People Come Clean About Their Giddy Revenge Stories
44. Neighbor's Next Partner Is Better Than The First One
“In the early eighties, we lived in a trailer park in Cocoa, Florida. We just had our first child and had him home for two weeks. Our neighbor was a single man who traveled a lot for his job. We hardly ever saw him. Right after we brought the baby home, he got a new girl. He moved her in and left to go on the road for two weeks.
Every night she had people over and blasted loud music for hours often until 2 or 3 AM. We tried talking to her and she just laughed it off. The trailer park management company did not respond to calls.
What she did not know was how the electricity for the park worked. A pole was set up at the middle trailer for every 5 trailers. That was the trailer we were in.
The pole had a fuse box with a 60 amp fuse for each trailer clearly marked with the lot number. Electric service was included in the lot rent so each pole had 1 meter servicing all five boxes. This was 5 feet from my back door on the opposite side of my trailer from this neighbor.
After the first four nights of no sleep for us or the baby, I decided what to do.
There were no locks on any of the fuse boxes. When the party hit full swing I would step out my back door, pull the fuse holder from the neighbor’s box, and lay it on top. The power would go out and the party would be over. The new girl had no more luck with the management company than I did. Calling the power company resulted in a no problem found report.
I always stuck the fuse back in when her guests left.
When our neighbor returned he came over to ask us if we had any electrical issues. I told him what had been going on and what I did. The new girl was moved out the same day. His next significant other was brought to meet us before he left town. She was a delightful person we got along well with.
He never told the first partner what I had done. I guess she always thought that trailer park had lousy electrical service.”
43. They Reported Us For Having Chickens
“We did get petty with a neighbor in our last house.
We lived in rural mountains, zoned agricultural, and I did all the research and checked with planning and zoning more than once – and we got 8 chicks. By luck, they grew up all hens. We built a coop on the far side of the property, away from the closest neighbor, in full accordance with the zoning.
And they called zoning on us for having chickens. When zoning called me, they told me a neighbor had called on us (the only neighbor who would – we’d had some serious problems with them in the past) and told me this was just an informational call to let me know. They told us that we could have as many as 100 chickens where we were, and as many roosters as we liked as a part of that 100, as long as they were adequately housed and cared for.
So we started a rooster rescue, got more hens, and sold eggs at the local farmer’s market.
By the time we moved, we had 20 roosters and 39 hens. (a friend with a farm took them all, since moving them across state lines was impossible.)
And those 20 roosters? A lot of times, they liked to crow all at once.
And there was nothing they could do about it.
5 years of roosters, crowing all day long.
Not so sneaky, but worth it.”
42. Annoying Neighbor Gets Deflected By A Can Of Beer
“Years ago, I lived in Jacksonville, Florida in a trailer park. It was a standard-issue trailer park. Rows of tin rectangular cubes baking in the tropical sun. It was clean and generally quiet.
As in all neighborhoods, there were all types of people living there, some good, some not so good.
One of the neighbors – Pam – was a friend of mine. Pam and her husband lived in the inexpensive trailer park for a number of years, trying to save funds to build their own home. She was a good Independent Fundamental Baptist. She and her family went to church every Sunday.
Pam taught Sunday School. She and her husband had raised their son to be polite and respectful. She was sweet and kind.
Pam told me how she’d had some trouble with some bad neighbors a few years before when her son was a toddler. They lived a couple of lots down and had a TransAm. Shiny, new, fast. And they loved to drive the shiny, new TransAm fast down those narrow roads.
There were a lot of kids in the neighborhood, so Pam complained to the park manager. The TransAm owners were warned but to no avail. They continued to drive fast past Pam’s house.
One day, they shot past her house in that shiny, new TransAm and threw a beer can out the window into her yard. Pam’s son, then a toddler, was sitting in the grass.
The can missed hitting the child, fortunately, because it was half full, and it might have done some injury. But the can, by some twist of divine providence, landed bottom side down right in front of the little boy. The beer splashed out onto the baby.
Pam picked up the baby, and the can with its vile contents and walked down the street to where the TransAm was now parked. (Pam admitted to me she wasn’t thinking of Heaven.) She knocked on the door, but nobody answered the door.
She knew they were in there because the window was open and she could hear them moving around and whispering inside.
Pam said kindly, sweetly, and loudly, ‘I’m returning your beer.’ Then she stuck the can through the open window of that shiny, new TransAm and dumped it all over the front bucket seat.
After that, the neighbor would drive the long way around to avoid passing her house.
They moved soon after that.
I just found Pam’s obituary. She went home to be with the Lord some years ago. I hadn’t seen her in years, but I still miss her.”
41. Former Boss Learns I Have A New Job
“I worked at a government-funded employment agency. We helped people, mostly women, with resumes and getting job skills that were on welfare. These women were VERY rough around the edges.
I worked on the resumes.
The people that ran the agency were a husband and wife duo. The lady was always complaining about her husband and his daughter. She spilled all the beans about how the daughter stole her ring and lied about it, how he is always gone, and how he put his family over theirs… it was a mess.
Now along with the job I was paid for… LOL….
I handled payroll tasks and anything else they asked. I didn’t mind. I NEVER had an issue with the wife. She was great, just unhappy.
She went on a much-needed vacation and her husband had to be in charge. Besides him being VERY inappropriate in telling me about his store and saying that he was always ‘looking for talent’ he was a micromanager and major complainer.
I needed to get my W-2 and he would not give it to me. I opened the mail and got mine out. Now I had access to every single employee’s W-2, address, and banking info because I set up payroll and it was only 5 of us.
He fired me for ‘tampering with personal info’ because he was mad that after a month of asking I didn’t just wait.
No biggie. I was sad to leave everyone. But in 3 days… I was back at my old job. My old manager LOVED me and hated to see me go.
I never left a job in bad standing, because you never know. I am at my job and his wife calls. This woman actually started lecturing me about how I can use this time to ‘think about what I did’ and that she knows that I will bounce back even though it will be hard for me.
I had the biggest grin on my face when I cut her off and said, ‘Hey, I don’t know what you were saying cause I am busy at work. Can you call back or just text me?’
There was a pause, she said, ‘Work, what do you mean. We fired you.’
I said, ‘Yes, I was there. But I am at my new job now… I have to call you back.’
She says, ‘It’s only been three—’
‘Sorry have to call you back a customer is walking up.’
I hung up… I haven’t talked to her or the creep since. I was QUITE satisfied that day.”
40. My Replacement Couldn't Produce New Software Builds
“There was a place I worked where I was responsible for all of the software builds and releases. I was brought in to help them because they were about to lose a major contract. They had 1 month until they had to demonstrate considerable improvements to the customer.
If not, the poorly written contract would allow the customer to walk away without penalty, not even any progress payments. The problem I was specifically working on was that their build process was so messed up that it took about a week to get a working build completed. They knew that they would need many more than just 4 builds in that month in order to get all their testing done.
I dug in, and pretty quickly we were able to do multiple builds per day. They managed to make enough fixes in the code to impress the customer and keep the contract. There were a lot of other improvements and updates and things were humming along well.
At some point, I scheduled a 2-week vacation and pointed out to management that no one else knew how to do my job.
Sure, there was documentation, but there were a lot of tricky nuances that wouldn’t be obvious to someone without some experience – this was not an entry-level job! Finally about 2 weeks before my vacation, they give me a new hire college grad to train. I only got him about half time though, so I basically only was able to train him how to do things if everything worked. I didn’t really have time to teach him all the intricate details, only the big picture.
I went on vacation, and everything went smoothly. After I returned, they moved him back full time to software development. A few months later, layoffs happened, and I was one that got let go.
A few months after that (got a much better job, more interesting and better pay), I had lunch with a former colleague. They told me that the other guy had failed to produce new software builds for about a month after my departure.
They told me a bit about the problems they were seeing, and after listening for about 2 minutes, I said it sounds like they forgot to do this one particular step. That’s exactly what happened. Much of their work had ground to a halt for a month because management had thought that a half-trained new hire could replace my years of experience in that area.
That was very satisfying.”
39. Neighbor's Pipes Are Not Working
“I live in a small hamlet on the coast (somewhere in the world) where about 70% of the houses and cottages are permanently occupied. The other 30% are holiday homes for the wealthy or holiday rentals.
There is one large house perched high on the sand dunes overlooking a large portion of the community that belongs to a wealthy family that is only ever seen in the summer months and for most of the year, the house is empty.
This house came alive one summer with raucous teenagers and young adults. The parents (or anyone responsible) were obviously not around as the music was deafening into the early hours along with screaming and yelling.
This crowd was also seen breaking benches at the local lookout point and left beer cans and smoke butts strewn on the beach.
The police visited twice after complaints were made and the noise would be reduced for a while but return to previous levels soon afterward.
