People Excite Us With How They Got Elite Revenge
12. Karen Regrets Selling Grandma's House
This is what she gets for being so greedy and entitled.
“Everything started several years ago, around 2013-2014 in Mexico. My entitled aunt Karen has a history of harassing my grandma (her mom) with loans, stealing her food, and even making grandma pay for her utility bill. My aunt harassed grandma saying it was her responsibility to make her daughter happy, or that if she was in need, wouldn’t her mother help her?
To the point of pressuring my grandma into asking the bank for a loan.
No one knew anything, my 65-year-old grandma had to start selling anything she could to pay the loan (In Mexico there are some products by catalog called Avon, StanHome, Andrea shoes that you can offer and sell, grandma started selling them) to the point that she got sick due to stress.
Her excuse to my mom is that ‘she did it to make her feel young’ (Grandma being a farmer all her life, we could understand she couldn’t sit all day doing nothing, since mom pays for her rent, food, and utility bill). My mom let her be but always warned her to not put too much pressure on herself.
The time passed it was now 2016, and she started accumulating late fees for not paying the loan on time. One day my mom receives a call from my grandma’s neighbor because grandma passed out due to stress. She rushes to her house to find her house empty.
We thought that someone had stolen everything, but no. The loan fees were too high and the payment was overdue for over 1 year, and the bank had taken everything from her house to pay the loan.
Here is when we knew that entitled aunt harassed grandma into the loan.
My mom was furious, she and my stepdad paid the loan and recovered grandma’s stuff. It was around 7k USD that my mom and stepdad ended up paying for grandma.
From there and on, my mom hired a nurse and had my two younger sisters go with grandma after school every day to take care of her (mom worked in a different state.
She only came on the weekends.) This is why she asked my 2 sisters to take care of grandma. Also, they did not move due to stepdad’s job. Both were in high school at the time and always had someone at home to avoid Karen coming to her house to steal goods or to harass grandma.
2016 passed, I finished university in 2015 and started working. I was able to get hired by a USA company and started working to save money. In 2018 mom and I decided to purchase a house for grandma. We did all the paperwork and purchased a house for her (by the way, if you wonder why grandma was paying rent and had no house, it was because grandpa lost their farm gambling).
We knew that entitled aunt would try to trick grandma into giving it to her. This is why the house was in my name.
Everything was great for the next few years, then 2020 came the worst year overall, and we feared the worst, you know the health dilemma, and the inevitable happened. Grandma passed away.
We are glad to say she had a peaceful death. She passed away in her sleep. Happy and well taken care of by my mom, sisters, and her nurse.
We knew that Karen would try to make her move. I asked my sisters to take my grandma’s personal belongings from the house.
This is to trick my entitled aunt. They agreed and took all of the furniture out – clothes, anything from the house. Even a small nail on the door to hang some plants. They left the house empty.
3-4 weeks after this, my sisters saw a big sign that said ‘FOR SALE’ with Karen’s phone number on it.
I knew the time to start the revenge was close so I asked my family to let her be and that I had something in mind. 2 months after the sign, the house was sold, and my sis saw people moving in. I felt bad for these people but I had something in my mind for them as well.
6 months passed after the new people moved into the house, and then it was time to act.
You may wonder why I took 6 months to act, well, my entitled aunt has a history of spending her life away. I waited for her to spend most of what she earned from the house that she illegally sold.
Revenge time. This is for you Grandma.
Event 1. Before 2020, my wife and I had planned to go visit my mom for her to meet her granddaughter, so we continued with the plan (we took our precautions traveling). We went to Mexico to visit my mom.
Event 2. My stepdad was into politics his whole life. I asked him as a favor to search for the most epic lawyer he knew for this, and we got the best. I presented my case to him and gave him the original house scriptures. He said it was going to be an easy win.
Event 3. Like I did not know anything, I went to grandma’s house with my key copies and went into the house (This was part of the plan. Even when there were already people living there). I acted surprised when I saw people inside the house and asked why they were in my house.
The gentleman in the house stated he had purchased the house. I showed the house scriptures and he was shocked. He then mentioned that the paperwork was being completed and gave the phone number of the agent. I apologized for coming into the house and went to the Real Estate office.
Event 4. Arriving at the Real Estate office, I asked for the agent in charge of grandma’s house being sold. When he looked at me, it was like he saw his last hope, that he thought I was going to agree to the house being sold.
Our conversation went something like this:
Me: Hi. Are you Mr. Agent selling the house at such and such address?
Agent: Yes, nice to meet you, we were trying to get ahold of you.
Me: What for?
Agent: We had a small issue with the paperwork.
We only need your signature and the house will be sold.
Me: This might be a mistake. I’m here to talk about the house being sold because I did not agree to sell anything.
Saying this was like a cool bucket of water being poured on him.
The glow in his eyes was gone and he knew he messed up bad, really bad.
Agent: Why the change of mind? We’ve been talking via phone and you agreed to everything.
Me: You have been scammed. I have never talked to you before.
Then I suggested calling me from the phone number we have been talking to. He did and someone answered, and surprise surprise it was not me. Then I just mentioned that I want my house back since I never agreed to anything or I will legally proceed to sue them, and walked away.
From this point, I knew everything was going to go down for Karen. 3 days passed and I encountered Karen at the Walmart parking lot. I politely approached her to say hi, like I did not know anything. I then asked why she sold my house.
She started to get nervous and negated everything until I mentioned that Mr. Lawyer is suing her (A way to say we have an epic lawyer on our side).
She then tried to defend herself by saying that grandma gave her the house and she had a paper with grandma’s signature.
I just smiled and mentioned that grandma did not have the power to do that, since the house was in my name and she better get herself together because a storm was coming her way.
1 week passed, and we did not hear anything from the agent, I visited him again.
It was hard to track him down. I tried for 2 weeks to contact him with no luck, so we proceeded to sue them. As soon as the order was placed, I received a call from the agent to meet him. I refused and hung up.
I did this to make everything harder on him for avoiding me for 2 weeks. He then found out who my stepdad was and found my stepdad’s office address. He had the audacity to visit my stepdad. My stepdad, being a busy man, ignored him and said to contact me and that he should have listened the 1st time.
After 3 days of the constant calls, my wife being sick of the calls, made me answer, and I agreed to meet. In the meeting he gave me his version of the story and why the house was sold. He mentioned that Karen contacted them for a house to be sold.
Karen stated it was her mom’s (grandma’s) house and she inherited it. She then presents a paper with my grandma’s signature with a fake last will stating the house belongs to my grandma and Karen was the new owner after grandma passed away.
This was a lie of course. Then when the agent started the paperwork, he found out the house was in my name.
He contacted Karen and she assured him I agreed and gave him a fake phone number. This could be Karen’s significant other or someone on her side, not sure as of today who it was.
The agent was in contact with this fake me for a long time waiting for the paperwork, and that he mentioned that I was going to visit him to sign the paperwork. This is why he was so happy when I arrived the 1st time.
The agent begged to stop any legal action since he could go to jail. I agreed if he agreed to the following terms: a) recover my house and make the people inside my house move out. b) Get a new house for the people currently in my house.
He agreed to term (a) but for term (b) he was not sure. I then stated that it was his fault for approving the paperwork without my signature and that he will need to recover the funds from the agent to pay for the new home for the people currently in my house.
They will need to solve this. I gave him 2 weeks to solve this, or else I would sue them all.
Event 5. Notified Karen about the fraud she had committed. She did not take it very well, as always. She acted like she was on the right, saying, ‘grandma gave me this, and no one can take it from me.’ We’ll see Karen, we’ll see…
Event 6. Wait. (I went to talk to the people at my house to give them a heads-up of the issue and apologized for the misunderstanding since it was never their fault. I explained that they will be moved soon to a new house and not to worry because the REA will take care of everything)
Event 7. We got a call from the agent at the end of week 2 after we talked. He mentioned that my house was empty and that the people in there were in a new home as well. I called the gentleman that was at my house and he confirmed that they were in a new house and everything was good with the REA, also my house was empty.
Event 8. Karen, time to pay, woman. Since the agent and I were on good terms we started working together to sue Karen for fraud and identity theft. We went hard on her. We sent a letter for a court notice and the time. She did not arrive.
We sent a second letter, and this time she did arrive. While in court, she never talked, at least, not as an adult would.
She was crying and sobbing the whole time, saying that we tricked her, that the house was hers, but all this was hard to understand with her desperate crying.
We presented our evidence. We even brought the bank records when she harassed grandma into getting a bank loan. We brought witnesses. We had the whole circus set and ready for a big show. Epic lawyer was smooth-talking and presenting everything, stating the house was in my name, and that Karen has a history of tricking grandma.
In the end, we won the case. Karen had no evidence other than the fake last will from grandma which was written by Karen and only had grandma’s signature. Not only that, no lawyer was informed of this to back her up.
The sentence: Karen was to give back everything she got from the house, around 20K USD.
It was half of the house price since the paperwork was not completed, and she had 2 weeks for this than 9 years in prison for fraud and identity theft.
I was so happy about this. When the judge gave the sentences, Karen was speechless. She couldn’t even say a word.
She even stopped crying. Her world and life had just collapsed in front of her eyes.
From that time and on, I have not spoken with Karen or anyone about this besides my mom, sisters, and stepdad. This was in November of last year (2020). Did not know if Karen was able to pay everything back but did know that when the cops went to her house to arrest her, she tried to escape and was on the run for 2 days until she was caught riding a bus to Veracruz escaping, at least, attempting to escape.”
Another User Comments:
“I have an aunt like this. My grandma ended up putting everything into my name to stop her from stealing it. I quite enjoyed seeing her that Christmas. I didn’t touch a penny of it. Even when she passed away, it wasn’t my money to keep.
