they would explain to her why she’s getting fired, and that would get me and Little Sister in trouble.
So what did I do? Entitled Mother was always complaining about one of the bosses on her job that hated her and had tried to get her fired for ages. I went to the company site, found the woman (thankfully she was the only ‘Ashley’ that worked there), and found her on social media.
There she had a post tagging her yoga studio. Went to said studio and created my membership. It took a few weeks of trial and error trying to find exactly what class Ashley belonged to, but I finally found her. Then I went to yoga class every Tuesday and Friday at 8 a.m for months, slowly building a friendship with her.
Around 3 months in she asked to follow me on social media, and I was already prepared for this scenario, having deleted the few pictures I had with Entitled Mother. After 9 months, when our friendship was a strong baby, I brought up the crazy coincidence that I found out she worked with Entitled Mother.
Before things could get awkward I said ‘It’s ironic that she works for civil rights, considering, y’know, everything…’ That got Ashely’s attention. I told her everything. Showed every screenshot. I could practically see her eyes shining. They had their own history that is not important to the story, all you need to know is: Entitled Mother is a witch.
Ashely wants revenge as much as I do.
I told her about Little Sister’s situation and why Entitled Mother couldn’t ever know about this. This is why being friends with Ashley was so important – if I had just sent them the proof and explained the situation they would have probably just ignored it since this was a very legitimate reason to fire her and they wouldn’t risk firing her for a minor mistake and maybe getting sued. I sent her the files with her promise that Entitled Mother wouldn’t hear about this, but she needed it to convince the other owner – who was the reason why she wasn’t fired yet.
Two months later, Entitled Mother was fired for minor mistakes, lateness, and general bad productivity.
Small victory, sure, but I loved coming to visit her during the 4 months she was unemployed. She was looking so tired and miserable all the time since she had no money to pay for a babysitter and Little Sister is away at college, so she actually had to take care of her children.
Moral of the story: check on your siblings, they might be living in a modern slavery arrangement.”
6. Pizza Shop Owner Told Me Not To Show Up After 10:15, So I Didn't
“This story took place a few years ago, but I just remembered it after passing by the shopping center this pizza place used to be in.
At the time I was working for a window cleaning company and was paid commission (I got paid a fraction of whatever I cleaned); at the beginning of the day, we would be given a list of jobs in an area and drive around until everything was done.
Usually, the routes were somewhat random, meaning it was rare to get the same route twice in a row. Most routes had a large number of restaurants that had to be done before they opened, so usually, we would have to plan out when to get to a job based on what time they arrived so we wouldn’t have to backtrack.
The route in question will be called Springfield, but this route also had two small pizza places in the next town over (Shelbyville) that were always included because the company did not have any other jobs in that area and Springfield was the closest town.
Both of these jobs didn’t usually show up until around 10:15-10:30, so I would often have to save them until all my other restaurants were done before making the 15-minute drive over. There also wasn’t enough work on this route to justify sending two people, so whoever had it was by themselves.
So one morning I’m driving out to Shelbyville and stop at my first job at around 10:20. This job is cheap, consisting of about one big window and a door. However the lights were completely off and no one replied when I knocked, so I left to do the other job in the area before returning at around 10:40 to see someone inside.
At that point, I get my stuff out and start cleaning the outside, only for the owner to see me and come storming to the door. In a very angry voice, he starts asking me what the heck I thought I was doing? When I explained that I was cleaning the windows (as if it wasn’t already apparent), he yells at me that I should have been there earlier; to which I told him what time I was originally there, that the lights were out, and no one answered when I knocked. The owner assured me he was there, but that he just likes to sit in the back office with all the lights out, and next time I should knock harder.
Lastly, before I left after he refused to pay for the outside I had already done, he yelled that ‘If you can’t be here before 10:30, don’t even bother coming at all!’
It was around this time that back in Springfield, my boss had picked up another restaurant that was about 10 times more expensive but had the same issue of people not showing up until around 9:45-10:00 to allow me to clean the inside.
This meant that every time I had this route, I had to pick between a job that cost $10 or a job that cost $100 (I picked the more expensive one). Because this new place was so much bigger, even if I did the outside before they got there, it would still take me at least 20-30 minutes to finish the inside.
Because of this, I wouldn’t even start driving out to Shelbyville until almost 10:30. As a result, I took what that owner said to heart and stopped showing up. Also because of some weird twist of fate, I ended up getting this route multiple times in a row, so this guy’s place hadn’t been cleaned for 6 months straight before someone else eventually had to do it.
