People Rave About Their Dandy Revenge Stories
13. Complain About The People Who Clean Your Office? Clean It Yourself
“One of my co-workers proudly told me how she had complained because the “cleaning people” were always bothering her and her team, and she got them in trouble.
By “bothering her and her team” she meant they would chat with people as they worked, as any other co-worker does.
They are always super nice, helpful, friendly but I get the impression that she views them as “lesser” than those who work for the company because they are “cleaning people” and of a specific ethnicity.
Anyways, I was really upset, so I let the manager know that I personally hadn’t had any negative experiences with them.
Anyways, the company they worked for solved the problem by telling them to not speak to this co-worker or go into her office for any reason, so now she has to clean it herself and take out her own trash and the crew is still talking to everyone else.
It is glorious.”
12. You'll Have To Hire Four People To Replace Me
“I worked phone sales for a catalog company, bilingual Spanish/English. For several months, I’d take the Spanish calls and translate everything to the customer, on the phone, while I took their order. I decided, screw this, and typed up my own little two-page catalog in Spanish, all the most popular items, which I’d copy off and send to the customers (this was in the 1990s).
My average call time went from five or ten minutes per call down to two or three. It also put me in the top three salesmen for the company for the next three years. I kept telling management they were missing out, but they wouldn’t pay attention, so I kept sending out my little rinky-dink catalog and quintupled the Spanish sales while nobody was looking.
Management still didn’t get it. A manager I’ll call Helen was a particular pain in the butt, and after a year, I packed up all my stuff (leaving just enough that it looked like I was coming back), signed with a temp agency, took my vacation, then called in sick until my sick days were gone, fully intending to walk in the door and quit on my return.
When I came back, Helen was gone! I changed plans and stayed with the company. A year later, a manager I’ll call Helga was causing me just as much pain as Helen ever did. I packed up all my stuff, signed with the temp agency, took my vacation…well, you get the picture.
I walked in the door…and now Helga was gone, leaving me the s*******t, pettiest, most immature middle-school drama-inspired parting letter I’ve ever seen.
I decided to stay. Another year went by. More drama (it WAS a call center, after all), and I decided I’d finally had enough of being treated like a peon. The pay was good, I was still top three in sales, but management was still blinder than the average bat and was now giving me a hard time about my typed, xeroxed mini-catalog. I found a job a lot closer to home, gave them my two-week notice, sent out the last of my catalogs.
The two part-time Spanish speakers that were on staff were immediately overwhelmed, and one of them quit. They tried to hire several workers in the next few months, and most of them quit. A year later, they’d settled on a staff of four to do my job and were still trying to put together a Spanish version of the catalog.
I went on with my life.
Six years later, the job I’d taken moved all of its production from Latin America to China, and as I didn’t speak Chinese, I was let go with a decent severance package. A friend told me the original company was now a better place, and I applied for my old job back. I walked in for my interview, and it was the shortest, easiest interview ever: “This is just a formality.
We REALLY WANT you back.” I worked there another 4½ years.”
11. Be A Petty Jerk? Don't Receive Your Purchase
“Over a decade ago, I worked at a popular electronic games and console boutique store. It was boxing day in Canada, the mall was busy. Obvs. Lines to inside the store was about an hour.
Maybe an hour and a half. I don’t know, I was on the till.
This lovely gent, who was clearly ecstatic about spending that whole time in line to get in, gets to the front to finally pay. He starts complaining to me about how it’s such a long line and that it should be managed better. I remind him, in my most retail of voices, that it is boxing day and he made the choice to come shopping.
He grumbles more and pays with a credit card. It was a large purchase, I think the new Gamestation came out and he was buying heaps of accessories for it. He needed to sign for his purchase with a credit card.
He signed it, “you jerk”.
I checked his signature on his card. It doesn’t match. I tell him that and I immediately refund everything.
He was upset but I explained to him that policy is it needs to match or I can’t accept it. I don’t recall if it escalated more, this was 15 years ago. But he leaves. He returns with his wife and she makes him apologize and asks if he can still make a purchase. I said yes. Luckily we were so busy we hadn’t had time to replace the stock it was all behind me.
His signature matched this time.”
10. Steal My Identity? I'll "Steal" Your Precious Cars
Two can play that game.
“Our 40-something neighbor Frank Smith has a brother three years older named Fred with the two similar in looks and build. Apparently, these boys were not obedient children and got into trouble a lot.
Frank (mostly) straightened up by the time he reached 21 but Fred kept at it, with drinking, illegal substances, multiple DUIs, etc. While the two were still living at home with their parents in their early 20s, Frank happened to leave his wallet on the kitchen counter one night after coming home from a night out. The next morning, he discovered his ID wasn’t in his wallet.
Thinking he must have left it at a bar the night before, he tried locating it but with no luck. Not thinking much about it, he just got a new ID.
Fast forward a year or so and Frank gets a phone call. It’s his uncle whose son works at the county jail. Fred had been arrested and their cousin happened to see him when he was getting booked – under the name Frank Smith.
Turns out Fred had given the police Frank’s name (and ID) and was going to jail under Frank’s identity. Needless to say, Frank was livid. He went down to the jail to prove he was Frank and Fred was a liar. Fred was ultimately sentenced to serve time and stayed put.
During the time that Fred was in jail, Frank received a letter in the mail from the state BMV.
It said that his two vehicles, an Audi sedan, and a VW bug, were due for e-checks (emission checks). Frank was confused because he only owned a truck. He went to the BMV and discovered that these two vehicles were indeed titled in his name. That’s when Frank realized that his brother, who had lost the right to own a vehicle due to excessive DUIs, used his identity to register these cars.
Frank asked how much it cost to get duplicates of the titles – $8 each. So he paid $16 and walked away with title documents for the two cars. He knew enough of his brother’s friends to start calling around in search of the cars – lo and behold, he located them both (at different locations). Frank is a knowledgeable mechanic and could start these cars without keys, but he knocked on the door of each house where the cars were.
He explained to each person that he owned the title to the car, showed them the document, and gave them the opportunity to remove their belongings from the vehicle before he took it. They understood and didn’t push back, taking their things out of the car and handing him the keys. Frank proceeded to sell both cars and pocket around three thousand dollars for all his troubles.
The good news is that after his stint in jail, Fred got sober and became someone Frank could actually be friends with.”
Another User Comments:
“Reminds me of my two older brothers; we all got our social security numbers at the same time, so they were sequential. My black sheep brother used square peg brother’s identity and SSN whenever he was in trouble until SP changed his SSN without mentioning it.
Next time nonsense got pulled over for something minor, he ended up going to jail for identity theft.” Kyra_Heiker
9. HOA President Thinks He Can Bully Me Until I Realize His Ego Allows Me To Bully Him Back
Bullies don’t like getting the same treatment back.
“So this story is about a property I own but rent out. This may sound strange, but I don’t think I could afford to live there these days – it’s become somewhat exclusive.
A million years ago my property was part of a large farm.
I bought it about 30 years ago, long after the farm was broken up, but before there was any development near it. The piece of land I got was near the back entrance that joined into a dirt road that ran past. The more expensive plots were near the tarred road in the front.
I originally bought a large chunk of the land intending to do some farming, but that never happened. About 20 years ago some of the owners got organized (We’ll call them the Organised Owners – OO) and had the area designated as a municipal suburb.
The municipality agreed to put in tarred roads, water and electricity if a certain percentage of the properties were developed. A construction company (linked to the OO) went around contacting the owners who had land but no buildings offering to build houses for us at a very (very) reasonable price – contingent on them getting a certain minimum amount of people signing up. While this was happening, one of the OOs approached me and offered to buy half of my property.
I agreed, and the money I got for the sale (which was about 4 x what I’d paid for the entire chunk of land 10 years prior) combined with a small loan from the bank gave me what I needed to pay for a house to be built, and it was a fairly large and nice house too.
I stayed in the house for a few years, and my mom moved in with me.
I had decided to subdivide the property again and build her a house next to mine, but unfortunately, an un-diagnosed tumor took her before the house could even be started (well, it was diagnosed, but too late to do anything).
Soon after she died, we moved out of the house and started renting it out. About a few weeks before we moved out, the OO I’d sold the land to started talking about starting an HOA.
I wasn’t interested and left soon after. About two years later, the neighbor OO contacted me. There were two roads entering the area these days – the original tarred road that was near where the farmhouse had been and was entered from a fairly busy main road and my ‘dirt road back entrance’ which was now a tarred entrance from a wide but not very busy municipal road.
The HOA was trying to get the old farm road blocked off to improve security and decrease traffic and wanted the road next to my property to be the main (and only) entrance to the HOA community. And they were pressuring me to join.
I said no, and I was adamant, and eventually, they accepted that but told me they wanted to have a sign near the road welcoming people to the neighborhood, and the only practical place to put it was on the edge of my property.