I got a ring via her will and that was more than enough for me. However, you can bet I wished my aunt a merry Christmas with an extremely smug face that year. Come and try it, Karen! I’m small, but I could take you.” PrisBatty
11. I Know Where I'm Wanted, And It's Not At This Job
“Guys, I know this is long, but I assure you…this is a juicy one.
I was working with a B2B Sales company (we sold services to companies), and this company had managed to hire the most incompetent, lazy, and jealous sales manager I have ever come across.
We were a team of 5 salespeople and a sales manager, all 5 of us salespeople hated our sales manager, Mrs. B, for various reasons but we liked her personally.
I was the top salesperson on the team, I was sitting at 170% of my yearly objective and was well on my way to President’s Club.
This is largely because I was the only salesperson on the team with real sales experience and the sales manager was too incompetent to train a team.
So my VP came down for our yearly performance reviews and I was called in first. It was my VP and Mrs. B.
I was expecting a positive performance review.
Right off the bat Mrs. B hits me with, ‘Sting, you know our location hasn’t been performing at the objective for a number of years, and we suspect this is because salespeople are misrepresenting their daily work.”
I’m taken aback.
‘Sting, I don’t think you are actually doing what you say you are doing in your CRM, and this is something that could get you fired.’
I looked at Mrs. B and I said, ‘Really?’ She said, ‘Yeah.’
I hit her back with, ‘I’m shocked you decided to go this route.’ Mrs. B, with a confident smile, said, ‘We gotta do what it takes to get this location on objective.’
I said, ‘Alright, let’s play a game. Mrs. B pick a day, any day in the CRM, and let me prove to you that I went to all my appointments and did all my stops as recorded.’
‘Well Sting, I’m not saying you never go in the field, I just think some days you stay at home and put in nonsense notes in the CRM.”
I said, ‘Mrs. B, pick a day, any day, pick a day you think I lied about my sales activities.”
So Mrs. B picks a day. Now I’m smiling ear to ear, and I’m totally heated right now. I notice the VP is smiling at me and his head is slanted to one side, I suspected he knew Mrs. B was about to get absolutely owned…and he was right.
So she gives me a day and I turn to the VP, ‘Mr. VP, are you aware of how android phones work?’ VP responds, ‘Enlighten me.’
I said, ‘By default, Android has location services turned on and, in fact, Google will track where you went and when.
Naturally, I carry my phone everywhere so let’s compare what Google says I did that day to what my CRM says.”
So I pull up my Google location services for that day, and surprise surprise, it’s a match. Mrs. B is obviously very concerned at this point.
I said, ‘I’m actually quite enjoying this performance review, let’s pick another day, Mrs. B.”
Mrs. B fires back, ‘We don’t need to do that.’ I turn to the VP, ‘Mr. VP would you mind picking a day?’
He says, ‘Sure, what about XYZ?’
He pulls up my CRM, I pull my location services for that day. Guess what? It’s a match.
I then get ready to pull out the big guns, ‘Mr. VP do you remember company XYZ with a contract value of excess of $1 million that we lost recently?’
‘Yes, Sting I remember. Apparently, our competitor won them over a price we can’t win them all.’
‘Mr. VP, here is an email from their VP basically stating that they’ve decided not to go with us because we failed to provide 3 samples for them to decide on which product worked best for them.’
‘Sting, can you forward that to me?’
‘Sure not a problem Mr. VP.’
Forward it over.
‘Mr. VP, while I’m at this, let me forward you over several email chains before this where I clearly asked Mrs. B to order those samples, in fact in those very same email chains, she confirmed that she had, in fact, ordered the sample.’
He asked me to forward those emails to him so I did.
‘Now Mr. VP, I had our service department look to see if any orders had been placed for those samples, no orders were actually placed.’
He said, ‘I’m going to look into this.’
Mrs. B is freaking sweating bullets at this point, my performance review has just turned into her performance review and it’s not going right.
‘Mr. VP, I have one more thing I’d like to bring to your attention, do you mind if I step outside for a minute so I can show you?’ he said, ‘Sure, I need to have a talk with Mrs. B anyway.’
Now I need to mention that several years prior to this, a general manager at another location seriously assaulted a woman. The company was sued and lost a lot because of this. Since this incident, the company put in a very clear-cut policy, ‘No romantic relations between management and people who work for them.
It is immediate termination for the manager.’
Another sales consultant in the office is named Joe. Joe is a married man with two beautiful kids and Mrs. B had the hots for him. She tried to have physical relations with him multiple times, twice on text.
Joe and I had talked about if he should report this transgression.
I walked into the sales office and said, ‘Joe, I think it’s time we get a new sales manager, you got those texts?’
He looks at me and goes, ‘Is today going be the day?’ I said, ‘Today is going be the day.’
All the sales staff knew what was going on, the mood in the office was lifted.
Joe and I begin walking back to the conference room when the Location Manager who was not a part of the performance review saw Joe and me, he asked, ‘What’s going on?” and Joe said, ‘You’re going to need to hire a new sales manager soon.’ The location manager was confused. He said he’s coming into the meeting, we said fine.
I knocked on the door, Mr. VP said come on in so I did.
There we stood, Joe, myself, and the location manager. Mrs. B knew exactly what was about to happen. We all took our seats, and I asked the VP, ‘Mr. VP, I just want to clarify a company policy.’
‘Sure.’
‘Is it true that if a manager tries to engage in a romantic relationship with a direct report, it is immediate termination for that manager?’
Mr. VP sits up straight, takes a moment, and goes, ‘Yes, if something like that came to my attention my hands would be tied. I’d have to fire the manager.’
I said, ‘Well Joe has something he wants to show you.’
Mrs. B got up and walked out of the conference room, she was about to cry. Her world, her career, had just completely been wrecked and I don’t think she wanted to be around for the end.
Joe went on to tell the VP how he’s a happily married man with two beautiful kids and Mrs. B kept hitting on him. In fact, she had sent him numerous suggestive texts, and on two occasions openly invited him to make love with her, once in the office and once at his home even after he had made it clear he wasn’t going to do anything with her.
Mr. VP asked to see the texts and Joe provided them. The VP asked him to screenshot those and email those over, Joe said he would. Then the VP said, ‘I’m going to need both of you to go back to the sales office, the location manager and I have some talking to do.’
We walk back into the sales office, I noticed the sales manager’s office had looked cleaned out.
Apparently, Mrs. B was balling, she was a wreck and crying, and said she was going home. Joe laughed and said, ‘Yea she won’t be coming back.’
It was about 20-25 minutes when the VP came into the sales office and asked me to come to the conference room again so I did.
I sat down and the VP said, ‘Well, I would like to inform you that Mrs. B has been terminated effective immediately, with this being said after your performance review, and looking over your numbers you are our top sales rep in this location and deserve nothing short of stellar remarks on your review and you’ll be getting that.’
I said, ‘Thank you, I do have one question.’ He said, ‘Sure, anything.’
‘How do I apply for the new sales manager job that just opened up?’
Mr. VP laughed and said, ‘You sure do you like to strike while the iron is hot don’t you?’ I said I do, he said he would let the location manager know and I’d be able to put in my application.
I thanked him and he said, ‘No, thank you. In my 35 years of being in sales and sales management that was by far the most interesting performance review I have ever witnessed.’
I did not end up getting promoted. I ended up quitting shortly after this.
I ended up quitting shortly after this because they decided to not promote me and instead hired a guy with no sales experience to be our sales manager, and this rubbed me the wrong way. Also, our service department sucked and couldn’t deliver what I was selling, and another company offered me more.”
10. The Power Is In The Hands Of The Bully's Victim
“When I was in high school, one year, a new kid, John, came into my grade who was very nice to me when we first met. We became friends and I thought he was fun to be around and generally pretty nice.
A few weeks into the school year, he became super distant all of a sudden, and I didn’t know why. I was going through some mental health issues at the time, so it wasn’t really at the forefront of my mind anyway.
I kind of ignored it until a friend pulled me aside at school one day to tell me something.
She showed me various screenshots of several social media posts John had made about it. It turned out, for the past week, he had been cyberbullying me. Mostly on Twitter, where he thought I wouldn’t see it because I do not use Twitter, but also on another private social media account.
I was really hurt, and it didn’t help that I was going through a lot.
All I had done was try to be nice to him and be his friend, and I didn’t understand what could motivate someone to do that to a friend.
Over the next few weeks, as he continued to post about me on and off, I came to understand that, being a new student, he was trying to increase his social standing, and saw me as an easy stepping stone to do so.
For some background, I’m not very popular and have been bullied for as long as I can remember.
However, until John, I’d never been outright bullied, mostly passive-aggressive or snide comments my peers could pass off as jokes. I go to a relatively small school, so most of my peers knew about what John had been posting, and most of them laughed along with him, save for a few of my close friends.
I ended up losing a lot of friends over this, too, because John and I shared a lot of mutual friends. However, I’m super non-confrontational and continued being nice to all of them, including John (this will become important later). I was lost and didn’t know what to do since I figured reporting this to an adult would only make things worse in the long run.
I collected screenshots of all of John’s posts just in case I eventually got the guts to report it to our principal.
After a few long weeks of this happening, it finally subsided, or at least I thought. Although my social anxiety was made 50 times worse by the whole ordeal, I was beginning to get over it.
Then, our homecoming dance rolled around. I had fun at homecoming for the most part, though I ended up leaving early due to a panic attack.
Monday after homecoming, I’m standing in a hallway at school, exhausted and over it. This girl, let’s call her Kay comes up to me.
I happened to know Kay was friends with John, so I kind of braced myself to have something bad happen. To my surprise, she started by apologizing. I asked her what she was apologizing for, and she told me she felt bad because apparently, she was standing in a group with John and some other kids about five or seven feet away from me outside of the homecoming dance, and John started talking negative things about me (the rest of the group followed suit).