Us residents, while used to some inconsiderate behavior from excited visitors, had reached our limit after 3 days and after some discussion over neighboring fences, a consensus was reached that some local corrective action was required.
The morning of the fourth day, at the time that the shouting and screaming would usually start along with the music, there was a stillness.
As it turned out someone had crimped the copper water infeed pipe to the house at the flow meter stopping all flow to the house.
No showers, no washing dishes (unlikely that was happening), or flushing toilets. I believe a note was attached to the meter requesting that noise be kept down and for more respect to be shown to the community.
I also heard that a call was placed to our local plumber but as ‘luck’ would have it he was fully booked for a few days in advance and couldn’t assist.
The greasy-looking mob vacated the house that day and there has not been a reoccurrence since.”
38. The Company Annoyed Me So I Did Not Send The Important File
“I worked for this company for 10 years. Always on time. Always a hard worker. Covered shifts. Worked graveyard when needed. Team player.
ALWAYS got the maximum raise every year with stellar reviews.
For 10 years in IT, I was the guy who located and contacted vendors to repair many of our custom or obsolete items. I had contacts for VERY hard-to-find parts for the obsolete items. I kept the ‘Rolodex’ file of all the contacts, phone numbers, etc. and they were on the corporate network ‘someplace’.
They got a new IT Director and I was let go under less than respectful circumstances.
I had no time to do anything. I was escorted out and they said my things would be on the loading dock the next day. (found out later they let go all the old-timers who were making more than they wanted to pay. I was among the first.)
A week later, they called me asking for my contact list file.
Guess what they did NOT get.
I’m sure it took them years to re-locate them all.”
37. We Created An Improvised Fence For The Neighbor's Car
“The neighborhood way back in the early ’90s had a brand-new neighbor who had bought a home from a family.
My neighborhood in Montreal’s West End was a nice little family area, where everyone’s kids played with each other, and the neighbors actually did stuff together. Needless to say, back then, we were a pretty tightly knit community.
He mostly kept to himself and worked early shifts, but there was an issue that came up literally in the first week after he moved in.
You see, it was his car, a CLASSIC beauty, that was his daily driver: a ’69 Ford Mustang GT 500. And I’ll put it mildly, the car was LOUD.
Every morning, at 5 AM, the guy would bolt out of his driveway and drive through the neighborhood like a bat out of the underworld. Everyone could not only hear the car but would see this lunatic driving 2 1/2 blocks down the street at FULL ACCELERATION.
In the first month, pretty much everyone in the neighborhood at one time or another paid him a friendly visit and asked him to please drive safely and not rev up his car as the neighborhood speed limit was 30 km/h. He would answer with lip service, apologize, and then do it all over again the following morning.
In the second month, we were all making calls to complain to the police.
He would get warning after warning from the police, but again, it didn’t mean anything. The cops didn’t find him. They didn’t come around at 5 AM so they could catch him in the act. And the entire neighborhood was now wondering when will this lunatic kill someone unlucky one fine morning.
This went on through the Fall, and then came the winter.
Complaints to our Town Hall and our local MP didn’t work either. We all thought that he would put away the car (I mean, who drives a classic car in the winter?), only to find out that it was his daily driver. We still made complaints and so on, but the cops just didn’t show any interest in the matter. With the cold and snow coming, all any of us needed was this loon wiping out on the main street and flipping or spinning his car on the ice into our own cars or even our homes.
In the end, it just got to be too much. Between the recklessness and the noise, a group of us got together over a few weeks and went through all sorts of options on what to do. We knew it was only a matter of time before someone was killed, and we all agreed on a plan of action and spent the time recruiting other like-minded neighbors.
Strangely enough, we were all inspired on what to do while setting up the neighborhood skating rink for the kids while putting up the boards.
A deep freeze hit the city, and Montreal’s deep freezes are legendary as it can easily hit -20 C or lower. And around midnight one such night, a whole bunch of us came out… and turned his car into one huge ICE CUBE.
What we actually did was use the rink boards to surround the car, and then make snow walls all around his car, leaving some space between the walls and the car. Then the next-door neighbors came out with extended hoses from their garages and quickly watered down the walls so they would freeze solid. Once that was done, the space in between the frozen walls and the car itself was filled with snow.
Needless to say, it was now impossible to just jump into the car.
Around 3 AM, we were all done, and we all went back to sleep… for all of two hours. That’s when we all heard someone screaming the most god-awful language demanding who did this to him and threatening revenge. In the morning, life went on, though those of us who could steer clear of him did.
That afternoon, cops were going door to door asking if anyone saw what was going on. The neighbor was with them, and by the time they came to me, they obviously were pretty annoyed with him. He had apparently demanded to be there so he can see the faces of each of the other neighbors, so he can see who was responsible. He ended up threatening several of the houses and was practically seething and silent when they reached me.
If looks could kill…
Well, the crazy driving ended, once he got his car free from the ice walls and snow coverage. Apparently, he had threatened one too many neighbors, and even tried to punch one, so he was warned that if anything happened to any neighbor in the area, he would be the main suspect immediately. Luckily, we all kept the party line saying we had no idea what was going on.
Considering the number of complaints and how outright crazy that guy was acting, the cops probably already figured out 2+2 and knew who was the real menace of the area. There was a sort of warning saying that if ANY vandalism occurs in the future, they would be looking at some people and leaving it at that.
By the following spring, he sold the house and moved away.
A new family took the house, and life returned back to normal.
Oh, and apparently our town hall had decided to FINALLY do something that Spring. They installed a number of speed bumps all over the neighborhood.”
36. Don't Value My Worth? Get Reamed Out
“I was working in a shipping dept where all processing was done with computers. There were occasions where changes would have to manually be made in the system and the general population around me couldn’t be counted on to make the changes correctly. (Most were of another culture and were excellent, hard workers, if you kept their instructions simple.) So, I became the official guy to handle all the shipments requiring special handling (changing shipping terms, COD, special delivery instructions, etc).
I was totally happy to have this responsibility, by the way. I felt good about being ‘that guy’ they could rely on. Until they didn’t appreciate me anymore.
There were many personality problems in the department and the supervisor/manager wasn’t backing me up as they should have. By chance, I was invited to move to another department within the company and I accepted the position.
So one day after I was into my new job someone from the shipping dept approaches me and mentions that there had been an ultra-high priority package from one of the top-level execs sent down to shipping on a Friday. It was FedEx and had to be delivered ‘Saturday delivery’. These packages could only be entered as ‘Next day air’ and Friday packages would automatically be delivered Monday — unless someone went in and manually changed the shipping terms to Sat Delivery.
That used to be me. Apparently, the shipping supervisor gave this package to one of the workers down there to process for Sat delivery and they just went ahead and ran it through as it was entered, Next Day air for Monday delivery. Whoops! (Hehehehe)
The shipping manager got called onto the carpet for that one and apparently got reamed out big time. Too bad he didn’t appreciate it when he had someone there he could count on to not mess that stuff up.”
35. Pavlov's Operant Conditioning Seems To Work Wonders At Times
“I had a neighbor in my college dorm who had absolutely no respect for others.
He wanted to crank up his hugely expensive and loud stereo at all hours of the day or night. He had stacks of amps and speakers that have no place in a tiny little dorm room. Many dorm members would complain to him but this did no good. They complained to the RA with no results. To the campus police with no results. Nothing was going to teach this guy any manners apparently.
So, I happened to be bored out of my mind with campus life and the dumb prerequisite classes I was taking, so I had begun teaching myself electronics. I had collected a bunch of second-hand ham radio test equipment because not everyone can afford to buy expensive electronics like this neighbor.
One day he found out I was into electronics, and being a low life that he was, he would just barge into my room and ask/demand me to help with his homework.
He was an electronics engineering (EE) major, and apparently not so great at studying. Who would have guessed? After he left my room each day he would return to his room and crank up his stereo. LOUD!
So one day this reoccurring problem just annoyed me and I started to think about how to logically train this guy to be a little more respectful to others.
So, I got an idea and grabbed an old signal generator, a few wires for connections and antenna, an RF amp, and constructed a quick FM radio jammer out of it all. I turned it on and dialed up the FM frequency band for the radio station he was on, and slowly turned up the power.
WOLVVVEReeeezzzzzzttt!!!!. He immediately turned it off and started to tighten and adjust things that I could hear through the paper-thin walls.
He was scared it had blown his amp or something. In a few minutes he turned it back on at a low volume and checked things out, adjusting and returning it for a while, then he cranked it up and again, WOLVVVEReeeezzzzzzttt!!!!
Again, he turned it off. He played with the stack of equipment and cranked it yet again. I turned up my own amp/transmitter and played with him again.