It became even funnier for me as, during those 6 months, we picked up a dry cleaner right next door to him that I would clean while staying just out of sight of the pizza place. It also somehow slipped past my bosses that I hadn’t been doing this one job as it never came up.
When my co-worker went to go clean it, the owner apparently thought we had gone out of business or something as he hadn’t seen us in so long.
Shortly after he canceled service altogether, then went out of business maybe another 2 months after that.”
5. I Joked With A Customer, But Here Came Buzzkill Bill
“So I, me, Captain Smarty Pants, am taking an order from customer number 232 for the day, and I’ve been standing in the same 3 ft. by 2 ft. rectangle of space, back to back with another behind rubbing against mine unwillingly (my colleague’s), as if to further punctuate an already unsubtle statement communicating how cramped it really is at the drive-thru window.
I’ve been standing in the same space for longer than I ever do as an Algebra 1 teacher (my day job). When I teach, I have to hold my pee for long periods of time, epochs even, but I move around the classroom and sweat it out.
I don’t have that opportunity at the register. Brow sweat notwithstanding. I’m all but doing a hybrid of the pee-pee dance and the Hokey Pokey (‘You hold your Urine in, Don’t let your Urine out, you hold your Urine IN, and you shut your mouth.
If you think you’ve got rights you’re a clown….that’s what it’s all about!’).
When I got to pee this bad, I get weird. Like if we let Y represent how weird I behave, and x represent how badly I need to pee in terms of minutes past pee time, the equation would be as follows:
y = 5x + 10
Because let’s face it, I started off a little weird, to begin with (that’s why the equation starts at +10).
So here I am talking to a stranger I’m speaking to as if I’ve known him for a lifetime, rattling off the Powerade flavors he so quizzically enquired about, and I could just tell by this guy’s vocal demeanor that he had a sense of humor.
So I have a little fun with the myriad of flavors available:
‘We have Orange, Cherry, Raspberry, Avocado, Grape, Lime, Strawberry, Lemon, and Fruit Punch…’
I really didn’t think he was going to notice my inventing a flavor, but almost as if on cue he sputters ‘Did you say Avocado?!’ He seemed equally excited and entertained by the prospect of such a flavor, so much so that I’m sure he’d have ordered it out of sheer curiosity, but ALAS!
Enter Buzzkill Bill.
My night manager who is listening to the orders along with the rest of us, who thinks he’s the word police, like I have some telemarketing script (I don’t, we totally don’t), pipes in through the Buddy System Button (where the employees can talk to each other unheard by customers) and starts to chide me, eventually saying ‘OP, don’t LIE to the customer!’
Enter, oh God finally, Malicious Compliance.
I get the novel idea to decide, as I’m about to cough or fart, one of the two, and either of those will start a river of pee a-flowin’, to tell the truth, to you know, NOT LIE.
I then say to the best customer I’ve had in a while:
‘Hey, since you ordered light ice they’re gonna make me fill up the remaining space with water, is that okay? Oh, and also, sorry if I’m weird man, I’ve had to pee since 6:30 (it’s now 9:38)… Not gonna lie.’
The guy retorts, ‘Yeah bro, thanks.
Please don’t do that, all soda and ice if you can, I’ll pay extra, plus after I get to the window you better go the restroom right after man. But wait if you can.’
‘I’ll be here.’
I don’t know how or by what miracle my manager did not hear me say that last part, but before I knew it the guy was talking to me, asking how life’s going, and gave me a twenty-dollar tip.
If I didn’t know better I’d swear it was Theo Von. I thanked him immensely, had a laugh about everything, and walked away thankful that things ended the way they did. Speaking of ends, I split the tip with my partner.
Buzzkill Bill got word that we got a tip after all that, and he was fuming… the kind of anger that could only spawn from a total buzzkill.”
4. I Need To Abide Strictly To Lunch And Break Rules? Sure Thing
“I worked in a very strict healthcare company (rules have to be so strict regarding privacy, practices, etc.), my job wasn’t patient-based, more lab work and analysis.
This was unpaid by the way but I still had to sign a contract.
I left work early and took extra time during lunch as I had very little work to do some days as there were delays in training and a lot of shadowing and they even took months to find me a computer to sit at.
One day they called me in as a warning for time management issues. They said very adamantly that lunch was 30 minutes, and you can have a 15 min break before and after. I said I took hour-long lunches instead of my two 15 min breaks to be more available to people but that didn’t fly.
Line up the malicious compliance.
I made sure that I’d take my 15 min breaks 25minutes before my lunch, meaning I’d be wandering up the stairs, and by the time I got to my desk, logged back in, and checked work it was time for lunch and I’d be evacuated from the building.