Internally, I was on the verge of tears, but I sort of brushed it off and told her it was okay. For the next month or so, he continued to talk badly about me behind my back in real life. Again, I didn’t do anything to him, and I racked my brain trying to figure out what I did to deserve this.
In the meantime, one of my best friends, let’s call her Bea had gone out and broken up with John’s best friend, let’s call him Kevin.
Bea and Kevin were a weird couple, to begin with, but I was happy for her because Kevin had been a nice kid until he became friends with John.
Bea ended up breaking up with Kevin because he moved way too fast and she got very overwhelmed. She had perfectly valid reasons for breaking up with him, and things were pretty amicable between them until John got involved.
John manipulated the situation, twisting Kevin’s perception of Bea.
John, under the guise of making Bea jealous, caused a whole slew of effects, my favorite being this: John started spreading various rumors about Bea, including one that Bea was gay and was using Kevin as her beard (it would be perfectly fine if she was gay, but she’s not, and even if she was, John would’ve been outing her without her consent).
Because of John’s manipulation, Bea lost a lot of her friends and began to get bullied more and more. I’ve known Bea since we were kids and she means a lot to me, so this did not help my image of John.
My own pain from what John did to me, combined with my anger at him because of what he did to Bea boiled into a seething rage.
Everything boiled over when Kay, who had slowly begun to distance herself from John, came up to me once again, this time a month after homecoming, to apologize for being in a conversation where John was trash-talking me. At this point, it had been over two months since this whole ordeal started. I was furious.
I decided, enough is enough. As I said, I’m a very non-confrontational person, and if I ever had the energy or emotional capacity to confront John face-to-face about this, I didn’t anymore.
So, over the next week or so, I devised my plan.
My older sister, Lily, who had graduated the year before this, was her year’s student body president, and she was very involved and incredibly well-liked among my school’s administration, faculty, and staff. I am also a good student and fairly well-liked among teachers and administration as I have a reputation for being a diligent student and a kind person.
Lily had wanted to destroy John’s life from the first moment he posted about me, but I had held her back up until that point. I called her several times over that week and together, we created my method of revenge.
Lily collected all of the screenshots of John’s cyberbullying that I had and anonymously sent them to my school principal. Our principal, let’s call him Mr. K, first emailed me to let me know what had been sent in and to arrange a meeting to talk about it.
Mr. K is fairly close with both my sister and me, and he knows that I have severe anxiety and hate confrontational situations. So, I played innocent and asked if Lily, who happened to be home from her university on break, could come to the meeting with me.
Mr. K happily obliged. My sister came early to pick me up from school that day, and we sat down with Mr. K. We both played dumb, pretending we didn’t know who sent the screenshots in. Our story was that I had told Lily about the bullying, but she wanted to respect my wishes of not wanting it reported to an adult.
Lily masterfully manipulated the conversation, name-dropping a much less intense incident of bullying in her year that had resulted in severe punishment, and Lily made sure to mention that she was going to chat with our dean (unrelated meeting), with who she was very close with, right after the meeting with our principal ended. (Quick context note, I go to a 7-12 school, so the principal presides over the high school, while the dean is the general head of our school.
That year, the woman who was formerly an assistant principal and a wonderful English teacher had been promoted to Dean. She had taught Lily several times and they were very close.) Mr. K is a bit frightened of our Dean, so this scared him.
Mr. K assured us that he would take care of it.
When Lily had her chat with the dean (she was just popping in to say hi, nothing serious), she casually let my situation with John slip, along with the fact that we had just met with Mr. K. We knew that once Dean knew, she would put pressure on Mr. K to get things done.
We then got in the car and got coffee, satisfied with our work.
About a week later, Lily headed back to her university, and at school, I heard the news that John had been put on probation, which meant he was kicked off of the basketball team.
Outside of our mutual friends, most of John’s friends were in basketball with him, and this ostracized him from a lot of his friends. The unintended consequence, but I didn’t feel bad about it, especially since John still had many friends and his significant other at the time outside of the basketball team.
I thought things would be better after he got some much-deserved consequences, but they didn’t. He kept talking about me behind my back and even made some posts that didn’t mention me by name, so I couldn’t do anything about them but were clearly about me anyway.
I was fed up. I was having a particularly tough day once, and that happened to be the day that I overheard him trash-talking me.
It was the first time I had actually heard him in person rather than hearing about it from someone else, and it pushed me over the edge.
My eyes clouded with tears, and I ran into a nearby classroom and bawled. A few minutes into my crying session, my history teacher, who also taught John, walked into the room, as he was teaching a class in it about 30 minutes from then.
I tried to play it off, but I was mid-sob and it was very obvious that I was crying.
My history teacher (let’s call him Nate) is a super caring person and also happens to be married to our Dean, but that’s not entirely important to the story. He asked me what was wrong, and I explained to him that I had just heard someone talking badly about me.
Nate consoled me for a little while, and then admitted to me that he knew about the situation with John from his wife, and asked me if it was him. Through tears, I told him it was, and I told him that the in-person side of things hadn’t stopped even after he had been punished for his online actions.
Nate tried to console me and helped me to stop crying.
I went home that day and realized I now had an advantage. All of the teachers at my school are very close, and opinions of students typically become shared among all teachers, especially if the opinion originates with a well-respected teacher, as Nate was.
Given that all of John’s teachers already knew he was on probation, what Nate now knew would definitely not help John’s cause.
So I took advantage of that. At the time, my whole grade was in a period where everyone had a lot of tests and assignments.
I dropped an anonymous note on Nate’s desk (typed so he wouldn’t recognize my handwriting), warning him that John would be dishonest on the upcoming test. When I dropped the note, I figured it would inconvenience John. I never expected what actually happened.
It turns out, John actually was being dishonest during the aforementioned test. Because of my fake warning, he was caught. More than that, his chosen method of being dishonest was to text a group chat of three of his friends while they were taking the test in order to compare answers (the test was on a computer), so they all also got caught.
My school has a strict honor code, and violations like this are taken incredibly seriously.
They all got put on academic probation. (Regular probation is a slightly less intense punishment than academic probation, and students have to report academic probation to any university they apply to.) Given that John was already on regular probation at the time, he was kicked out of all of his extracurricular activities, and pretty much lost favor with every faculty or staff member.
Unintended consequences really went my way when it came to him.
At this point, I was probably taking it too far, but I had one more ace up my sleeve. John and his partner were going through a rough patch, and I knew John had harbored a crush on a close friend of mine, let’s call her Beth, in the first few months of school.
Knowing John, he wouldn’t have a problem being unfaithful to his significant other.
It helped that the aforementioned friend was not only gorgeous, but also one of the most popular girls in our class, so I knew John would see her as a way to climb the social ladder.
Beth was an incredibly nice girl and had taken my side through the whole thing, but she was still friendly with John. We had joked about doing this for a few months at this point, and she was in (I would never have done it if she wasn’t).
So, she began subtly flirting with John for the few weeks leading up to Christmas break. After the last day of classes before the break, a group of kids, including John and Beth, had planned to go to a local mall, get lunch, play some laser tag, and hang out.
I went home after classes ended that day and waited for my phone to ring. I wasn’t sure this plan was going to work, but I had my hopes.
To my surprise, it worked better than I could have ever imagined.
When they got lunch, they fractured into groups because they wanted different food, agreeing to meet up after they purchased their lunch.
John and Beth both wanted food from this Chinese place, so they went off on their own a little ways away. I know what you’re thinking, and, no, Beth didn’t actually try anything. I’m not that horrible of a person. However, the Chinese place was just far enough away and it took them just enough time to buy their food that, combined with their flirting in the weeks leading up to this day, it was plausible that something could have happened. When she and John got back to the rest of the group, Beth acted flustered and ate her lunch quickly, then made an excuse to leave and went home, setting up the next part of the plan perfectly.
Beth’s best friend cannot keep her mouth shut. She’s a nice girl, but you cannot tell her anything without seven other people knowing within the next 12 hours. So, Beth let it slip to her best friend that John had kissed her at the mall, and within the next few days, the rumor spread like wildfire.
Beth is known for being incredibly nice and honest, while John has been caught in lies before, so everyone believed Beth. John’s significant other broke up with him three days later. The social standing that John had worked so hard for and stepped on so many people for was destroyed. He had very few friends left and that’s the way things have been ever since.
He no longer bothers me and I’m now doing really well.”
9. Carelessly Lose Our Cat? You'll No Longer Be Living Here
“So I (24F) was in a really, really bad place before I moved here. It was at the beginning of March when I found out I could live here. I had nowhere to live, which is not at all uncommon for me because life’s been kicking me in the metaphorical butt since I turned 18.
So, when my old high school friend in another state told me I could finally get out of the Poconos AND have a place to live at only $125 a month (they were kind enough to let me stay for free as long as I needed while I got a job, too!), I was OVERJOYED. They paid for a U-Haul for me, which made me cry a little (not gonna lie), and I got to meet everyone who lived here:
- Tabitha (24F): The friend from high school, and also the homeowner. She loves animals, and there’s too many to list in the house. All of them are hers, except some of the cats.
- Jack (23M): Tabitha’s fiancé, and the main breadwinner of the household.
- Dan (21M): Jack’s step-brother, who sleeps in the living room.
- Terri (21F): Dan’s significant other at the time, who also slept on the couch.
- Anna (21F): Ignorant slob #1.
- Dean (23M): Ignorant slob #2.
- Dusty (1M): My baby, an indoor-only cat.
- Gru (4 or 5 M): Tabitha’s little sweetheart, also an indoor-only cat, but has gone out previously.
- Peengus (?M): Not sure if he’s Tabitha’s or Jack’s cat, but he’s just a shy little guy, don’t know if he’s ever been outside.
- Risky (less than a year old M): Anna and Dean’s cat. Looks an awful lot like Dusty when he was a kitten.