This went on for a while that first day. He then must have figured that there was something wrong with the FM radio and switched over to playing his LPs. VERY LOUD.
My jammer could not jam a turntable so again I began to think. Then in a minute, I got an idea. I knew his stereo was just on the other side of that thin wall, so I placed both hands against that wall and gave it a solid but silent nudge.
The needle skipped right across the record. He queued up the next record, cranked it, and the needle skipped across that record too. Imagine that. Each time he cranked it up above a certain volume that I knew would bother everyone in my hallway it was always met with a bad outcome. Apparently cranking up the stereo caused many problems for his prized possession stereo.
So he eventually stopped cranking it up above that particular volume level that I had determined to be reasonable.
And to think that each day he would come into my room and sit right by my own stack of aging equipment. That same equipment that was permanently configured as a jammer, just in case I needed one in a hurry for some unknown reason. He never caught on to what was happening, but just as with Pavlov’s Dog, operant conditioning seems to work wonders at times.
The dorm, of course, stopped having problems with him after about four days of negative reinforcement learning. Even the dumbest of dogs can occasionally learn a new trick. Just don’t expect this particular EE major to learn too much about electronics or physics. Some things you just can’t teach to a dog apparently.”
34. I Cut The Neighbor's Electricity Then Ran To The Airport
“In the 1980s, we had upstairs neighbors who were very loud, rude, and belligerent, but when we complained to the building manager they didn’t want to have anything to do with it. My eight-month pregnant wife and I were even threatened with a rifle and we are still waiting for the police to respond.
I was nearing the end of my assignment at this particular base, so we just put up with it and bided our time until we could get out of there.
(Little background now. We had had trouble with our stove at one point and I watched the repairman see what he did to fix it. He started by turning the power off to the entire apartment by going to the rear of the building and throwing the breaker to our particular unit. Each breaker was in a metal enclosure, well marked with the apartment number, but it was not secured in any way.
The repairman then placed a little lock and tag on the breaker to make sure it couldn’t be accidentally turned back on.)
On our last day in the apartment, as we were loading the cab with our suitcases, I ran out back of the building, used a lock that I had bought just for this occasion, and turned the power off to the offending neighbor’s apartment and locked it.
Closing the metal enclosure made it look like nothing had been disturbed. I then ran to the cab and we went to the airport. No, I wasn’t there to see what happened next, but it is my sincerest hope that they had a very hard time figuring out just what had happened and were equally frustrated at not finding us there to accuse.”
33. Neighbors Went Home To A House Full Of Poop
“I had a neighbor who had a constantly barking dog they left out in their yard 100% of the time. My home office was right next to this yard so I was constantly bothered by the noise. Their attitude was that I should ‘Get used to it.’
One day they left for a few weeks’ vacation. They left the dog in the yard as usual but also left their sliding rear door open a bit with a piece of plywood blocking the opening.
They installed a flappy dog door in the plywood.
I investigated this arrangement in what I suppose was a burglary. When I went into the yard, the dog was happy to see me as I suppose it was lonelier than usual. I looked into the house through the slider to see a huge bowl of dry dog food and another of water – I suppose to carry the dog for the two weeks they were gone.
Hmm. I kicked the plywood out and invited the dog in. I then left leaving the dog inside. Every day maybe once or twice I’d check in on the dog to see how it was getting along and to refresh the water. As I hoped, the dog wandered all over the house pooping at least twice a day and peeing often. The place was growing rank.
When I opened the slider, the dog showed no interest in returning to the yard. I suppose it had had enough of the cold.
The people returned to a house full of dog poop including, for some reason, it covering their bed. Beats me why the dog made a mission of that.
The people asked me if I knew what was up and I acted surprised. I’m not sure I sold it.
They never left the dog out in the yard again for extended periods and soon left.”
32. The Government Created Its Own Worst Enemy
“I uncovered a questionable loan with non-existent collateral, and refused to back down on pursuing it!
The original loan was made by a person who had rapidly risen in the upper echelons of the Corporation…
Thus began a lengthy period of workplace harassment, and a suggestion from the Personnel Manager, that my work, (previously commendable for over 2 years) was not competent, and I would be let go, with no severance beyond the mandated 2 weeks notice.
I told the Personnel Manager that he ‘COULDN’T FIRE ME’, because….
‘I QUIT’ and that I had documented evidence of harassment, age, and gender discrimination and was going to file the appropriate official complaints with the Canadian Human rights Commission.
He was gob-smacked as he watched me walk out!
I left his office with my evidence, filed my complaints, and hired a lawyer who reviewed my documents and told me, (thereafter), that the government had hired the lawyer who wrote the book on Wrongful Dismissal to fight me in court!… HA!
I asked for only two things in my legal suit, the amount required under the aforementioned book on wrongful dismissal, and I wanted a glowing recommendation for future employment! I left the Human Rights complaints outstanding and on file so that the Corporation would stand permanently accused, in case of any further complaints!
After 18 months of stupid nonsense, I received that requested sum, and got to write my own letter of recommendation from the Head of Personnel of that former Corporation, and went back to work in a Unionized Department in the same Government in a different Department.
I did, however, after that experience, become an ardent Union official, specializing in Human Rights, and Harassment complaints.”
31. Neighbor's Dog Poo Gets Dumped On Their Windshield
“I have a neighbor who has several dogs. The dogs used to keep to their own yard, but soon, they were coming into my yard also and taking dumps. As it happened during the winter, it wasn’t immediately apparent the extent to which this was going on.
Spring came and the snow melted. Dogs kept pooping in my yard… and their people would often just look on and watch, do nothing to stop the dogs, or pick up the dogs’ poo. We had called out to them from our house several times to deal with it, but nothing ever came of it.
So one day, I opted for supreme retaliation. I went outside with my shovel and a bag, scooped up all the poo, and bagged it.
Then placed the bags full of dog poo on the windshield of one of their vehicles parked in the driveway with a nasty note about how if I wanted dogs dumping in my yard, I’d have dogs, but since I don’t want dogs dumping in my yard, I don’t have dogs and that they should be better dog owners and keep their dogs and their poo out of my yard.
That problem stopped in a New York minute.”
30. Neighbors Enjoy The Weekends With Loud Music
“I lived in a townhouse with one shared wall. When I moved in, the neighbors were a very quiet couple, never heard a peep out of them.
They moved out a year later – and 3 single male construction workers moved in. They played obnoxiously loud music at all hours of the day and night. Complicating matters – I had a 3-year-old and was pregnant with my second child. So sleep was a need.
My husband (nicer than saying ex-husband because he WAS my husband at the time) politely went next door to ask them to turn down the music – several times.
It got to where they wouldn’t answer the door when he went over there. We called the police several times – and they wouldn’t answer the door for the police either.
The situation was wretched – and I began looking for ways to get the message across. One night – they left their garage door open during a particularly loud jam session. I had already gone to bed and was wearing a huge maternity nightgown – because – I was hugely pregnant.
I quickly snuck into their garage and flipped the breaker switch. And scurried back to my side of the townhouse quietly. They figured it out the next morning. And did their party thing the next night – and I repeated the process. After that, they left the garage door shut.
Around this time, I had the baby I was expecting. My husband and I decided to take the kids and visit a friend for a few hours on a Saturday when we knew all of the neighbors were home sleeping off their Friday night party.
Before we left, we moved both of the stereo speakers over to the shared wall and turned on some super loud heavy metal music to share with said neighbors. And left. We did this several more weekends.
The construction workers broke their lease and left a couple of months later.
And no, they never said a word to us.”
29. I Disguised Myself And Emailed The Company
“I got fired after I lost my temper confronting a bully. The bully (let’s call her Q) harrassed me because I had injured my foot, was in a walking cast, and standing on crutches. Did I make a mistake? Yes. But Q was a known bully with lots of co-worker complaints to her ‘credit’. Yet she was given a second (and third and fourth etc.) chance but I got fired.
A few weeks later I was talking to a friend from my old workplace who told me that Q had used vulgarities berating a co-worker While Customers Looked On. I saw an opportunity so I emailed the company using a computer-generated name and email address to complain, under the guise of a customer, about Q’s behavior. While Q did not (unfortunately) get fired, she was reprimanded. However, she continued to bully co-workers so she got demoted to the shipping department, where she won’t have as much contact with other associates as she used to.
Meanwhile, one of my friends got sent to department head training.”
28. Company Got Threatened So They Sent Me A Check
“I was recruited heavily by a company, as I had a reputation in the industry of being able to do a lot of deals. I was somewhat hesitant to join as I knew the company was in a turn-around phase, and there was a risk. I negotiated a very good deal and joined. I quickly realized the company was in worse shape than I thought, and was completely disorganized, but still went about my business and started doing deals.
