People Thrill Us With Their Energizing Revenge Stories
10. Win My Auction And Refuse To Pay? Two Can Play That Game
“I make art as a hobby. Metal sculptures. I only sell them when I need a bit of extra change for something. I had a holiday coming up so listed one on an auction site for a $1 reserve. The auction lasted 10 days, and the piece got quite a bit of interest during that time with lots of people adding it to their watchlist and bidding on it.
It ended up selling for a bit over $500. Perfect. I contacted the winner with my bank details and ask for their delivery address. No reply. Email again. Nothing. I look into his profile a bit, and sure enough, he doesn’t follow through on half the things he buys.
Fair few grumpy feedbacks from other sellers. He’s a complete Time Waster (TW). Hmmm, I’m a bit livid. I’ve already had to pay a listing fee, advertising fees, and a $40 success fee (I’ll eventually get this back but still annoying), and being in limbo on a deal sucks.
You kind of expect the payment and kind of don’t at the same time. Got me raging.
I Google his email, but nothing. I check if he has any listings for sale, but he doesn’t at the moment. Besides giving him bad feedback, there’s not really much else I can do right now.
I add him as a favorite seller. This way next time he lists something, I’ll get emailed about it, but he never does.
About a year later, after I’d forgotten all about it, I get a bunch of emails on the website telling me TW has new listings.
Seems TW is packing up shop and moving to Australia. Seems everything has got to go, mate. Ironically, his listing states that everything must be picked up by end of August as I’m moving to Australia, NO TIME WASTERS. He’s got listings for a car, motorcycle, tools, a welder, some furniture, rims, and a bunch of other stuff.
I give his feed another quick look to see if he’s changed his ways. He hasn’t.
Over the following week, I research what a good price would be for everything he lists. I share all his listings with my friends and get them to add his listing to their watchlist, so he thinks they are popular.
I instruct them to go into a bidding war with me on each item up to a certain amount but no further. I win all of his auctions using a bunch of false accounts. The lucky guy gets top dollar for everything.
I reply to all the auction-winning email confirmations from the various accounts and arrange different pick-up times for the goods agreeing to pay straight out of wallet on pickup for everything. As the week goes on, I cancel, reschedule, rain check, and delay every pickup.
Bearing in mind, I’m pretending to be a different person for each item from different SIM cards.
On the day I arrange to pick up the car (it had been agreed previously that he could continue to use his car up until two days before leaving for Australia because I’m a nice guy like that), I text him that I’m on my way; see you at 1.
I was late, of course. ‘Nearly there mate, see you soon.’ Half an hour later, ‘5 minutes away.’ 20 minutes later, ‘I’m here, where are ya?’ Ignore the text messages and waited for the call.
TW: Where are ya?
Me: Annoying, isn’t it?
TW: What?
Me: Annoying, isn’t it?
TW: What do you mean?
Me: You know. Having someone bid on your auction with no intention of buying it.
TW: Are you freaking kidding?!
Me: No, I remember being quite annoyed when you did it to me.
TW: Who? When?
Me: I’ll let you figure that one out. Click.
Over the next few hours, I called him as the welder buyer ‘Annoying, isn’t it,’ the motorbike buyer ‘Annoying isn’t it,’ outdoor furniture buyer ‘Annoying isn’t it…’ all of them.
To top it off, I gave him positive feedback on everything I bought saying he was a ‘Top Trader A+++, easy pickup, good communication.’ In the coming weeks, I was contacted by the website regarding his dispute (he was wanting to get the success fees back, over $500 altogether, I’d guess).
I responded to each of those with the fact that I had already paid and picked it up and was happy with the item. Not sure if he got all those success fees back, but I very much doubt it.”
9. Overwork And Underpay Your Staff? Someone's Getting Reported To The Department Of Labor
“It was late 2007, and I had just gotten a part-time job offer at your neighborhood electronic (and now defunct) store named RS (shortcut for something that had Radio at the beginning and Shack at the end). I was a college kid, and about a few months before, I had knee surgery which forced me to quit my previous part-time job.
So when I joined RS, I was told that aside from extremely rare circumstances of when I may have to fetch a thing or two from the back room or basement, my job was to “sell.” I was a Sales Associate/Customer Assistant.
And we had one or two Stock person(s) whose sole job was to stock the shelf, fetch the merchandise, etc. Then the store management, those are salaried employees.
For us, the sales associates, we would get paid by the hour, and it was ABSOLUTELY the minimum wage.
But if you sell RS branded accessories, then we would get something like maybe 5 percent of the selling price (do not recall the exact amount; it’s been more than 11 years now). And when we sold brand new cellphones, we would get 20 or 25 bucks per NEW account, 10 bucks for an additional line on that.
And if we upgraded (re-locked the contract for another 2 years), we would get 10 bucks for that account (can be one line or can be more than one). This extra parentage was called “spiff.” The stock person is supposed to be paid a little bit more than the minimum salary, and that’s about it.
All of us were trained weekly to sell “add-ons.” And the better the seller you are, the more commission you can make.
Ever since I joined the store, I was required to spend out of my own wallet to buy the color combination clothes that the corporate office decided for the season.
One time, it was a red shirt and black pants. Another time, it was a black shirt and gray pants, etc. And since your clothes have to be presentable, that means buying two of each at least! With your own wallet!
A few days after I joined, I come to learn that the stock person is friends with or related to the ma****r. So, he gets to sit down in the back room “for training” while we have to fetch the merchandise that we sell.
As I mentioned earlier, I had knee surgery not even two months earlier. And this store’s backroom had a cage that only contained cellphones and GPS devices, while TVs, stereo, speakers, and other accessories were in the basement. If we sell a TV or any big-ticket item, we get nothing!
But if we sell batteries for that remote, power strip, antenna, etc. we get about 5 percent. So since our stock person was ‘occupied,’ we had to get those items from the back. As you can imagine, was not the most pleasant thing to do with a still bandaged leg.
Not to mention, that was not in the sales associate’s job description.
Our ma****r, let’s call her Michelle, made a new rule, that since we are clearly making a lot more as a sales associate than a stock person, now we have to share our spiff equally with the stock person on duty.
So that means, if we’re in the middle of selling an item and ask the stock person to get us the item, he would tell us to get it ourselves. We had to do so to be able to complete the transaction and not fight in front of the customer.
And all while, we are giving him the equal share of our spiff! Nice!
Now, whenever new stock deliveries are made, it was generally the management team (salaried person) and the stock person’s job to stock them up or place them in the back room or in the cage.
But Michelle had better ideas. Told us, “If you are going to work here, then you will have to replenish the entire store at the end of the day. If the delivery truck comes, you HAVE to sort them and place them in the stockroom yourself.
Or else, you will be fired!”
Now, keep in mind that I am still a full-time college student and also have family responsibilities to attend to. And my part-time job was supposed to be no more than 20 hours. She made me come at 4 PM and sign out at 8 PM, for 5 days.
Signing out does not mean you are done, though. It means you will only get paid for the time of 4 PM to 8 PM. And then, you MUST tidy up the place, restock the shelf, vacuum, throw the trash, and if the deliveries are coming (it was 2 days a week AT LEAST), boy it’s your lucky day!
Because if the truck comes AFTER 10 PM, you get all the joy and happiness of taking care of it sometimes beyond 1 AM.
When it was during Black Friday, I remember leaving the place at 5:30 AM (Came in at 4 PM the day before, “WORKED” until 8 PM, and then stock up for Black Friday Sale), only to come back 2 and half hours later at 8 AM and work UNTIL 1 AM the next day!
That day, she instituted a new rule only for that Black Friday: ONLY sell big-ticket items to boost the stores’ numbers. A contest was going on from the corporate office, and the store manager with the highest sales per district would get a huge bonus and some other perks.
She expressly told us not to sell any accessories (although, that was what we made most of our profit on). Now, even on a Black Friday Sale, if you sell a TV, someone would want batteries or antennas for it, right?
I ended up accumulating lots of profit that was supposed to be my spiff. And besides, I was extremely good at sales (and there were times when someone came in for just 2 AA batteries only, and I ended up selling him about $4K worth of merchandise).
But she ended up denying all of us that spiff “since she told us not to sell that and only sell big-ticket items.” She only paid us for 8 hours’ worth of work per person.
This kept on going for a while, when Michelle would go have extended lunch, had to maintain a pedi/manicure, hair appointments, clothes shopping, etc. for professional outlook and betterment of the business, while in business hours.
From time to time, phones from the cage (which she and ONLY the shift manager would have keys to) would go missing.
Right before my first midterm exam, my uncle had a heart attack, and I had to fly to Montreal for 72 hours to see him.
Of course, I let Michelle know. The whole time I was in Montreal, I could not sleep for a second, and the day I come back, our flight landed at 10 AM, and my exam was from 1 PM to 3 PM., so I had told Michelle that I wouldn’t be able t0 work that day since I would have my exam right after I land.
I run to my college to take my exam, while I get calls after calls from Michelle that I need to show up to work that day since the stock person is sick and I had to help with the delivery truck or else I am fired.
