People Hash Over Their Most Interesting Revenge Story
14. Getting Payback On An Internet Troll
They need to learn sooner than later.
“So I found this guy a while back and have been sharing my story ever since.
I am not entirely proud of what I did to this man’s life, but I do think it was justified. I do think that sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.
This is the story of the time I ruined the life of an online troll. Now, this may sound extreme, however, I believe it was justified given the circumstance and nature of my encounter.
To understand how I found this individual, I need to take you back to 2015.
It was in 2015 that I would spend my days Googling pointless topics. One day, I decided to look up opinions on the meaning of life. I scrolled through various pages of search engine results until I came across the concept of Nihilism.
What is Nihilism?
Nihilism interested me because it was unlike any other belief I found on my search for the meaning of life.
To put it simply, Nihilism is the belief that the world is meaningless. It is a pessimistic approach to life, which suggests that there is no point in life because nothing holds real relevance.
Nihilism can make people believe existence does not matter therefore their actions do not either. Many people view Nihilism as a real belief that opposes our human nature to seek significance. I wanted to speak to a real-life Nihilist and hear their opinions on life.
What I found shocked me.
Upon discovering Nihilism, I joined several social media groups surrounding the topic. These groups were full of dark humor and memes that made fun of life and passing away. Comments such as “existence is misery” were common to see. In these groups, I came across a few genuine Nihilists.
The community was predominantly made up of people who were depressed, or people who would see the humor in depression.
The Nihilist approach meant that depression was not important, because nothing is relevant. I found that the constant sharing of these kinds of dark, life-threatening memes meant that people become desensitized. People would believe that their existence is meaningless, which is not a good thought to have if you are dealing with genuine depression.
I spoke to one individual privately who said they did not want to live anymore.
They told me “the world is not real but my sadness is.” The world is not real, but my sadness is.
This made me realize that Nihilism and depression are a bad combination.
I reassured this person and told them they were important. A few months later, I went to get in touch to see how they were getting on but I discovered that their social media account had vanished.
Fast forward to mid-2016 and I get a notification from one of the Nihilist groups.
It was someone seeking genuine advice. They said they were scared. Upon checking the comments of the post, I noticed one person giving them awful advice. The person giving the advice was the troll whose life I went on to ruin. I will refer to this troll as Nigel.
At the time, I thought that Nigel was being edgy for the sake of it but this was not the case. I thought back to the time when I spoke to the person who told me their sadness was real but the world was not.
The fact they had disappeared off social media gave me goosebumps. I assumed that the worse had happened and that this could become a reoccurring story in this group. There were many more damaging comments to other people by Nigel.
The First Warning
I realized that Nigel was not your ordinary troll and that I had to do something to stop him.
I created a fake profile to contact Nigel. At this time, I had no intention to ruin his life, I just wanted to stop him from ruining the lives of others. On my fake profile, I told him that I had seen his comments and that they could have a devastating effect.
He replied to tell me that he did not care,
From my understanding, Nigel had the belief that depression was a weakness to humanity. It appeared he was on a mission to sift out the weak members of society. It was almost like he got a buzz from it, some weird kick that motivated him to do it that I could not understand.
I warned Nigel that if continued, there would repercussions.
He told me that he did not care and then blocked my fake profile. I logged into my genuine profile and checked for new posts by Nigel. A day later, I saw that he was back to his old tricks.
He was, yet again, giving self-destructive advice to another mentally tortured soul.
The Second Warning
Nigel had made a crucial mistake by not setting his social media profile to private. I was able to see every post that he had ever made, as well as the friends that he had.
Nigel was a family man and made it clear on social media how much his wife meant to him. I decided that I would give Nigel his second warning. This time I would make it more personal. This time I wanted to put the fear into him.
Within ten minutes, I was able to find Nigel’s home address. I decided that I would write a letter to his address. This letter was handwritten to add a personal touch.
On the envelope, I addressed the letter to his wife’s name so that he would not be able to simply brush it under the carpet.
The letter read the following –
“Your husband continues to give dangerous advice online and he must be stopped. Could you please let him know that this is his final warning? I will be watching.”
The letter was sent with the intention to make Nigel stop doing what he does.
I thought that this would be the only way that I could get through to him. The more I thought about it, the more I felt guilty that his wife may be living in fear. This was something I did not take into consideration initially.
My mission to stop Nigel clouded my thought, however, I knew this was necessary for the greater good.
The Final Blow
It had been a month since I wrote the letter and I had not seen a single post from Nigel.
I thought maybe I had finally got through to him, but I was wrong.
Another month had passed and Nigel was back at it again. I was disappointed, however, I was not prepared to give up. I reached out to the depressed victims to let them know they had my support. Nigel had to pay for his actions, but how?
I decided to take a deeper look into Nigel’s personal life. His use of the internet meant that his life was essentially an open book.
I was stunned when I discovered that he worked at a care home. He was not someone I could trust in society to care for others.
I knew I had to deliver the final blow.
Nigel’s Linkedin profile revealed that he was a senior member at a care home. This care home was reputable and risked their reputation by hiring him. I dug deep to pull out a barrage of screenshots I had of Nigel’s activity online.
After some contemplation, I decided that I would get in touch with the care home via their social media page. I logged into the fake profile via a proxy and sent the screenshots. I did not believe that he was fit to be trusted with human life.
A member of staff replied to say that the case had been handed over to the CEO.
The Aftermath
A week later, Nigel was no longer on the company website and had also removed the care home from his Linkedin page.
It was clear that his actions had caused him to lose his job.
Nigel’s relationship status had changed from “In a relationship” to “It’s complicated.”
In almost an instant, he had lost his job and damaged his relationship with his family. Nigel had completely stopped posting on social media and eventually shut his account. This guy’s life was turned upside down, and it all stemmed from his actions online.
I have comfort in knowing that he will never offer damaging advice again.