Meanwhile, the company’s stock started to slide, going down 70% and everyone was panicking. I was on board about a year, and they started doing layoffs to preserve capital; I was on the list because they really didn’t have the funds to do many deals.
I got a phone call from HR letting me know my position was being eliminated and that they were going to kindly grant me three weeks severance.
I told them, no, when I joined they agreed to a year’s severance, which I had insisted on because I knew the company was risky. They claimed not to know anything about that, so I emailed them the executed agreement that committed them to a year’s severance including paying my COBRA premium. They went radio silent for two days, I assume looking for their copy, which they found.
To my surprise, rather than continuing to pay my salary regularly, they sent me a check for the year’s salary in full, including a year’s worth of COBRA payment. I had a new job in about a week, so got a nice bonus, plus payment for COBRA that I didn’t use.”
27. I Wrote A Negative Review About The Company
“I was unjustifiably fired (I know, who isn’t unjustifiably fired) but this was a sales role that THEY sold me into.
I was desperate for income at the time and they were pressuring me to take it in the interview (first red flag). So due to my finances, I accepted. Anyway, 2 days into my tenure they fired the woman who hired me. They gave me a load of nonsense about why they let her go but this was the second red flag that I ignored.
A couple of weeks after that the Director of the company scheduled a meeting with me just for a catch-up.
No problem, except I over-ran a call with a client (I’ve always been told the client comes first) and so was 5 minutes late. Director was furious. ‘I’m your boss, when I say jump you say how high.’ The third red flag was ignored…
Anyway, the sales role was tough. It wasn’t the best product anyway but I certainly made the effort, was making 3x as many outbound calls as any other rep there.
One day I woke up with severe back pain. I have sciatica and it genuinely comes and goes whenever it pleases, sometimes not for months. Anyway one morning I woke up and it was searing. I could barely move. Naturally, I called in sick but made it clear I wanted to still work and could do so from home as I had a laptop and phone.
They said it was fine no need to work just rest up. Four hours later I get the phone call telling me I’m sacked.
I told the Director on the phone exactly what I thought of him and his business. I then followed this up in an email. I then wrote a scathing review on the company on Glassdoor. But none of this was enough for me, indeed the email and review I considered to be too petty to be considered revenge, and the phone call was just a natural reaction which I believe most people would have done.
So I upped my game. In my final act, I hired a hacker/programmer and got him to create a bot to DDOS the life out of their website for a week, in addition to getting him to ping their telephone lines all day so they couldn’t take any actual business calls, or receive any inquiries on their website.
I know he knows it was me.
But he could never prove it.”
26. Noisy Neighbors Got Their Power Cut
“Years ago I lived in a community of 200-plus townhouses. Most neighbors got along fine, but at some point, a unit became occupied by a bunch of guys in their early 20s. Not surprisingly, they played their stereo at a high volume. Their place was a fair distance from mine, and I consider myself pretty reasonable, but the day came when I knocked on the door and asked the guy to turn down the music.
He yelled over his shoulder to his friends, ‘Turn UP the music!’ And they did.
Shortly thereafter my car, which was parked outside, happened to have a slashed tire. When I discovered it I heard a hoot of laughter from their unit.
The neighborhood had a security guy, who told me everybody was complaining, and the owner was being fined for numerous violations. But apparently, the owner was the mother of one of the guys, and was rich, and didn’t care.
In the wee hours one night, I was awakened by a very loud, nonstop rant coming from that house. After several minutes I finally got dressed and walked over there. Every window was brightly lit and it seemed pretty clear somebody inside was strung out on substances. Under normal circumstances, nobody could maintain that kind of ranting for any length of time.
I considered my options.
The guard didn’t work that late. I wasn’t going to knock again. But the exterior of the building had a wooden door behind which were the electrical panels for all the units. I threw the main switch for that unit. It made a loud THUNK and the place immediately went dark. At the same moment, the voice also went silent, as if he’d been wired into the house current.
I waited a bit to see what would happen, half-expecting somebody to come out and investigate. Nope, I guess they all just sat there in the dark, mystified or scared.
Silence reigned for the rest of that night and thereafter. For whatever reason, I never noticed them again or heard anything about them. Guess they moved out.
But after that, the electrical panels throughout the community were locked.”
25. Be A Hypocrite? Time To Play Fire With Fire
“When I was 20 or so I moved into a townhome with 3 of my high school friends.
We were in a unit on the end of a row so we only had one adjoining unit, and when we first moved in nobody was living next door.
Eventually, we got a neighbor, and he was mostly quiet and kept to himself. But often at 4 am he would start up a saw and run it for hours, or play his electric guitar with the amp set to 11.
This frequently woke two of my roomies since the sound traveled through the adjoining wall and straight into their bedrooms. We tried knocking on his door to talk the noise over with him but he never answered.
One night my ‘top floor’ roommate and I were just hanging out in our respective rooms. He had music on in his room, but it was so quiet I could barely hear it, even with both our doors open.
We heard a banging at our door, so all 4 of us went to the door to see what was up. It was the neighbor, screaming that the music played was too loud and that he’d call the police if we didn’t turn it down. I pointed out it was barely loud enough to hear from inside our own unit and that his 4 am noise was much, much louder, but he screamed, ‘I go to work soon!
Turn it down or else!’
My roommate didn’t think it was worth the trouble so he turned off his music. I thought, screw this, we’re allowed to play music at a reasonable volume in our own home, our neighbor is getting what he deserves. So every time we heard the saw or his guitar at 4 am I called the police with a noise complaint.
He moved out soon after and we thought that was the end of having a noisy neighbor, but then a nice family moved in after him. Well, they seemed nice at first, until they started in with loud music and lots of people over every Sunday night. They’d keep this up until 2 am, and I’d go into work groggy the next day from lack of sleep.
We had a small get-together one Saturday and the husband came over to complain about the noise. This time around I just wanted to see if we could actually come to some sort of an agreement with a noisy neighbor, so I said we’d try to turn it down a bit if he’d agree to do something about his loud Sunday night gatherings.
He apologized up and down and said he didn’t realize we could hear them and agreed to end their festivities (it was a regular after-church gathering!) by 9 pm at the latest. We had no trouble after that, and they were very nice neighbors going forward.”
24. I Didn't Even Have To Quit
“After two years with a company, I’d had enough as the job I was being asked to perform bore no relation to the one I had been hired to deliver.
My company had an annual bonus scheme linked to the FY and I decided that I would stay there until my bonus was safely in my bank account, hand in my resignation, and then endure a very painful month while I worked my notice.
However, the day before I’d planned to resign I was summoned to an offsite meeting and was told that I was being made redundant with immediate effect: as I’d been with the company for two years that meant two months of salary plus extra in lieu of notice – result.
The icing on the cake was that as my role involved access to sensitive customer data I was put on immediate gardening leave and was asked to hand in my PC within the next few days.
I went home and immediately put a good bottle of champagne in the fridge to chill.”
23. Don't Pay Me? I'll Cost You A Lot More
“I worked for a guy for a week… I’d heard bad things about this guy so when he hired me I told him that the first week was going to be a trial… after three days I decided the guy was a complete jerk to his workers and not so much of a jerk to me… I knew that would change.
So I told him Friday would be my last day, and I would continue to perform efficiently until Friday and he can pay me on Friday. He got all annoyed and let me go that day. He told me he would mail me a check… I didn’t hold my breath.
I gave him two weeks… calling him a few times to ask where the check was.
‘Screw you, I ain’t paying you anything.’
6 months later I went to where he conveniently parked his six vans in the alley behind his house.
Let’s do the math… 4 tires on each of the six vans plus 12 employees who couldn’t leave to hit the service calls he had booked for the next morning.
Sidewalls are not repairable…
A lot more than writing that check for me…
A few years later I had a helper who worked for him… apparently, he still goes on about those tires and tells everyone about the incident…
The kicker… he was convinced it was his ex-wife’s new partner… couldn’t prove it so installed cameras at the back of his house… more expense.”
22. Pay Me In Exchange For The Password
“I was doing my graduation in 1997 when my dad’s company closed down for some awful reasons.
So, there I was 16 years old doing college and no money for me or my family.
As I had done computer courses in my school and secondary high school days, I was well versed with Word, Excel, and primitive coding languages (Basic, COBOL, C). An accountant contacted me for freelancing work of migrating his book accounts to Excel for 500 Rs (6.66 $) per month. As I was in dire need of money I agreed and it was settled that I will work from evening 6 to 9 every day at his house.
So, I used to travel every day to his house which was about 19 – 20 KM’s via bus which itself was costing me 100 Rs per month.
I worked for him for 35 days and there was no sign of payment, when asked he used to say let’s tally this particular worksheet then we will talk (BTW tallying was not part of the deal only migrating was).