They also wanted to build a little guard hut and have a security guard permanently monitoring who went in and came out, and they wanted to build his shed on my property. We came to an agreement whereby they would mow the lawn and pay the equivalent of about $35 per month in exchange for the land they needed. I was very happy with this arrangement, since the property was fairly large, and it didn’t really cost them anything since they already had a full-time gardening service servicing the HOA.
This all happened over a decade ago. They eventually got the other main road blocked off, and the HOA is paying for rent-a-cop to be permanently stationed close to my property, as well as mowing my lawn and paying me enough for takeaways for the family each month. I’m occasionally contacted by members of the HOA to get me to sign up, but I’m really not interested. My property has been rented to the same tenant for all these years and everything there is going well for me.
Until about 3 years ago, when someone scared the life out of my tenant’s young daughter by making strange noises and shooting a gun close to her bedroom window three or four times over about a month. This scared my tenant and I guessed it scared the HOA because they AND my tenant contacted me with a proposal – I join the HOA and they give me exclusions from the HOA rules, including exclusions from paying the monthly fees, and in addition, they will build a wall around the ENTIRE HOA neighborhood, including electric fencing and security cameras.
They told me they had wanted to do this for a while but were unwilling to build the wall on a property that was not in the HOA.
I couldn’t see the downside, and so agreed.
It took a little over a year to build the wall and get everything completed, which is quite fast. And then a month to the day after everything was done, my tenant got an HOA warning about his dogs barking.
He told the HOA that while the property was in the HOA, it was exempt from the rules. The HOA told him that they had canceled the exemptions and that he had 30 days to comply. He contacted me, and I opened some mail I’d gotten from the HOA (I’d ignored it since I was supposed to be exempt from the rules and fees).
Man, did I get a surprise. They had retroactively canceled the exemptions, and were claiming:
That I pay late fees going back over a year.
That the easement agreement had been canceled, and that they were retroactively canceling it a year back because the HOA contract allowed them to use “small unused portions” of HOA members land for the common good for free.
That I refund them what they had paid for the easement over that period.
That I owed them for the garden service mowing the large lawn.
That I would be fined for each infraction my tenant failed to remedy.
This started an expensive process involving lawyers and the court system, which ended with a judge telling me that what the HOA had done was mostly legal – they had the right to revoke the exemptions, but that they had to give me 30 days notice.
As I was walking to my car the neighbor OO (the one who bought half my land so many years ago) told me that I was stupid to have refused to join when the HOA started, as I could have been a founder member (whatever that means), and that next time I should be sure to understand the documents I sign before signing them.
Neighbour OO was right, I should have read the contract (better).
Also, I was interested in what it meant to be a ‘Founding Member’ (spoiler: Nothing), and so when I got home I grabbed the HOA contract I’d signed, as well as all the other documentation they had provided me with, and started reading. I was determined to break every rule I could find a loophole to break.
I didn’t get past the first page.
While the street address of the property is used to identify it for all practical purposes, in the city records it has a unique property number that has to be used on legal records. When my mom moved in, I’d subdivided the remaining property but hadn’t yet started building on it. And when I gave the HOA the easement all those years ago it had been on the property I’d sliced off for my mom.
And when the HOA set up the contract, they had simply used the property number from the easement.
The next afternoon the neighbor OO delivered (and had me sign for) two documents – one telling me that my exemptions would expire in 30 days, and one letting me know that the easement would no longer be required after 30 days. I think he was being a bit malicious here, because I lived about an hour away from the property, and he drove out himself.
EXACTLY 30 days TO THE HOUR after the HOA had given me the 30 days notice, I knocked on the neighbor OO’s door (did I mention he was the president of the HOA?) and had him sign for two documents. The first was that I planned to build a house on my HOA property (which confused him) and the second noticed that they had 30 days to remove from the property the guard shed, the parts of the electric boom that were on my property, as well as the sign.
He tried to engage me but I ignored him, climbed into my car, and drove off.
Early the next morning I got a call from the HOA lawyer who explained to me that their junk would be staying on my property since it was in an ‘unused’ part of my land. I explained that I was building a house there and that the land would not be unused anymore.
I could hear the smirk as he told me that building a second house to be spiteful would not be accepted by the courts. I sure hope he could hear the smirk in my voice when I told him that the property in question did not have a house, and was, in fact, barely large enough for a house to be built and would not be large enough for any extraneous buildings.
I then told him to go look up the property in question and call me back. (I had sliced off just enough to be legal, which was just enough to build a small house).
It took them just under 5 days to get back to me. Their lawyer told me that the terms of the easement meant that I could not cancel without their permission, so I emailed him a photo of the document they sent to me canceling the easement.
That afternoon Neighbour OO invited me to lunch (his treat) to discuss the problem. I said ‘No thanks.’ He extended the offer again two days later, and again I said ‘No thanks.’ Others of the original OO contacted me to try to talk. Some sounded aggressive, some sounded sympathetic. I said, ‘No thanks’ to each of them.
Eventually, the lawyer phoned and asked if we could come to some sort of arrangement.
I asked what he had in mind, and he told me that he was prepared to discuss exclusions in exchange for access to my property. So I said ‘No thanks, and please don’t call me again.’
About 9 days before their 30 days was up I got a call from a different lawyer. He said he wanted to ‘negotiate a surrender’ (his words, not mine). I agreed to meet him at his office the next day.
I’d already had documents drawn up, and the meeting was as simple as me giving him the documents and him reading them over. My new easement offer:
Included everything offered by the old easement offer.
I changed the line ‘mow the lawn’ to ‘get the property to HOA standards and keep it there’ since it was now in the HOA.
Would cost them about $500 per month instead of ~$35.
This amount would be increased with inflation (the previous contract didn’t include that bit).
When canceled, for whatever reason, the HOA would have to pay me a cancellation fee of around $7500.
The contract automatically terminated 30 days after any disciplinary action was taken against me, my tenant, or the property (‘the property’), any complaints were levied by the HOA against the property, any legal action was taken against the property by anyone in the HOA.
That (lawyer who had offered to negotiate surrender) would be allowed to mediate any disputes between us, at HOAs expense, and that
The HOA would pay all my legal fees if any legal action was taken against me.
I’d deliberately left some insane things in there so that I could appear to ‘concede’ some points or be negotiated down when the HOA got indignant about the points I actually cared about.
The lawyer didn’t look happy. He said that my proposal sounded unfair, but that he’d have the HOA president look at them. I reminded him that in 8 days I’d be setting a group of men armed with sledgehammers and anger management issues loose on whatever of theirs was still on my property.
That evening I got an irate call from the HOA president.
He told me he was never going to sign the new contract. I said ‘OK’. He then told me I was charging too much per month, and that it should be at the same rate as the previous contract. I pointed out that when I signed the previous contract the area was under development, and there was at least one other road leading in and out, but that now there was only mine.
And besides, mine was now developed with everything they needed. He told me that I was forcing them to sign a document they didn’t want to sign. I told him that he was free to not sign it. He whined about everything he could think of. And then eventually told me I’d be hearing from his lawyer.
The next morning Surrender Lawyer called to ask if I’d be willing to come to their offices to sign the contract.
I agreed. When I got there that afternoon I learned that Surrender Lawyer was not a lawyer, but a Paralegal. He handed me the contract and asked me to sign it. He laughed when I told him I’d have to read through it first to make sure nothing was changed and mumbled something that sounded like ‘I’m sure you would’.
I read the contract.
Nothing had been changed. NOT A SINGLE THING. And the HOA president had signed it, with the Surrender Paralegal signing as witness. I looked at him and said ‘Why did he sign this? It was stupid to sign it!’ and the paralegal looked at me and said ‘I started telling him that signing it would be a bad decision, but he told me I wasn’t being paid to think or give legal advice, and to shut up.
So I shut up.’ I said, ‘Do you understand what he’s signed here?’ He looks at me and nods. He said he asked him if he should have one of the lawyers look at it before giving it to me, and he told him that they had already billed enough for this and that he’d sign it and sue me after their easement was safe.
This happened about a year and a half ago. It took 6 months for the HOA to find out how screwed they were. They wanted to sue me, but their lawyers explained to them that there was no way to win. Even if the court sided with them, all they would get is the easement contract voided, and they did not think that the court would side with them.
The lawyers were adamant about one thing – the HOA could not live with the ‘HOA pays my legal fees if legal action was taken against me’ since it didn’t limit the people taking legal action against me to the HOA – as worded, the HOA would be forced to pay for my legal fees if ANYONE took legal action against me. They argued that the courts would probably not enforce that, since the context of the agreement was to do with the HOA, and I told them I was prepared to find out since the HOA would definitely be the ones taking action against me if they challenged it.