I finish my exam at 3 PM, run to the store before 4 PM, get dressed, and “WORK” till 8 PM. That day, I work until 12:30 AM, midnight! At this point, I have not slept in more than 80 hours (ok, maybe slept an hour or two in between, but you can understand when you are visiting a relative who is having an emergency surgery how much sleep you can get), and I was dying to sleep.
(That job is the reason I got a Redbull and 5-hour energy drink addiction). All while, I had a vicious and painful popped ear from a flight that lasted for more than 3 days.
That was the last straw! The next day, I slept for more than 12 hours.
Go to work. And the following day, “Someone (AHEM AHEM)” called the state labor department with all these allegations of forced labor, no pay, stolen items, etc. The Department of Labor then contacts RS corporate office, and two days later, I see Michelle crying hysterically and packing her stuff.
Apparently, the corporate office instead of confronting the situation chose to fire her. And Michelle is asking us to make calls and write letters on her behalf to say that those allegations are not true. Her friend (the stock person) told her on her face, “Told you to tone it down with your employees!
But you wouldn’t listen!”
She leaves!
A month or two later, a guy walks in, and says he is a manager of some bigger electronic store, and someone (Michelle, of course) just joined his store as an assistant manager. He is just curious and took it upon himself to find out how good she was as a manager.
I buy him coffee that day and spend about half an hour with him in the nearest Dunkin Donuts. After that, I hear she was trying to get unemployment.
After that, we had a chilled-up manager who was an awesome person.
Loved him! But a month or two later, I found a job (while still in college) in my field and ran to it.”
Another User Comments:
“She must be the world’s dumbest RS manager. I used to work for that company, and I know darn well that even on Black Friday when selling big-ticket items, you ALWAYS sell the accessories because there is a lot of profit in those, especially the RS branded ones.
The store makes little to no profit (sometimes negative profit) on big-ticket items alone.” TravellingBeard
8. Mess With The IT Guy? The Dirt I Have On You Will Ruin Your Marriage And Career
“In 2003, I was the Director of Information Technology and Communications on a project tasked with securing Saddam’s major weapons storage sites throughout Iraq, performing a comprehensive inventory of said weapons, and then destroying what we’d found.
I was based at one of the largest weapons storage sites in the country so our mission there was monumental. Blowing up 100 tons of weapons six days a week (SCUD missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, anti-shipping missiles, all varieties of rockets, grenades, and mines heavy to light) was going to take years.
In order to accomplish this, we had to first build base defenses and secure an area the size of a small county. Once that was complete, we built a major support base in the middle of the Iraqi desert from scratch and all the infrastructure to support it.
We’re talking housing, cafeteria with full commercial kitchen, office buildings, electrical, water, and sewage systems, toilet/shower trailers, recreational facilities, an eight-bay full-service vehicle shop/motor pool, and most importantly IMO, IT and communication systems (radio, network infrastructure, servers, VOIP phones, all connected to the outside world via satellite uplink).
All of these facilities housed bomb/explosive technicians, engineers, base support personnel, and as we had to provide our own security, private military contractors (PMC). If you’re not sure what PMCs are, think Blackwater/mercenaries, or look them up, and you’ll get the picture.
Our PMCs were a mix of ex-US Special Forces (Army, Green Berets, Delta Force, Air Force Pararescue, SEALs), British SAS, French Foreign Legion, and ex-South African/Rhodesian Special Forces (Recces, Selous Scouts). All of them were now mercenaries, and in reality, so were the rest of us to some degree.
Most of the PMCs were darn good men, but when you assemble a motley crew of individuals from such disparate backgrounds, you’re bound to have a couple of bad apples in the bunch. This story is about one of those bad apples, and for the purposes of this story, we’ll call this bad apple RoidRage (RR).
RR was one of the supervisory PMCs and oversaw the night watch from 2200-0600 (10 PM-6 AM). I usually started my day around 0700 (7 AM) and often worked until midnight; although, those last few hours were generally spent surfing the internet and catching up with folks back in the US as Iraq is nine hours ahead.
You’re in the middle of the Iraqi desert, so there’s not much else to do anyway, and other than the daily 100-ton explosion at 1600 (4 PM), the internet is pretty much your primary source of entertainment. Since I was often in the office late at night, I was regularly alone in the office with RR for a couple of hours.
As I previously mentioned, I managed the IT/communications infrastructure for this project and a vital component of that infrastructure were our telephones and voice over IP (VOIP) phone system. All of our sites used a satellite uplink to connect to a central VOIP server in Baghdad which in turn, connected us to the world.
You could pick up any phone and dial a five-digit extension to connect to any of our sites throughout Iraq or call any international number in the world. It was a pretty sweet setup, but it was also ripe for maltreatment.
We tried locking down international dialing with various server rules and PIN schemes, but due to the inherent latency in satellite communications and the amount of bandwidth being consumed over a single satellite uplink at each site, we had trouble keeping those rules pushed to the phones on every desk.
Ultimately, we had to scrap the restrictions as they were a real headache, and we went with an honor system. All international calls for business would be logged for review by the site manager each month. Anybody wanting to make a personal international call had to use an AT&T calling card which you could top up online or with a credit card.
After spending a few nights alone in the office with RR, I noticed a trend. RR would start his shift, check in with his men at their various positions/patrols on base, and then pick up the phone and talk in hushed tones for hours.
It was a fairly large building and our desks were on opposite sides of the office, so I couldn’t ever really make out what he was saying, but I could hear this constant murmur of him speaking to someone on the other end of the phone.
It wasn’t my business however so I largely ignored him. This went on for a couple of months, and as our site manager had to return to the US for a family emergency, the phone logs went unreviewed during that time period.
A couple of weeks after the site manager returned, I was summoned to the conference room for a meeting with him and our senior US Military and Department of Defense (DoD) advisors. I could sense the tension in the room and as I sat down, the site manager slid a manila folder across the table to me.
As I opened the folder to reveal pages upon pages of call logs, he said, “OP, we know you’re usually in the office late at night and somebody has been making hundreds of international calls during that time and racked up thousands of dollars in phone bills.” “I hate to say this, but you’re our prime suspect at this point, and with theft of this magnitude, we’re going to have no choice but to terminate you immediately and bar you from working on any DoD contracts in the future.” “Unless you have some evidence to the contrary, we’re going to have to move forward with termination and remove you from the country on the next supply convoy.”
I was shocked and sat in stunned silence for a couple of seconds and then it hit me. Those calls were made by RR! Someone hadn’t been using their calling card! I immediately protested my innocence and told them that every night, RR would get on the phone at the start of his shift and would still be on the phone as I left around midnight.
They then summoned RR to the conference room and confronted him with the records. He begrudgingly admitted it was him and began to spin some bullcrap story about being unable to top his calling card with his credit cards and blah blah blah.
All the while, he’s staring at me with eyes of the fiercest degree of rage. We were short on senior PMCs at the time so a call was made to Baghdad and a decision was handed down that RR’s employer was to immediately settle the debt with the US government and RR’s salary would be withheld until he worked off the debt with his employer.
RR was also put on final warning that any future impropriety whatsoever would be met with immediate termination and removal from Iraq as well as being blacklisted from working future DoD contracts. For an ex-US Special Forces Operator turned mercenary like RR, that would forever spell the end of the DoD contracting gravy train and he didn’t take this threat to his livelihood lightly.
Now, any rational person would admit they messed up, tighten up their game, and move on, but RR isn’t a rational person by a long shot and the events that were about to unfold would highlight his irrational and sociopathic nature.
After the daily demolition at 1600 (4 PM), I was especially dirty, so I hurried back to the base to beat the evening rush on the shower trailer so I could grab a hot shower before the limited supply of hot water ran out (our water heaters took forever to heat).
Upon entering the shower/toilet trailer I noticed that I had the entire place to myself! I savored this rare moment of solitude, used the toilet in peace, disrobed, and stepped into a nice, much-needed, hot shower. Just as I was working a nice lather of shampoo into my hair, I hear the door to the shower trailer open…
Boots clomp across the floor to my shower stall and the shower curtain is ripped off its hanger by none other than a very angry RR! Seething with rage, he grabbed me by the throat and yanked my wet butt out of the shower, and slammed me up against the opposite wall of the trailer choking me all the while.
Now, I’m about 5’11” and a toned 175lbs., but RR stands 6’4″ tall, weighs about 240lbs., and is a steroid-enhanced muscle-bound mass of a man. RR’s grip on my throat put ever-increasing pressure on my windpipe. and in my oxygen-deprived state, I began to panic.
I thrashed about trying to loosen his grip, but in doing so I expended the limited oxygen I had and felt myself growing weaker by the moment. RR leaned in close to my face and said, “You think you can rat me out like a little witch and there wouldn’t be consequences?!” “Let me tell you this, Iraq is the home of unsolved mysteries and bad crap happens to people every day out here!” “You better watch your freaking back, you absolute idiot, because I’m gonna be coming for you from every freaking angle at every freaking opportunity from this moment forward!” Just as I felt myself about to blackout, he threw me to the floor and gave me a solid kick to the stomach followed by another to the kidneys, and walked out leaving me cold, wet, and gasping for air.