There came a point when I ran out of funds to even travel by bus. I told him the situation to which he replied that he was sorry and currently he was low on funds and will pay me tomorrow for sure. Disappointed I left for home just thinking at the bus stop of how can I reach home, just when I saw my employer buying goods at the shop just in front of the bus stop.
The tipping point of my anger was when I saw him paying the shopkeeper 500 Rs note and 5 mins before he claimed he couldn’t pay me.
That day I kept my cool and walked about 2 ½ hours to my home hungry and dejected. The next day I borrowed some funds from my neighbor’s and visited the accountant as if nothing happened. I then zipped all the work I had done so far with a 14 digit password.
When asked for payment I got the same reply sorry tomorrow, to which I replied I won’t be coming in tomorrow as I had enough. The employer said in that case you won’t get anything for me as there was no written contract, to which I said fine and left.
The next day employer realized what had happened and called me up for a password for zip files, to which I said what work and who are you?
He started cursing me and told me that he’s smart and will get it cracked blah blah. I said best of luck and cut him off.
After a week he again called me up and said that he realized his mistake and to please provide him the password as all his client accounts which were tallied were locked. I said kindly send me my income for 36 days of work, once received I will provide him the password.
The next day he personally came to my home to pay me and asked me what happened all of a sudden. I narrated the incident at the bus stop and his face went pale. He said sorry for what happened earlier to which I said let bygones be bygones but don’t take advantage of another person’s forcedness and gain from it. I gave him the password he wanted and hoped he learned a lesson from this…”
21. I Wrote About The Company's Lies
“Several years after grad school, I was hired to be the chief scientist at a biotech firm near the LA airport… Several months after beginning work, I began questioning the scientific basis for the substance detection instruments they were making and selling, mainly to governmental agencies. I began doing experiments to determine if they had what they thought they had. What I discovered was that the substance detectors they were producing were responding to ammonia, such as in baby diapers, and not specifically to illegal substances.
They were detecting an artifact.
I wrote up my work in a report and presented it to the Technical VP. The following morning, his executive assistant came into my room and with much embarrassment told me to collect my things and that he was escorting me to the parking lot. I was fired.
About six months later, I happened to meet the Marketing VP at a local restaurant.
He came up to me and told me, ‘You were right. The company collapsed and is now in bankruptcy.’ Sweet revenge.”
20. School Had No Other Choice But To Use My Book
“I was teaching science including senior Chemistry at a private school. At that time, in the mid to late 90s, a lot of linked private schools were doing anything and everything to ensure a meek and compliant workforce.
The remaining few brothers and nuns as well as former brothers were serious about hanging onto their power. As a result, any staff member who held any kind of branch position within the Union was got rid of by one means or another.
I saw it happen to a number of colleagues around the same time.
In my case, I was subjected to daily bullying episodes by the Principal. I eventually collapsed with a mental breakdown and was dismissed.
When I recovered I found work at a public school and I am still there. I co-authored a Chemistry textbook.
What happened to the private school? Instead of having me, a well-respected teacher and author, they have had well over two decades of a number of Chemistry teachers. Varying quality. Varying levels of experience. At times it has been a struggle to find anyone.
When the book I co-authored was released, the then teacher wanted it for her class.
She ordered it. The school secretary canceled the order and ordered a different book. The teacher could not understand why. I never told her. She eventually managed to get my book.
So not only has the school had some difficulty in replacing me, they ended up using my book to teach from.”
19. Neighbor Felt How The Bass Feels
“My apartment complex has good sound insulation, but not for low-frequency sounds… Which I discovered when my neighbor started using her home theater system for the alarm clock. At some ungodly hour like 4:30 am.
And no, the sound itself was not super loud.
Actually, you could barely hear the music even if you lean your ear to the wall, but the low-frequency booms were drilling through as if there was no wall at all.
Several attempts to reason her into switching off the sub-woofer were met with a total lack of understanding. Maybe she did not know what a sub-woofer is, or how do you disable it. Or just thought I’m making things up, after all, she’s not playing the music ‘that’ loud…
This way or that, I had no choice but to resort to some kind of devilish counter-action. Sure, the person waking up at 4:30 would go to bed at 10 pm or even 9…
So. Each day I have to wake up to the morning boom-boom, I’m detaching my sub-woofer, putting it next to the bedroom wall, plugging it into the laptop, and scheduling an hour-long playlist with some juicy bass part to start at 9 pm (sometimes, I’m not back from work at this hour).
Just to give the neighbor a rough idea of how it feels.
Could be a coincidence, but it took less than a week to have the morning sound attacks stopped completely.”
18. I Used The Strange Neighbor's Picture In My Target Practice
“Many years ago I had a strange neighbor that lived with his mother next door. I did not speak with them but I would wave if I saw them to be polite.
A few years later I had fallen asleep on the couch and heard this weird noise by the window like scratching.
I thought it was my cat and started checking. I see the screen going up in the window and two arms, I started screaming get out of here and slammed down the storm window.
I woke my son up and called the police, unfortunately, my description was two arms of a Caucasian male. This was in the country so not a lot of people around.
Four police cars later and after getting my story they went next door. I figured they were asking if they saw anything, but no they were hauling out the guy next door. They found him hiding under a car in the garage. They told me they knew this guy and he had been in trouble before. He had actually broken into my house when the people before me lived there.
That would have been good to know before…
So we go to court and you can tell this guy is not right in his mind when he talks to the judge stating he doesn’t understand: so after my victim impact statement, they hold him over and say I can go but not to worry he will not be back.
I do not know what happened but he was back two weeks later and now I have to live next to this guy.
All I could think of was this, my neighbor knows when I am home or at work so what exactly were his motives to break in knowing we were home? Scared me to death and I had two kids to think about (my daughter was not home the night this happened luckily).
So I called my brother and he came over with a shotgun to teach me target practice.
I printed off pictures of this guy’s mugshot to use for target practice in my backyard. When I was done, I posted them around my property so he would get the message…
Not sneaky but hopefully scared him off. I never had trouble for the next year I lived there but I also never leave a window or door unlocked at night either. Even in the summer months.
Luckily I have much nicer neighbors now and a much better gun to protect myself with if the need arises.”
17. Don't Like My Bike? I'll Use Your Car As My Next Art Project
“So when I was 18 I bought an electric bike. It kinda looks like a moped but it had pedals for when the battery died. Before I bought it I did my research. In my city, as long as I had a proper crash helmet and proof I was over 16 I could ride it anywhere a regular bicycle was allowed. I even printed off a bunch of stuff from our city bylaws and kept them on the bike just in case I was hassled.
Now bear in mind, my top speed was only 35. And that was on a perfect battery. This thing was used so I could maybe top 25 normally. Only got to 35 immediately after I charged it and only for a half-hour. The only time I went on the road was on the little backroad of my city where it’s so quiet kids can play street hockey.
One hot summer day I decided I would head over to the store and get a Slurpee.
I only had to drive for two minutes on the back road to get to it. I turn the first corner and noticed in my side mirror a car coming up behind me, so I do what I always do, I pull over as much as I can to the point I’m in the gutter. This JERK cuts me off to the point that even slamming on the brakes and swerving was almost not good enough.
As I came up beside his driver’s door he screams at me that I shouldn’t be on the road (typing this out has made me think about what he has done to other people on bikes.) Along with a few other obscenities that I don’t really want to say.
Now here’s the really funny part of this story. When he cut me off, he made a turn down a street that looped back around to the same street we were on.
So after I went and got my Slurpee I went home and told my dad about it. He wanted to go and find the guy and throttle him but I convinced him I would handle it. I had a very interesting life at that point and I didn’t take crap from people like that jerk.
Reminder people, I was 18 at the time. Looking back now I would have gone a different route.
Maybe called the cops or something. But I was a new adult teenager who did not like the law because I had seen them taking advantage of the people in my area too much because we were in ‘the hood’.
I went to the library and photocopied all of the papers I had on the rules of my bike and went back home and waited. At around 2 am I left my house and walked down to that street.
Only took a couple of minutes to find that piece of crap rust bucket hatchback. I then proceeded to use some adhesive spray and plaster those papers all over the doors and hood of that car. Took special care to make sure they all lined up nice and neat. (Honestly, it looked kinda cool when I was done because I had extra copies to make sure you could not see any paint underneath) I even cut out where the handles were and all that.
Then I calmly walked back home and went to bed.
A week later I was driving to the store and saw a moving truck there. Being the jerk I was I got another Slurpee and drove back right in front of his house while drinking it. We made eye contact as I drove by and he never said a word to me. (I was kinda nervous when he saw me but I tried to not show it) I never saw him again and I never heard anything about it.
I never got pictures because this was when cellphones with cameras were just coming into style and were really expensive.