I’d also take my 15 min breaks at peak shadow time if nothing was scheduled so where normally someone would come up to me and ask if I’d be okay training on the fly, I wouldn’t be there, and as it wasn’t scheduled I was doing no wrong as long as I stuck to my 15 minutes.
I also made sure to screenshot times I’d log in and times I’d log out to show I was complying with their rules.
I got called up and told that multiple people tried to find me on many occasions and that I was skiving off work and I’ve gotten worse since I last got a warning over my long lunches.
I showed her my screenshots and she couldn’t say anything, but she was clearly not impressed.
Cue malicious compliance because I really didn’t like her. I found out one of my office buddies would enter and leave the building more than the 3 times you’re supposed to, so I asked, not to report him, just curious.
He said he smokes. So I say surely with the 3 breaks you have you’re not allowed to go out just to smoke you should do it within your time. He told me as long as it’s not more than 10 mins and it’s not on the grounds (no smoking policy) then it’s fine.
Oh boy, he just gave me gold.
I’m no smoker but as I know my manager would find any way to clap back I bought smoking stuff and the next day had pretty much the whole day off through 10min on/off smoke breaks, I’d mostly hold it in my hands but took pictures for every one and logged it as a smoke break on my self-made timesheet.
The day after I got called in saying I’m at this point disrespectful. I showed her all my evidence and said if smokers are allowed out whenever I guess I’ve taken up smoking. She had to get her manager involved and he asked where this has stemmed from as I’ve been a nuisance recently.
I told him that my time management didn’t fall in line with the contract and now it does. I told him honestly that I work hard and actually take less time during lunch than I would if I took my two breaks, and also that if I was done with work, and there was no more, and I’m not getting paid for it, then I should be allowed to leave 15mins or so earlier to catch buses, etc. He said there’s not much he can do so I said there’s not much I can do.
I made sure I wasn’t wasting coworkers’ time anymore and got on with my job but during stretches of no work or just periods where I wanted a timeout I walked out, smoking stuff in hand, ready to waste my day. I won’t be working there again.”
3. Want Proof We Are Working? Proof You Will Get
“I worked in a bank’s back office for over a decade. Towards the end of my stay there, we got detached from one department and moved to another during a general restructuring.
While there, we get talked down on and called stuck up and unfriendly. Mind you, because of compliance, we sit in a secure environment that allows little interaction with the non-staff of the unit. As a result of some beef the head has with us, stemming from not understanding our duties, we got a new unit head who came in with the same attitude saying we were blowing our jobs out of proportion and that the general opinion is we were lazy.
She wanted to be copied in every mail we sent out as well as receive all our standard operating procedures, etc.
The thing is, in our unit, we had like 5 subunits and she had no idea. No one had asked us for a structure or our job descriptions, they all came with preconceived notions about us.
I was tasked with sending the procedures, work manuals, job descriptions, and team strength. We shared all our unit email passwords and that’s when it starts to dawn on her when she saw 1 mailbox having over 500 emails and only 3 people attending.
Then we started copying her in our emails.
In a day we get no less than 200 emails and send more than that, and that’s 1 subunit only. So she got copied in everything. Every single mail from 5 subunits.
In 3 days she came running, asking us to include her in escalations and relevant emails only.
My colleagues, ever mischievous, ignored her.
We continued to copy her for about 3 weeks and even included her in automated responses. She missed her own relevant emails cause her box would be filled with over 1000 emails.
After a month, she sent someone to plead that we stop, which we did, somewhat.
She opted to be removed from the unit head position after that and gave the department head a report. Safe to say we got some respect after that. It was just so sad that they treated us as such without any attempt to understand what we did.
In the end, occasionally, she would get still get copied in like 20 emails a day till I, later a team lead, asked them to stop.”
2. Months Of Paid Vacation? I'll Take It
“This happened in Germany so the laws are different in other countries, especially in the USA.
I was working for a family-owned business (about 40 employees) a couple of years ago. My time there wasn’t the best because I had huge problems with my boss’s younger brother.
He was on an early pension and officially just working on a small part-time contract while in reality working full time and getting most of his salary out of pocket.
That I was hired meant for him that he just worked about half the hours he worked before and having a huge pay cut because of me ticked him off as you can imagine.
He talked bad about me behind my back all the time and tried to get me fired.
Dealing with him was a pain in the behind but I didn’t have to deal with him too often, my co-workers were nice and the pay was good.
So I didn’t care about finding another job despite my relationship with my boss and his wife getting worse over time too. My boss even came with me to two deliveries to customers because his brother probably told him I would waste time during the deliveries.