So, after I got here, I notice one glaring issue right away: The place is a huge wreck. It looks god-awful. There are moldy dishes everywhere, dirty clothes, there was trash all over the dang place, the front lawn had clothes and trash strewn about, it was just an all-out trash heap of a house.
There’s also dog poo everywhere, but that was because of a badly misbehaved and untrained dog that Tabitha was babysitting for a family member (a story for another time, maybe).
It was literally so bad I had to play hopscotch through the hallway every time I left the room, and believe me we TRIED to get it cleaned up, but it was a pointless endeavor since all the mess was either ingrained into the carpet or would just come back looking the same a couple of hours later, if not worse.
Now, I’m no stranger to bad messes. I have depression, and there’s a difference between mess and depression mess. This was neither. This was WORSE.
Eventually, I come to find out that it was Anna and Dean who were responsible for the dishes, clothes, and trash in all parts of the house.
Granted, others would make messes, but we’d at least clean it up after a little while. Their messes STAYED there, and after a month even I gave up on trying to help them out.
Now, Anna and Dean both stayed in what we call ‘The Cat Condo’, which is basically just a big shed with electricity where the cats stayed (since Tabitha’s grandmother, who bought her the house, is highly allergic to cats).
They had a bed, TV, and gaming setup in there, but no bathroom or kitchen, which is how they managed to track their mess into the actual house.
They were also in charge of letting the cats out (all of them are unfixed males, so they need to stay separated in their almost-extravagantly sized cages) so each cat would have time to roam.
They didn’t mind. And the cats were happy and well-fed, so I trusted them at first. Surely they wouldn’t be dumb enough to mess with the cats… right?
On to the actual story:
Tabitha and Jack wished they had the guts to kick them out, but they’re both big softies to a fault and couldn’t bring themselves to do it, since Anna and Dean ‘wouldn’t have anywhere to live’ (that turned out to be a lie.)
There’s something you need to know about me; I’m hard to anger if you’re even a semi-decent human being. The only two things that TRULY annoy me are if you mess with my friends, or if you mess with my cat. So, naturally, I was getting a bit annoyed that my friend was letting herself be stomped on by these lazy potatoes.
But what could I do? I just got here, and it’s Tabitha’s call.
So, I start to become wary. Dusty is the most precious thing in my life, and at this point, life has a massive track record of taking everything I hold dear, so I felt it in my gut that something might happen to him.
Plus, I worried for the other cats… But, I was holding on to hope that maybe Anna and Dean would get their act together. I used to be ignorant like that too, so if I could change, maybe they’d change too. Stupid, I know.
Tabitha constantly stresses about the mess. Her family saw the lawn and they started worrying, claiming it looked like ‘she’s running a frat house’. Anna and Dean are constantly reminded to pick up after their grown adult selves, but, of course, they don’t.
Tension rises.
And then, it happened. The two of them were doing substances one night, and after they sobered up a bit, they opened the window to let things air out. They went to sleep. They forgot that there’s a hole in the screen, just big enough for Dusty to get out, and since he wasn’t in his crate for the night, he got out.
I spent hours looking for him in the woods, in the dark. They, to their credit, tried to help me. But, to their discredit, they kept following ME when I told them to stay away because I’m the only one Dusty would trust at this point.
I was LITERAL INCHES away from picking him up, and these ABSOLUTE IDIOTS came stomping up behind me and scared him off.
I. was. ANGRY.
But it STILL wasn’t enough to get them kicked out. Dan offered, many times, to tell them to get out, but nobody gave him a straight answer, so he couldn’t do it.
And here’s where the last straw was crossed… After watching me desperately search for hours, after watching me WEEP from worry for my cat, they made the same mistake mere DAYS after they let Dusty escape.
Gru got out the same window. Anna and Dean WEREN’T EVEN HOME.
We were all panicking, but we knew that at least Gru knew how to deal with being outside. Still, we worried that neither of them would come home. Anna and Dean were told to keep the door cracked open so the two of them would be able to, at least, come in from outside, but they were IDIOTS and kept closing the door at night, despite saying they were okay with it and would leave it open at ALL TIMES.
Tabitha’s starting to crack.
The revenge: I. Blew. A. GASKET.
Remember how I said I’m hard to anger? Tabitha, despite knowing me for almost a decade, has NEVER seen my rage before, has never heard me shout at all besides to be heard over a distance.
She’s never seen me have a complete rage-fueled freakout like this. Not only have they stomped all over my friend and threw her kindness in her face, but they let out my cat AND hers.
They’ve messed with us for too long.
I screamed that this was enough, that I was sick to death of watching Tabitha cry and stress about them, I’m sick to death of worrying about my cat not being ABLE to come home because of their stupidity.
I looked Tabitha dead in the eyes and told her that they’ve clearly proven how harmful they were to this household.
‘If they were gonna do better, they would have! And them letting Gru out DAYS after Dusty got out?!?! You’d have to be a MASOCHIST to want them to stay any longer!
You CLEARLY hate having them here, they’re CLEARLY causing harm to everyone here, they eat us out of the house and home, they owe you guys THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS, haven’t even TRIED TO FIND WORK, and I don’t think we can EVER trust them with ANYTHING ever again…ESPECIALLY NOT OUR CATS.’
Not gonna lie, guys, the look on her face shut me up for a bit. But, I don’t know how to deal with REAL anger, since I don’t experience it often. So I basically just angrily paced through the house for a good while.
Tabitha thought for a while. But, eventually, I decided to stop letting her mull it over. I looked at Dan.
‘Dan, you’ve been offering to kick them out all this time. Tabitha, you HAVE to let him. This can’t keep happening. Please, for the love of GOD, give him permission.
PLEASE.’
She says she wants to call Jack and ask him first. I told her that the second she was done explaining what happened, I needed to speak to him as well.
So, basically, she hands me the phone and I have a similar freakout as I beg him to let Dan kick them out.
Jack is fed up at this point, so he tells them they have until 11 AM the next morning to get their stuff and LEAVE. In my anger, I felt it was too generous. There was no lease, so they weren’t required to give them time.
But, I really had no say in the matter, so they got their time and I kept my yap shut.
The aftermath:
After they left…oh my god. Dan tried to ask Jack for $20. ‘I’ll pay you back on Tuesday’… Jack just replied with ‘Yeeeah, I’ve heard THAT one before.’
Forgot to mention: Anna had a school laptop at the house. She conveniently left it here when they moved. Why didn’t we just drop it off wherever they were? Because they moved MULTIPLE STATES AWAY. Not only did they have a place to go, but they had someone willing to drive them there, so the dishonesty on top of it all?
ugh.
So, Anna tries to claim we stole/hid it from her. SERIOUSLY!? After everything Tabitha did for them, this is the thanks? They haven’t paid her a CENT for over HALF A YEAR they lived here, never even TRIED to find work and this is how they thank them?
By being petty? HA!
Well, we called her school first, let them know that Anna no longer lives here and forgot the school laptop at our house… which she wasn’t allowed to take off-campus in the first place. Oops! So, now they don’t have a leg to stand on, they’re no longer in our faces, AND Anna is probably in major trouble with her college.”
Another User Comments:
“Maybe I missed it but did you find your cat?” racshade
Reply:
“Oh! shoot! I was pretty much neck-deep in remembering how much all this angered me while writing this that I totally didn’t think to add that in! Yes, Dusty came home, as did Gru.
They’re doing just fine, besides the fact that they kinda hate each other. I’m shocked at how Dusty managed to somehow not have ticks all over him, considering how long he was in the woods. Buuut, there’s possibly a chance that he got…busy….with the neighbor’s female cat….he’s a freaking playboy.” JeannieSmolBeannie
8. Company Illegally Retaliates Against Me, And I Get A Huge Settlement
“Some time back I was hired to a company by a CEO I had previously worked for someplace else. He was a good friend, so when his newest company wasn’t achieving sales, he headhunted me to join the new one.
The company hadn’t made a sale in two years.
In year one, the software product was in beta, so it wasn’t ready to be sold. In year two, they realized using the tech staff to make high-end sales to C-level executives was the worst sales model one could conceptualize.
In general, and there are exceptions of course, these two personality styles don’t speak the same language.
Tech people talk tech. Buyers talk benefits and how the potential product fills needs. I bridge the gap well by translating tech-speak into natural conversational language so buyers better understand how their needs will be filled.
The job was an hour and a half drive one-way from my home so the CEO said I could work from home as long as I kept the sales management tool current (it’s where you keep the notes of each prospect’s status), came to important meetings and made sure the executive team had daily sales reports.
The first month, I made the daily 3-hour commute because I needed to have solid, constant interaction with all the departments to rapidly form my sales strategy and develop a two-way confidence level with the section heads. Once I had a handle on things, I was ready to launch my sales plan.
In the meantime, the CEO hired a VP of Sales (Karen) who started four days before I hit the ground running to get in front of buyers. She was a VP coming from the banking industry and had a long career in sales and marketing in finance products.
I hated her from the moment she arrived. She knew nothing at all about tech, and I spent a lot of time trying to orient her which wasn’t ideal because I needed to work on my sales strategy. They brought her on board because she had strong experience gaining financial investors.
Nevertheless, I forged ahead. Traveled to a target state and spent 19 days crisscrossing it. When I came back, I had 17 contracts from buyers totaling about $2 million in sales. My CEO was overjoyed.
Fast forward six months and now working from home, I’m rocking and rolling.
Sales are strong. CEO is happy. Good things are happening.
Karen has landed an investor willing to drop $6 million into the company, and they are coming into town for a discovery meeting. She asks me to drive up because they specifically want to meet the salesperson.
Seconds before walking in the door for the big meeting, Karen pulls me aside and says she needs me to back her up on a lie she has told them. Basically, she doubled my sales numbers. I told her there was no way I was going to do that.
She says the CEO has okayed the lie.
We get to the part in the talk where the investor is looking over my inflated sales numbers on the prospectus, then directly asks me how many sales I’m making a month. Karen is behind him waving her arms, but I was having none of it and answered truthfully.