I did make my dad drive down there so he could see what I did and I have never seen him laugh so hard.”
16. I Avenged The Trapped Squirrels
“The family of my significant other in high school rescued a litter of grey squirrels from a nest after their mother was hit by a car. They fed them using doll bottles and raised them for a few months. Her dad built a tall cage for them where they could later come and go as they pleased. That was their home base where they could always find food, water, and security.
They were very tame and we could hand-feed them and they’d crawl up our pants and shirt and sit on our shoulders. They would greet us like dogs.
The neighbor behind the house didn’t think the suburbs were any place for tame squirrels so he set a trap, caught all six of them, and did horrible things to them.
My partner was devastated.
One night after a bit of drinking, I drove around the block, leaned my bike against a tree by the road a few houses away, walked over, unrolled his garden hose, unscrewed the nozzle, and fed a few feet through the mail slot of his front door, turned on the water and walked to my bike and drove home.”
15. Neighbor Got Serenaded By Led Zeppelin
“I had a neighbor that would come in from work very early in the morning, usually around one or two AM. Once home, he and his buddies would start the party, loud music, loud talking, uncontrollably bouncing off of walls, and such.
I had to get up around five in the morning and this noise was preventing me from getting my sleep before work.
I tried speaking to him about this and he’d promise to keep the volume down — it never happened. After the third or fourth attempt, it was time to fight fire with fire.
I had a 500-watt Kenwood stereo, four Pioneer PL-120 speakers, a Dual turntable, and a nice equalizer. I introduced my neighbor to Led Zeppelin’s live album ‘The Song Remains The Same.’
The bass response on the equalizer was cranked, the speakers placed face down resting just a few inches above the floor and the turntable set on repeat. I made certain to place the speakers over tiled areas so as to not allow the carpet to muffle the sound. He was serenaded by Zeppelin from 5:30–6:00 AM until I came in from work around 4:30 that afternoon. This went on all day, while he was trying to sleep, and for about a week before he raised the white flag of truce.
He kept his music down and there were no more wasted parties at one in the morning.”
14. I Messed With The Company's System Before Leaving
“Many, many moons ago – pre-Windows, actually – I worked for a company that specialized in downhole analysis. They had a very detailed library of tools that were developed in Microsoft ProBasic.
They worked, but they were very slow. When I took the job, there were over 800 open tickets about the software, most of them dealing with the speed issue.
This is kinda long but bear with me.
Over the next two years, I closed all but two of the tickets and improved the throughput on the application by more than 500%. A job that used to take 15 minutes to run now ran in about 40 seconds.
The customers were ecstatic. The overall change that I made was so simple that I never told anyone what it was, I just basked in the glory.
In the application, there was a lot of looping. In ProBasic, and today’s Visual Basic, the code would look something like this:
For Index1 = StartValue to EndValue
… bunch of code statements to be executed
Next Index1
However, arithmetic operations in ProBasic and VBasic run much faster if the datatype of the variable is an integer.
Much, much faster. And NONE of the indexes were declared as integers in this application. They would simply have a statement like:
Dim Index1, Index2, SomeOtherVariable
All three of these would be typed as double precision. I simply went through and changed the Dims to something like this:
Dim Index1 as Integer, Index2 as Integer, SomeOtherVariable as Long
It took me a while to do it because I had to go through every piece of code and determine if Integer or Long was the correct datatype based on the max value that the variable would ever assume.
Okay. Now we get to the meat of the situation. At the end of my second year, I was given a horrible performance review. It basically stated that I was not following directions and not achieving any progress. I went ballistic. I told my boss that I wouldn’t sign it and requested a second meeting that afternoon. I spent the rest of the day pulling together all my progress reports and metrics and laid them out for him in the afternoon meeting.
Turned out that he had ignored every single one that I had filed in two years, but he still insisted that the review would have to stand. I refused to sign it again.
I immediately got on the phone and found a new job, as in starting next Monday. Before I left that day, I spent about an hour editing every single module and I think you can guess what I did.
Yep – deleted ‘as Integer’ and ‘as Long’ from every statement. I then recompiled the library, then walked down to the boss’s office, gave him my keys, and walked out.”
13. I Threw The Food In The Garbage
“I used to work at a gym and when I got fired I did something that was kind of a jerk move, but they deserved it.
I pulled something straight out of Hollywood.
There was a banquet table because it was Friday and every Friday the employees would get free lunch provided by the company. There was pizza, cupcakes, French bread, and stuff to make burritos with, and even cinnamon rolls and Mini Donuts. After I got fired, because instead of asking what the problem was and writing me up and giving me a warning my boss just decided to fire me without a second thought, I went into the break room and packed up all of the food in styrofoam takeout containers and left with all of it in a garbage bag.
I made myself two burritos in my car, ate a couple of the donuts and cinnamon rolls, and threw all of the sweets away in the garbage. I then shared the rest of the food with my family and it lasted for three meals for 10 people.
Needless to say, I saw it in an episode of Family Guy and I decided to do the same thing.
It was well worth it. I suggest doing this to anyone that got you fired.”
12. Company Left Me Alone When They Realized I Won't Give An Answer
“I was working in a Canadian company in sales. My job was to sell our services. My family ran two companies that require the particular service the company offers. The two companies we ran require the service on very large scales, more than any of their clients or a few large clients combined. And we have a lot of friends in the same industry with a similar scale.
I was laid off disregarding my work and effort to set up a fairly large account and all the work to maintain it due to company politics. There were a couple of departments fighting over the client I was maintaining. So after they gave me the msg, I basically gave them a hint then left. They had a few people call a couple of times to casually chat to try to get a confirmation on what my hint means, I just enhanced the hint but never confirmed anything.
After they realized I will never say yes nor no, or anything concrete, they just left me alone.”
11. Unprofessional Store Lost Their Business
“I was working at a Nissan dealership in Orlando in 1992 as a finance manager. I was fired for no reason to allow the owner’s secretary’s husband to fill my shoes. He was let go from his job as an engineer and had no car business or financial training at all.
The guy I had worked with (another finance manager at the store), up until that time, was a good guy and quite capable. We kept in touch, as I took over the finance department in the Nissan store across town. A dealer in Chicago, who I had worked for previously, had just bought a Nissan store and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, but before I left I set it up so the guy at the other store took my place.
Not too long after that, the other store went out of business, thanks to their unprofessional way of doing business.”
10. Don't Share Your Breach Of Contract Story To Anyone
“I work in Tech and a junior colleague I had mentored who was also a contractor had been told his contract would not be renewed at the end of the month. He had a month’s notice.
Speaking with him at lunch and discussing his next moves, he had confided in me that some automated scripts he had created, he had now deleted since he was not happy at his non-renewal. I was horrified and strongly advised him to recover them immediately and never to take such actions as it was essentially a breach of contract and worse, could land him in serious trouble even with the law.
He was destroying the company’s IP.
He was surprised as he thought I would have taken his side. Of course, he did not listen to me and his lead found out about the action that same day. I saw him being escorted from the premises. He of course did not remain in touch with me.
Very wrong. There’s always the next job for you.
Don’t be vindictive to your former employers, no matter the temptation.”
9. Want Your Key Back? Tell The Weird Guy To Fetch It
“I worked for Wallymart for three months.
I was a supervisor and also drove machines. For some reason, they didn’t keep me. The day I was let go, I had just gotten off a machine and put the key in my pocket.
So, here’s the weird thing about Wallymart. No one has a last name. It’s Bobby Q… Rodney O. You’re not even supposed to be friendly with people or speak of personal details like where you live.
So the day I was let go, it was by my boss, and the second in command – who was this eager ALLL WALLYMART rules kind of guy named Kevin. Yeah, Wallymart is the best. So they take me in a room and tell me I’m not a ‘good fit.’ Even though I didn’t even know this Kevin O. guy, never worked for him or anything.
So I get up to leave and he says, ‘I need you to sign some documents.’ So I said, ‘Why would I sign anything. Screw you, Kevin O.’
So the next day, I get a call from HR at the store. Now here’s the other weird thing about Wallymart… they always say ‘Wallymart’ never anything else… ‘This is Wallymart property…’ ‘This is Wallymart policy.’ They never say the company, as in ‘company policy.’ So this lady says, ‘You left with Wallymart property yesterday.’ Meaning I still had a key for the machine in my pocket.
Which I did. She said, ‘We would like it back. It’s Wallymart property.’
So I said, ‘No problem. But I’m not driving back to your store. You fired me. If you want your key, tell Kevin O. to come directly to my house and ring the doorbell, in person, by himself. I’ll give him the key.’
Never heard from them again.”