Everybody has the right to an opinion, but nobody has the right to prey on the vulnerable. Do I feel guilty? Of course, but then I remember all of those people that he sought to destroy.
This man was in a position of care. What if my actions had saved the life of someone? It is these thoughts that make my guilt fade away.”
13. My Bestie's Mom Thought I Was A Loser... Until I Proved Her Otherwise Years Later
“One of my best friends since middle school was a super high achiever growing up, and her mom hated me.
My family is much lower-class than hers, and while my friend was being offered whatever she needed in terms of a push to succeed, I was being left home alone while my parents both worked and partied from a young age.
At one point when I was 12, my friend’s mom told me to my face that she didn’t like me, thought I was disrespectful and that I was going nowhere in life, and that I was going to be a bad influence on her daughter.
My friend and I still stayed close through high school and wound up going to the same university. We both had our struggles in the first couple of years – I had a bad relationship, and she got into bad stuff. Both of us took a hit in terms of grades from all of that.
I pulled out of my slump, finished my degree, and started working. My friend took an academic break. I saved up some dough and went back to grad school. My friend returned to working on her BA while living in a trailer her uncle owns since the 80s.
I got a job in my new field post-grad school. My friend quit school again and started working full-time at a bar, then got a DUI.
Then I got invited to my friend’s wedding, so I flew back home for the occasion. In addition to getting to support one of my oldest friends in a huge life milestone (she’s mostly sober these days, and that’s worth celebrating, even if I do secretly hate her choice of spouse), I got to see the look on her mom’s face when she finally recognized who I was, then got to tell her about everything I’ve done since finishing high school: the master’s degree, the six-figure job, the move across the country, my own relationship, and on top of that I got into fitness and I’m a full 5 dress sizes smaller than I was at age 17.”
12. Won't Give Me Back My Security Deposit? Your Reputation Will Be Trashed
“So…background! Around Thanksgiving 2017, my wife’s company offered her a fantastic promotion, which she accepted even though it meant moving across the state by Jan. 1st.
The month of December was insanity – list and sell the house, find a short-term rental that would accept 4 pets, pack, move, etc. A lot of booze magically disappeared but I got it all done and we moved into our rental house and all was well!
We bought our new home and moved and the rental lease officially ended on April 1.
The Property Manager followed the state laws correctly so far and we were told we’d get the $1,800 owed for our security deposit back by May.
Spoiler alert: it never came.
I spent the next four months going back and forth with the Property Manager and hearing “It’s coming”, “We never got your paperwork”, blah blah. I got sick of this and got two different lawyers involved and sent them official Demand Letters. I also filed a formal complaint with the state Division of Real Estate against their license.
The P.M. kept telling the state investigators that they would pay us back but nothing ever happened.
I didn’t want to formally sue via our lawyer because he charges $300/hour and it’s all up-front.
I was hesitant to go to small claims court because it’s a $5,000 max in our state and the damages we’re legally owed are 3x the $1,800 deposit, which puts us over that cap – so I’d have to give up on some of the damages we’re legally entitled to seek, eat roughly $500 total in fees, and then go through that whole process for the next year, and assuming we won the judgment, then go through the collection process for another year or two.
An option, one we’d win, but a big pain in my butt.
So this is where the pro revenge comes in. It was initially petty…say their website is “awfulpropertymanager.com.” I bought “awfulpropertymanager.co” for $12 and posted all of my screenshots and info about their theft and nonsense for the world to see, and then I bombed it all over their business social media pages as well as the personal pages for the main partners and their Yelp page.
I got a kick out of it, they took their pages down, petty revenge wins, right?
My little website caused a bigger boom than I anticipated. Basically, this P.M. has two principal agents in charge and a broker. One of the agents is married to the broker.
Beneath them, they have (HAD…heh) 5 realtors. I sent my new website to them all, everywhere I could. Turns out the partner who isn’t married to the broker had NO idea that the broker and his wife were stealing funds from the P.M. company.
Their realtors had no idea, either – two of them quit immediately, and one reached out to me to let me know why she quit and that she was going to a new broker.
But the other principle of the company was mortified. She asked me to leave her name out of it, take the stuff down, etc. and I just politely but coldly replied that hey, your business partners/broker stole my funds and I can back everything I’m saying with documents, not my problem.
She promised she’d get things resolved and for the first time in 10 months, the broker started answering my e-mails.
We worked out a deal and they’re now paying us $200/month until December, which will cover the amount owed plus the extra for our legal fees.
The first check came last week (it actually BOUNCED but I made them send me a cashier’s check and they have to send checks going forward, so we did get our first installment.)
I’ve also learned that the state investigation has been turned over to the state’s legal department and the broker and his wife will likely lose their license – the state investigator said they had multiple complaints against them, but I was the most thorough and had the most documentation against them, so our complaint was a big reason they had the ammo to push it to the legal team.
So all told, my awful, little website ended up costing them 40% of their real estate team, resulted in them removing their business social media listings, pushed the investigation into their license over to a state legal team (still ongoing), and resulted in them having to FINALLY start paying us not only the $1,800 we’re owed but the legal fees I spent on top of it.
Oh, and that bounced check? I made them send me a certified check for $12 to cover the bank fee for that, too.”
11. Treat Me Like Garbage Since Childhood? I'll Write A Story About It, And We'll All Read It
Sometimes the best stories and essays come about from a painful experience.
“Growing up I had the displeasure of living across the street from two very cruel twin sisters.
They were very close, would do everything together, lie to protect each other, etc. I ended up being “friends” with them until approximately middle/high school, but looking back on it, I don’t know if I would call it friendship. They (especially one of them, let’s call her Jenny) lied to me constantly, talked about me behind my back, manipulated me and my brother, and straight-up bullied us as well as other kids.
When I was young, I didn’t really realize how messed up she/they were, but as I distanced myself from them entering high school and made real friends, it was clear that I shouldn’t have hung around them anymore.