I eventually signed an addendum to the contract that said that the neighbor OO (HOA President) would personally pay all my legal fees unless he held no position at all in the HOA and that the HOA would pay all legal fees if the HOA took legal action against me. He resigned from the HOA at the end of that meeting. I politely told him in front of everyone that he should not sign documents unless he understands what he’s signing.
He didn’t look pleased.
It came out during the mediation (you cannot imagine how happy the lawyers were that their paralegal was mediating) that without the ability to control access to the HOA neighborhood through the security boom (partially) on my property (the HOA had become a ‘gated community’ a number of years back) the HOA would be in breach of their own articles and would be dissolved. I also learned (should have been obvious to me) that all the security cameras were wired, and all terminate in the guardhouse/guard shed. So basically, it was my way or the end of the HOA.
That first mediation was really quite funny. My paralegal looked more than a little glum as we assembled and he called everyone to order. I suspected that he had been told to work against me, so I took the initiative. I reminded everyone there that I had agreed to let the Paralegal mediate, but that I had agreed to no arbitration at all. If I didn’t feel like the proceedings were fair I’d leave and they could go ahead and sue.
The paralegal brightened up and things actually went quite well.
I’m writing this after getting home from the latest mediation. I built a ‘paddling pool’ for the neighborhood dogs. As in I made it myself. I dug a hole, packed it with stone, and added a concrete finish. It was my first attempt, and if I say so myself, it looked… well, terrible. The HOA called for a mediation meeting (what they do now instead of taking official action.
I’ve declined their mediation requests in the past) in which they told me, as nicely as they could, that the paddling pool was an eyesore right at the entrance of the HOA. I asked them to create a list of what needed to be fixed and how it needed to be fixed to give to me the next meeting. The list was extensive. It basically required the pool to be rebuilt from scratch, I asked them if there was any way to reduce costs on the work they needed to get it up to HOA standards, and they assured me there was not.
I thanked them, pulled out a copy of the agreement where they had agreed to ‘get the property to HOA standards’ (which I’d highlighted), and handed it to them with the list. I told them the HOA usually preferred if these things were dealt with within 30 days. They started arguing until the mediator reminded them that they could not force me to comply without causing the easement to end.
I should mention that their lawyers usually no longer attend these things. They said they would get it done.
I also learned a lot about neighbor OO today:
I found out that Neighbour OO sold his property about 3 months back, and is apparently leaving the country for Australia.
I found out that the HOA had successfully sued him for what they had lost to his mismanagement as part of his vendetta against me.
I also learned that he had a vendetta against me. I have no idea what I did to upset him.
I’m not sure if I will screw with the HOA anymore. I already think I’m so close to breaking them the only thing stopping them from canceling the contract is the massive financial loss if they do. I guess a lot depends on how they treat me and my tenants going forward.
Also, I do like the monthly payments, though, so I’m motivated to play nice.”
8. I Ratted Out My Entitled Roommate To The Building Manager And Got Her Evicted
“I rented a room in a 2-ish bedroom apartment while I was at University. I rented from the current tenant who was living in the living room which had been turned into a bedroom. Her story was that she had rented the place with her friend who had the official bedroom but had moved out after finishing her degree.
At the time, I was desperate for a place (I was living on an acquaintance’s sofa for a month while trying to find my own place), so I was probably a bit more trusting than I should have been. In my defense, the contract I signed had the letterhead of the building on it, so I assumed it was legit.
I figured out there was something wrong though after about a month when she told me that she was going away for a week and to “not bother the people in the reception office and not collect any packages that arrive in that time.” Up to that point, she had always picked up the mail and any packages that were delivered by the time I had returned from classes, so I never had a reason to go fetch anything before.
This was the first inkling I had that there was an issue. I ignored her, by the way, and never had any issues. The front desk staff and the maintenance guys knew me and liked me well enough, so they never caused trouble or asked too many questions. The mailroom lady even said she preferred when I picked up the mail because I was polite, unlike the woman I live with.
Fast forward a year and things started to get strange. My roomie was a party girl that would keep strange hours and was trying to get herself set up in her dream job. She managed to get herself hired, but they needed a copy of her working visa.
(Pin drop)
Turned out, she had come to the country as a student on a student visa and overstayed by SEVERAL YEARS!
Up to that point, ALL of her employment had been under the table, profit in hand sort of gigs, and she had a line of sugar daddies as long as the Nile river, so she never had to prove working rights.
This is where poop started to hit the fan.
A letter arrived from the department of immigration: it was a notice of deportation. The potential employer had reported her when she couldn’t provide a valid visa.
She FREAKED and got a lawyer who told her to go back to her home country and apply for a working visa from there. She thought it would all be ok, so she left EVERYTHING she owned minus 3 suitcases worth of stuff and went home for a vacation.
Before leaving, she told me that she was going to rent her half of the apartment, so she didn’t have to pay rent and got upset when I raised concerns about a stranger moving in (keep in mind that I had gone home for 3 months and had to still pay rent because she REFUSED to let me sublet because it made her uncomfortable).
We argued because I wanted to at least meet the person who would live with me, and the roomie got all mad but begrudgingly agreed to let me vet them. I was also concerned because by this stage, I had confronted her about the fact that she was illegally subletting to me and didn’t want some other poor girl in this situation too. Anyways, she left the country, and I had the place to myself for a month before a short-term replacement moved in.
She was a nice girl who just needed a place for 1 month while she was in town for work which suited roomie just fine because she thought she would be back by then.
3 weeks after the new girl moved in, my roomie called freaking out because her application for a visa was denied, and she was banned for several years for the overstay. She said the lawyer was contesting it, but it would be a few months, so she would place another ad for a replacement sublet once the current one moved out in a week.
Oh, joy… Whatever, I was wrapped up with school, and the place was finally not a flophouse for party animals.
The new tenant is found, a 3-month rental was settled on because she was only in town as an exchange student for one term. Around this time, I decided to move in with my then-partner as we were getting engaged. As per my “lease,” I gave Roomie just over a month’s notice.
She FREAKED.
First, she demanded that I pay her an additional month’s rent on top of the last month’s rent that was paid already when I moved in because I was causing her trouble (I said no). Then she told me that I had to be out in 2 weeks, so she could rent the place faster. I told her that wasn’t possible because I was in the middle of finals, and she would just have to deal.
This is where she went off the rails. She started threatening me.
She threatened that her guy friend would come to beat me up, threatened that she would have someone who had a spare key come over and throw me and my stuff out. I blocked her and started frantically trying to get my stuff moved out.
While all this was going on, Roomie started threatening and harassing the temp girl to try and get her to force me to pay more rent and to get out sooner.
Now on to the revenge:
Temp girl and I discussed what was happening. Roomie had told her to tell me that she was going to call the building and have me thrown out for trespassing. I decided to call her bluff and went to the building manager, explained EVERYTHING, and asked how long I had to get my stuff out. They already knew I was an illegal sublet and didn’t really care as long as things were civil and on the down-low.
But this changed everything: Manager asked for a copy of my “lease” and a letter from me telling them all that had happened including how I came to rent the place, why there had been other sublets, the WHOLE STORY. Temp girl also provided a letter as she had decided to move out too.
This is where it gets even better.
Temp tells Roomie that she will be leaving as well due to a change of plans.
This is fine with Roomie as she has made arrangements for one of her other friends to take over the lease temporarily. So Roomie sends a guy friend around the night before the temp is to move out to inspect the place to make sure it’s clean.
He gets there and has NO IDEA what has happened or what sort of crap show he walked into.
First, he video chatted with her, and she goes ballistic that all my furniture is gone. (It was my stuff I brought in, but she thought since I was moving in with a guy that I would leave it all for the next tenant, never did figure out why other than she was probably hoping to advertise it as a furnished room). Then she tells Temp she wants her out immediately, that night.
Keep in mind, it’s also almost midnight at this point, and Temp has no place to go. She then tells her guy friend to repay Temp the last month of rent since that is what they agreed to. This guy was not told this prior, and he had to fork over nearly a grand from his own pocket.
So this guy says he has to go get the funds and will be right back.
He hangs up and leaves while Temp comes over to the neighbor’s place where I’m waiting in case she needed help (we were friends with the neighbor) and tells me what happened. The guy friend gets back, and we all go out to meet him. He is a nice guy and feels like a jerk if he kicks a woman out on the street in the middle of the night, so he says he will let her sleep the night there and will just come back in the morning before work to lock the place up.
I think he was also angry at the surprises that were sprung on him that night too.
The final revenge came about 2 weeks later when the owners canceled the lease and sent a notice of eviction. Roomie had 1 week to move out, and since she was in another country, she had to try and organize it all from there. I spent time hanging out with the neighbor with who I had made friends, and no one ever came to clean the place out.
After the eviction deadline, maintenance came in, changed the locks, and cleared the place out. There was over 3 grand worth of furniture and God knows how much designer clothing, shoes, and bags that were just left there.