I pulled myself up onto a nearby bench, caught my breath, and staggered back into the shower in shock. So much for a peaceful afternoon shower…
I made my way to my quarters, sat on my bed, and thought about everything that had just taken place.
My immediate thought was to report him to the powers that be but given the circumstances and that he was always armed, I had to plan my next course of action carefully. RR is a steroid-influenced individual and professional killer with his career on the line in the high-stress environment that is Iraq.
My fear slowly turned to caution and then evolved into anger. Yes, I’d have to plan my next course of action and ultimate revenge very carefully. For the time being, I decided against reporting him and riding on any convoys he was on.
I had been procrastinating setting up a private WiFi network connection to my trailer, but I wasn’t going to be caught dead spending any late nights alone in the office with RR in the near future so I got that set up that night.
The next night, I left my trailer to use the bathroom, and as I passed the office on the way back to my room, I saw RR sitting at his desk by the window on the phone. Why is this guy on the phone all the time and who is he talking to?
Time to investigate.
I don’t want to get into the technical jargon, so I’ll try to keep this as brief and simple as possible so you can comprehend my next course of action. All of our phones at our site were voice over IP (VOIP) phones and connected to the local network which was connected to our satellite uplink.
Every VOIP phone has a unique MAC address, a fingerprint if you will, which identifies it on the network. I had the master list of all devices and phones connected to the network, so I could easily identify the phone RR used every night.
Network Instruments makes a nice little program called “Observer” which allows you to monitor all traffic on the network. It even has a cool little feature where you can flag a phone’s MAC address (fingerprint) and tell it to automatically begin capturing traffic on that phone from the moment the phone makes a call until the end of the call.
Once the call is complete, it dumps the entire phone call to an audio file which you can then playback at your leisure. Pretty neat! Time to observe!
Over the next month, I amassed hours and hours of calls that RR made and I finally found out who he was talking to!
We already know that RR is a huge piece of garbage, but the conversations I listened to took it to a whole other level of jerkery. I sat at my desk every day with my headphones in pretending to be listening to music, but in reality, I was digesting each and every call, taking notes, and marking timestamps of the “good” stuff.
Here’s what I found:
RR is married and has three kids. RR also has a mistress in the US who is an adult entertainer, and by the sounds of it, she’s a world-class gold digger.
RR spoke to his wife and kids about twice a week on average but always kept the conversations brief because he was “busy running the show” in a very dangerous Iraq.
As soon as RR would hang up with his family, he’d immediately call his little mistress. Let’s call her SM. RR made it a point to call and talk to SM for hours every night, however. A jerk has to have priorities, right?
Most of the conversations were pretty nasty phone conversations, but others were sprinkled with bits of gold like, “Yeah, of course I freaking hate my wife. She’s a dumb witch, and I regret marrying her in the first place. The reason my kids are so freaking stupid is because of her crappy genes.” “Yes, baby, I promise as soon as I get home, I’m going to divorce her and marry you.
Promise!”
Another memorable conversation involved RR calling his wife and telling her that he’d have to cut his next vacation leave to the US short because he was so critical to the operations in Iraq, that they wouldn’t be able to run the place without him.
This conversation was followed by an immediate call to SM telling her, “Yeah, the old lady bought the story hook line, and sinker. Yeah (chuckle), I told you, she’s a dumb witch! Yeah, baby, I’ll book the tickets, and this time, we’re going to Paris.
We’re gonna do it big.”
While these conversations were certainly deplorable, other conversations with SM were more dangerous in nature and severe violations of operational security. Given RR’s foul nature, I can kinda understand why he felt it necessary to brag about operations, but man, you’re talking to an adult entertainer in the US who has no idea about any of this Iraq crap anyways.
Make stuff up if you must, but DON’T ACTUALLY DISCUSS THE SPECIFICS OF OUR OPERATIONS AND MOVEMENTS TO INFLATE YOUR PATHETIC EGO!
Some of these calls went like this, “Yeah, I’m the convoy commander tomorrow. Yep, large and in charge.
I’m running a 20-vehicle convoy of flatbed trucks loaded with big SCUD missiles from Karbala to Amarrah tomorrow morning at 0900 (9 AM) and all 40 of the guys on the convoy report to ME.” “These missiles are pretty volatile and sensitive and we’d be a prime target for the bad guys, so I came up with a plan to cover everything with these huge canvas tents we stole off some idiots, so we can disguise everything.
Heck yeah, I’m smart, baby!”
This is just ONE of the many calls of this nature and the growing frequency of these calls ultimately forced me to cut my investigation short and move to the next phase of my plan.
I started studying RR’s movements and which convoys he was on and where they were going. If I was going to pull this off, I had to be pretty spot on with my timing. I edited all the calls down to the “good” stuff and burned two CDs for two different audiences.
RR ran a weekly supply convoy to Baghdad and one of these CDs needed to be shipped to the US within a week’s time. The only way to make that happen was to drop off one of them to DHL at Baghdad International Airport.
They always stopped by there on their way back to our site to pick up drinks at the Duty-Free (which was the only thing open in the airport terminal at that time) so I packaged one CD up and asked a buddy on the convoy to drop it off at DHL for me and told him I’d pay him back when he returned. Once the convoy returned to our base, my buddy handed me the receipt and tracking information.
Done! Phase one is complete, now it’s time for phase two!
The following week, I packaged the other CD up and asked the same buddy on the supply convoy to drop that off at the DoD Country Director’s office at the project headquarters.
By this time, the first CD was out for delivery in the US and the second CD would be delivered to Baghdad HQ in four hours. Perfect! Not to pat myself on the back, but the disaster that was about to unfold for RR was the product of patience, dedication, meticulous planning, and flawless execution.
The convoy made its way to Baghdad and the second CD was delivered to headquarters. RR made the usual pass by the airport for the booze run and then returned later that night.
The following morning the entire base awoke to an unusual sound.
That unmistakable sound of the whirring of helicopter blades! The only time we’d ever had a chopper land was for a medevac (medical evacuation) which was for one of our local Iraqi ammo handlers who thought an empty weapons bunker would be a good place to hide away on his lunch break.
That didn’t go over so well and he ended up getting bitten by a viper in his groin area. That’s another story for another time though. So this Blackhawk helicopter, with overhead Apache escorts, lands and these guys come running out asking for RR and the head of the PMC at our base.
They unceremoniously roust RR out of bed along with the head of security and told them they needed to leave immediately for Baghdad. With just the clothes on their back and their body armor, they were whisked away within minutes.
As soon as they left, the camp manager approached me and said we needed to have a “chat” with Baghdad in the conference room.
We made our way to the conference room and got on a call with our local DoD advisors and the DoD Country Director in Baghdad.
He had listened to the CD and wanted to commend me for blowing the whistle on RR. He also scolded me a bit for not blowing the whistle sooner on the first violation of operation security I had heard, but when I told him the entire story and the brutal assault I endured at the hands of RR in the bathroom, he softened his tone a bit.
He concluded the call with assurances that RR would be “dealt with” swiftly and thanked me for my vigilance.
What follows was relayed to me by the head of security who traveled with RR on the helicopter to Baghdad:
Upon arrival at the helipad at headquarters, a US Army security detail led the two individuals into the DoD Country Director’s office and RR was confronted with the evidence.
The Director sat there with the senior advisors present and played the entire CD in front of RR and his superior. It was a heated one-sided conversation and RR got ripped up one side and down the other. He was ordered to leave the country immediately and would be taken under escort to the US Air Force PAX terminal at Baghdad International Airport upon the conclusion of the meeting.
He was also notified that he would no longer be eligible to work DoD contracts in the future. The head of the PMC was also excoriated for allowing this behavior to happen on his watch and notified that their security company would now be under investigation for any other possible violations.
If the investigation unearthed additional violations, they’d be found in breach of contract which would be terminated upon transition to a new PMC company. That company lasted another seven months in Iraq.
As RR left the meeting under escort, the Director turned to him and said, “AND TELL YOUR FREAKING WIFE TO STOP CALLING HERE AND BLOWING UP THE PHONES!
SHE’S LIVID ABOUT SOMETHING, BUT THAT’S YOUR FREAKING PROBLEM TO DEAL WITH! YOU NEED TO CALL HER WHEN YOU GET TO THE AIRPORT AND TELL HER TO KNOCK THAT CRAP OFF!”
Moral of the story? Don’t screw with your IT guy.
P.S. – RR if you’re reading this, I hope you’re enjoying employing your “talents” for pennies guarding b***d diamond mines for warlords in Africa or whatever heckhole you’re stuck in these days!”
7. Keep Sabotaging My Lemonade Stand? You'll End Up In The Hospital For A Week
“When I was 7 or 8 (I can’t remember; it was 20 years ago), I set up a lemonade stand a quarter for a cup in my driveway with my friend and neighbor Kaz at the time.