Jenny ended up having to change schools because “everyone was mean to her.” Her sister, who I honestly believe I had a genuine friendship with at one point, remained at my high school.
The last straw with her was that she lied to my face about my partner kissing another girl. Her story held no ground, and it was the most made-up nonsense I’d ever heard. I ended up calling her out and storming off on her, but afterward, the messed up thing was that I ended up apologizing to her for not believing her word.
Whatever, I didn’t want drama, so I moved on, but after that point, I was done.
So I’m in my grade 12 English course, and we have to write a short story to practice for our exam. I ended up writing a story about a situation that had occurred with Jenny back in elementary school.
Jenny had tried to prevent this one kid, Billy, from playing with us in the playground. Billy was picked on a lot. Jenny had made every kid vote for whether or not they wanted this kid to play. Most kids, probably afraid of Jenny, voted with her to not let Billy play.
But ONE kid ended up voting to let Billy play with us. Jenny ended up interrogating this kid about why they wanted Billy to play, and in the end, she begrudgingly allowed Billy to join our game. I remember feeling so much justice had been delivered that day, and so I wrote about it in my grade 12 English class.
I had elaborated on some of the details to be sure for the sake of telling a good story, but the important points were left unchanged. I was also sure to leave in some details about Jenny’s appearance, including her purple overalls that she would wear all the time, her blond pigtails, and the character’s name in the story was very close to her real name (equivalent to calling the character Jenny when her real name was Jennifer).
Now here I need to note that my English 12 teacher taught two sections of the same course. Both sections received the same lessons. Well, my teacher ended up loving my story so much that he ended up photocopying it for everyone, and we all read it out loud and analyzed it as a class (although my name was marked out).
We also did the same for two other stories from students, so there were three stories in total, shared among the two class sections. Remember, the summary of my story was that Jenny was a total witch, everyone hated her, and that day that kid stood up against her.
After reading my story, no one in my class liked Jenny one bit. Well, Jenny’s sister was in the other section of English 12 taught by the same teacher. I never got full confirmation, but I have every reason to believe that my teacher read out my story with the class that Jenny’s sister was in.
I have no doubt that she knew I had written the story and that Jenny was in fact Jennifer, her sister.
Haven’t had real contact with either of them since (about 7 years).”
10. You Picked On The Wrong Person
“I’m going to start this story off by saying that this is absolutely not one of my most shining moral moments and that I’m well aware that I was a straight-up jerk for doing what I did.
My only real defense is that I was in a super bad place mentally and needed a mountain’s worth of therapy. Witch was evil in human form. Now, on with the revenge.
I was a weird kid growing up, REALLY weird. My social skills were so underdeveloped that I had difficulty reading human faces aside from my Grandmother, Grandfather, and Father.
Being the weird kid meant the I was a juicy target for bullies. It never stopped, but there was one bully that I hated more than any of the others. We’ll call her Holly. This girl never passed up an opportunity to make my life awful, and since she lived across the street from me there was nowhere I could avoid her.
Holly treated me like garbage; here are a few examples.
She put dog poop in our mailbox on a regular basis. She let my dog out of my yard and I was never able to get her back. She would also sit on her porch with her friends and roast me to entertain them if I so much as put a toe outside of my front door.
She did way more to me than the specifics I mentioned. It’s just embarrassing to admit to being weak enough that she could do it to me at all. She beat my butt more than a few times, once she and her friends force-fed me poop.
Actual poop. No, I don’t know what kind.
The list goes on and on and I don’t really feel like going into it but suffice to say it wasn’t just ‘teasing.’ It doesn’t make what I did much better, but I didn’t do it over something minor.
I am also female.
Also, we lived in a trailer park. Which was why they tore the house down rather than clean it. Her house wasn’t worth more than 3 grand on its best day.
Those are all the details I intend to add here as any others would make things too specific.
It went on for years.
I hated her with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, but while my grandmother was still alive there was nothing I could do about Holly.
If I did anything to her or fought back in any way my grandmother would punish me for it and I was more afraid of her than I was Holly, for a very good reason.
So I made a plan. I suffered through all the hurt and pain and promised myself that when I was older I would make Holly pay for what she did to me. Thinking of what I was going to do to her when the time was right was sometimes the only thing that kept me going.
Over time, Holly grew up, and eventually she left me alone and stopped being a jerk, unfortunately for her by then it was too late. I didn’t care about her new moral epiphany, I had been nursing my grudge for two decades and it was time for a reckoning.
I was going to destroy that witch.
When my grandmother finally died, it was go time, and I’d had 20 years to plan.
I wasn’t idle while I waited, I’d made it my mission in life to learn as much about Holly as possible, and to do it I became friends with a few people on the periphery of her social circle.
Eventually, I knew more about her and her life than her own mother did.
The first step I took in my plan was getting her fired from her job. It took longer than I would have liked, but eventually, I managed it. Holly worked at a doctor’s office, and I knew that the doctor she worked for was super Christian.
Very straight edge, upstanding type of guy.
He also had a huge influence on the local community. I decided to become a patient at his office, scheduling my visits to be on the days Holly was off work. After a couple of visits I just ‘happened’ to notice Holly in the staff photo on the waiting room wall.
I made a show of looking surprised and then concerned. I got to the exam room, and the doctor came in shortly after. The expression on my face got his attention, and he asked me what was wrong.
I told him that even though I didn’t want to, as a Christian I couldn’t keep my knowledge a secret and still sleep at night because I just couldn’t let him endanger his soul and reputation by doing nothing.
I had his full attention then and I asked him as one fellow Christian to another not to tell anyone where he got the information I was about to give him. After he promised he wouldn’t I told him that I knew that Holly was using illegal substances.
He was absolutely floored and at first, he didn’t believe me. I told him that I understood his skepticism entirely, but it was easy enough to prove or disprove my information with a substance test. If I was wrong, he lost nothing. If I was right he was saving himself from trouble down the road.