I found out later, through a mutual acquaintance, that Roomie had started crying to all her friends that it was all my fault and that I got her kicked out and deported and cost her big time, so she had nothing to pay anyone with to store her stuff and ship it back to her home country.
Basically, she tried to get her friends to not only clean the place out but ship all of it to her.”
7. Refuse To Give Me My Bonus? Lose $25,000 Of Your Salary
“I used to work at a Wendy’s as a manager. It was already a trashy job, but my general manager was nice, and most employees were easy to deal with.
All this started when I was already working ~65hr/week.
I was offered a $100 bonus to work one of my only days off. I decided to do it later that week. Before I had even been paid, I was asked to come in again. I said this time I would like $150 as at this point I had worked almost 23 days without any days off. They said they’d do it, so in I went.
Cut forward 3 weeks, I’ve been asking about my pay for a while now.
I am told by my general manager that I could speak to my district manager as he would be in later that night. The conversation goes like me:
‘Hey, do you know what’s going on with the bonus? I’m owed $250 with both the days.’
District manager: ‘Well, that’s why I came here. The store has been having trouble making money.’
So, basically, he’s telling me that my performance isn’t good enough.
At this point, I’m working dinner rush and the whole night with me and three others, my significant other, best friend, and another friend that has grown close.
District manager: ‘Your shift isn’t making as much as others, and your drive time is higher.’
Me: ‘Well, we are doing all we can. It takes extra time when we only have half the number of people with the same amount of customers.’
District manager: ‘That’s really no excuse.’
Me: ‘When am I going to receive my bonus?’
My dm was a very sheepish man so he is very obviously scared when he tells me this.
District manager: ‘We can not give you a bonus until the revenue rises and drive time goes down.’
I am speechless at this point, the rest of the conversation was a blur.
I grew up on the south side, you didn’t mess with people’s money.
A day passes, I’ve had time to collect myself and speak to my entire crew. Everyone agrees to walk out with me. So I call my district manager. The phone starts to ring but then it cuts off. He declined my call. So I call him again, and again and again.
Finally, I just leave him a voicemail.
Me: ‘Look, Jacob, you need to talk to me, you have until 8:45 to call me back or all of the night crew is done.’
At this point, it is 7:30. I go into my office and start watching my boss’s email. She leaves it open and logged in, I figured he would probably email her before calling me.
Around 20 minutes of watching this email, and boom. An email pops up. ‘Emergency: Lonnie.’
This idiot put my name on the email. So of course I read it. Long story short, in the email, it was him trying to make sure my general manager was going to be ready to go to work. Aka: he wasn’t going to call me or pay me, so I get all my people together and we walk out leaving everything out, all the meat, all the toppings, the fryer.
Everything.
The next day I turn in my keys. About a week later I’m called by my brother.
Me: ‘What’s up.’
Brother: ‘Jacob lost all of his stores. He has to go back to Indiana.’
My brother worked at the store as well. If you don’t know, the district manager’s pay is based on the number of stores they have and how much they make.
When he moved to Indiana his wages got reduced from 65,000 to around ~40,000. All this for $250.”
6. Steal From Your Job And Your Own Husband? I'll Get You Arrested
“My 1st marriage was to a woman with mental health issues. When she was medicated she was awesome but she finally convinced herself she didn’t have a problem and stopped taking her medication. I dealt with a lot over the years with her fake pregnancies, affairs, and lots of lies… She could never keep a job for more than a month or 2.
She would get a job to tell me how much she loved it for the 1st month or so and if something would happen they would fire her and she would blame everybody but herself. While in between jobs I would find some of my items going missing: movies, collectibles, etc. I thought it was her but I had no real proof. Finally, she opened her own business doing house cleaning, she was a neat freak who was very obsessive and good at cleaning.
Despite her condition, she was very charming and likable and soon had a large client base.
I thought things were getting better. I was very proud of her, she was even bringing home more than I was. Then came the night that she didn’t come home. I was frantic. I kept calling her phone, no answer. I finally got ahold of her sister who said ‘I want to start off saying it’s not my fault…’ Turns out when my wife showed up to her 1st client to clean, there were police officers waiting for her.
Apparently, my wife was not only cleaning her clients’ houses but cleaning out their jewelry boxes, purses, and other valuables. I finally get a call from her that night from jail. She’s crying begging for my forgiveness. I try to be sympathetic. She tells me they’re going to let her out the next day on her own recognizance.
The next morning around 7 AM I’m waking up to a knock at my door.
I answer and find 2 uniform police officers and a detective standing outside. I apologize for being in my pjs and let them in. They search our apartment high and low and ask me a bunch of questions. I am honest with them. My wife finally gets home later that night once again apologizing profusely. At this point, I’ve decided in my heart that I’m done.
I don’t let her know yet knowing her violent outbursts but decided to plan with my family to move out of the apartment when she’s gone one day. The 1st day of her trial arrives. She wanted me to come along for moral support but I had gotten the flu that morning. I was vomiting into the sink meanwhile she was screaming at me that I’m not being supportive of her, making my decision to leave much easier.
My plan was to wait till she was sentenced and then move out while she was gone avoiding any fights, but she kept getting extensions on her trial. So one day while she was at work at her new job I called my father and brother over and we quickly packed up my stuff. As fate would have she forgot something at home and showed up when we were half done loading my stuff into the trailer.
She started screaming and crying wondering why I was leaving her then jumped in her car and sped off.
I moved back in with my parents and started digging. Turns out she wasn’t only stealing from her clients, she was stealing from me and my parents when she would come over to visit. My mother told me that she had been missing some gold jewelry from her childhood but didn’t want to point fingers.
I go through my items and discover my entire collection of 12″ Star Wars figures that I had collected for years was nowhere to be found (I found out later she had put them on craigslist for a fraction of what they were worth). I also found out that she opened up an eBay account in my name, took pictures of my nephew’s Nintendo Wii (during this time Wii was hot), and ‘sold’ it to multiple people then never sent it out.
She pulled the item before eBay could do anything.
Cue the revenge.
Here comes the fun part. Despite her being a thief, I, on the other hand, had worked retail security for going on 21 years. It’s my business to catch thieves and to hunt down scammers so she picked the last person she should have messed with.
Turns out my ex-wife stopped showing up for her court dates and moved out of our apartment, she vanished. The courts couldn’t find her.
So I started digging found out that she moved in with the Ex of a friend of mine. So I opened a fake social media account under a random name, I friended her new roommate. She openly began talking about my ex as her roommate confirming that she lives there. I told her that I had a bunch of Twilight promo merchandise (which they loved) I wanted to send them.
She happily gave out her address. I called that county sheriff’s department and informed them that I knew where a fugitive with warrants was hiding out. They showed up and arrested her on Valentine’s Day. She ended up spending the next several months in jail while going through her trial. She was convicted of 5 felony counts of theft. And ended up being sentenced to 8 months in prison.
I don’t want to speak badly of her but I feel really bad for the people she victimized. It turns out some of the jewelry she stole from some of her clients belonged to parents or grandparents, long gone mementos that these people should have had of loved ones that she stole to make a quick buck.
Oh, and I want my Star Wars toys back.”
5. Waste My Time Making Me Believe I Got The Job? I'll Cost You A $30,000 Sale
“I’ve worked a lot of jobs in my life and been turned down from a few. One such place that turned me down was a car dealership. After a stint with a certain long-distance phone company as a telemarketer, the sales bug hit me, and I wanted to sell cars.
I knew there was profit to be had and wanted a piece of it; plus, I’m a people person, so I would get to interact with people on a daily basis. One thing to note about me is I am a male and have long hair. I do not like having short hair; I have no self-esteem with short hair. I hate it.
I went around to several dealerships one day, talking with management, trying to get a feel for the industry.
One place in particular sold Volvos. I ended up talking with “Tommy” the sales manager, for a bit, and it turned into an impromptu interview. I spoke with him and “John,” who was the highest-ranking salesman there or some other bullcrap – I don’t remember, it was like, 17 years ago. Anyways, I ended up sticking around for a couple of hours during these interviews, and we talked about cars, the market, expectations, experience, etc.
After a couple of hours, we got to the dress code. Now, I was wearing slacks, dress shoes, and a collared button-up shirt, and my hair was in a tail, and multiple hair-ties in it to keep it neat. I also had some product on the top/sides to prevent any flyaways. My hair was brought up, only briefly. I was asked if I was willing to cut my hair, and I answered honestly, I would, for a certain amount of dollars.
I knew it was commission-based sales, but I made that decision a while ago about my hair. Then we moved on to other topics.
After around 4 hours or so, I’m sent on my way and was told to be there at 8 the next morning; if I was late, they would send me home. Sweet! Hired! So I went home and started getting prepped. Called my brother to ask for advice, since he’d been in the industry for a while, and got advice.