8. I Registered Her To Random Subscriptions
“I worked retail in a mall at the store with the yellow monkey fruit in the name. I came into the store due to a major turnover in management. The store then had a zero-tolerance policy on everything. The store manager was someone I thought was my friend. She informed the district manager of a 10% senior discount I gave someone who was not a senior.
I was fired. I realize that I was wrong but the manager of the store could have taken me aside and warned me not to do it again. I obviously felt betrayed. I got my revenge by going to the chain bookstore’s magazine section. I picked up and obtained many subscription postcards. I sent to her address over 85 subscriptions. I also had the same number of subscriptions sent in the manager’s name to each of her neighbor’s addresses.
She didn’t get along with them due to a problem with sprinklers and property lines.
Apparently, they started coming and didn’t stop for 3 to 4 months. She had to write each of the periodicals and request a stop of subscriptions. There were so many she never got them all to straighten out. Another weird thing that happened was she began to receive Franklin Mint collections, music club CDs, and Christmas ornaments clubs which I had nothing to do with.
She tried to catch me by stopping by to see me and just having ‘friendly’ conversations. Because I didn’t catch on to what she was up to until way after the fact, I came off looking innocent. I don’t regret these actions and definitely was satisfied with the results.”
7. I Messed Up Their Windshield
“Years ago I camped with a girl on Hermit Island, Maine. Beautiful place; well-preserved nature on a rugged coastal island. Well-spaced campsites among the stunted coastal forest, quiet, water teeming with sea life. Family-run and family-friendly. Splendid, charming place.
You drive there across a tidal flat as long as the tide isn’t high.
We loved it so much, we kept extending our stay for new nights.
Well, Hermit Island is popular and booked well in advance. This meant that if we wanted to stay additional nights, we had to pack up one site in the morning and move to a different site that was open for a couple of days.
That’s how we ran into ‘the boys’.
Three of them stayed in one tent about 100 yards from our campsite. Talk about inconsiderate neighbors! These fellows turned out to be awful.
They arrived at their site in the late afternoon. Clumsily set up their tent. That was entertaining.
It’s not that they were a bad group. By day they were passably polite. But they were young, socially immature, and somewhat clueless. Judging from the evidence, I guessed they were college kids from one of the local schools.
At 1:00 in the morning, predictably enough, I woke to need to use the toilet. Normally this means oozing out of the tent, tottering a few steps into the woods, and hosing down a tree.
Not this night.
I’d eaten a seafood pasta dinner with all the trimmings.
Well… ‘eaten’ isn’t accurate. More like greedily inhaled.
Regardless, it was migration time.
So I trudged to the bathroom… which took me past the boy’s tent.
There was some party going on in there!
Lit by a flashlight, the boys propounded articulate opinions on weighty college matters on the path to self-discovery. Classic subjects such as the meaning of life; the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe; how the hotness of some girls improves with booze.
Classic.
I’m certain they were inebriated.
At one in the morning, they talked loudly enough to be obnoxious.
But the conversation was punctuated by sudden expressions of utter astonishment, elevating the sound level by a factor of at least two.
One of them would exclaim ‘WOW!’ at something, and the others would loudly chime in ‘I KNOW, RIGHT?!’
‘NO LIE! ME TOO!’
And it went like that, round after round after round.
I rolled my eyes and trudged to my business meeting in the bathroom.
They were still at it on the return trip. Louder, if anything.
I understand wanting to have a good time. But zero-dark-90 was far past time to get quiet.
I walked twenty feet into their site, and in a low, calm voice asked them to please keep it a little quieter.
‘Did you hear that? WHO SAID THAT!?’ one of them asked.
‘I didn’t hear anything,’ said another.
Low and clear I said ‘Do you mind? I asked you to be quiet. It’s one-thirty in the morning and we’re all trying to sleep.’
‘THERE IT IS AGAIN! THAT VOICE!’
‘YEAH! I THINK I HEARD IT TOO!’
Bizarre. I didn’t know what to think. They behaved as if they were camped in a forest in a remote glacial valley in Alaska, and the next human beings were a hundred miles away…
Or they’re hallucinating.
I shook my head and went back to my tent to sleep.
Only I didn’t sleep. I was awake. And the night was quiet enough that I could easily hear them. The conversation was now about the cafeteria food.
Thirty minutes later I was annoyed.
I walked back to the boy’s site and listened to them. The discussion now centered on sports statistics.
Interesting, actually, but I wanted to sleep. I shined my light on the tent but they didn’t notice because they still had their light on inside the tent.
My eyes fell onto some rotten wood they brought back to their site to build a fire. The wood was so wet and punky it nearly fell apart under my feet. Fools!
I picked up a large piece of wood and threw it in a high arc.
It landed solidly on the tent fly.
‘WHOA! WHAT WAS THAT?!’
‘I THINK A TREE JUST FELL ON THE TENT!’
‘NO WAY!’
‘JESUS! THAT WAS REALLY SCARY!’
Blessed silence descended. I walked away.
The possibility occurred to me that these fellows had never been camping before. Were they scared? They had no clue about anything!
They also didn’t get out of their tent to investigate.
Back in my sleeping bag, I nodded off… and woke when I heard the boys back at it again. By now I was sure that they’d stay awake until the sun came up.
And I was annoyed.
What to do? Call the campground manager?
Instead, I took matters into my own hands.
I located our travel medical kit. Extracted the large container of petroleum jelly.
Vaseline. Grabbed a couple of paper towels and went back to the boy’s site.
Noisy as ever. Good enough. I set to work polishing every window on their car with Vaseline.
Windshield. Side windows. Rear window. Mirrors.
Generously applied.
For good measure, I thickly gobbed the stuff on the windshield wipers. Both sides.
I tried the car door. Locked. Thank god, actually; I had debated smearing Vaseline over the inside of the windows.
Probably a step too far.
I listened. The boys, none the wiser, now yakked about popular drinking games.
New idea. Brazenly, I walked around their tent and gently loosened the stakes holding down their tent. Loosened, but not fully removed. The front stake suspending the main tent pole I loosened enough that it would likely fail if the tent walls were bumped hard enough.
Evil laughter like Sylvester The Cat from Looney Tunes threatened to bubble out.
Feeling – what?… better? hate to say it, but yes, I was feeling better – I went back to my tent and promptly fell asleep. Slept like a passive-aggressive baby.
Woke at 8:00. Everything was quiet as a church.
I got dressed, stretched, and walked to the bathroom for the morning ablutions.
The boy’s tent was silent. And collapsed like a folded souffle.
Their car was covered in morning dew.
I knew what lay beneath the dew on the window glass. For anyone who doesn’t know, Vaseline is a difficult and time-consuming substance to remove from glass. It’s all the harder when you have none of the tools or chemicals available at your campsite necessary to remove the stuff.
Hehhehhhehhhehhh…
Inside, a bed of glowing coals warmed my thoughts. I walked on, feigning innocence.
This is plausible as I can be persuasively clueless at times.
I heard about it all through breakfast.
I feigned zero-knowledge around my girl at the boys’ swelling animation. First, they woke to a collapsed tent, with all the predictable blaming and acrimony between them.
That was fun.
Then an hour later they discovered that the night dew had congealed into ‘a gooey clingy substance’ on their car that had a special affinity for window glass.
Wonder transformed into bewilderment. Then to annoyance. Then to a steady river of invectives.
‘What’s going on over there?’ I casually asked the morning air while we drank coffee.
Sometimes by mid-morning, they figured out that somebody had done this to them.
Music to my ears.
What did the boys do to clean it up? Everything wrong! They wound the windows down into the door, assuring that the bottom window seal was coated in Vaseline.
Apparently, every time they lowered and raised the windows, the windows got freshly polished with a coat of Vaseline.
Yeah? Wait till you try the windshield wipers. I silently prayed to be nearby when that happened. Alas, I wouldn’t get that lucky.
Meanwhile, they couldn’t drive anywhere because they couldn’t see anything through the windows.
Last I saw they had used up their entire roll of paper towels trying to remove the grease and had made zero progress to improve visibility through the windows.
I was grinning like a fool.
We went to the beach for a day of sand and surf.
The boys were gone when we got back to the campsite in the late evening. That was a relief.
Days later I heard from campground staff that it took the boys most of a day to clean the glass enough that they could drive. Slowly. Hungover. By then they were in a foul mood.
Along the way, several families complained about all their cussing. The boys were ‘gently’ reminded that check-out was 11:00 AM. By early afternoon ‘gentle reminders’ turned into the firm direction to vacate their site. They continued cleaning the windows at the camp store after they purchased several more rolls of paper towels.
Word is that they never really got the windshield clean. They got a small patch of the windshield clean enough to see through well enough to drive off the island.
Good riddance. I would have handed over my grandmother to see their reaction when they switched on the windshield wiper.