He finally agreed to test her, and he tested everyone else too so that it didn’t look like Holly was the only target.
See, I wasn’t actually lying. Holly smoked a lot and I knew that because it was my dad she used to get it from.
He’d been her dealer dude. Her test came back positive for substances.
Oopsie. The doctor fired Holly on the spot when the results of the urinalysis came back and then he called me to thank me for telling him what was going on, and before he hung up he told me that I truly walked with the Lord.
Y’all will never know how hard I had to fight not to laugh at the depths of his wrongness. I thought I was going to pop a b***d vessel.
Phase one; complete. I know what you’re thinking, it’s just a job and it’s not like she can’t go get another one, right?
Losing a job isn’t the end of the world.
You’d be wrong.
Remember how I said that her boss had a very high reputation in our area? That man called every single hospital and doctor’s office in the state personally to make sure that NONE of them would hire Holly and risk liability and loss of community trust for associating with her.
Holly’s field of study was all pertaining to the medical profession, so her education was rendered worthless because nobody would hire her.
I wasn’t done yet. Nope. Not even close.
She lost her job, and because she had no income her car got repossessed.
She still had her family though, two kids and a fiancée.
Who needs families? Amirite?
With the help of a good friend of mine, we catfished the heck out of her fiancée. My friend is very hot, and she let me use pictures of her to ‘prove’ that she was really real. She even got on Skype with him once.
When he finally made the arrangements for a face-to-face encounter and booked a hotel room I texted the screenshots of EVERYTHING to Holly from a burner number.
To say the excrement impacted the oscillating unit would be a vast understatement. They broke up, the whole thing was an ordeal and Holly was devastated. She had two kids, no job, and now no fiancée who could help her keep the family afloat.
A normal person would have stopped then. Unfortunately, I am not normal and I was going full scorched earth. I seethed for twenty years, no way was I going easy on her.
Phase Three. With her fiancé gone and no job, Holly was struggling badly, she needed money and she needed it quickly before she and the kids got evicted. Substance use was a giant problem in my area, it’s high risk but it’s also fast funds and so I started subtly mentioning Holly’s situation among my more legally questionable family.
Eventually, one of my family’s friends who happened to be a substance cook got in contact with Holly and offered her a LOT of to let him cook at her house.
It was supposed to be a one-time thing. 2 days and then done forever.
Holly was desperate so she said yes, everything went smoothly at first but dead in the middle of the cook, someone called in an anonymous tip about an active cook in progress to the local narcotics unit.
They rolled up on Holly’s house at about 3 am and caught everybody inside, including Holly red-handed.
Watching her cry when they handcuffed her and put her in that police cruiser was one of the most gloriously satisfying moments of my life. She was in deep legal doo-doo, and to make a bad situation even worse, most houses where labs are discovered aren’t deemed habitable afterward because the toxic fumes from the chemicals used to make the substance get EVERYWHERE and it’s super hard and time-consuming to clean.
It’s up to the property owner to either hire a hazmat team to clean it, or condemn it and tear it down.
A lab cleanup costs thousands of dollars. It would have cost more to clean it than the entire property was worth. So it got torn down, with everything Holly owned still inside.
See, you can’t take things out of a lab because they’re going to be covered in toxic residue. It can make you VERY sick, especially young children. Everything in the residence is usually counted as a loss. Now, some people sneak in and grab stuff anyway, but whatever, it’s their funeral but since Holly was still sitting in jail, there was no way for her to get anything and none of her close family were interested in risking getting caught sneaking into the house and being accused of stealing or tampering with a crime scene.
Holly ended up in jail for a while, and while she was gone the court gave their father, Ex-Fiancé, sole custody of their children, and Holly was only given supervised visitation. Two hours every Saturday if I recall correctly.
Revenge is a dish best served cold, and mine was freezing.
I was behind every single bad thing that happened in Holly’s life, in one way or another for an entire five-year period.
She decided she liked bullying me and making my life awful and she figured there would never be any consequences.
Instead, I took her reputation, her job, her fiancé, got her arrested and convicted of a felony and her children taken from her and the best part is that she has no clue I did it to this very day.
She’d forgotten about me, what she did to me impacted my life forever, but to her, it wasn’t even important enough for her to bother remembering. I was nothing to her, so she never connected me to her problems.
Last I heard she was in rehab and had her parental rights terminated permanently.
After she lost her kids she just sort of gave up and crawled into a bottle and never came out again.
I was tempted to tell her, but I decided that the helplessness and confusion about why everything suddenly went to trash in a hand-basket was the better plan because that means that every now and again I can contact her and pretend to give a rat’s tail about her troubles.
She thinks I’m the nicest person she’s ever met.”
Another User Comments:
“I’m not going to sit here and lecture on whether this is morally right or wrong. We don’t come here for that stuff. And quite frankly, I am unable to say if it was right or wrong because I have not been in the darkest pits you have ever been in.
I’m just gonna say that you have one of the most dangerous passive ways of executing vengeance I have ever seen of anyone online or in real life. This is sweet, very well-coordinated, patient, strategic, personal justice. And holy, you weave together such a compelling tale of life experience of someone who has dealt with a lot of nonsense.” ThatNerdyRedneck
9. Too Lazy To Get Your Helmet Sticker? No Hockey Game For You
“I used to work as a referee at a men’s hockey league that required all players to have helmet stickers to prove they had signed the league’s insurance waiver. (Sign the waiver, get the sticker, put it on your helmet, and you can play.) It was really common for guys to be too lazy to walk upstairs to the office and get their stickers so we would constantly have to bother them during a game to go and get one immediately.
So one Friday night, I go up to a guy without a sticker and tell him to go get one, and he tells me that the office told him they ran out of stickers and that he could play. So I let him continue to play while I get my timekeeper to radio my convenor who then had to call the office and check the guy’s story.