The next day, I show up at 7:55 am and am told they are in a meeting and to just have a seat and wait. They don’t get out of the meeting until closer to 10 am, and Tommy sees me and tells me they didn’t talk about it yet and to go home; they’d give me a call. Now… I’ve been in sales, and I know how things work.
I knew what that meant but decided to play along. I went home, waited until the next day, and then called.
Tommy got on the phone: “Yeah, we’re looking for someone a little more company-oriented. Thank you for your time” and hung up.
I knew it was because I wouldn’t cut my hair, and I didn’t care. I didn’t care that they wanted me to cut my hair, and I didn’t care that they didn’t hire me because I wouldn’t cut my hair unless my requirements were met.
That didn’t bother me.
What bothered me was he wasted my time, made me believe I got hired, and then hung me out to dry.
I am the type that stews on some things and dreams up many different ways to get revenge but never acts on them. Well, I had my chance a few years later.
In the US, when you fill out a W2 (or is it W4?
I always confuse them) at a new job, you can elect to have extra funds withheld from your check via federal and/or state taxes. I’ve always elected to do this because I prefer getting funds from taxes vs having to send funds in. So, I did just that and saved the extra amount every year. Then I got married, had kids, and got more back (child tax credits are nice but not a reason to justify having kids).
Somewhere around 2012, after I’d been driving a truck for a few years and making/saving more, we were looking at getting a newer vehicle. We still lived in the area, and then we drove by that dealership, and the memories came flooding back.
I hadn’t told her about that because I had honestly forgotten about it. So, I spilled the beans and then we concocted a plan that was so devious … so insidious … so deceitful … so … I’m kidding; I’m looking at a thesaurus right now.
It was a plan of revenge and vengeance though.
I would love to say that I had saved up $100k over the previous few years, but I didn’t. Getting married, having kids, etc. tends to cost a lot. We did have a decent amount saved up and were about to get a settlement from a lawsuit (sued a former employer for retaliation), so we had about $35k to spend.
First, I called to see if Tommy still worked there, and he did. This meant the revenge could possibly take place. I called the local PD, informed them I would be carrying a large amount of change on me to purchase a vehicle, and wanted to know about having an escort – $30/hr for an officer to provide private security, while in uniform. Awesome! Went to the bank, spoke with the manager, informed them I would be making a very large non-loan withdrawal and then depositing it right back in the same account a few hours later the same day.
I did not give specifics, but I did inform him it was a revenge scheme that involved the illusion of making a large purchase. She said, “It’s your earnings; you can do whatever you want with it.”
I got a nice suit, wore my hair down, and went to the dealership. Got approached by someone almost immediately and requested Tommy, due to word of mouth from a friend of mine.
Tommy comes over, and if he recognizes me, he didn’t show it. Probably not since it had been close to a decade later.
We get to talking, and I tell him I want to buy a Volvo to surprise my wife. It’s her all-time favorite car (not true), and she deserves it, and I want it in red, her favorite color (very true). I also tell him that I have a $30k budget to pay in full right upfront – no financing, no check; cold, hard paper.
I could see his eyes dancing. I ask if he’s commission-based since he’s the manager, and he says he gets a small salary, but he is still expected to sell, and he does get a commission.
He shows me a few here and there, but I insist on a red one. So, he shows me this cherry red XC90 with the works – dual-power leather seats, CD player, moon roof, and a DVD system to boot.
Sticker price was $37k, and I told him I wasn’t paying over $30k, tax/title/fees, out the door for it. He said he’d see what he could do with the owner (Bill) since it was a trade-in and a 6-year-old car.
He leaves to talk to the owner, and I’m just waltzing around looking at other cars. He comes back with someone else in tow.
It’s Bill. We get to talking about the price, and he’s willing to go down a little but not to my price point. I sighed and told him that due to the issues that particular vehicle had, I felt it wasn’t worth what he wanted. I had done some research, and my brother told me all about the recall on certain Volvos, why they were recalled, the complaints from other owners, crash test results, etc.
Bill’s eyes got a little wide with that. Apparently, I knew my cars, or rather, my brother did. So, he left to “check some numbers,” and when he came back, he was willing to part with it for exactly $30k but not a penny less. I said that was fine and to get whatever paperwork he needed done as I needed to go to the bank to make the withdrawal and would return the next day.
I requested a notary be present with the title, so it could be notarized in my name, and I could go switch the title the same day.
I contacted the police, hired an officer for private security, and had them meet me at the bank. The officer they sent was someone I went to school with, “Mike.” He questioned why I wouldn’t just write a check, and I told him he’d see why when we got to the dealership.
So, there I am, being escorted by police, into the dealership, with $30,000 USD. I go in, ask for Tommy, and we go to Bill’s office instead. Tommy is there and someone else who is introduced as the notary. They have all of the necessary paperwork, and I insist we go over it before I sign anything. Standard stuff for a used car, bought AS-IS with no warranty implied, hold them harmless, etc.
Time for some real acting now. As we’re talking, I start to give a confused look while looking at Tommy. He asks if I’m okay, and I say that he looks familiar, and I’ve been trying to place him since yesterday. I ask if he’s worked anywhere else, and Bill speaks up and says, “Tommy has been the sales manager here at (business name) for 15 years.”
My eyes go wide. “Wait a minute. You were working here back in ’02 (I think it was 2002, so I am saying it is)?”
Tommy: “Yes.”
Me: “I remember you now. I had an interview with you back in ’02 when I was trying to break into car sales. I went through 4 hours of interviews with you and John. I’m sure you don’t remember me; it was a long time ago.”
Tommy: “Of course I remember you. I remember the hair.”
Me: “Do you remember not hiring me because I wouldn’t cut my hair?”
His eyebrows arch ever-so-slightly.
Bill: “What do you mean?”
I relate the entire encounter.
Bill: “I’m sorry you had that experience. We do have an image to maintain, and men are expected to dress professionally.”
Me: “Do you have any women on the sales floor?
Bill?”
Bill: “We do.”
Me: “Do they have long hair? Bill?”
Tommy: “I don’t see how that should factor into you buying a car. What’s this about?”
Me: “You led me to believe I was starting a job here, which is what I wanted. You wasted my time, and this time, it was my fault. I wasted my time. I knew that I knew you, but I couldn’t place you.
Bill, this money,” (I pull out the cash) “is now going back into my account, and I will be purchasing a vehicle somewhere else. I refuse to spend at a business that would do this to potential employees.” I put the money away. “So … sorry for wasting your time as well.”
I get up to leave, the officer follows me, and Bill and Tommy try to get me to “see reason,” and I ask the officer to please inform them I want no further contact with them.
He relays that, and they shut up.
We get back to the bank, and after I make the deposit, Mike tells me I should have moved on and just forgot about it. I shrugged and said maybe, but Tommy is going to have to deal with Bill now since $30,000 just walked out of the building. I asked if I did anything illegal, and he said not that he could think of.
I said, “Okay then; thank you for your time, Officer; I am releasing you from your obligation to me.”
I have no idea what the fallout, if any, was. I imagine there had to be some. I mean … Having that much cash just walk out of your business? Yes, I know in the long run, it didn’t amount to much for the profit of the business, but it definitely hit them, Tommy in particular since he was going to get the commission, that day, and that paycheck.
And that is my story of revenge that cost a sales manager a $30,000 sale.”
Another User Comments:
“Love it!
I’ve had a salesperson literally RUN after me. My 3-month-old car was in for a new transmission (yes, it was covered under warranty), and I wasn’t feeling comfortable keeping it, so was exploring prices for a new upgraded model. The quoted price was more than I wanted to spend, so I stood up and said that I was going down to the service department to see how long the repair was going to take.
I guess I took him by surprise because I almost was at the service department when he caught up to me. Funny how the price came down. I bought the new car and was happy with it for many years. But will never forget the sight of the sales guy running to catch up to me!” Iaminavacuum
4. Target Me Because I Prioritize My Family? Lose Your Job
Family always comes first.
“I have worked at a certain home improvement store for close to a decade now, about eight years roughly. The first seven were in NC before I moved up further north to be with my best friend and her husband, who I learned was pregnant with my first godchild. As such, I transferred up to a store in the area, and put my nose to the grindstone.
I worked Garden before and did that for some months before I started to be moved from department to department, as this store was low on staff. However, this was not full-time. My old HR had dropped the ball, and this store believed I wanted part-time. Having already moved, I grabbed a part-time overnight job at a gym to make ends meet and continued to work, all the while asking repeatedly for full time at the main job, and never getting a definitive word back or change.
Several months into this, my god-daughter was born. As I lived with my friends during this time, I spent quite a lot of time helping to raise her, and we became close. I would take time off (that I was allotted) to help look after her, and there was a little problem.
Half a year into this change, I had made a good name for myself.