Anyways, there was a 10-year-old idiot name Tim who kept coming over and taking the pitcher, drinking from it, and then dumping what was left in the grass.
He called us names like lolly lickers and fart monkeys or some such. He did this 3 days in a row.
Well, on the 4th day, my mom had chicken thawing out in the sink in some water, and I always remember her saying if you touch the water, wash your hands, or you’ll get sick, so I got my pitcher and filled it with the chicken water.
So this young loser comes over not 10 minutes after we had made the lemonade, and he does his thing.
Anyways, a few days later, he was taken to the hospital with severe food poisoning caused by me, and he was there for a week.
That’s my revenge story.”
Another User Comments:
“I was so sure you guys were going to pee in it!” Kaitwin
6. Side With My Bullies? I'll Be The Reason You Lose Your Job
“This happened when I was in 8th grade, and I still feel a sense of pride remembering this incident.
I went to a small, private school that was part of a network of international schools around the US. This network had its own Board of Education that managed many things across the schools, including the firing and hiring of principals.
Our school principal had decided to leave for another school in the middle of 8th grade, and the Board Director for our state decided to take over as the interim principal until a full-time one could properly be found, although she was expected to stay as long as a school year or two.
Many students hated her, as she immediately began lording her position on the board over the other teachers and was incredibly condescending to all the students, even the high school students, and treated us all like we were little kids.
She shall be called M for this story.
So I had always had a problem being bullied by a clique of girls in our year ever since we were in 6th grade. They whispered insults to me in class, spread rumors about me, tripped me in the hall, tried to turn the rest of our class against me, and then made fun of me even more for having very few friends.
I have Asperger’s, which had been undiagnosed at the time, and they took advantage of my more literal thinking to trick me into believing stupid things to get me hurt and called me a freak for my particular interests and how into them I got.
I became incredibly depressed.
Towards the end of 8th grade, I decided I’d had enough of these girls and, since I was switching to another more elite school for high school, I felt like even though I was going to be better off than them, it would be proper for me to stand up to these girls once and for all.
I didn’t have the confidence to go up to them on my own, so I went to a few other girls who I knew this clique had been bullying too to ask if we could all go stand up to them together.
So we planned out exactly what we were going to say and went to them during lunch to tell them to leave us alone, or we’d all go to M directly to deal with them.
Not an hour later, I’m called out of my science class to go down to M’s office.
She had called all of us girls down. Apparently, the bullies had decided to go to M themselves and spin some sob story about how WE were bullying THEM and that they had tried to stand up to us but then we ‘surrounded’ them and ‘threatened’ them to keep quiet.
M had clearly taken their story in hook, line, and sinker and began berating us for bullying ‘those poor girls’ and telling us that we should be ashamed of ourselves and that we weren’t allowed anywhere near them or we’d have our parents called. M even said she was friends with the mother of one of the bullies and that ‘(Girl) had been teased at her old school and didn’t deserve such treatment here.’
She directly asked me what had happened during lunch and clearly didn’t like the truth that I was telling, because she immediately brushed it off and continued yelling at us, adding that if any of us tried to interrupt her (read: explain what really happened), she would have us expelled. I stayed quiet because I didn’t actually want to be expelled and jeopardize my chance of getting into my new school, but I was now fuming with anger.
This anger became fury when I noticed that two of the girls in the clique (who had been allowed to sit in on this humiliating telling-off) were smirking at us from behind M’s back.
Once M let us finally leave (and after I took some time to cry in the bathroom), I went down to the front office to be excused from class for the rest of the day, claiming to be unwell.
My mom was called to pick me up and, as soon as I got into the car, I told her everything that had happened. I have a somewhat eidetic memory, so I was able to tell her how the meeting in M’s office went nearly word for word, emphasizing the fact that she had threatened us with expulsion for speaking up.
My mom was furious and called M personally to give her a piece of her mind. I told my mom the names of all the other girls who had been humiliated along with me, and my mom then called their parents to tell them what had happened. Many of them called M as well to complain about the injustice done.
The next day, I went back to school and retold the story to any of my classmates who asked where I had been. This not only turned many of them against the bullies who had orchestrated the entire thing but also allowed me to convince them to tell their parents to write letters to the Board to complain about M’s general behavior.
The entire time, I stay away from the clique in class and, whenever a teacher noticed and pulled me aside to ask why I was actively avoiding those girls in particular, I told them that they had been bullying me and that M had them protected. I was a very good student and had a good relationship with many of my teachers (who I would sometimes keep company during lunch because I didn’t have any friends to hang out with), so they believed me and made their own complaints.
When M tried to confront me about them, I simply told her that I was just letting my teachers know what she had told us so that they couldn’t accidentally make us work together.
The whole thing caused such a mess for M that she was removed by the rest of the Board as the interim principal a month after, and lost her position as the Board Director shortly after that.
I went on to my new high school feeling quite smug about that.”
5. Can't Bother Cleaning Up Your Trash? Oh, You Will Be Whether You Like It Or Not
That’s one way to do it!
“Back in the early 90s, I went on a camping trip with a bunch of friends, and a younger friend of a friend had invited his high school buddies who were a bunch of belligerent jocks.
That night, around the campfire, the jocks are exceedingly intoxicated and fighting each other occasionally and making a heck of a mess. The next morning, my friends and I were up earlier than them and collected all the trash into bags.
When they woke up, we asked them if they’d be willing to take just one bag with them to dispose of it (most of it was cans from the pee water they’d brought). They laughed and said they didn’t give a crap and that they weren’t taking any trash.
While they were distracted, we put all the bags of trash in their trunk, as the little bit of camping stuff they did have was still in their back seat.
Perhaps not the most satisfying revenge, but they probably had quite a stench in the car after a week or so.”
4. Attempt To Destroy My Education Due To Religious Differences? You're Only Going To Ruin Your Own Career
The nerve of this teacher to later only apologize to the student because they wanted their job back.
“In my adopted motherland, I am a religious minority.
I am a proud citizen now of this land who immigrated here. And stereotyping, while not very common, is not uncommon here. And this story is from my college life.
This involves one of my programming courses that my college hired a new professor for.
Although I am a religious minority and the professor was from a different religion (which also is technically a religious minority in this land) that did not really mesh up well, I did not (as I still do not) care at all!
You see, I myself am not much religious, and my point of view about religion is from the perspective of (social) science. I believe my first religion is Humanity. Everything else is just a label!
So, back to the story.
This professor was teaching us the basics of C++ (as the course was the Intro to C++), and during the final, he gave us a final project that either counted as the entire final or a major portion of the final exam (can’t recall the exact details since it was about 13 years ago).
Once the project was done, we email it to him, and he grades it. I do that and wait for my grade. It was spring semester, and summer break/session was about to begin.
Now, another bit of info here: if in a course, you get an “F” (for Failing), the following semester, you can take the course again, and if you pass, that “F” gets erased from your record, and you are on your merry way toward your degree.
BUT for some reason, (like if you do not submit your final project), you get an “I” (Incomplete), and now you have “X amount of time to complete that work” so that “I” can be transformed into a grade. I am not too sure now, but I believe if you retake the entire course again, you get a grade, but that “I” stays with you and goes on your transcript/diploma.
It is extremely frowned upon and may hinder your graduation and future.
So, after waiting a few weeks for the semester’s result, I see I got an “I.” Immediately I emailed the professor asking why I got an I. No response!
I call his office number… No response! I go to the department, and they tell me that the professor has notated in my record (as I guess it was customary to do so) that I have not submitted my final project and hence the “I,” to which I fumed up and stated that I had indeed sent my final project using our college emailing system.
But the department stated that since I am within so many days of that “X amount of days” (before I need to take care of that “I”) and since the professor went back to his motherland for a month, I should wait for him to return, and he is the only one that can reverse the “I” from my grade.
They mentioned that he probably somehow missed my email containing my final project. The department assured me that once he is back from his country, they will instruct him to fix this and notify me of it.
I waited for his return till the very last week of that “X amount of days.” He did not come back!
So that week, I went back to the department and stated my case. They mentioned that since he was not back, they would email him to get some form of “OK… I received his email with the project, and I see that either he passed or failed; he gets a grade.” The Comp Sci department CCs me on that email.
To my utter disbelief, that professor emails back the department chair (I am still CC’ed on it) that he went back to the email and checked, and he got NOTHING from me, so that “I” stays.
At this point, I began to fume so much so that I went back to my department chair, and the department chair now wants me to prove that I sent him that at THAT particular time (right before the end of the final).
I log in to the email account, and I dig through and find the email, showing it in the “sent” box. Department chair replies to that professor that the chairman concurs that I indeed sent that email to the professor, to which then, the professor replies, “It may very well be, but you know how sometimes although the email is sent, it does not arrive at the recipient’s inbox, so I did not get it.” And right after that email, the professor now goes silent and does not respond back to the chairs’ emails.