Turns out, he lied to me; the office had plenty of stickers, and he was just being lazy (this was annoyingly common).
So I blow my whistle at the next stoppage of play and go over to tell him that he lied but that since it was now the last half of the third period I would let him play but that he had to get one before his next game.
His team played back-to-back games that night, so I would know for sure that he got one and didn’t mind doing him that favor. He agreed and thanked me for being cool about it to my face but as I skated away he called me a freaking idiot.
I, in turn, assessed a game misconduct for of officials which in that league carried an automatic one-game suspension and would force him to miss his next game. He didn’t like this and cursed me out more before leaving the ice.
After that game as I was walking back to the ice for this guy’s team’s next game, he came up to me and apologized to me which was nice, that is until he then asked me to let him play in the next game.
I promptly told him not a chance and walked away. He cursed me out again but had to sit out the game and all for a sticker that he could have easily gotten by walking upstairs to the league office.”
8. Don't Try To Make A Simple Job So Difficult
“Many years ago while attending college, I worked in a bowling alley at night as the night mechanic. Once the bowling leagues started, I would walk back to a small room (we called the shop) behind the alleys, do my homework, and respond to any trouble calls that arose.
(Meaning, someone had a problem with a pin spotter machine and they pushed the “trouble” button.)
Now when someone pushed a trouble button on an alley, a loud bell rang behind the pin spotter machines. And I mean loud. (It had to be as the machines themselves were quite noisy.)
There was this woman who bowled weekly on one of the ladies’ leagues. Let’s call her PITB (short for Pain In The Butt). When PITB had a problem with her pin spotter, she did not just ring the bell for a few seconds. She rang it for at least 30 seconds.
And if the problem was not repaired within a minute or two, she would again ring that very loud bell – and again for at least 30 seconds. And again. And again. And so on, until the problem was resolved.
Now the bowling establishment where I had worked was large, and it would take me close to a minute just to walk to the back of her machine.
(During league play all pin spotter jams, etc. are resolved from the back, rarely from the front by walking down the raceway between alleys, lifting the masking unit, and climbing into the machine.)
Most of the trouble calls during league play were for “ball returns”, where the ball got caught up in the machine and did not return to the bowler.
Naturally, when that happened to PITB she would, of course, ring the trouble bell (for 30 seconds) and a minute later, ring it for another 30 seconds. Etc. Even on occasions when her machine actually jammed or otherwise needed a bit of repair and she could see my legs plainly dangling from the machinery (meaning I was actively working on the problem), she would keep ringing that loud and incredibly irritating bell.
So one evening, I was really tired. Exhausted even. I had a ton of homework to do and was generally in a bad mood. And at some point, the trouble bell rang and it was PITB. And as I walked to her machine, again she rang the bell.
And even as I was working on the ball lift/return, she rang it again. And again.
Well, it so happened that in one of the tool bins between the pin spotters was a grease gun.
Just chock full of thick, black grease.
So being in a foul mood that night, I thought, Okay lady, I’ll fix your butt once and for all.
I grabbed the grease gun, pushed the nozzle deep into the thumb hole of her bowling ball, and squeezed the trigger. I then inserted her shiny, bright pink beautifully marbled bowling ball back into the ball lift, to be returned to her waiting, lily-white hands.
Before I go onto what happened next…
I had on two previous occasions politely told PITB that the bell was very loud and annoying in the back and ringing it only once was sufficient to get any issues resolved.
She ignored me, it seems.
In any event…
There is a fairly large opening over the masking unit (what a bowler sees as the front of the pin spotter) that I could look through (and not be seen by any bowlers) that allowed me to watch PITB’s reaction to her soon-to-be well-greased thumb.
So, as soon as I sent her ball on its journey back to her, I watched and waited.
She picked up the ball, pushed her fingers into the holes, made a face of some type, and pulled her fingers back out. Two were still lily-white.
The thumb, not so much. More of a greasy, black look from what I could see. She let out a screech alerting all within ear-shot to look at her as she held up her well-contaminated finger. Many comments from her teammates followed (could not hear them), but lots of the “eeeeee” nature or reasonable facsimile I would guess.
PITB picked up her ball and went storming down to the control desk.
Beaming with satisfaction, I walked back to the shop, and when I get there the phone was ringing. Tony, the night manager at the control desk wanted to see me. And I could tell by his words that he already knew I did it, he knew why I did it, he was happy I did it and would cover for me no matter what happened.
As I approached the desk, PITB’s back was to me so Tony had seen me first. He kind of nodded as if to say, I will play along with anything you say, Mike.
PITB saw me and, holding up her greasy black thumb that she had not cleaned as yet as “proof” of……..what(?), she demanded to know how this happened. (And I will say, she was really ticked off.
It was great!) Tony, with a very concerned face (ha!), asked me to look at the ball, and tell them both how something like that could have possibly happened.
Displaying an even more highly concerned face, I slowly and carefully examined her ball. Finally, in a serious, professional tone I said something like, “Well the only way that could have happened is that the ball came in contact with the pin carpet, which forced it into the kicker belts on the ball return door which must have caused grease from the ball lift to be forced into the thumb hole as it went by the pin-feed solenoid.
(All a bunch of horse-nonsense, obviously.)” I ended that technical mouth full by looking at Tony who said, “Yup, that must be what happened all right.”
PITB, of course, had no idea what I had just said, but instead demanded a new ball be purchased for her by the owner of the establishment.
Tony pointed to a sign over the desk that read:
Management is not responsible for damage to any bowling ball.
If she was ticked off before she talked to us, now she was irate.
Fortunately, just about then, the trouble bell rang for a problem on another machine, so I just eased away from that ugly situation leaving Tony to soothe her ruffled feathers.
I guess she yapped and yodeled for a few more minutes at him then finally went back to her game. Greasy black thumb and all I suspect.