He looks askance staring at the document which has the false number listed, while she’s giving me the stink eye behind him.
No one says a word. Dead silence.
I ask to see the document and fates have aligned allowing me to solve the dilemma.
I explain the first two numbers were transposed (they correlated well to my real sales versus inflated sales if you flip-flopped the first two digits.) The potential investor is satisfied, and we move on.
Switch gears.
About a week later I was meeting with the CIO in his office and he referred to my ‘big chest.’ I’m no shrinking violet but it stunned me because it was so unexpected.
That night I was chatting with my BFF who happens to be a lawyer and told him about it in casual conversation. He said I should tell the CEO so he can address it. Thinking along smart business practices, I decided to tell Karen to whom I directly report as proper protocol since we don’t have an HR department yet.
Side note, I also reported directly to CIO as a boss since my role was a muddy mix of sales and tech.
The next day CEO calls me, and I take him through it telling him it’s no big deal, but to make sure he talked to CIO, so it didn’t happen again.
He says he’ll do it right away.
Two days later, I check in with him, and CEO still hadn’t talked to CIO because the investors were in town. I gently push him to get it done and casually mention my best friend who happened to be a lawyer was the one who urged me to tell him because ‘Any good CEO would want to know about it.’ I reiterate I’m not mad or upset.
The only word he heard was ‘lawyer.’ He went nuts that I was bringing a lawyer into the mix. Now, this guy was my good friend. We’d worked together at two companies for years. I calmed him down (or so I thought), explaining that I only wanted him to talk to CIO.
I also told him I HADN’T brought a lawyer into it, that I had been innocently chatting with BFF who just happens to be a criminal defense attorney. He seemed okay, and we hung up.
The next day, I’m working as usual, and I get a call from an attorney who explains the company has hired her regarding my harassment claim.
I’m flummoxed and adamantly told her that was not the case, that I had no claim against the company. She said otherwise.
And that’s when everything changed. Dramatically.
CEO was furious with me for bringing this on when investors were looking at us.
His reaction set the tone which filtered down. The company began to retaliate against me. Karen now made it her mission to make my life a complete mess: ‘Forgetting’ to tell me about important meetings I was supposed to attend, freezing me out when I was in the office, telling me I could no longer even speak to CIO (a problem since I’m selling a multi-million dollar tech product needing his input AND I directly reported to him as my other boss), denying me a long-planned, approved vacation, basically anything she could devise to mess with me, she was gleefully working it.
Coinciding with this was a serious health problem I developed ultimately requiring surgery. My illness had no impact on my work as I was able to work from home which made things easier on me health-wise. Karen then decided that I need to come to the office every day despite a 3-hour round trip commute.
Now I know you’re thinking why didn’t I just leave, get another job somewhere else…I needed health insurance. There was no way to turn around another job fast enough, and I had a complex surgery scheduled requiring 3 surgeons for my procedure. My doctor gave me a note for them which released me from having to make the daily commute, so I could continue to work at home.
As long as my work didn’t suffer, they legally couldn’t force me to commute especially since working from home was a part of my employment contract from the outset.
The night before my surgery, Karen calls to tell me they’ve canceled my health insurance.
After hanging up with Karen I collapsed on the floor in a faint. I was so, so, so sick, and mentally exhausted from all the stress.
The next morning, the CEO frantically calls asking to talk to me. My mom refuses to let him. I’m on official leave as of that morning and we’re heading to the hospital. CEO had told their lawyer about canceling my health insurance and she chewed him a new one telling him it was illegal. They immediately reinstated my insurance.
In the two weeks I was out, my mom had found a lawyer for me as it was clear shenanigans were going on. I still needed them as an employer because I was in no shape to rigorously job hunt while recovering.
Turns out, all the stuff they were doing to me is illegal. Companies aren’t allowed to retaliate against employees when they report nefarious acts against them.
I met with my new lawyer who said I had an excellent claim for retaliation and took me on. He said I had to continue working there while he did his thing to stay within protocol while he filed the EEOC claim.
Now it’s time for me to return to work.
The company had relocated (planned) during my absence and Karen refused to tell me where so I couldn’t come back to work. The company lawyer told them they HAD to tell me so Karen gives me the wrong directions, making me late on day one.
I walk into the new office, and it looks like any other place except for one thing. There is a wide-open area directly in front of the CEO’s glass office with a single desk in the middle of it. Welcome to my new desk.
Also, I wasn’t allowed to do sales anymore. In fact, I wasn’t allowed to do anything, at all, period. They had hired a bunch of new people and they treated me like an outcast. Turns out, Karen had gone to them telling a pack of lies and if they know what’s good for them they’ll stay away.
Since I had nothing to do but couldn’t just sit there aimlessly, I worked on documenting everything being done to me per my lawyer’s advice. I was meticulous in my note-taking.
Karen began writing me up. Stupid stuff like not answering my phone on the first ring and for asking questions during company-wide meetings, asking to see my personnel file which employees are legally entitled to do although not entitled to photocopy any of it.
Each time she wrote me up, I had to sign the write-up. There was a space for me to reply to it so I consistently wrote, ‘I do not agree with this assessment.’ It infuriated her so much, she wrote me up again for writing the statement that I didn’t agree with it.
There were several instances where she called me into her office and literally began screaming at me loudly and enthusiastically. I wouldn’t engage though; my standard answer to everything was ‘OK’ which made her apoplectic. At one point, she’s inches from my face screaming, her face beet red, and I just sat there with a dreamy expression whilst envisioning her blowing a vein in her head.
I infuriated her with my equanimity.
Still and all, I was in it to win it at this point. It didn’t matter what new humiliation they dished out. I took it all with a bland face, then went to my desk and documented it in my notebook.
She loathed my notebook, sure that I was doing exactly what I was doing. Documenting. Because it was my personal property though, she couldn’t take it from me. I had to carry all my belongings with me everywhere (company-wide meetings, the bathroom, lunch) because I caught her one time going through my desk drawer…In my dang purse!!!!!
(Although it gave me great joy to write a note reading, ‘forget you’ which I left in my backpack and jerry-rigging it, so I could tell if she went into it…which she did). I withstood it all with a brave face only breaking down once I left for the day.
My attorney took a lot of sobbing phone calls during this period.
Finally, the day comes that my attorney has what he needs and I can resign, better still, he advises I don’t have to give a two-week notice. I come back from lunch and type up my letter with one sentence, ‘I resign immediately.’ I take it into the HR guy (who also took part in their evil machinations) and hand it to him.
His mouth forms an O shape and he half stands up from his chair as he reads it. He looks up and I give him a smile and say bye-bye just as sweet as pie, walk out the door, and drive home feeling mighty fine.
One month later, my lawyer and I are at the EEOC office along with the CEO, Karen, and their lawyer so the EEOC can review my claim. In my state, you can’t just bring a lawsuit against a company for things like harassment and retaliation.
Claims must first be evaluated by the EEOC, and then if they determine you have enough grounds to file a lawsuit, they issue a Right to Sue document.
My lawyer presented my case logically and forthright detailing all the evidence. It took him 40 minutes to go through it all.
Then they presented their side with allegations of my poor employment along with their ‘evidence’ which were all the copious write-ups Karen had written.
EEOC asks about the timeline of the write-ups inquiring if they were before or after my claim occurred. Karen wearing a smug self-satisfied smile states they were all prior to my claim as noted by the dates on each document.
EEOC Lady looks at my lawyer. My lawyer looks at me. I look at Karen then serenely pull out MY photocopies of the documents. Whilst handing them to EEOC lady, Karen barks, ‘She’s not supposed to have those! They’re company property!’
I show EEOC lady that the dates have clearly been altered by Karen.
(She had made copies with the dates blanked out then backdated them.)
You see whenever she wrote me up, I had to take the document personally to the CEO to put in my personnel file. Along the way, though, I stopped at the copier and took copies.
She never knew I was doing this.
You could’ve heard a pin drop.
EEOC Lady reviews the copies then slowly sets them on the table. She didn’t say a thing for a long time, then she spoke. I can remember her words exactly to this day.
‘I’ve seen a lot of ill-treatment and illegal undertakings by both employees and employers, including forged or altered documents, but I have never seen someone so incredibly stupid to present documents this easily disproved. Not only are employees entitled to receive and keep a copy of formal write-ups but reading these ridiculous allegations, it’s obvious you are trying to manufacture your case.’
She went on to say I had a clear case for a lawsuit, and moreover, I would win it. She recommended their side go in another room and determine a settlement amount to pay me immediately or risk the lawsuit.
They went to a nearby office and I could hear the lawyer dressing them down.
Words I heard included, ‘lied to me… Lied to EEOC… Presenting false documents… Broke so many laws… Figure out a number big enough to pay her so this doesn’t go to court because you will lose.’
They came back with a $50,000 offer which we accepted.
My lawyer and I left then did a football touchdown dance in the parking lot. Looking up at the EEOC window, I could see Karen in the window looking miserable and crying.
She had just been fired.
I’m not a hateful person. I get mad and get over it.
But… for Karen, I nurtured hatred and vowed to one day get revenge, so I kept tabs on her and discovered she opened a finance marketing company after she was fired.
Then I waited a year before exacting my petty delight.
For the past 18 years, I’ve executed a wonderful, soul-refreshing project.
Each year I go to her website and write down all the work email addresses and phone numbers for the employees. Then I subscribe to them all to ‘get more information’ from places like online schools, online insurance companies-all those scam aggressive organizations that keep your contact information longer than a gypsy curse while trying to sell you stuff.
The last few years, I’ve subscribed them to an email bomb service where the service takes the address and instantly subscribes it to 1,000s of newsletters, request for more information feeds, and other online buyers of email addresses for marketing services.