Every time I send an email, especially one as important as the college final project (since we are supposed to only use the email address that the college provided) I also CC my personal email on that. I show the receipt email from my personal email, and the department chair agrees that the email was indeed sent.
By this point, I am extremely desperate to overturn that “I.” I will take an “F” if needed, but that “I” will hurt my education.
I was extremely popular in our college circuit, so much so that (our college was under a “Chain Education” system, and I will not mention any names here, that had more than 20 different colleges/universities all across this city) I knew the head honcho, the chancellor, and the college president very much and very well!
Now, on the last day, I go to the college president as well as the chancellor, show them the proof, and state my case (I might have mentioned to them that I am in the process of getting a lawyer as I feel that this is a clear, blatant, and extreme prejudice against me and may very well be racially motivated).
They agree that the professor’s behavior contained a negative intent toward me by giving me an “I” and not a grade that can be the either “A, B, C, D, or F.” I also lodge a formal complaint against the professor right then and there.
They immediately instruct my department chair to take my project and grade it and then change that “I.” Now you gotta understand that this was not a norm. The chair does that, and I end up getting an “A.”
When someone becomes a professor for the first time, the first year or so is their Probationary period, and if they do not make much splash, they can become permanent.
And now, the chancellor and the president of my college decide that it’s in the university’s best interest not to retain that professor any longer. Simply put, they FIRED his BUTT!
I get my grade. I am happy! Summer ends.
A new winter session is about to begin, and I get an email in my personal as well as college email account from that very same professor. Lo and behold! He apologizes to me for his behavior without directly admitting his prejudiced action toward me and asks me to withdraw my complaint, so he can attempt to get his job back.
I CC that email to the department chair, the college president, and the chancellor and reply to him that “I will not withdraw my complaint at all, and he is lucky that I did not involve my lawyer for the serious harm that he intended to cause me.
And I wish and pray that he never gets another chance to teach again in the event that he might try to ruin another student’s life.”
I graduated from that institution so long ago… but of all the great memories and the few sad ones, this sticks out to me!
”
3. Harass Me Online? Your Reputation Will Go Straight Down The Drain
Reputation is important, you know.
“So this happened almost 2 whole years ago. I met a girl on social media (I know, we’re already off to a good start) when I was diving into a certain subculture because it kind of called to me at the time (it starts with a w, ends in itchcraft).
She had been getting into some drama with another witch who also practiced the same type of craft. We’ll call the girl I met Trish, and the other person will be called Vix. I can’t remember the exact reason why, but after coming across a salty post from Vix about Trish, I immediately sided with her because, well, I’m an idiot with the critical thinking skills of a rock.
I messaged her, and she replied, and we started talking. She was witty, charming, and had an overall loving motherly vibe to her that really drew me to her as at that time I was dealing with some hard-hitting delusions as well as just generally feeling very vulnerable.
She had over 25,000 followers, so her influence on the community as well as her reputation was very well known, and she was known as “star mom” due to her working with astrology a lot and being very kindhearted and motherly.
Anyway, we hit it off extremely well, and within a month or so, we had made plans to meet up because she lived thirty minutes away from me. Throughout our friendship, she was very kind and comforting to me, and I got to know her deepest secrets and insecurities, and she got to know most of mine, and we became super close friends.
I believe we met up only about three times due to the fact that driving wasn’t exactly her forte, and it took her an hour to get to where I live. We became very close friends for I want to say about a year (probably not accurate), and I believe this happened so quickly due to the both of us having severe anxiety in social situations in person, as well as each of us having a grab bag of mental disorders that kind of just makes having long-lasting stable relationships, be it romantic, platonic, or otherwise, very difficult.
There was a point during our friendship that I was being rocked around mentally by these delusions that I was doing illegal substances (believe me, once that was done and over with, alongside the delusions of being followed by the mafia or something, I was thoroughly embarrassed).
It wasn’t helping that I was taking anxiety meds at the time and wasn’t taking them as prescribed, and in the fogginess, I’d find my mind going down these holes, and somehow it became my reality. During that time I’d talk about it, and she knew it wasn’t true but didn’t really imply much until later on in this particular stint.
When she finally did ask me if I was actually doing it, and I told her yes, she replied with a ‘mkay.’ which, if you 1: get familiar with the way she responds to things (I call it textual patterns but again, not on topic), and 2: are aware of the implications of the usage of the period when someone doesn’t ever use it (it’s also a very common thing among people with BPD, feel free to ask me about it), you know that was a very doubtful answer.
Also at this time, we were running a server together, and once again, I can’t remember why I was being dropped admin, but it upset me and I left. I can’t remember much after that, but in my mind, I was sobering up, and I caught the flu around that time, so obviously, in my head, it was withdrawing.
Not much went on during the time we weren’t talking. I was seeing a guy, and we were together for a bit. I had reconnected with Trish after I think six or so months, and we had agreed to “take stuff slow” after that, which didn’t go as planned because we were being happy little platonic besties and making more plans to hang out.
Trish had taken a strange interest in Vix throughout our friendship, constantly claiming that Vix was copying her and stealing her content, which she wasn’t, but because I didn’t want to upset her by disagreeing with her (she’d give me short replies when I did, and because at the time I didn’t have many other friends, I went along with what she did because, you know, I wanted her approval, which didn’t help either of us at all).
It was the kind of interest that was almost stalkerish, and because she knew that I was what she described as “hacker esque” (I knew how to use Google and bare minimum ‘hacker’ skills, as well as running a server that was basically that, but again, had bare minimum skills, so I don’t think they qualify as calling them hacker esque), she would ask for ideas, and again, wanting her approval and attention, I went with it.
We basically made throwaway accounts asking where Vix was from, and Vix isn’t stupid; she called our bluff right away. To summarize, we were basically trying to find all the dirt on her we could, but Vix is again, not stupid, and because she’s not a sugary sweet witchcraft blog like a lot of them tend to be, she knows what she should or should not say to give away any personal information.
Trish hated her because of the drama they constantly had. I thought it was annoying as heck, but like I’ve mentioned before, Trish was my only best friend who I trusted, and she trusted me, so there was that bond there that I had always wanted in a friend that I didn’t want to destroy no matter what, which ended up being my downfall.
So towards the end of our friendship, I had broken up with the guy I was seeing and began seeing another person who in the end was using me and was generally a piece of crap. They basically were absolutely a fallback, and Trish and I would talk about it because I knew it wasn’t right to be romantically involved with someone who’d act the way they did and how it’d affect me, but again, because I was so alone and didn’t have much else, I took what I got.
This was also at a time when both me and Trish weren’t mentally doing well; we both were feeling generally super numb and unfeeling.
There’s a festival for Japanese culture that happens once a year in my city, and I invited her to go, and the night before, she canceled on me.
The festival went fine outside of feeling alone, I ran into a bunch of people I went to school with, and we all caught up and went our own way. When I got back that night, I found out that Trish had gone to a movie with some people, and at that time, I didn’t even know it was her brother, his fiance, and her mom, which whom she posted a photo of on her blog.
To give you some small piece of this issue, the last time I “saw” her brother was a high school picture she showed me, so I didn’t really recognize him, and the picture that was taken was by her mom, so it really just looked like she was hanging out with some friends.
I had said something about it very vaguely, and she was done. She kicked me from her witchcraft server, left mine, and blocked me on social media.
Here’s where it gets juicy.
I had gone to bed early because I was having a bit of a panic attack.
I knew I had screwed up. When I woke up at about 3 AM, I had woken up to some anonymous messages saying stuff like, “I know the illegal substance thing was a lie,” “You lieeee sooo much, it’s hilarious” and I had been replying to them.
On one of them, she forgot to hit anon, and there she was. Her URL right there. I sat there for a minute staring at my phone. I knew she was taking this absolutely too far, and I know the pagan drama blogs would eat this right up.
She had said, “LOL, ARE YOU GONNA DISAPPEAR AGAIN, WIMP?” For context, like I had mentioned above, I have a habit of deleting and changing social media a lot, and I still do to this day, but nowhere near as bad as I used to.
And I had told her how when I’m overwhelmed, I’d disappear as I described it. I’d scrub every ounce of existence from the internet and go exist elsewhere as someone else under a new alias. I don’t know why I do it; it kinda just happens.
So anyway, I screenshot the notification column and submitted it anonymously to a certain pagan blog known for being an absolute freaking salt mine. Between that, and the time it was published, she was still saying crap to me on anon, and despite blocking her on social media, I still could see snippets of her asks in my notifications, but they wouldn’t show up in my ask box.
So then she had been sending her coven after me to say crap and harass me. As you can probably tell above, I wasn’t exactly the most stable, and I had been known for my anger issues. So I said something I shouldn’t have.
You know when people get mad, they say something along the lines of, “God I wanna punch a wall”? Well, my version of that was, “Ugh, I want to firebomb someone’s house,” not really ever specifying who, but Trish took it as a direct threat to her.
She posted on her blog about how if I firebomb her house I would be killing not just her, her mom, and dad, but her cats who I had taken a liking to because you know, cats are freaking cute.