When the leagues were ending about 11 pm or so, I had come back down to the control desk.
At some point, PITB finished bowling and as she walked past me I approached her and told her I was again sorry for her ball.
I also added…
And by the way, I have asked you in the past to please not keep ringing the trouble bell when you have a problem with your machine.
It’s very annoying to us in the back, and sometimes causes us to get distracted and (pause) make mistakes.
In that instant, PITB knew I had screwed her. (no pun) And she also knew she had no way to prove it. And she also (finally) realized that just maybe she better ease up on that annoying bell-ringing thing.”
Another User Comments:
“An elderly man I was acquainted with had worked as a pinsetter in a bowling alley in the days before automatic pin setting. The rule was bowlers were to wait for their pin worker to return to his safety cage so as to not be hit and hurt by flying pins.
Some bowlers, though, got an evil laugh out of bowling the pins while the pins were still being set, which was very dangerous for the setters. On more than one such occasion, balls were returned with unidentifiable sludge in the finger holes. And of course, the prankster bullies were loud, outraged squealers.
They were invited by the owner to leave and never return.” Farmall Emta
7. You Clearly Didn't Listen To Me The First Time, So Joke's On You
“I work at a retail store for a major telecom provider.
I had a customer come in a purchase a pay-as-you-go phone and a $100 top-up balance one night (I don’t make any commission on PAYGO phones, and they’re a pain in the butt for the most part).
That day we had been experiencing some network issues which was causing a delay between me setting up the device on the network and the phone actually activating. The customer was in a bit of a rush, so I made sure everything went smoothly and that I properly explained the issue we were having, so any issues wouldn’t freak him out.
He told me he understood and that he would let us know if he had any further issues.
I get a phone call 2 hours later from the same guy yelling at me that his phone was broken. Apparently, he had taken it into his local store, and they told him the phone was defective and whoever sold it to him was an idiot because it should have never left the store.
This not being my first rodeo, I kindly reminded the customer of our conversation about the delay and suggested he pull the battery and restart the phone to solve the issue. He replied with a few choice cuss words and told me he was going to get me fired for the inconvenience then hung up.
The next day while I was filing some paperwork, I was startled with a, “HEY! YEA, REMEMBER ME?” And I looked up to see the same customer in the store stomping over to my counter with his phone and paperwork. As he started ranting and raving about how much trouble I was in I took the battery out of his phone and restarted it, fixing the problem.
Me: “There you go, problem fixed.”
Him: “What? How did you do that?”
Me: “Remember when I told you to pull the battery to fix the issue? That’s all I did.”
Him: “Well, I shouldn’t have had to drive all the way down here to fix that!”
Me: “You didn’t, I told you on the phone what to do.”
As soon as I said that the customer completely shut down, mumbled a goodbye, and walked out. The kicker was that he lived an hour away so he drove a 2 hour round trip for me to do a simple battery pull.
As for the other store, I found out what rep had gone on about how much of an idiot I was for selling a “defective” phone and contacted their manager who I just so happened to be friends with. Rep got a 3rd and final written warning and was fired soon after for repeatedly trash-talking his co-workers.
Good riddance.”
6. Betray Me After 5 Years? I'll Show You How Great My Life Will Be Without You
“Found out my (ex) man of five years was two-timing on me for months and got the girl pregnant. Needless to say, I left.
I stayed working my dream job in ICU at one of the top hospitals in the area, lived with my parents, and so I was able to pay off all my undergrad loans and save a ton of dough.
I ended up traveling all around the world without him guilting me for “leaving him.” I made new friends because before it used to be just me and him and no one else. I started horseback riding and doing yoga, things he used to say were a waste of time, and laugh at me for showing interest. I lost a bunch of weight, got some new piercings that I LOVE.
I also went back for my master’s degree.
He on the other hand. He’d always said he couldn’t find a job that he was passionate about so he’d stayed on his mom’s couch for well over a year searching for his dream job. But when the baby was en route, he had to******* up and got a job working at a local hardware store (I don’t think there’s any problem with working retail, but I know he looked down on it, so it makes me giggle thinking of him working in a smock).
His mom let him stay until the baby was born and then kicked him out and made him live with the girl and baby. He used to pride himself on his athletic ability. But he definitely let himself go and gained a LOT of weight.
He had such a close relationship with his family (as did I), but once they found out what he did, his relationship with his mother and younger brother definitely changed.
But the best part was that I went to see his mom a couple of months after the baby was born, and we talked for a while.
She told me she wants all the best for me and that she wished I could have been her daughter-in-law, but she understood why I couldn’t stay. Then, she told me how before he moved out, he would just lay on the floor crying some days.
Not gonna lie, that made me smile.”
5. Act Like A Witch To Your Students? I'll Steal Your Special USB Flash Drive
Just a tiny device but with so much important information!
“This happened over a decade ago now. I would have been 15 or so at the time.
I was in my sophomore year of high school, and this all takes place in my general science class for the year.
Things started off quite well in that class with a nice teacher who was passionate about her topic.
Unfortunately, for one reason or another a good 6 weeks later classes were shuffled and we ended up with a new teacher. Our new teacher was an older guy, certainly less passionate and kind of dull but otherwise harmless.
To provide a little background, I was certainly a troubled student in high school, and troubled is putting it lightly.
I was a great student providing the teacher wasn’t disrespectful and was actually interested in what they were teaching. There was nothing worse for me than a grumpy, bored, and disrespectful teacher.
Now this second gentleman was certainly bored and maybe a tad grumpy sometimes, but I wouldn’t say he was necessarily disrespectful.
He wasn’t a good teacher, but he wasn’t terrible either. He didn’t ignite my passion for the subject by any means, but he was adequate.
Then, for the second time that year, things got shuffled around on us and we were on our third teacher.