I tested it with a burner email, and it wreaks havoc on your inbox with thousands of emails received within seconds, and they never….
ever… stop…You literally have to close down the email because it can’t be salvaged. Each year when I go to collect the contact information, all the emails have been changed to new ones.
Last year my cousin took a job in the same building.
I enlisted her help, and she made it a point to befriend a receptionist working for Karen. After executing my yearly plan, my cousin went to lunch with her. The receptionist was in a foul mood and explained the entire organization was in disarray because IT had to redo all the emails again.
‘It keeps happening over and over and nobody can figure out why.’
She said the owner (Karen) has had to get her cell phone number replaced 3 times because of all the texts and phone calls she gets whenever it happens again. (Sometimes Karen would have her phone number on the website which I duly subscribed to everything under the sun.)
The best part for me was hearing how she lost a mega client because they felt the company was in too much turmoil so often.
The thought of this keeps me warm and cozy at night, and I sleep so very, very well.”
7. Do Things By The Books? Sure, But It'll Inconvenience You
Whatever you think works best.
“I work as a freelance artist doing advertisement, ticket, and program booklet designs for various Police/Firefighter events that give to children’s charities. It’s not consistent work but it pays pretty well for what it is. The people I work with directly are a promotions company that was created to sell the advertisement space and tickets.
I’ve been working for them for a long time. Lately, these people were essentially my only source of income, so I had to put up with their nonsense. Mostly having to put up with having to hear “the check is in the mail” for two or three months before it actually arrives.
I convinced the owner of the company to download PayPal so I could be paid in a reasonable time. He was confused on how to use it. He said “I just want to keep doing this by the book. These websites you’re sending me to look scammy.” And because “I don’t work for him, I work for the unions and they’re the ones cutting the checks.”
I asked him if he really wants to do that. Of course, he said yes.
Cue malicious compliance…
He’s becoming quite upset with me since he realized doing it by the book actually gives me ALL of the leverage.
From that point forward I had begun putting my logo watermark on every single thing I send him.
The first time he experienced this was with show tickets. He asked me to remove the watermark and send it to the printers, he was satisfied with the work. I told him the watermark will come off when I get paid. He told me that he can’t start making sales until he has the tickets to sell, thus he can’t afford to pay me.
Oh man, that sucks, better figure out how to pay me electronically then. Here’s my PayPal info, as well as info for direct deposit. He insisted he couldn’t pay me before he has the tickets so he agreed to a fifty percent price increase for me to release the files to him without pay (and with my company’s logo on them).
I actually got paid for that today.
The second time was with a show poster. The same instance occurred, only this time I was told I’d have to talk to the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) about being paid since I “work for them”. They were very confused when I called them.
An hour later I got an angry phone call and was paid via direct deposit from the promotor’s business account, not the FOP’s account.
This morning was pretty interesting. He called me up while meeting with the police association to talk about cutting me a check for the last show that happened yesterday (9/25).
On this call, I was asked about bank transfers, all that good stuff. But the promotor asked why my invoice stated that I am no longer accepting checks as a form of payment. “Are you sure you want me to answer that in this meeting?” I asked him.
He said yes, so I told him while he was on speakerphone with his boss. “Because you don’t pay me for months when we do checks. I only accept online or bank transfers.”
There was a little back and forth between him and the guy from the police association.
It didn’t sound like Mr. Promotor was having a good time. I was told I would get a call back about payment. Well, I received that call; from the police association, not the promotion agency. I’ve been paid via PayPal and apologized to profusely. When I got the call from the promotor afterward, he had a very upset tone.
He asked why I’m doing all this.
“Well, Sir. You told me you wanted it done by the book right? This is by the book, we didn’t do it by the book before because I’ve worked with you for years and your son is my best friend.
So this is how it will be from now on.”
We’ll see how it turns out. I’m confident I won’t be losing any work, since the police associations, firefighters, and other organizations have repeatedly told me how great my work looks, and how I often work at half the price of other freelancers.”
Another User Comments:
“When will people learn that “are you sure you want me to answer that?” means “you absolutely won’t like the answer and will be embarrassed if I actually say it.”” Astramancer_
6. You'll Regret Calling Me A Bad Drummer
“As a drummer for nearly 40 years, my trouble with the neighbors was always over the noise. As I acquired some skill the friction wasn’t as severe. I tried to practice when the neighbors were at work but even then somebody would inevitably get irritated.
One time I had the practice room in the basement. A band member had helped me set up a basic home recording studio so we could make demos. None of the local clubs would hire a band without a sample of their recording music. My bandmates and I had insulated everything so you could only hear a low rumble outside.
But the neighbor liked country music and we were just a bunch of metalheads. The problem was my bandmates didn’t take any disrespect from rednecks and some of my neighbor’s friends had started calling us derogatory names.
That neighbor called the police on us multiple times.
But the police couldn’t do anything. The officer would just come by and tell us the neighbors called and complained. We weren’t in violation of any laws. They usually said we sounded good. One officer said it wasn’t that loud and asked if I had some other dispute with the neighbor.
There was none that I knew of other than he just didn’t like my type.
My neighbor was divorced but had 3 teenagers. One of his sons used to stare at me like he wanted to come over and check out my drums. Although it could have been that I always had a pair of drumsticks in hand and often walked around practicing twirling them.
Somebody told me that you can’t just be a good musician. You have to be entertaining to watch.
My revenge was like a gift of payback from the universe. I had tried to work out a schedule with the neighbor but he just wanted to threaten me with violence.
He was only trying to intimidate me and it wasn’t working.
One weekend my band was playing an outdoor charity event. It was in a vacant parking lot next to a huge flea market, which was having an art and craft fair. There were a few bands and we got to headline because we had an incredibly good yet slightly insane guitarist. He lived alone with 5 horses.
He talked a lot about alien abduction and alien control of the human population. But when you put a guitar in his hand he didn’t seem so out there after all. He had one of the most extensive vocabularies on his instrument that I had ever heard.
We took to the stage and our set was going great. Then I happen to spot my neighbor and he didn’t look at all happy. He was there with what looked like his ex, her new significant other, and his 3 children. I’m sure they were at the art and craft fair and the kids wanted to check out the music.
There he was in the crowd. Actually hearing for the first time what he had so vehemently opposed. At the end of each song, his family applauded with others in the crowd. Imagine the feeling I had when I realized my neighbor was in absolute misery at that moment.
It was easier for him to hate me when he thought I didn’t know anything about music.
After the set was the best part. My neighbor’s son, the one that always stared at me, wanted his mom to know I was the neighbor that lived next to dad.
I was the one who played the drums. So I met my neighbor’s ex and her partner without intervention of my neighbor. I gave the young teen a free introduction to the drumset on the spot. Then I gave him the drum sticks I had just used for that particular show.
This is just something I’ve always done. Someone inspired me to play drums and so I’m just passing it along.
The neighbor stopped calling the police after that incident. And kind of stayed out of sight. I never saw his children after that.
My revenge had always been to keep playing and striving to make better quality music regardless of my neighbor’s efforts to silence me. As it turned out, fate gave me the opportunity to rub my neighbor’s nose in the fact that my band was actually entertaining to watch and listen to.
And even his only family supported the right for our music to be heard.”
5. Think You Can Get Away Without Paying Anyone Back? I'll Tattle On Your Felonies
“Had a colleague in the volunteer armed forces (national guard-ish) who would never lift a finger unless something good came to him, and he always expected people to help him… He was a kinda poor soul, who had been lost most of his life, never really had a job, and had no education… But he did find some meaning in the uniform.
He had huge issues with spending…Whenever he got his welfare check, he would spend it all within a week, on video games, a new TV, or something like that… The rest of the month he would beg scraps off the rest of us…He always had such a big debt, that when he finally got the welfare check most of it would disappear in seconds…
Eventually, he got kicked out of his apartment for ‘forgetting’ to pay rent… He was of course furious that the city council wouldn’t pay the bills for him, because ‘it’s not my fault I forgot to pay!’
Our platoon leader chose to go above and beyond for this guy and chose to take him in… Not only having 2 teenagers in the house, he now had a third and even more useless ‘adult teenager’ living with him…They agreed that the Platoon Leader’s wife would help him with finances, that he didn’t have to pay for food, and that the rent he paid the Platoon Leader didn’t even cover half of the expenses they had, with an extra mouth to feed.
As you might be guessing, the guy has some serious issues with life in general, and especially spending… The guy was like 35 and still couldn’t manage on his own…
At some point, he started not paying tickets on public transportation… Sure thing he would get a fine, but being on welfare, he had no way of paying it, so he just didn’t.
He even boasted to his squad of being soooo clever, as he was riding ‘free of charge’ when the rest of us were paying a lot to get on a train… He literally told me ‘It’s no problem, I just consider it a loan from the government’…
I told him in no uncertain terms that what he was doing was going to land him in so much trouble, he would never in his life get out of it…
His reaction was to completely cut off any communication with me, despite both of us being NCOs and having to communicate on a regular basis… It’s completely fair of him to think of me as an idiot for sticking my nose in his affairs, but when it starts to hurt the company and the soldiers are complaining about a ‘hostile work environment’ and talking about stopping as volunteers, things are out of hand…
I let the Platoon Leader know what was going on… Telling him that not only was this guy boasting of committing a felony crime, he was also refusing to talk to anyone who called him out on it… The PL took note of it and went ‘up the system’ with it…
At the same time, I found out he was borrowing funds from a couple of new soldiers and not paying them back…
I told the Platoon Leader, who told his wife… The Platoon Leader and his wife decided to pay the soldiers back from their own pocket, as one of the guys was studying and didn’t have a dime to spend on anything.
At the same time they raised the ‘rent’ he was paying for living in their house, to cover what they had paid back on his behalf…
He of course got super furious and started yelling at the Platoon Leader’s wife, who kicked him out straight away… He called the Platoon Leader straight away, crying on the phone and saying how sorry he was… They let him stay…
Being on welfare, you have to do these pointless courses in writing a resumé, or you have to do some kind of practical activation job, like picking up trash or sweeping the streets…He started not going to these things, stating that he had to go on some super important military drill and the city people believed him… Only thing is, being a volunteer force, everything is evenings or weekends.