And then she went on to call me a psychopath, which I also screenshotted, knowing that social media has a huge anti-ableism crowd, and even though I didn’t take offense to it, I’d been hearing that term since I was about 12, I knew a plethora of people who would.
She would go on in the tags to say how scared she is. I never really directed that threat to her; it was pretty ambiguous, but of course, I went, “You know what? YEAH! That WAS directed at you!” because to be frank, I’m on a next level of stupid.
Around this time, I had made a separate group chat on social media with people who were involved, and that’s where I’d go to rant and blah blah. They were very good friends who were also very invested in “the salt” as we called it.
One of them jokingly called the group “The Salt Mine” and changed the icon to be that goat on the mountain from the “He craves the mineral” meme, and we were living for it. It was around this time I noticed I had some missed calls and voice mails.
Huh, I thought, who’d call me? You guessed it. Trish. She had left not one, but TWO voicemails of her laughing maniacally (I’d like to note, that I hadn’t thought about this particular part in a long time, let alone type it out since then, and I’m cringing).
The newest one was of her saying very meekly, “You need help…” The social media website we used had an audio post function, so I also submitted those.
Throughout this entire week or so of being harassed, the only thing I can remember feeling was really hurt, betrayed, and broken-hearted. When I say we became close, I mean that we were extremely close.
We told each other everything, and we loved each other very much like we were each other’s family. I was in the process of trying to get social security, and she wanted me to live with her in a condo.
We were literally looking at getting a place together. I can’t really convey in words how hurt I was about all of it, and on top of my mental state being absolutely wack, it was heightened, and I was not acting appropriately.
Neither was she, but you know, I’m not her, so I don’t know if she’s had any regrets about it.
Anyway, so one of the people in the Salt Mine had confided in me that they were still part of Trish’s server.
“Oh?” I said, “Do tell.” And he told me it had become a crap-talking server. Shocking. He took screenshots and submitted those to the drama blog. Then I had an idea. I asked him to screenshot all the people on the introductions page who stayed (the name would be white if they left) and who listed their blog URLs.
He did so, I went through each and every blog (there were over 35) and blocked each and every one. My ask box didn’t have a single word of harassment after that. During this, the pagan drama blog had become a cesspool of people defending both my and Trish’s actions, as well as me bitterly submitting screenshots of all the crap Trish had about people, including her own partner.
Looking back, both sides’ reasoning and defending anons were pretty pathetic, grasping, and stupid. On my side, people were saying stuff like, “Oh, he wouldn’t actually do that!” and when people replied how it wasn’t okay to say stuff like that and how some people even came forward to admit they were scared of me and my little rantings, I was for some reason very shocked. I never considered that people would be scared of me and how I shouldn’t ever act that way.
Nobody ever said it to my face, surprisingly enough, so I’d never thought of it.
I mulled over it for a while, and decided… they were right. I had acted irrationally and out of pocket. I decided to get help.
I went to a mental health hospital, and the only person I ever contacted was my now fiance because they to this day remain the most level headed reasonable person I know, who, when I was having a rough day, talked me through it and was honest, but not overly blunt, and they were firm but gentle, which is not something I ever find.
The people at the facility adjusted my meds, helped me realize when I was going through such heavy delusions, and when I was ready to go, they let me go. I then went to work on apologizing to everyone I had hurt in that storm.
When I got out, I submitted an apology to everyone involved on the drama blog… which never got submitted. So I copy and pasted it to my blog. I then went to work with contacting people who I had wronged in that storm, and I apologized to each and every individual, including Vix.
There were still some anonymous submissions of people talking about Trish’s actions before me, how she had scammed people, how she had and her new best friend, who I may add, has a now-husband who doxxed her on 4chan before, bullied several people off social media in the past. I was literally watching her reputation fall apart.
I was still a bit sore from the whole ordeal, so watching from a distance was the visual equivalent of sipping a martini in a sun chair wearing sunglasses and watching a nuke go off from a safe distance. Someone told me that on social media she asked her followers to give her a shop that mass produces products so she can buy them cheap and sell them for ridiculously high prices on her little shop.
She apparently at one point tried to make her own products, but they were so bad, that they didn’t sell well, so now she sticks to mass buying “crystal” pipes online and those websites that mass sell products that are cheap and fall apart easily.
At one point, she tried to start more beef with Vix with the same claim that she’s stealing her craft, but everyone called her out on her crap. Now she doesn’t really post anything on her blog. At one point, she found my new blog on a separate NSFW blog that I won’t get too into, but basically, I was mass following adult blogs, and one of them was hers as well as her friends, and I didn’t realize it because, well, to be frank, I’m an idiot and don’t really look too much at blogs when I follow them.
I take a quick look at their content and decide if they’re worth following. Once she made it clear it was her, I saw she was not only talking huge crap and making me out to be this textbook stalker psychopath, but she had been stalking me on it for a while now.
The only thing going on her main blog is a repost of her Sweatcoin app thing, basically begging for change because her shop isn’t going as well as she thought it would.
The Salt Mine chat has disbanded since because we realized we’re adults, and we shouldn’t dwell on things for that long, but for some reason, there were people who would still contact me about Trish’s stupid crap and update me on it as if I was still involved. I ended up deleting and remaking my social media because of it.
Vix and I are now very close friends, if not better friends than what Trish and I were but with the addition that we aren’t afraid to call each other out on our stupid crap. I’m doing much better now, I’m engaged to my sweetheart, and I’ve been working on my writing much more as well as figuring out what I want to do since I live at home and am unable to work currently.
All of my friendships are good and stable, and I’ve been taking my meds, as well as keeping my doctors up to date on how I’ve been feeling. Life, despite how it looks from the outside and my occasional breakdowns, is going good, and I hope to build from it more.”
2. Officer Or Not, You're Still Going Down
“This story takes place in Asia.
I was a Private in the military when I was 18, serving as an engineer in charge of infrastructure maintenance, including roads and vehicles. This suited me well since your boy is scrawny as heck and couldn’t really hike a combat load too far.
From time to time, I was rostered to perform admin duties, which meant I had ample time to read up on military protocols, which would be important later on.
Being great with tech stuff, I helped out the other Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) a lot and reaped a lot of good karma.
There was this particular trainee officer, whom we shall also call Jack. Jack was in his late 20s, fresh out of officer school as a regular. Over here, rank matters a crap-ton. Even the senior warrant officers in their 50s would bend the knee for a fresh baby-faced officer, especially a regular.
Now, Jack was seriously buff and had all sorts of expensive gear like Oakleys, and activity trackers (which were darn expensive back in the day). And he loved to show all this off, coming in to work in non-regulation marathon shirts, gym shorts, and the like, while also wearing those darn mirrored Oakleys indoors.
A typical jock, if you will.
So there I was one morning, taking attendance during my admin duties. I had to personally call anyone who wasn’t on-base during roll-call to confirm their status for the day. There was a new addition to the list, an Officer-Trainee Jack who was still not on base.
The conversation went as such:
Me: “Good Morning Jack, this is Private OP calling from so-and-so. Please let me know if you would be on-base today.”
Jack: “What did you call me?”
Me: “Uhm, Jack?”
Jack: “I think you meant Lieutenant Jack, SIR.”
Me: “…So would you be on base today?”
Jack: “Yes, and you’d better show me some respect there, PRIVATE OP, was it?”
Me: “Thank you for confirming your status. Goodbye.” -hangs up-
I was seething. This guy had yet to go for his commissioning ceremony and yet demanded to be called “Sir?” According to protocol, a trainee had only a temporary rank.
By virtue of having to be trained by NCOs of a lower but permanent rank, all temporary rank assignments were officially given zero weight next to a permanent rank. As such, even a goshdarn Private held a ‘higher’ rank than an Officer-Trainee.
Unofficially, most NCOs and enlisted would not dare to offend a soon-to-be Officer, for fear of being condemned to the crapper. But not your boy OP, I took no crap from anyone.
On Jack’s first day, he came in and immediately called a special meeting, ranting about how there was a lack of discipline in the section, and he had already personally witnessed a “goshdarn private” disrespecting him.
To start off, he instituted daily morning drills and exercises. Foot drills. In a service and maintenance unit. Seriously. But as per usual, the other senior NCOs started with the ring-kissing and lauded his ‘initiative’ as a “great idea,” promising to look into this “goshdarn private.”After a quick glance at the duty roster, I was called in by THREE senior NCOs, who furiously demanded to know what happened. Being on good terms with them, they dropped the act once I was in the private briefing room and I related the whole incident to them, including how I said my ‘pleases’ and ‘thank yous’ as per the usual script.
They determined that I technically did no wrong, so they couldn’t punish me. But I was warned to be careful in the future. From then on, I’d make sure my butt was covered every time I bent the rules or anything.
I was by far, the model soldier in the unit for the year as far as anyone knew. Always on time, always properly attired, all procedures followed to the letter. I also took extra pleasure in calling for “Officer-Trainee Jack” over the intercom as and when I was on admin duty.