This time, a brand new teacher at our school, a recent immigrant from the UK. We’ll call her Mrs. Snow. She was middle-aged with reddish hair and a scowl so cold she could extinguish the sun.
Mrs. Snow got into a routine quickly. She made it very clear she would tolerate NO misbehavior of any form.
And included within the category of misbehavior was an interruption. And this meant any kind. I observed several students, even well-behaved attentive ones, sent directly to the dean’s office (a dean being someone who was essentially in charge of your year group) with no warning or prior offense for having the sheer gall to sneeze while she spoke.
And it didn’t matter how much you tried to cover it up. A friend of mine was unwell one day but doing his best to make it through his classes. Unfortunately for him, he had quite a dry cough, and Mrs. Snow was on to him.
Poor kid was jettisoned before the class even had the chance to be seated.
And of course, it should go without saying that I was not on her good books.
She was rude, unreasonably hostile, and clearly bored to tears by her subject. I don’t recall how many lessons I saw to completion, but I certainly became intimately familiar with the dean’s office that year.
My favorite story to tell are the days when she was in a bad mood. As if she wasn’t horrible enough already! I remember more than once she kicked out the entire class. God knows what she spent the rest of the lesson doing, but I remember the poor receptionist in the dean’s office: her eyes practically bulged right out of her head as she saw a congo line of 30-something students making their way to the office, all requiring to be written up by her and seen by the year’s dean.
I can’t imagine she was too fond of Mrs. Snow either, but the dean came to the wonderfully well-thought-out conclusion that the students were clearly the problem, not the teacher.
Now one day during class, I was seated near the front of the class, right next to the computer Mrs. Snow was using to deliver her wonderfully monotone lecture on god only knows what.
I happened to notice a small, red pen drive sticking out the front of the machine.
While she wasn’t looking and most of the class was distracted, I bent down pretending to grab something from my backpack which was on the floor below my stool, but quietly reached over and pulled the drive from the computer and stuffed it in my backpack before anyone could notice.
I dunno why I did it, just being a jerk I guess. I figured it’s just a pen drive, she can get a new one.
Later that day, I plugged the drive into one of the PCs in our library to browse the contents.
Various things related to her class were scattered throughout, but then something, in particular, caught my eye: her immigration documents. I took a short peek and discovered her visa was due to expire in only a couple of months, and that she had a new folder in which she was assembling her documentation for her next application.
“OH WOW,” I thought. This flash drive was hot property. If she found out I had this, I would be in serious trouble! The obvious solution of quietly returning the drive never occurred to me. At first, I removed the red sleeve from the drive hoping it would be unrecognizable.
Even then, I was still nervous so between classes one day I threw it on the roof of one of the buildings.
And not a moment too soon.
She’d found out. And someone had dobbed me in. I don’t think I had ever been sent to the deans that fast in my entire school life.
I was grilled, kinda like those CIA/FBI interrogations you see on TV. I didn’t crack, denied all knowledge and responsibility. They conducted a search on my backpack and found nothing. Just as well I’d tossed it. I was incredibly well known to the dean at that point and I could tell she was MORE than ready to believe I’d done it, but she couldn’t prove it.
Nobody could prove it. It was all he said she said. So I was let go.
I continued having classes with Mrs. Snow. She was incredibly hostile towards the entire class after that, but especially me. More than once during this time, I got sent to the deans for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
The referral slip she sent me with always claimed some utter nonsense that never happened and the deans would gobble that up eagerly.
…until one day, we had a reliever. And the next day. And the day after. That reliever became our new permanent teacher for the remaining 2 months or so of the year.
There was never any explanation as to why. Rumors began to spread, and eventually, I learned the proper truth.
The copy of her immigration documents on that pen drive was the master copy. She had no backups, hard copies, or duplicates.
NZ’s immigration system is ridiculously pedantic in that you need to resubmit all of the evidence from previous visas you’ve been granted AGAIN when you apply for a new one.
She no longer had any of it. She was missing crucial documentation to retain her visa status and as such, her visa was declined and she left or was removed from the country.
I had no reason to suspect she wouldn’t have backups.
Usually, you’d use a pen drive AS backup, and have a master copy on a computer somewhere.
This was in the days before cloud storage was a thing, and pen drives were quite small in capacity and not particularly reliable at that. I remember having a few die on me during those years. Besides, what if you lost it? Anybody could poke through your crucial documents.
It just seemed so unlikely that this would have been the case and it’s what I had assumed when I tossed the thing.
But, I was wrong. And she was never seen again.
And that’s the story of how I (accidentally and coincidentally) got one of the worst teachers ever not only out of my school but removed from my entire country.
Remember kids: Always, always, ALWAYS have a backup.”
Another User Comments:
“Sounds to me like she was more interested in some kind of pathetic power trip rather than actually teaching. The education system has absolutely no need for teachers like that.” tosser-tom
4. Be A Horrible Romantic Partner? I'll Put Your Toothbrushes Somewhere Gross
“Once upon a time, I had an absolutely horrible partner. Truly the most awful, narcissistic, self-centered, controlling, deceitful, manipulative, mendacious egomaniac I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter, let alone be involved with.
Truly an emotional vampire. Unfortunately, I genuinely loved her and couldn’t see this until it was far too late and the alarm bells had become sirens.
My family and friends, however, all could and did.
I learned afterward of how some of my friends would run away when they saw she was with me (she never let me out on my own) and others would ring other friends to join in solidarity as soon as they saw her there.
None of them liked her. She was rude and obnoxious, demanding and dismissive, arrogant, and conceited. All conversations were about her and if they weren’t to begin with, she would find a way to make them about her. It was all about her, the center of the universe.
I was oblivious.
Not long before it went pear-shaped, there was an intervention by my friends and family, where I was told in no uncertain terms that I was living with “a narcissistic bully who will destroy you.” I tried to leave, actually getting out for two nights but was cajoled, browbeaten, threatened, then promised significant change when I went to remove my belongings from our home and I stayed.