I did not have a good deal of friends per se, but I was respected for my work ethic, and willingness to help out anyone, in any department, that asked me. Enter a new assistant manager. The ASM was abrasive to staff and used to getting her way. The first I heard of her was when she outright fired a girl working the front desk because of a Playboy tag on a jacket.
I and several other employees organized a walkout in protest of this and succeeded in getting the store manager to reverse the decision made by the ASM. This was not our first walkout, having done this in the past when another ASM (the current’s predecessor) made inappropriate comments about a cashier.
Soon after this, I was given full time by the Ops manager, working in Receiving for a… cantankerous supervisor.
We often did not get along, especially as my godchild got older, and I took on babysitting duties while her parents worked and slept. It was not something I minded, as I adored the child. I often talked about her with my coworkers and loved to show pictures and stories. However, this was not something shared by my higher-ups. My supervisor was upset that I could not work overtime to help him (as we were the only two in Receiving for the store) because of either my second job or babysitting.
And soon after the second walkout, I was made aware of a rumor circulating the store – that the child was in fact my own daughter, that I had fathered outside of my friend’s husband’s knowledge. The source of the rumor was unknown, but my ASM had made disparaging remarks to me in the past about men taking care of children, so I had my theories.
My holiday plans, asked off in advance as soon as our electronic system allowed, were canceled without explanation, both Thanksgiving and Christmas. I had never missed a major holiday since I moved north, and I had asked for the same days off the year prior and had gotten them off before the ASM arrived (Strike 1). And soon after this, my supervisor, whom I work closely with got ill, forcing me (per company rules) to self-isolate.
During this week, I was harassed repeatedly by text and phone calls by both management, and my supervisor to get back to work ASAP. All the while, I had to inform everyone I was in contact with, including my friends, family, and roommates, that I had been exposed, risking their own holiday trips and plans (Strike 2.)
A week after this, the northeast gets slammed by a snow and ice storm.
I drive a four-wheeled vehicle, and so made it in, but near the end of my shift, I was made aware that my friend’s husband had been injured and stranded in a car accident on the ice, and so left to get them home, and their car to a service station. To add to it all, they have lost power in their home, with an infant, leaving me as the only person they could turn to with a vehicle and power.
I will admit, I had a few sick hours left but informed work that I would be out on a family emergency. For that week, I called out each day with an ‘ongoing family emergency,’ with snow and ice still coating the streets, and power still down throughout our city. And every day, I was hounded by calls from management, demanding I return to work regardless.
This would have not only risked my own safety but would have stranded my family at my apartment, with no way to get supplies or get home once the power returned. (Strike 3.)
I was done. Early in the morning that following Sunday, I walked into work and placed my resignation letter on HR’s desk (That is important latter.) I had tendered it to be immediate, as I live in an at-will state.
Was it petty? Yes, I will freely admit that. I had given eight years of my life to this company and asked very little in return. As I was leaving, I crossed paths with my supervisor, who asked angrily if I was ‘finally’ coming back to work. I informed him of my decision to leave, ignoring his provocations, and left to go home and sleep.
Several hours later, I received the gift that would ignite my semi-accidental revenge. A single text from my ASM – ‘We will see how long you can take care of your lovechild without us.’
…well, well. Seems I found my probable source. My friends had been made aware of this rumor from the start; I did not hide anything from them and did not want any kind of rumor, however unlikely, to reach them from anyone but me.
They are my closest friends and compatriots and have given me the greatest gift in the form of my godchild, whom they insist I call my niece, as I am family. Lovechild feels like a slur against her, and I am not cool with that, and neither are they. However. They informed me of the monumental s******p my (now former) ASM had made. It was time for corporate HR to be made aware, and so I began to compile my evidence – the texts from my supervisor, the call records and messages left, and this holy grail of a text message.
If I was going to leave, I was at the very least going to give some blowback on the team that had been so willing to target me.
What happened after is second-hand from friends I had still at the store, and so I cannot entirely verify all of it, but the ASM? Played herself. The following day, a meeting of management and supervisors was convened, where the ASM made it known that I had been fired (not self-terminated) for ‘job abandonment and immorality.’ And unless I am grossly misinformed about the nature of American retail work, immorality is not a firable event.
To my supervisor’s credit, he defended me to the ASM – and was fired on the spot. The store’s HR rep, having earlier gotten my printed termination letter on his desk, made it known that I had indeed not been fired, but left on my own. And the ASM attempted to fire him as well, in front of the staff. And from there, it spiraled. According to my source, entire departments began to walk out or outright quit, having had their own problems with the ASM.
Appliances – quit to a man.
Garden – left with their manager to work at a competitor’s, as he had been working on this well before my saga began.
Front Desk – walked out in protest, as it came out that the ASM had threatened and blackmailed several Muslim part-timers to not wear their headscarves if they wanted hours.
Lumber, Receiving’s main partner – quit.
Pro Desk – joined the front desk protest, as one of their number, a Sikh man, had also been threatened.
Cashiers – both head cashiers quit, and the other trained cashiers walked out with the desks.
Ops manager – had informed the District Manager, and quit outright before he arrived, walking out with the HR rep and my old supervisor.
My source’s last report of the ASM was seeing her sprinting to her car, after having heard that the district staff was inbound, and the store manager was forced to shut the store down for the next two days, last I’ve heard.
I’ve been in contact with the other injured parties, and we’re compiling all the evidence we’ve collected, as several of the families are hiring lawyers. I suspect the company will attempt to keep this quiet; I just never suspected that anything like this would happen.
I have a full-time position at the gym upcoming, and I’ve been enjoying the extra sleep and time I get with my family.
I’m never working 56-64 hour weeks ever again. And I will never darken the doorstep of that store again- I hope my ASM enjoyed the temporary rush of power. I suspect she won’t get it ever again, at least not in manager positions.”
3. Refuse To Return My Security Deposit? I'll Destroy The Place Before Leaving
“I am a dry liner, which means I do a lot of moving around for my trade as most of the work I do is towards the end of most projects.
This means that I spend a lot of my time renting flats and houses for only short periods, usually about 6 months at a time. This has meant that I have had to deal with a lot of landlords over the years both good and bad.
When it comes to the bad landlords I will normally just walk away and get on with moving to the next job and take the loss of my deposit and never use them again if I am working in that area in the future, but this particular landlord got my back up so badly I was not just going to just walk away.
I had managed to get myself onto a big job in London working on the new Wembley stadium so decided I would look for a house to rent rather than a flat as I knew I was going to be working on it for a while and found a reasonably priced (for London) house to rent from a private landlord in a local newspaper. I gave him a call and met with him later that day, (he seemed ok) went to view the house, paid him the deposit (cash), and moved in that weekend.
I ended up staying in the house for nearly a year with no problems, always had the rent paid into his bank account on time, and fixed any small problems myself that might crop with the house without bothering him. Up to the time when it came to moving out, I only ever spoke to him twice on the phone after there was an issue with the heating that I was unable to fix myself and he sent an engineer round the next day to fix the boiler.
Come the time that the job was finishing I went round to the pawnshop that he owned to give him notice that I would be moving out the following month and to let him know that I was happy for him to come round to inspect the house before I moved out so that I could get my deposit back from him when I returned the keys.
He never came round while I was in to inspect the house and so I assumed that he had come round and let himself in while I was at work as I had told him that I had no issue with him doing that if need be.
So on the day I moved out, I went around the shop and handed him his keys back and asked for my deposit.
His response was ‘what deposit?’ ‘The month’s rent that I gave you in advance of moving in as a security deposit,’ I replied. He then told me he was keeping that to cover the cost of repairing damages caused while I was living on the property. I responded, ‘what damages?’ With the bits of work and decorating I had done on the house it was in a better state now than when I had moved into it.
His response was to step forward and get right up into my face and say, ‘you’re not getting it back so screw off,’ and he then gave me a shove which needed me to take 3 steps back to avoid falling on my butt. Now I am what you would class as the average size and build and this landlord had a good 4 inches on me height-wise and obviously spent some time down at the gym.
The wise move would be to back away and cut my losses.
Now before I was a builder I was a member of the British army in a regiment called The Royal Green Jackets and they had trained us that the best way to proceed when confronted with aggression is to meet it swiftly and with much more violent aggression. So without even thinking about it I started to move forward with the full intention of dropping this idiot quickly and painfully.
After the first step through a thought popped into my head like a bolt from the blue, so I stopped and took a moment to examine the idea from a few different angles. I said, ‘Ok bye’ to my now ex-landlord, and walked out of his shop.
What the landlord did not know was that I had had a spare back door key cut when I had lived in the house which I had stashed in my van in case I ever lost the keys so I could still get back in.
So later that evening I let myself back in and decided to stop for one last night before leaving in the morning for my next job which was in Scotland.