I called the city council and gave them an anonymous tip that there wasn’t any training or drills… They called him and gave him 1 hour to meet, or he would get taken off welfare immediately.
Remember the story of him borrowing from broke students and not paying back?
Well, a month later he did the same thing… Again I called the PL, who told his wife… The guy once again got super angry at the Platoon Leader’s wife… Platoon Leader went straight home, but didn’t say a thing.. PL waited until the guy left to go hang out with a friend, and then took all the guy’s stuff and threw it in the yard and called a locksmith to come and change the lock straight away…
The guy got super annoyed and started telling everyone that I and the PL were against him… Well, it wasn’t really a lie… Being homeless kinda sucks and being on the council watchlist for potential welfare scammers sucks too, so I was actually pretty happy and thought I had my revenge.
The guy got so annoyed he started calling my work and writing my social media friends outside the armed forces telling me how big of an idiot I was…
I had decided that I had made enough phone calls, but this kinda broke my brain… I straight away called both the city council and the national tax authorities to tell them of his ‘free of charge’ train trips… The city and the national authorities started working together sharing the info they had on him…
The last I heard of the guy, was when I read a headline in the newspaper, of a local man matching his age who got a 60 days jail sentence and a 40,000 USD fine for never buying train tickets… Having committed a felony (technically 300 felonies) and going to jail he lost his security clearance and got kicked out of the volunteer forces..”
4. Making Karen The Building Manager Regret Her Wording
“I live in a housing co-operative. I have no idea if there is something equivalent in other countries, but I live in Norway.
It’s essentially where you own your own apartment, but the co-operative owns the buildings and the land. If you’re going to make changes to the building you’ll have to apply for a permit, otherwise, it’s generally do as you please, as long as you don’t bother your neighbors.
Anyways, I put up a small greenhouse on my private patio. As many others had done, but not this exact type. This was an aluminum construction, not a frame with a loose plastic cover kind. The building manager, who is best described as a triple Karen, threw a fit.
She actually watched me spending three days assembling the greenhouse, then the next day she called me and threw a fit. Not because I put up a greenhouse, but because I had used screws to fasten it to the patio for stability. Apparently, I was not allowed to use screws on the floorboards, as this was considered ‘changes to the building’ in her mind.
And, I had destroyed the floorboards. Never mind the whole patio was built with – wait for it – screws through the floorboards! Screws in the wall were ok, she’d told me, in response to me asking about why she’d put up shelves on her patio herself.
But not the floorboards. Apparently, the difference was monumental, and everyone should just know this, intuitively. Nowhere, literally, nowhere, does it say fastening things to the floorboards or putting screws in the floorboards is not allowed. Not in the house rules, my contract, or in the national housing co-operatives law.
But she was furious I had done this.
I took a deep breath, and as I am quite creative, I immediately thought of a workaround. I’ll just put it on wheels, then. I made a big number of saying that fastening was essential because otherwise, the greenhouse would not be stable enough to withstand wind.
She said she understood this, but I had now ruined the co-op’s property. And this was a really serious matter. She told me to send an application for a permit, to see if she could find a way to get approval from the board. But she could not guarantee I could keep it, she said, with the fakest of sympathies.
So I sent the application, with photos, saying what I had done, and that I didn’t think I had to apply to do it, as I never considered putting in a pre-fabricated greenhouse would be seen as changes to the building.
My application was rejected, as I anticipated. But she worded the rejection exactly as I hoped she would.
I was not allowed to put in a fastened greenhouse, and she probably thought she’d been clever when she included that I was not allowed to put the greenhouse on my front lawn either. I had worked the ‘it needs to be fastened to be stable’ angle hard because I hoped she, like the Karen she is, would fall for that reverse psychology.
So I proceeded to put the greenhouse on wheels. I made a frame from 2 by 4’s, and put 8 small furniture wheels under the frame. I then lifted and screwed the greenhouse onto the frame. I put some boards on the sides, just above the ground, to stop the draft. Boom.
Mobile greenhouse. I can slide it all over the patio. I put some hooks in the walls and used transport straps to secure the whole thing to the wall for stability. The walls were OK to put screws in, remember? So in effect, my greenhouse is now in the exact same location, 4 inches taller, and with ugly, blue ribbons tying it to the wall.
And the patio now has 22 open screw holes, ready to be filled with rainwater in the fall. But oh well, as she’s repeatedly told me, it’s not MY patio.
Then I sent an orientation e-mail to the building manager with photos and videos of the sliding greenhouse, with the rest of the board members on copy, where I explained in detail what I had done, and how every step was in compliance with the rejection e-mail I had received (which I of course included).
I said the greenhouse was now to be considered a piece of mobile patio furniture, just like my sofa and chairs were. And that I now considered this subject to be a closed matter.
I have not heard a single word from any of them, it’s been over a week.
I think I got her. I can’t imagine she’ll find a loophole that lets her legally dictate what patio furniture is allowed and not in the co-op, since the patios are stated to be for every apartment owner’s private usage. So when Christmas comes, I’m planning to decorate the greenhouse with lights.
Make it pretty. Because every time Karen steps out of her front door, she has to face my patio where she is looking straight at my greenhouse. The least I can do is make it pretty for her, right?”
3. You'll Never Get Away With Stealing From Someone Like Me
What makes this story great is that it’s inspired by the movie, Home Alone.
“So in 2010, I was a recent college graduate who joined the Peace Corps (a US volunteer program where Americans go to a remote location of a developing country to work on specific development projects).
It’s not a paid program, but I did receive about $200 USD per month.
I was living in Zambia as the only non-Zambian for about 30 km. I lived in the same type of house as the locals (a mud hut, no electricity, no running water). My bathroom was a separate structure behind my house… basically, a hole in the ground, surrounded by 4 mud-brick walls (about 6ft by 6ft), and next to it was my bathing shelter built basically the same way without the hole.
I had some sticks tied to the ceiling that acted as a towel rack, a small mirror, and a few makeshift shelves that were a few sticks bunched together and fastened to the wall (important later).
Despite what many may assume, it was amazing. Zambia is beautiful and filled with amazingly kind people…mostly, that is.
About 6 months into living there, I began to notice that someone was entering my bathing shelter at night and stealing my soap.
This wasn’t a big deal, as soap isn’t expensive for me, so I figured if someone stole it, they probably just couldn’t afford soap (living in a rural farming community, that’s a real possibility).
After all, they always left the shampoo (more expensive) and the mirror.
This happened on and off for a few weeks… Eventually, I ended up just bringing my soap inside my home after my bucket bath, so I wouldn’t have to ride 15km on my bike to get more soap at the markets.
I thought this would end the problem…and it did for a bit…
Then one day I was boiling water, prepping for my bucket bath. I dropped off my soap and shampoo in the bathing shelter, then returned to the pot of water, waiting for it to heat up.
I go back to my bathing shelter and both the soap and shampoo are gone. This was not 10 meters from where I was standing. The fact that someone crept into the bathing shelter when I was right there annoyed me.
Whatever… 15 km bike ride to buy more soap at the market.
15 km back.
I’m angry on that bike ride… And this anger causes me to brainstorm retaliation during this 30 km round trip ride, in the blistering heat. My brain thinks back to the days of ‘Home Alone’ (the movie) and all the traps I made as a kid, inspired by a young Macaulay Culkin.
I don’t hunt, but I was a mischievous little brat, so I’m uncommonly good at making b********s.
I arrived home that day (with extra soap and shampoo this time). I had finally cooled off and decided building a trap would be an overreaction. I boiled water, prepped for my overdue bath, and brought my new soap into the bathing shelter.
Horror met me at the door.
The mirror, gone. The towel rack and shelf (literally just sticks), gone. Shampoo, gone. A big piece of poop, sitting right in the middle of the floor.
I was infuriated.
This wasn’t just a poor kid taking soap, this was someone screwing with me.
STICKS? YOU STOLE STICKS? AND YOU POOP HERE WHEN THERE IS A TOILET LITERALLY NEXT DOOR?
I remember a quote from Home Alone: ‘This is my house, I have to defend it.’
Step 1: I had a hunch the kids in my village wouldn’t be this bold (and that poop was certainly adult-sized), but I needed verification before calibrating the intensity of my trap.
So I dumped a bucket of water on the dirt in front of my bathing shelter after every day’s bath. Eventually, I found what I was looking for when the thief left adult-sized footprints in the mud. This confirmed it wasn’t a kid, and it was just one person who dropped in every few evenings.
Step 2: Send a warning. I told all my neighbors to keep away from my bathing shelter because a thief has been coming by and I am going to make a trap (I hoped it was one of them and that this would be enough to end things, or that word would spread to the thief).
Nope, I kept finding muddy footprints every few days.
Step 3: Set trap. I made another bike trip to the market to buy:
– ‘Rub On’ which is IcyHot without the cooling effect
– Red powder
– Hot sauce
– Rope
– Thin, but durable, string
I removed half of the shampoo from the new bottle, mixing in hot sauce, red powder, and RubOn… If the thief bypassed my trap, this would ensure they receive some regret when they use the stolen goods.
But for the main trap, I created a tripwire and a release (made from two carved sticks). The tripwire ran across the doorway, about shin-height, and then ran up the wall attached to a pendulum.
The pendulum had a BRICK affixed to it. Now, I didn’t want to kill anyone over soap, so I made sure to make the pendulum swing at that sweet spot… just about balls to chest height… no chance of hitting someone’s head or knees.
For good measure, I attached one of those alarm key chains to the tripwire (One of those assault prevention keychains that blast a very loud alarm if you remove the pin), so I could confront the perpetrator in the act.