One day I had to do a delivery with my boss’s wife’s car because the company car I normally use was at the inspection on that day and the timing couldn’t have been worse. I scratched the fender of her car on a wall when I tried to get out of the parking spot.
The scratch was barely noticeable but I immediately reported it to one of my co-workers so no one can say that I tried to put it under the rug.
I did the delivery and when I came back my boss’s wife was already waiting for me.
She went completely crazy, screamed at me for ruining her car (without inspecting the damage before), and said that she will take the funds for the repair from my paycheck.
I told her that I won’t pay for anything because the insurance will pay for it anyway and that’s what let her snap and she slapped me in the face.
I immediately turned around, grabbed my stuff, clocked out, and went to the doctor to get a sick note because of mental stress, which I threw into the company’s mailbox in the evening.
2 days later I got a termination letter in the mail and had to laugh while reading just the first sentence.
‘We are terminating your work contract immediately, or if this isn’t applicable, within the legal 30 days.’
To people who aren’t familiar with German worker’s laws, it’s illegal to terminate a contract immediately AND within the legal period of time in the same termination letter.
You can do one or another but not both at the same time.
So I went to the government office to apply for unemployment and hired a lawyer to sue my boss for illegal termination. Over 2.5 months went by until I got a court date and my boss was really ticked off when the judge explained to him that the termination was illegal and that he had to pay me for the last 2.5 months.
But the illegal termination wasn’t the only mistake he made. The judge gave me 2 options. I can accept an immediate termination on that day and leave without compensation or I can have a 2-month salary compensation but I have to work another month for the company.
My boss laughed and said that I’m too scared to go back to work and that it makes him happy that I leave the court unemployed. He didn’t look that happy anymore when I asked him ‘why should I be scared? Do you want to beat me like your wife did?’
So I took option B and went to work the next morning. My boss’s brother already waited for me to hand me the termination letter and made comments about how difficult the next 30 days would be for me. I checked the termination letter and after I saw that everything was right I just said that I’m not feeling well, turned around, and went to my doctor to get another 30-day sick note because of burnout.
So, in the end, I had a 3.5-month vacation with full pay and 2 months’ salary compensation and he had to pay for my lawyer too because he lost in court. I could have sued my boss’s wife for the slap too but that would have been too much stress for maybe a couple hundred euros.”
1. Think My Attitude Is Too Much? Good Luck Finding A Better Replacement
“Years ago I worked at an office supply store. We had idiot manager after idiot manager cycle through and come up with dumb ideas to try to make the store run better and this is one of those dumb ideas.
The idea was that between certain hours, I think 11 AM-2 PM, we were only allowed to directly help customers.
No restocking shelves. No unloading the truck. I was in charge of changing and checking prices but wasn’t allowed during those hours. Any of those tasks can easily be done while still being accessible to customers, but apparently, that’s not good enough.
The rest of the staff decided to sneakily do their work when the manager wasn’t looking, otherwise, they couldn’t get everything done.
Luckily, I was able to finish my work outside of these hours, so I decided to follow this ridiculous rule.
At first, I stood up front and turned myself into our Walmart-style greeter, but I hated it and didn’t really feel that it was following the rule as customers typically don’t like being asked questions the second they walk in the door.
Eventually, I find a spot in the back of the store where I can see the front door and I post myself there. I do absolutely nothing besides stand there and stare at the front door. When a customer comes in, I track them with my eyes, see what aisle they walk down, and go ask if they need help.
When I finish helping them or more often after they say they don’t need anything, I walk back to my spot in the back of the store and continue staring at the front door. Sometimes I stand there for less than a minute, but sometimes I just stand there for 15 minutes or more.
I do this for 3 hours a day, 4 days of the week that I’m there, for I don’t even know how many weeks.
One of my favorite memories of this time was a staring contest with my manager. I was in my spot in the back of the store and he was near the front of the store when he spotted me standing there, not even remotely pretending to work.
He stares at me across the store and I stare right back, hoping he’ll confront me. After all, I’m not allowed to do anything besides help customers and I know I’ve approached every customer in the store. Unfortunately, he didn’t and I lost the staring contest after a few minutes when a customer came in and I had to go approach them.
When I got back to my spot he had already moved on.
Eventually, I quit. I was given my ‘final warning’ for my attitude. No customer complaints or problems with incorrect prices. I was just rude to the managers. If you don’t know, ‘final warning’ means next time I did something wrong I would be fired and I realized my managers weren’t going to get smarter and I wasn’t going to learn to bite my tongue, so it was best that I move on.
Of course, they didn’t realize how good at my job I was and my replacement was terrible, partially because they didn’t have me train him before I left. Price tags all over the store were wrong for months.”
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