Did I get caught? Worse! I confessed the whole thing to my significant other driving home days later. She appraised me with gape-mouthed astonishment. I told her they had kept me up for two hours. Fair is fair. She looked skeptical.
No question, not my proudest moment.
Then I’d argue it was fairly well earned. Today? Well yeah, like so many things, I would have handled it differently.”
6. Neighbor Complained About My "Loud" Music
“I had a next-door neighbor who moved in about five years after I did. When she moved in, I came over and brought her mail that had been delivered to me in error. So we’d met!
A couple of months later, I get a knock at my door and a cop is on my porch asking if I’d been playing my music really loud all day and night. I say no, but I had had my old (from the 70s) stereo on while I cleaned the house on Saturday. It wasn’t loud. My toddler fell asleep in the chair next to the stereo WHILE THE MUSIC WAS ON.
Apparently, this neighbor had called the police THREE TIMES that weekend to complain. The cop said he couldn’t hear anything and left. The next day, I confronted her and told her if she had a problem, to come to me directly. I never played that stereo again, but that witch went all over the neighborhood telling anyone who would listen that we continue to play music loud and disrupt her sleep.
This went on for years until we moved. Eight years later, we get ready to move and my husband tells me he has put rotten chicken livers in her outside vents. I hope she NEVER figures out where that horrible smell is coming from!!”
5. I Messed Up The Store's Ice Cream, Walked Out, Then Got A Different Job
“20 odd years ago, before the turn of the century, as a student I spent a summer working at a Friendly’s.
Think of it as a Denny’s with a large ice cream bar. 2 tone pink uniforms. Food poisoning on the regular. The boss was a prototype Bill Lundberg with a dorky mustache named Dwayne. Always trying to get invited to parties with kids half his age.
As a waiter there I made ok earnings, about $100 daily. For about 150 tables over a ten-hour shift. For that, I would have food thrown at me.
My butt was pinched by creepy old men. I’m a six-foot-four inch tall guy and I would have someone want to fight me daily. As a cross-section of the average public, it was a great argument to exterminate humanity. I would have half a dozen over-the-top horror stories nightly. My roommates grew numb to them. As did I.
After 3 months my growing hatred was obvious enough for even Dwayne to notice.
He brought me into the large walk-in freezer for a talk. He told me anytime the mistreatment I was putting up with got too bad, I could go in there and punch some of the hundred or so frozen 5-gallon ice cream containers. See, he figured I would break a knuckle or bruise a bone, he would get a good laugh and that would be it.
What he didn’t know was as a kid, I did martial arts that had me smashing cinder blocks. So a few times a day, for a few weeks, I would ravage out these thick paper drums wrapped around crystallized sugar and milk, then I would turn them around and put them back behind others on the shelf. I even let him spy on me pawing weakly at the one’s upfront.
His assistant managers said this was a bad idea. Heard him giggling.
So eventually I got fed up. I believe it was after being told I would cover the bill, again, for some idiot who had a big public hissy fit because they wanted a soda we didn’t carry. I walked out, got a job at Domino’s, and came back half an hour later to quit.
Dwayne made a big show of saying I couldn’t quit because I was fired. I had a bit of fun with that back and forth, but the real enjoyment came days later. When Dwayne realized I had destroyed nearly the entire stock of ice cream. At his urging. I heard from a friend who still worked there that the next day they had to turn down thousands of requests and had a sign up for weeks that there was no ice cream available.
That was also the time frame for a mass exodus of all the smart and competent employees. After about a month I didn’t know anyone left who worked there.”
4. Husband Glued The Neighbor's Garage Door To The Driveway
“We moved into a new apartment and encountered the neighbor from the underworld.
He threatened to call the police on my 11-year-old son and his friend for sitting on the low wall outside the block, he made nasty remarks to our children whenever he saw them in the street, he photographed them from his balcony, etc, etc. He was well known in the area for his obnoxious behavior. At that time, none of this was specifically illegal. This man was one of the most spiteful poisonous individuals I ever met.
My husband confronted him a few times but he ran inside and closed his door (a coward too). One day my husband had had enough, went to the local hardware shop, and bought several tubes of industrial-strength glue. At 2 am when the street was quiet, my husband went downstairs and glued his garage door to the concrete driveway. We got up early the next morning to watch the fun when he tried to open his garage door and waved to him when he heard our laughter and looked up at our balcony.
He knew who did it but couldn’t prove it. He stopped harassing our kids and avoided us until we moved out. It is impossible to describe how deeply satisfying this was, we laughed about it for years.”
3. I Left The Restaurant Along With The Head Chef
“Firstly I wasn’t fired or let go, I just hated my job so I left! Many years ago I was a Catering Manager in a very large unit that employed 100’s of staff (white collar/blue collar and manufacturing operatives) and operated 24 hrs a day 7 days a week.
I worked Mon-Fri, my hours were approx 7 am until 3 pm. On my shift, we did breakfast, lunch and served snacks throughout also. There were two off shifts who basically did a mirror image of what we did but at strange times of the night, eg breakfast at 11 pm, etc. I hadn’t planned what was about to unfold but it all seemed to fit nicely into place over what happened to be the last few days of my employ!
My Head Chef on the same shift as me got another job and they wanted him to start almost immediately, so I, being the good manager agreed that he could leave at the end of the week (Fri). But what I didn’t know was that one of my Head Chefs on the off shifts also got another job but decided to not give me any notice and was not going to come into work on Friday!
I kept all this information to myself as I had a plan. Friday was always a busy day, with lots to do for not only that day but also plan for the weekend and the following week. Some suppliers had their usual phone calls that day and commented that it was an unusually large order (bread/pastries/milk) whilst others were dismayed to either get very small orders or no order at all (butcher/fish/dry goods, etc).
I wiped the stock sheets on the computer, wiped the daily/weekly/monthly allowance/credit sales! And no planning was done for the following week at all, just for good measure!
I left the office on Friday at 3 pm along with my Head Chef knowing an enormous amount of stuff was going to hit the fan in a couple of hours when the off shift started with no Head Chef, very little food, and nothing organized for the weekend or the following week!
I did hear through the g*******e that it was massive chaos for a few days and my name was cursed rather a lot for a long time afterward! I was just glad it happened at the end of the month and my salary was already in the bank, I probably lost a few days’ holiday pay I can’t really remember. My ex-wife, kids, and I went away for the weekend and had a great relaxing time and on Monday morning I set myself up as self-employed and did a lot of consultancy work and never looked back, except with a wry smile now and again.
I’ve left out of this brief story the reasons why I did what I did but you’ll just have to believe me that they really did deserve everything they got and more!”
2. I Gave The Store's Golf Balls Away Before Leaving
“I worked for a golf course for a summer. I’ll admit I wasn’t the best employee (I was pretty bad at driving the golf carts, I didn’t have my driver’s license yet), but the only part of the job I truly hated was washing the range balls. There was no one designated to work on it, but every time I worked there, I was the one stuck doing it.
You had to dump hundreds of balls into this cleaning machine that always got clogged, it took forever. These balls were to be sort of rented using tokens you could buy at the course’s store, and I also had to take these tokens back to the store. The last time I worked there, I got the key stuck in the lock to get out the tokens.
After I left, what I heard happened was that everyone just opened this unlocked cabinet to get as many range balls as their hearts desired. I was let go from my job, but they lost a whole revenue stream in the process!”
1. Rude Neighbor Has An Opossum Visitor
“In the mid-’90s my wife and I lived in an apartment above a woman who was rude, noisy, hateful, and constantly grouchy.
No matter how nice we tried to be to her, she found countless reasons to be rude and complain about everything. One evening we heard a commotion on our deck and discovered an opossum there. I swatted it with a broom and scooped it up in a box, intending to take it across the street and release it.
While we were dealing with the animal, we saw the rude neighbor leave.
Inspiration struck. I’d never seen her lock her deadbolt. She usually just locked the doorknob and pulled the door to. My wife and I went downstairs with the opossum in the box and it took me only a few seconds to card the neighbor’s door. I then turned the animal loose in her apartment and my wife & I went back upstairs to wait for her to come back home.
About an hour later when she returned, my wife & I lied on the floor and pressed our ears to it waiting for the screams, but nothing happened. After 30 minutes we gave up. Later, we were lying in bed talking and wondering why she’d never found the opossum in her apartment when we suddenly heard blood-curdling screams from the bedroom directly below us, followed by the sound of her running out of her apartment and slamming the door while still screaming.
We laughed until we couldn’t breathe. The next day we learned from the maintenance guy who had to remove the opossum from her apartment that when she’d finally gone into her bedroom and turned on the light, there it was sitting in the middle of her bed. They both concluded that it had somehow managed to crawl through the unused dryer vent into her apartment and we certainly never told them what we’d done.”