Still, Jack found many petty ways to screw with me after he shortly received his full rank, such as ordering me to clean his room and running other errands. Knowing I was scrawny as heck, he ordered lots of insane Physical Training (PT) exercises as well.
I had my own petty counters, such as wrapping his (fake!) Oakleys on the drawer lock while cleaning his room, so he would wreck them when he opened it. Making sure his drinks were cold when they got back (with extra spit), filling his bottle with water from the urinal flush, putting ants in his protein powder, etc. Also, always wriggled out of PT by volunteering for admin duties or otherwise.
The worst of his petty revenge plots was that he reported me for theft of equipment. I had packed some decommissioned supplies in my personal bag with permission from the Logistics NCO. Somehow, my bag was ransacked and anonymously reported to the Commanding Officer (CO).
A repeat of the 3-NCO debrief happened again but I KNEW it was Jack. That smug jerk kept loitering outside the room with a crap-eating grin on his face but was sorely disappointed when I was let off. This was when I knew I had to escalate before one of his subsequent plots eventually succeeds.
This is where the petty revenge ends and the pro revenge starts.
Having failed to get me punished, Jack fired the first salvo. He used one of the techniques I would steal in my later revenge plots, which was to socially isolate the target.
Jack suddenly became real generous, buying drinks and snacks for my team as well as the other NCOs. Of course, he excluded me and made it dang clear that anyone who supported me ended up on the same crap-errand duties I did.
Soon, nobody associated with me except the senior NCOs, who knew what was happening but didn’t want to risk their pensions stepping in. Knowing my team was chronically late for duty, he instituted a rule that all enlisted men who were late for roll-call even once in the year would be punished with a 4-hour punishment PT – but he never enforced it as long as my team supported him.
I knew what it meant though and kept up my impeccable punctuality, even at the cost of having to abandon some team members who were running late and needed a lift from me.
Now, being in an engineering unit, almost everyone was a motorhead – spending their downtime tuning their personal vehicles and swapping parts/tips.
Everyone treated their cars better than their wives here. Typically, we turn a blind eye to the personal use of work tools and parts – some NCOs even fill up their tanks with leftover petrol after exercises, which was hugely illegal but “I didn’t see anything.”
Anyway, Jack didn’t own a car, so he loved borrowing NCOs’ personal cars to run errands on-base. The junior NCOs reluctantly complied with handing over their babies’ keys, but were generally okay with it as he often returned with free drinks.
However, Jack loved revving these modded cars and driving them really hard over speedbumps for the thrill of it once out of sight of the section office. Knowing this, but unable to capture video proof (no cameras on-base), I initiated some repainting works on the speedbumps along his favorite route, painting on the fluorescent strips right before his usual morning coffee run.
As expected, Jack smeared that crap by driving some poor NCO’s car hard through the bump, with a sickening scrape. I reported that further repair works were needed due to destroying the paint at 0915H to the maintenance NCO, who quickly connected the dots.
Soon, all the junior NCOs were flooding out to the carpark, discovering the horrendous scratches and scrapes on their undercarriages.
From that day on, all the junior NCOs avoided Jack, while their cars were perpetually “in the workshop” or “borrowed by the wife,” etc. In actual fact, they simply parked the cars at the other end of the base and hitched rides on our trucks in.
Jack got so desperate once that he even asked me for MY car keys. Blank stare and an incredulous “What the heck?” look were all that were needed to convey my message.
Jack showed up one day at work in a freaking Maserati with an admittedly sick-looking low-body kit.
Being motorheads, everyone flocked out to gawk at his car and beg for rides. My work in Revenge Part 1 was about to be undone, I had to come up with a plan to stop him, fast.
I took out some leftover gasoline, leaving them near the carpark.
My intention was to tempt him to steal the gas and report him later. Unfortunately, I should have foreseen that nobody puts cheap gas in a Maserati, but I was a younger, dumber OP back then.
On to Plan B.
I knew that there was an old road in the base that none of the more experienced drivers take, due to its abrupt change in grade. Many fenders have gouged deep marks in the road, so it was almost exclusively for trucks and SUVs.
Jack hasn’t been here long enough to have to use that road, so I grabbed my truck and repaired that section of road, hiding all the gouges.
The next day, I parked my truck across his preferred road, claiming I had to do maintenance.
(There was like only a 2-inch pothole to repair, but whatever.) I redirected him to the alternative road and ‘kindly’ (read: sarcastically) told him that it’s good he drives slow since he was a new driver. That angered him immediately, with him revving the engine and charging down the detour road.
Soon after, a satisfying bang was heard.
I did my repairs leisurely, logged everything, and headed back to the office to watch the show.
Jack was in the maintenance room, holding back tears, begging the senior technicians to fix the car as he admitted to borrowing it from a friend who went on holiday.
I swore this unexpected revelation gave me the biggest smile. The car was still driveable, although the hood, bumper, and body kit were damaged. The senior techs did all they could, but concluded that they simply didn’t have the parts to fix a Maserati – Jack was going to have to take it to a workshop, by which they gave him a number of contacts to third-party workshops who could repair it with cheap parts for below USD 8,000 before his friend gets back and finds out.
Was I going to let him off that easy with an $8,000 bill? Nope. I felt horrible that he was about to screw over a friend who trusted him with his gosh darn Maserati too.
So I wrote an accident report, stating the license plate and the scene of the accident, kindly also recommending that speedbumps be installed, along with slow-down signs on the road.
This triggered an investigation from HQ into just how fast the car was going, as well as the identity of the owner. HQ somehow got a hold of the actual owner’s records and informed him that his car was in an accident on-base.
Jack. was. so. screwed. His friend was livid and insisted on sending his car to an official workshop, which costs I-don’t-even-wanna-know how much higher. Jack started asking around for personal loans from other officers and NCOs while calling banks. I’m not sure how he paid it off or if he ever did, but heck, that was an interesting month where he did not even dare to look at me.
From what I heard, he never drove a personal vehicle again after that accident and the NCOs felt safer bringing their cars back to the section carpark. He would still ask for rides like a jerk though.
By now I had been promoted to Corporal and was in charge of my team – who were still afraid to stand with me when Jack was around.
Jack was still a threat – he had also recovered from Revenge Part 2 and started up again with the petty crap. It was nearing Christmas, and Jack was super sure I was late at least once – since every single member of my team had been so.
Jack decided then was the time to enforce his 4-hour PT exercise rule, sacrificing the whole team to get to me.
I stayed in the office. Jack phoned me to get my butt out and hug the ground. I refused and started printing out my time logs.
Jack busted in angrily, and I dumped the stack of logs right in front of him, showing my perfect attendance. After getting nowhere in insisting that I work out “with the team,” he got the CO and other officers involved as it “looked bad for team morale” to have me just sitting there.
I retorted that it would “look worse if an officer didn’t keep his word and indiscriminately punished people. There would be no incentive to clock in on time, in this case.” CO took my side, which infuriated Jack to no end.
As a compromise, the CO personally took me for a leisurely jog around the compound as part of routine PT instead of a punishment. I took the chance to play up my part as a victim to the CO, listing several incidents in which Jack had tried to get me in trouble.
Having witnessed his outburst earlier, the CO agreed that Jack had a personal vendetta but had few grounds to terminate him. The most he could do was transfer him to another base, which I agreed to immediately.
“But wait, OP,” you ask.
“How is a lateral transfer wrecking his career?” Well, that half of the story happens 6 months later, when the bigwigs decided to shift my team to, you guessed it, Jack’s base.
When we got to the new base, I was shocked to hear how everyone sang Jack’s praises.
Oh, he was the golden child, he had brilliant ideas and was on track to make Captain soon. Jack’s attitude in the new base had changed 180 degrees. He was all friendly, helped out, continued buying drinks, and was never tough.
I guess he learned his lesson back in the old base and now tried his best to win the popularity contest before he screwed people over.
Jack was entirely too happy to see me, hinting that once he made Captain, he would have the power to affect personnel transfers and oversee promotions/demotions.
In fact, he was already acting Captain and would be doing my performance appraisal.
Screw that! I insisted, as was my right, to have another officer do my appraisal. That other lazy officer apparently farmed out the job to Mr. Helpful Jack anyways, who gave me a crap grade – which I protested up the chain of command and got it revised to something more reasonable but not what I expected to get.
Having almost been ruined by Jack, I had to act fast and take him down before he made full Captain.
During one of my admin duties, I dug out Jack’s records and pored through every section religiously. Jack apparently didn’t lie on his records (I called up to check), but the records were entirely unremarkable.
Barely passing out of Officer School, unremarkable testimonial, nothing. His academic records were horrible – he would not be able to secure his current salary in the private sector, for sure, but not a roadblock in the military.
I had zero allies in this new base and was grasping at straws, stalking him to catch him doing something – anything, outside of regulations.
Non-regulation shirts? Probably just a slap on the wrist. Coming in late and leaving early? Ditto. Spending all day working out in the gym instead of working? Nah, the other officers here would likely cover for him given how little work they do too.