I spent the last night in the house carefully removing every bit of wood in there. I took down doors, removed skirting boards, banisters, architrave, and floorboards being extremely careful not to damage anything. I also completely dismantled all the kitchen units, took up the wood flooring and carpets.
I then left everything in nice neat piles in each room.
I got in my van the next morning and was preparing to start my drive when I decided I wanted to rub a little more salt into my ex-landlord’s wounds. So I stopped at his shop on the way out of London, got a spare hammer, screwdriver, bag of nails, and box of wood screws out of the back of my van, and went into the shop.
My ex-landlord was not there (probably for the best) so I left the tools with his confused-looking assistant and told her to tell her boss ‘you will be needing these’ and left for my drive north.
I had my phone switched off while driving and a few hours later while I was having a bite to eat in a service station up by Nottingham I decided to switch it back on and was greeted by a string of text messages and some very colorful voice messages which left me chuckling to my self.
I did reply to one of the texts he sent me. The text was ‘Do you think you’re funny leaving me nails and screws?’ I responded ‘yes.’”
You see, my dad was old-school; he believed in leaving a place exactly how he found it. So he did. More often than not, upon moving in we would find peeling paint, trash everywhere, exposed wires, and what used to be a garden in the backyard. You get the idea.
2. Work Me Half To Death? Enjoy The Aftermath
“So back in the 90s I was working for a European-based financial firm. U.S. offices were managed by Europeans with a regional head office in New York. Younger employees were generally underpaid/overworked as in your first few years out of college the promised reward was being promoted to a Director position where the salary, perks, and bonus structure would really kick in (kind of like how law firms promote their younger lawyers to partners after a long wait).
As junior associates, the only good news was that we received the same five weeks of vacation per year (plus a few weeks of sick leave) as our European counterparts, which for me meant a lot of camping and stay-cations during the summer since I didn’t really make enough to travel to exotic/expensive locations.
The offices were set up in a way where the business development (‘BD’) Directors each had a junior associate.
The BD guys would generally network, schmooze and travel around their territories to meet clients and new prospects. Once back in the office, the BD guys would dump their meeting notes on the desks of their junior associates to follow up and land the business, aka a ‘hunter/skinner’ model. As a junior associate, I was pretty busy assisting a BD so I routinely rolled over at least two weeks of vacation every year.
I had worked at the firm for three years and was starting to get antsy for a promotion. Right after Thanksgiving, my boss in the West Coast office told me that I was being transferred and promoted to the Southeast office come the new year.
I really had no interest in working in/living in the Southeast, but I wanted to advance my career. I rolled over my usual two weeks of vacation into the next year, so I was eligible for seven weeks of vacation that next year.
After celebrating New Year’s with my family in CA, I packed up my car and drove across the country. Once in the new office, I settled in and met my new boss, who promptly informed me that he wasn’t actually promoting me to Director though I was being given the responsibilities of the role as he judged me to be ‘too young’ but was also told that if I demonstrated that I could do the job, I would be promoted next year.
I was angry but didn’t have a choice other than moving back home and starting from scratch so I agreed to it. I disliked my new boss instantly as co-workers told me he was flaunting his management perks, which consisted of large allowances for housing and automobiles which were paid for by sales production from employees like myself. Turned out he was related to a serving member of the Board of Directors back in Europe, which is how he got the job as a regional manager.
Everyone knew he didn’t have the skills to do our job, so he just collected fat checks, went to expensive restaurants with friends, and billed it to the company as client development, all the while leasing a new Mercedes every two years on the company’s dime while generally being a jerk to everyone who worked for him.
During the first week, I also met my junior associate, Jeremy.
We sat down and discussed some accounts that I’d inherited that were in backwater locations none of the other Directors wanted to visit. Jeremy was professional, but I got the distinct impression Jeremy hated me though I didn’t know why. I started traveling around to meet my clients and prospects over the next few weeks, usually spending at least 3 or 4 days on the road, back in the office on Fridays to go over follow-ups on business leads with Jeremy, and execute whatever paperwork needed to be taken care of.
About a month later I returned from one of my trips and learned that Jeremy had quit. It turned out that he was mad that he’d been passed over for the position that I’d been given. I couldn’t fault him as I probably would have done the same thing.
I asked my manager to hire someone else to back me up but he was hesitant to do so, reasoning that my client portfolio was just starting out so I could do both roles until it made sense to staff up.
I pointed out that it would be hard to be an effective business development officer if I had no support system to help grow my client portfolio, but he chose not to listen, knowing that I had little recourse but to shut up.
I spent the rest of the year working my butt off. This was right before email and internet were common so executing business on the road was hard (fax machines were the bane of my existence).
Even though laptops were reserved for Directors, my boss was kind enough (heavy sarcasm) to let me use a company laptop on which I would handle all of the paperwork to process client business from hotel business centers late at night or early in the morning, so I learned to live on 5 hours of sleep or to sleep on planes whenever I could.
After dealing with problems from some irate clients, I eventually paid for my own personal cell phone (not everyone had them in the mid-’90s and our Directors had just started getting company-paid phones that year) as I had to handle customers from the road.
I just gave my personal cell number for clients to call so I could handle problems from the road.
I landed a few big clients by a combination of luck and hard work and got some solid referrals, which led to more referrals, so within a few months I was gaining some serious momentum. Since I didn’t have an associate to help me, that meant I spent the weekends and late nights back at the office handling paperwork then back on the road during the week.
I was so busy working both sides of the job that by December of that year, I hadn’t taken my mandatory two weeks of vacation. I had some new clients that needed to be handled by year-end so I was granted a vacation waiver, meaning that my seven weeks of vacation would roll over into the next year (adding up to twelve weeks of vacation plus sick time for the coming year).
It was a big hassle for HR to process the waiver but since I had produced a lot of new business, my manager was all too happy to order it done.
I wasn’t upset about working through year-end, though I flew back and forth to CA for Christmas on a 24-hour turnaround. I rationalized it, hoping that I would get paid the first big bonus of my career in a few months.
At that time, European firms paid their bonuses in mid-April while employees of U.S.-based firms got their bonuses by end of January. If you were planning on switching jobs early in the new year, working at a European firm meant that sometimes you left funds on the table aka ‘golden handcuffs’, so the timing of switching firms was important.
I continued to work at my frenetic pace through April, taking no vacation as I was bringing in more and more clients and digging myself out of paperwork when I wasn’t on the road.
In the new year, we had some meetings about scorecards and sales goals and I led my office in some of the categories and was number one for overall production.
Finally, in mid-April, my boss called me in and announced it was time to discuss my bonus/annual review. I eagerly sat down, licking my chops because I was assuming my bonus would be equal to my base salary at least, if not double.
He handed me a piece of paper and it showed a number that was almost 90% less than I was expecting for my bonus. I literally laughed out loud and told him it was a little late for an April Fool’s Joke but he wasn’t smiling. He proceeded to tell me how proud he was of me but that since I wasn’t a Director, the bonus that I received was the maximum amount he would give me as ‘there wasn’t any more money in the budget.’ I sat there in shock for a while, then kept asking the same question in different ways, basically why did he screw me on my bonus?
It was like talking to a brick wall. Despite pointing to the scorecard that showed me as the best producer in the office, all the while having no junior associate. He wasn’t having it. I was crushed but then asked him if he was promoting me to Director since I had demonstrated that I could produce, hoping that title would be a gateway into the big payday the following year.
He shook his head and replied, ‘maybe next year if you prove this year wasn’t a fluke.’ It was a gut punch.
He also rationalized that while my review was positive, I had some flaws that I needed to work on; mainly that I didn’t work very well in a team atmosphere. I reminded him that I was a team of one so there wasn’t anybody on my team to complain about me.
A switch finally flipped in my brain as I realized I’d just gotten majorly screwed and there was no changing the outcome. I told him that I was feeling ill and would be taking some sick days, so I got up and left his office. Co-workers said I looked as white as a ghost as I walked out of his office so they knew something was wrong.
I forwarded my incoming calls to his extension, packed up my important papers in case I decided to never come back, then headed to my apartment in a complete rage.
I called my family and told them that I needed to come home for some much-deserved vacation so after drinking myself senseless for 48 hours and forwarding all my calls to voicemail, I called into work the following Monday and told my boss I would be taking a vacation week.
He was pretty angry about the short notice as he’d been dealing with my irate clients contacting him about their problems since I couldn’t be reached, and he didn’t have much of a clue as to how to handle the paperwork necessary to do the work, so other associates were now being called in to help handle my workload.
I flew home and made a few calls to people I’d worked with, hoping for some job leads.
I managed to grab lunch with an old associate who had left the firm and he gave me some ideas and contacts so I spent the rest of my vacation looking for a new job. I knew the timing sucked so out of options, I went back to my job the following week. The first day back I looked at my HR data and realized that I still had 11 weeks of vacation to use that year, plus a few more weeks of sick leave.