Eight days passed, with no attempt to rob my bathing shelter.
No footprints either. I never considered removing the trap, I knew he’d eventually come.
I was deep in a slumber one night when I heard something thud, then a man’s high-pitched yelp/gasp! No alarm rang, but I knew that had to be the sound of a brick hitting a man straight in the nuts!
I grabbed my light and ran outside, only to see a man, bent over, struggling to hustle away.
I inspected the bathing shelter. The brick hung dangling in the doorway, having deployed perfectly. The alarm was missing and so was the tainted shampoo bottle.
From the evidence, I determined that the man thought my trap was only a simple alarm.
He simply cut the alarm keychain off from the string it was tied to, probably thinking that was the only purpose of the string.
He then walked into the tripwire and was nailed by a swinging brick. When he heard me running towards him, he grabbed the shampoo and, still bent over, he hurried away.
I can then assume he used the shampoo and was met with a hot sensation from the hot sauce and Rub-On. I hoped the red dye from the powder would help identify him by dying his clothes red if he used soap to also wash clothes, but that never ended up working out.
However, for the rest of my time there, no one else screwed with my bathing shelter.
I guess he gave up after that. He wasn’t thirsty for more.”
2. I'd Be Careful About Firing The Person Who Holds Confidential Information
They might just release it to a competitor!
“Several years ago, I was hired as a Business Development Manager by this tech company (we’ll call them Company X) who headhunted me out from a competitor (Company Y).
They were several leagues above company Y, and being young and ambitious – I jumped at the opportunity. I then discovered that they had a high turnover rate, but it didn’t really bother me at the time because I was pretty naive and cocky and got along great with most people there.
Company X had somewhat of a small workforce, around 40 people. The CEO, CTO, and General Manager ran a pretty tight ship and were very involved with everyone, micro-managing almost all aspects of the business.
Several months down the road, I had already closed several new accounts and brought in new revenue streams to the company.
Then one day, they announced that they were going to shift the company strategy.
It’s been a while, and I can’t fully remember all the details, but the plan was pretty risky, and had everyone on edge, simply because it involved putting everyone under financial strain for almost a couple of years until the strategy matured and Company X would blast off exponentially.
This meant no salary increment, no bonuses, no inflation adjustments, and so forth. For the next potentially couple of years, we’d all be working on a stiff.
They promised everyone compensation for their patience and loyalty, but at the end of the day, this was a decision made on their end and we didn’t have any say in it.
A week after the announcement, my General Manager tells me I need to head up to meet a panel of companies who were vendors to one of our biggest clients. The deal was that these companies were required by our client to use our tech if they wanted to keep their contracts, as part of their standardization protocol.
These companies had already installed some of our tech, and my job was to head over and provide training on using our tech, as well as upsell on more of our stuff.
It was primed as a troublesome job. The panel companies were already unhappy about being forced by our client to engage our tech because it meant additional work and cost on their end.
And I had to sort out 14 companies across three states over a period of five days.
It seemed like a nice challenge and I was gung ho about it. I went off to meet with the panel and it turned out a success. Frankly, I was very proud of myself.
I built a pretty good rapport with each of them and had even upsold on our packages and units.
I came down with a fever on Monday after returning to work, most probably brought on by exhaustion.
I came back to work on Wednesday, submitted my clinic-issued medical cert to HR, and continued with my job.
After lunch, I was called in by HR and was advised that I have been terminated due to faking a medical cert. It was absurd! Even the HR lady looked sad about it. I asked what was going on and she could only reply it wasn’t her call, but my CEO’s.
I confronted my CEO demanding an explanation, and he said that he KNEW that I wasn’t sick and that I had lied to the company. I told him that was ridiculous and flat-out wrong. And even IF I had faked it, surely my contributions to the company and my most recent success would have made up for it.
But he wasn’t hearing it and gave me two days to pack my stuff and sort out my affairs.
Devastated, crushed, and totally embarrassed, I went outside for a smoke. The HR lady and another manager joined me shortly after. It was then that I found out that the bosses, as part of their shift in strategy, wanted to let go of employees to reduce the overheads but did not want to offer exit packages.
The trip to the panel companies was meant for me to fail and used as grounds for termination.
But me succeeding merely meant more revenue streams for them and they just had to fire me over whatever trivial grounds they could find.
I was furious!
I spent the next couple of days continuously being furious over the matter. I spent another day or so at home wallowing in self-pity over my stupidity, ignorance, and sheer naivety. I wanted to sue for wrongful termination, hostile work environments, and so forth, but I decided that it would take too much time and effort because the labor laws here are awful, and I needed to focus on rebuilding my career.
But they still needed to feel my vengeance! So I decided to be petty instead. I was their Business Development Manager for heaven’s sake! I had my own copy of their data, inner workings, client list, and so much more. I contacted my ex-colleague over at Company Y with whom I still had good relations, and told him what had happened, and what I wanted to do.
I was going to sell them the full set of information, which I had valued close to USD175,000 (amount converted) of potential revenue, for only USD5,000. Charging this low meant that Company Y could afford what I was offering, all in bills, so there would not be any digital traces, it could be done within a day, and ultimately, it would be an insult to company X.
And that’s exactly what happened. I dropped whispers to Company X that it was me, but there was no way they could prove it, and by then I was already well beyond their radar. I don’t regret it the least, and quite honestly, I had fun doing it.
It felt so dangerous, so undercover.
The last I heard of them, they were forced to file for bankruptcy because they were swindled out of a deal by one of their Senior Managers. It’s Karma jerk.”
1. Did I Place That Order? Sure Did!
“Some 20 years ago I found myself working in a small manufacturing company in what was my first job out of college.
There were a few red flags during the interview process which I dutifully ignored as I was desperate for my first real job. Being a small family company the role consisted of basically 3 jobs rolled into one which was production scheduling, procurement, and inventory control.
On my first day on the job I learned the person hiring me had already quit, the person training me had 2 days left at the company, and the average length of employment for my position was 4-5 months. They warned me that the CEO was a micromanaging psycho.
I reasoned with my naive self that the guys on the floor were just hazing the new guy.
I met the CEO (Chad) later that day and we got along fine for the first 3 months….
The thing about this factory is that they were gaining business fast and were ramping up production by buying new equipment and hiring more workers.
The business was in a large growth stage.
As we live in a small impoverished and isolated country, we had to buy our raw materials from overseas which had a shipping time of 3 months. I modeled the trajectory of sales and moved to order materials every month so that we had a pipeline of materials coming in at regular intervals.
When Chad discovered this, he yelled at me and told me to cancel the orders. His reasoning was we did not need that many raw materials and it was a waste of cash flow. I did as I was told as I was new to the company and thought, surely the CEO should know his business better than me, right?
Well, for the rest of the time I was working there, we were always running short on materials. I’d always have to problem solve when we ran out of materials such as offering free expensive upgrades (with more expensive material we had in stock) to our customers.
The thing that really irked Chad was that I was constantly ordering raw materials from our competitors. I built a good rapport with these companies, and they enjoyed charging us an arm and a leg for their materials.
By the time my 1-year mark at the company came around, Chad absolutely detested me and would come to my workstation on a regular basis to berate me for not doing my job properly, questioning my integrity, threatening my job, and even accusing me of theft of raw materials.
Being a fresh new grad, I’d keep quiet and just took it on the chin as he cussed me out. All the while thinking I’m the one busting a gut here working three roles and getting product out the door while you make stupid decisions which I always have to clean up.
The entire factory shop floor staff hated Chad. He had a window in his office on the second floor overlooking the factory. He would stand there with his arms crossed looking at the “plebs” working below. Every second day he would go on a warpath into the factory floor to yell and threaten staff.
As winter rolled around, we had a large order come in from one of our biggest customers (which required a large quantity of expensive and bulky raw material). Chad instructed me to order 3 containers of raw materials for the job which I did straight away.
A few days later, I realized I was getting shakes on the Sunday before coming into work as I was stressed, dreading the new incoming week. The next day I put in my notice for 2 weeks without securing another job. I felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders and I felt in control of my life again.
I slept very well that night. To this day, I still think it was one of the best decisions I have made in my life as I put my mental health ahead of a steady income (thankfully I had an understanding S/O).
A couple of days later I get a call from our supplier saying they couldn’t manufacture and deliver the 3 containers of expensive raw materials for us and canceled the order.
A familiar feeling of dread washed over me as I know I’ll have to inform Chad of the cancellation and I am sure to get chewed out again for no apparent reason. I sit on this for a few days trying to gather enough courage to have a conversation with Chad about the problem.
When there was about one more week left on my notice period I am summoned into a meeting with Chad and one of his advisors. They wanted to discuss a handover plan for my poor successor. As we were wrapping up the meeting, I braced myself as I was about to inform him of our upcoming shortage in materials when he looks up from his documents and asks “Did you place the order for 3 containers of X materials?” I pause and suddenly realize that this is it, here is my out!
I stall, pretending to think, then say “Yes! I placed that order last week right after our meeting!” I just chose not to tell him about the cancellation, he didn’t ask after all!
The rest of my time there was uneventful and stress-free and as I left to go to the car park on my last day I flipped off the company logo on the side of the building and went on my merry way.
The fallout:
Now, these raw materials were bulky, as in they needed a crane to move them around. The reason why we buy so large and in bulk is because it is more cost-efficient. By the time they found out about the cancellation of the special order it was too late.
My friend who still worked there informed me that they had to scramble to find materials and buy from our competitors, at inflated prices. The problem was that our competitors only had materials that were not of optimum size so there was huge wastage (I’m talking many tonnes) and a lot of overtime was required as they were really awkward in size to handle.
At the end of the job, Chad let it slip at a staff meeting that yours truly had cost the company an extra 600k USD for that little bit of “noninformation sharing.”
I drove by the factory 4 years later and found that it was shut down.”