Personal indiscretions? Nothing. Dang, he was good. I was stumped.
Then, it came to me. Jack had been driving our military trucks when he wants to do hands-on demonstrations for the enlisted men on how “it should be done,” looking all bad and whatnot.
However, none of the other officers ever drove our trucks, much less stepped out of their air-conditioned office if possible. Why was this so?
OH RIGHT, YOU NEEDED A MILITARY LICENSE OF A DIFFERENT CLASS TO DRIVE A MILITARY TRUCK.
And officers did NOT go through that course by default. Of course, Jack was no different and had no military license in his records. Well, well, well. I volunteered for the publicity team for our next recruitment drive, which included taking a video of one of our trucks being driven.
Being the golden boy and an attention grabber, Jack kindly accepted the nomination of the other officers to star in the video. I acted all butthurt about having to make him look good and all but got the video published in the public domain.
Then I submitted my report that a “routine review” had uncovered how Jack drove military trucks on multiple occasions without a military license. No amount of cover-ups could be done by his buddy officers since the video was published long before they somehow rushed to get him a backdated temporary license.
The issue was repeatedly repressed at each point in the chain, but I would simply report it further up the chain after the deadline to respond expired, as was protocol.
I don’t know much about what happened after that, but Jack never made it as Captain.
The other officers and NCOs also no longer saw any benefit in licking his boots, as he was apparently barred from promotion and had a pay freeze for an unspecified amount of time. Soon after, he resigned and apparently became a pretty crappy freelance artist.
I hope he fails.”
1. Discriminate Against Me And Give Me Bad Grades? Deal With The Principal
“I had a teacher who was unbearable in middle school. Here’s some info you need to know: I have a diagnosed small bladder with a doctor’s note and severe anxiety and asthma that has hospitalized me before.
On the first day of class, I hadn’t once thought that I would have a problem with this teacher. She was obese, wore long skirts that hung down to her ankles, slippers over socks that were over leggings, with a basic short sleeve shirt and a sweater.
I thought this was just an old lady that would spend her time at her desk while the students read from books.
It was some time into the first semester that I asked to go to the bathroom for the first time and was told to wait.
Figuring that Mrs. M had just forgotten about my urgent need to pee, I told her it was an emergency and I needed to go now. She let me go. This continued for a while until I eventually confronted her about the signed doctor’s note that was on file and signed by the principal and vice-principal. She told me all I had to do was raise my hand, and she would let me go.
I did the latter, and she still told me to wait. I raise my hand again 10 minutes later, legs crossed so hard my toes were numb, and she didn’t answer me for a solid five minutes despite having turned away from the board several times and skimming the class as she asked questions.
At some point, I couldn’t hold it anymore, and I just stood and left. I went to the bathroom, and when I knocked on the door for someone to let me back in, she told them to let me stand out there.
I went to the office and told them. They said it was fine, and I could stay with them until the bell rang. When the bell rang, I went back and got my stuff only to see people giggling and going ‘Ooooooh’ as they left. She proceeded to ask me why I just walked out of her class like that, and I told her I had to pee, I couldn’t wait, and there was a doctor’s note on file.
She was understanding, or so it seemed, because the next time I raised my hand and said ‘Bathroom,’ she said ‘No.’ The guidance counselor was not having this and called a meeting with ALL my teachers to be sure they were up to date on this, to which most answered with, ‘Yeah, we know this.
Who doesn’t by now? Who wouldn’t?’ That was never a problem with her anymore.
At some other point in this endeavor with this teacher, she proceeded to give me Fs, which I at first shrugged off as “I guess I forgot to do this one?
Or did I fail it?” Then when they were straight 0s, I confronted her, telling her I did turn these things in, as I had pictures that I had shared with my friends from time to time when they needed answers.
Mrs. M insisted she didn’t have them and said I could look through her Turn Ins. Sure enough, I found all my papers, in a neat stack, at the bottom of the box. How bizarre that the papers that were turned in late and on time were all at the bottom of the box?
She insisted that they must have all been late, and she was taking off points. I didn’t care, as long as I at least passed each semester with a minimum of a D grade.
For some project in her stupid history class, I vividly remember bringing in pencils, colored and not, crayons, sharpies, and a poster.
I brought in everything. Someone did the written part, someone did the typing part, another did the research, and I did the WHOLE poster. There was a lot of writing on the poster, a lot of coloring, and a lot of drawing.
I was the artistic one, and no one else wanted to do it. Even so, someone got sick, and I ended up doing half the research anyways. Despite my telling the teacher that I had anxiety and asthma, she made me present with my group.
I did fine but still had to go to the clinic to use my inhaler. Later, I find that I have a D on the project while everyone else in my group had Bs. I was so tired of her crap, I told my mother, and she took it to the guidance counselor.
Upon being confronted about why I had a D on a one-for-all-graded project, I was quickly pulled aside by Mrs. M to be told she corrected it.
By this point, I had so much anxiety about going to Mrs. M’s classes, that I would, consistently, go to the school’s clinic having an asthma attack from the anxiety and found out later on that I also had high b***d pressure.
The nurse, being my bestest friend for obvious reasons seeing as I saw her at least every 2 days, as we were on block schedule had put two and two together, I was almost in her clinic for my second period of every second day and went to lunch like normal. She calls up my mother and the guidance counselor, and upon them both hearing the reason why they called the principal and vice-principal (my mother had become great friends with everyone in the office by this point).
This teacher had been bullying me so intensely that the thought of going to her class sent me into a panic attack that had, several times, sent me to the hospital in an ambulance. I was so terrified of going to her class that I threw myself down the stairs of the only two-story building in the school.
With my constant absences, despite having to let me do makeup work, she wouldn’t let me, and when she did, she refused to take it, claiming it was late despite being makeup work. (This is important.)
Having been very sick just a week before and having been gone for a week, my mother had gathered my late work and brought it home for me.
I did it while sniffling, sneezing, throwing up, and glued to the toilet. It took me another two days to return it. But for every day that you’re absent, you have two days to return it. I was gone for a week, so I had two weeks.
It was a few days after I had gotten back that the intervention above happened. Upon hearing I still had Mrs. M’s work in my bag, finally finished just the class period before, the principal decided I’m going to go give it to her…
I stop outside of her class, in the middle of a test, and I knock. A student opens the door, and I walk in, following through with the plan. I tell her this is the late work and that I’m still sick and heading home right away.
She takes it, barely looks at it, and says, “This is late. I’m not accepting this.” It was a week and a few days early. At this, she tosses it into the trash. Little did she know…
I look to the door, and through the little window, the principal is standing there, shaking his head, looking mortified, disgusted, and absolutely done with this woman.
He used his key to open the door, walked through the room, and asked the teacher on the other side of the fabric sliding wall to watch her class. He tells Mrs. M he needs to talk to her. I let them walk far ahead of me, and when I made it to the office, I could hear him going into this woman in his office in harsh but calm talking.
I didn’t know I had been switched out of her class until two days later when I returned. That D I had in her class was suddenly, almost magically, an A in the new one.
Every time she ever saw me, she would either quickly walk away, glare at me, or just ignore me altogether.
And when she had a boy in her class (he shares the name of my mother), and she commented on his name and how there was this annoying parent that got her in trouble because their “unintelligent daughter” couldn’t pass the class, he looked at her and said, “A tan-skinned woman about this tall?
Salt and pepper hair? A lot of sass? That’s my aunt.” Her crap-eating grin disappeared, he went to the office, told the staff, and they ripped her a new one AGAIN, and I got to hear it because my cousin called me, and told me to come to the office.
I was dying trying not to laugh. My cousin refused to be switched out of her class, and instead, sat there and did very little work and got straight As. She is too terrified to screw with my family again.
I don’t know what punishment they gave her, or what they said, but she’s terrified of anyone with our last names. Any time she steps out of line in the presence of one of my family members, my mother will be there.
Even if it’s only in her fears.
Now 1) No, she did not get fired. She had and still has tenure. Unfortunately, favoritism, or in this case, hatred, isn’t something I can particularly prove. 2) It’s been 6 years, and she STILL works there.
3) I have a lot of younger cousins, and if anything happens, she’s going to be dealing with my mother.
SIDE NOTE: The textbook I had rented for her class? I had given it back to her as I had to.
It was considered “missing” and there was an obligation over my head for a year until it threatened to hold me back from graduating middle school. When I told the staff who I gave it to, they waived my obligations.
But I still had to deal with them all through high school. You have no idea how hard it is to keep track of a tiny receipt that says this obligation had been waived, had to go searching for it two times just so I could get my yearbook, but I had it ready by high school graduation.
So she did manage to screw me over, even after I was out of her class. Even after I was out of her school.”
Another User Comments:
“It’s always insane to me when a teacher blatantly hates and picks on a student.
They are literal children. I know kids can suck sometimes, but gosh darn-it, the teacher is an adult and needs to freaking act like one. So glad this ended up working out for you, OP. Sorry you had to deal with that awful woman and her maltreatment.” czechhoneybee
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