Around that time there was a company-wide conference call to celebrate a big company milestone (I think the firm was 125 years old but didn’t care anymore). To celebrate the big anniversary, we were told we would be getting an extra week of vacation that year, meaning once again I had 3 months of vacation in my account. As a high performer, I was also selected to spend a few weeks in New York during the summer and fall for some management training, so that meant additional time out of the office.
The next month was a blur of looking at different vacations options for me to take that year. I had accrued a lot of hotel/rental car points and frequent flier miles during the past year of traveling around so I spent my days in the office doing as little client work as I could get away with while spending the rest of my time on the phone with the frequent flier/hotel points customer service reps trying to squeeze as much vacation out of my miles and points as I could.
By the end of May, I submitted my vacation requests, which detailed how I was going to take three months of vacation in the seven remaining months of the year.
I submitted the forms to HR and within a day my boss called me in to discuss my schedule as he realized I was basically going to be gone for almost two weeks out of every month for the rest of the year (I was wrapping my vacations around federal and bank holidays whenever I could manage it).
He told me that he was rejecting my vacation schedule since there wasn’t anybody to cover my clients in my absence. I asked him to call the HR rep into his office to have his stance officially on record. He objected, but I said I wouldn’t discuss such matters without an HR rep present. HR was called in and my boss told HR he was rejecting my vacation schedule but HR responded that I was legally entitled to take the vacation days so he couldn’t reject the request. I also told him that, henceforth, I wouldn’t be handling any of my customers from my personal cell phone if I was out of the office so I would be forwarding my work phone to him when I was on vacation or doing business development trips.
Also told him I was going to Europe on two different trips and would be unable to be contacted since I didn’t have a company-issued cell phone. He was angry but knew that unless he promoted me to Director and issued me a cell phone, he couldn’t do anything about my new stance.
After that, I only did business development in areas where I liked to travel and more importantly, vacation.
Until that point, I had always said yes to any meetings in backwater locations if it represented a chance to land a new client. Having learned my lesson the hard way, I didn’t want any new clients to begin with, and certainly, none living in areas I didn’t like to visit. Trips to Florida became common.
If I was traveling, I would typically spend Monday to Wednesday making very infrequent sales calls (most of my schedule was falsified with fake prospects so I could spend afternoons playing golf or hanging out at hotel pools trolling for women my age) then would take off Thursday and Friday with vacation/sick days so I could hang out and have fun, using hotel points to extend my stays for free.
Since I was still underpaid, I ate cheaply and learned to squeeze as much out of my trips for the least amount I could manage while still having fun.
My boss was now irate with all of the customer calls coming to him but he refused to hire an assistant for me so I kept forwarding my line to his when I was out of the office.
Whenever I was back in the office (pretty infrequent at this point) he would routinely lambast me with verbal warnings about poor performance reviews but I would just shrug my shoulders and tell him that maybe he was right not to promote me to Director since I was such a disappointment. He was also angry because he’d been commended for having such a high producing office the year before (mostly courtesy of my efforts) and now he was getting a lot of heat from New York that his new client numbers were down.
Since I had frequent flier miles and hotel points, but not a lot of money, I backpacked through Europe on two different two-week trips that summer and also took a number of vacations back home, diligently following up on job leads on the West Coast that I had cultivated whenever I was in the office. By October, I started to firm up some conversations with a prospective employer back in California and finally received a concrete job offer in mid-November.
I waited until December 15th to inform my boss that I was quitting the firm and told him I would be using my two remaining weeks of vacation/sick leave so that my resignation was effective immediately. He was surprised that I didn’t wait until April to leave but I laughed, telling him I knew he was going to screw me on my bonus anyway so the money wasn’t worth waiting around for.
He then asked me to stay through the end of January in order to give him enough time to hire and train an assistant or a replacement to handle my clients. I refused, noting that Jeremy had quit 20 months before so he had plenty of time to prepare for this eventuality.
As I was packing up my office and informing co-workers about my departure, I got a knock on my office door from the HR rep as he wanted to conduct an exit interview.
He closed the door and I aired out all of my dirty laundry. I told HR the firm had lost me when my boss had screwed me on my bonus, repeating the story that ‘there wasn’t any money in the budget.’ The HR counterpart shook his head and laughed at my boss’s stupidity, noting that since Jeremy had been an employee at the beginning of the year I’d arrived, his salary and bonus were actually in the budget for the whole year.
As such, my boss could have allocated the amount that he would have paid Jeremy to my bonus, which probably would have kept me reasonably happy. Instead, he decided to screw me over.
I moved back to California that week and started the new job the first week of January. Three months into my new job, I got a call from a co-worker at my previous firm.
He called to tell me that after I left, HR from the head office in New York came down early in the new year to interview my former co-workers. Apparently, my sudden departure had raised some eyebrows in New York as they viewed me as a ‘rising star’, and questions were asked why I left so abruptly. Apparently, other employees in my office had also gotten screwed in various ways (lots of client development meal expenses were rejected for being too expensive by the guy who was routinely billing his meals with friends to the firm) so after listening to all of the complaints, New York management decided to make a change years before he was due to be rotated back to Europe.
Since he was related to a guy on the Board, they couldn’t fire him, so they reassigned my old boss to some backwater farm town. I couldn’t pronounce the town but was told it was the kind of place that doesn’t provide perks like allowances for housing, accounts for expensive steak restaurants, or a new Mercedes.
I started my own company five years back and it’s worked out pretty well.
Even though I got screwed 25 years ago, I always think about that experience fondly as I probably would have worked for a company like that for my entire life had I not been shown how companies and bosses will generally screw you over if given half a chance. It was eye-opening and put me on a path to eventually start my own firm so for that I’m forever grateful.
I always think about that situation around New Years to remind myself of how far I’ve come and for how not to treat my employees.”
1. Mess With A Geeky Gym Student? The Quiet Kid Will Chime In
“A good friend of mine was in high school and taking gym as required. He wasn’t out of shape or anything, just a lanky slightly-awkward band geek who had some friends but not many, and came from a well-known hippie family in a smaller conservative city, which put a target on his head automatically from some and was part of the reason he didn’t have a large circle of friends.
In gym class, two jocks who the gym teacher loved also did not like my friend. They taunted, laughed, pointed, etc., but he ignored it and so did the gym teacher. Seeing as my friend did not respond, they escalated their actions. Each day, the class began by running laps while the teacher took attendance then ran to the equipment room to get supplies. While the teacher was in the equipment room, the bullies would purposely fall on the floor and then tell the teacher through fake cries that my friend tripped them.
He was pulled to the side and screamed at by the teacher. The bullies made a case for my friend having an issue with them to the point where when the gym teacher heard the bullies, he came out of the equipment room screaming my friend’s last name. He never got detention or anything, the teacher felt the yelling was enough, and nobody dared to argue with him.
The gym class also had a kid; we’ll call Mohawk. Did well in class, stuck to the point when talking to teachers, but never spoke to any other students much, didn’t want to make friends, no clubs or sports. He didn’t harm other students if he needed to talk to them; he was cordial and did stuff like in-class group work just fine. He had a slightly muscular build and a tall green mohawk that distinguished him from others.
After 3 days or so of the bullying, the class was running, but something was different this time. Mohawk was running behind the bullies and was getting pretty close to them. My friend was ready for the bullies to fall, but when they started, Mohawk reached out and grabbed both bullies by the back of their shirts. He then put a hand on the shoulder of each bully and pulled them close to him.
Some words were said from Mohawk, but they were so quiet, nobody but the bullies heard. The bullies were released, and not a single incident happened again. My friend looked at Mohawk afterward, and Mohawk just nodded in my friend’s direction and carried on.
That was it for memorable Mohawk moments during my friend’s high school time that at least my friend knew about. However, a couple of years after they graduated, Mohawk made an appearance back in their city to visit family and some classmates spotted him at a bar.
It turns out, he was always set on living a simple life. He got a job with a logging company in Northern Wisconsin working with a crew. He bought a small cabin home up there that has just what he needs to live independently and was living the life he wanted to live, spending free time doing things like reading and hiking. He uses a smartphone to keep in touch with family, has no computer.
My friend tried to reach out to Mohawk once he saw he had social media, but the friend request to this day sits unanswered.”
Another User Comments:
“”Seeing as my friend did not respond, they escalated their actions.”
Every time I see the question, “What’s the worst advice you ever heard?”, my response is always the same: “Ignore the bullies. They just want a reaction, and if you don’t give them one, they’ll get bored and leave you alone.” No!
As this example illustrates; they’ll just escalate things until they get a reaction. The bullies I dealt with in the 70s and 80s? Yeah, “bleeding” counted as a “reaction” for them! Such utter freaking bullcrap!” revchewie
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