She convinced me. It didn’t last long.
This pattern continued; I’d attempt to leave, there would be a faked breakdown, empty threats, temper tantrums, and eventually, I’d cave in. Her demeanor would shift instantaneously from vulnerable to triumphant, from victim to bulldozer.
It was a nightmare, a never-ending cascade of contradictions and distortion. She was a psychological abuser. It was all a game, smoke and mirrors, calculated emotional manipulation. I later learned that she has a long and illustrious history of faking breakdowns to get her way, deviously inventing crises and fantastical stories of criminal conspiracy, a pattern she has apparently engaged in with most relationships in her life, including her family and the poor men who came after me.
It is her modus operandi.
It also explained something I’d begun to notice at social events where people knew her – some people reacted to her oddly, literally flinching in revulsion around her. And then there were the two occasions that complete strangers called her a monster, a homewrecker, which she laughed off.
I learned a lot after we broke up. An awful lot. None of it good. She’s basically left a trail of debt and destruction behind her over two continents.
It took another six months and as much aborted escape attempts to finally get away from her.
She’d still been bombarding me daily with texts, emails, chat messages, sometimes in their hundreds, veering from meandering declarations of undying love to psychotically abusive rants and threats to my physical wellbeing.
Essentially, after we broke up, she started to harass me full-time. It was nerve-shredding, frightening, intensely stressful and I eventually ended up shattered and in psychiatric care, exhausted physically and mentally.
In short, the experience destroyed me, utterly.
There was a very last night that I capitulated and agreed to meet her at our old home on the pretext of returning a book to her that I still had and she would never read and performing some DIY repairs that she insisted I perform.
She was yet again relatively calm to start with, but I knew that it wouldn’t be long before I would be right back to walking on eggshells, trying not to provoke her, trying not to mention anything that would trigger her.
Then began the attempts at seduction, interspersed with tantrums, then escalating into distressing and disturbingly venomous outbursts about friends of mine who she was convinced had done her some deep personal injustice; some were single mothers who I deeply admire and adore, that she was going to set child services upon, out of sheer spite and malice.
This is truly a person with an ego so rampant yet fragile that even a hint of disagreement will trigger unpleasantness.
But threatening my friends and their children… This incensed me. This self-centered bully, this emotional tyrant, this career narcissist, this nexus of negativity and toxic egotism was winding up to deliberately attempt to destroy even more people’s lives – because she could.
Because she felt it was some sort of entitlement of hers.
There wasn’t much I could really do to prevent her from acting upon her vile plan.
So I calmly excused myself, went to the bathroom, and stuck all her toothbrushes up my butt.
Right up there, I had a good rummage and rotation with the head of the brush. Then all her mascaras. Then all her make-up brushes. Then her mustache bleach – I stuck the toothbrush right in there and gave it a good old swirl.
In short anything in that bathroom that I could stick up my icky, sticky, unwashed, slick-with-the-rancidly-loathsome-sweat-of-manual-labor butt, I did.
It was and still is a deeply satisfying and thoroughly deserved act of revenge.”
3. Demote Me? You Can Forget Your Little Promotion And Bonus Pay
It goes both ways.
“This happened a good long while ago.
I was in high school and got a job at one of the big box stores in the computer department.
This store chain had an in-house technician department, which was always where I wanted to go. After busting my butt in sales for two years, putting up with rude customers, silly rules, and all the other glorious trappings of a retail job, I finally got a chance to be “promoted” to the technician department.
It was not as glamorous as I thought it would be – I quickly found out that most of the “repairs” consisted of running the pre-packaged antimalware suite, updating Windows, and doing data backups prior to wiping computers clean and reinstalling them.
I always liked tinkering with hardware more, but since 80% of customers had laptops and those repairs were deemed too complicated by corporate, we would just send the laptops out to get repaired by the third-party vendor.
It was still better than sales by a long shot, and we had a great team working in the technician area, except for one dude – let’s call him Mike. He always behaved like his poop smelled like roses. He was technically a lead technician, and even though that just meant he had a little more authority (he had access to a corporate account to arrange shipments of computers to and from our store), he was acting like he was the manager of the department.
Nevertheless, our actual manager was a splendid dude who took care of us and as such, Mike’s jerkiness did not bother any of us that much.
Fast forward a little and our awesome manager found a much better job – this opened up a spot for the manager, and since the whole store supervision was going through a shake-up (the general manager was fired for embezzlement and all the people he hired (90% of managers) were under review.) This led to everybody trying their hardest not to screw up and the new GM decided that since our department was one of the best in the district, he would not try to hire an outsider, but will promote from within.
Now Mike was working at this store for almost ten years at that point and a couple of people who started working with him as sales associates were by this point managers and assistant managers. One of them, Brittney, was an assistant manager in charge of customer services and checkout.
One of the conditions for Mike’s official promotion to the manager was to keep the #1 spot in the district performance-wise. One of the key metrics was the rejection rate from our third-party vendor (if we mistakenly sent them a software problem to fix, they would charge us extra).
Mike started obsessing about the numbers, especially when it came to the rejection rate – he insisted that we would spend extra time to confirm issues, even when there were recalls from manufacturers for these items.
I hated this bureaucracy since it meant that people needed to wait almost the maximum allowed time to get their computers back.
So a few times I skipped the extra diagnostics when I knew for sure the problem was hardware.
One day, Mike decided to do an audit on all outgoing machines and found out that I’ve sent four units skipping his “extra” checks – he told me that he will write me up for it, but when he tried, GM told him that he is not a manager yet, and I have shown to the GM that I followed the corporate procedure in diagnosing these units.
I thought that was the end of this, but I was sorely mistaken – Mike hated that I showed GM that Mike’s procedure was inefficient and that he was denied power over me.
About a month later, I got a call from Mike asking if I could come to the store on my day off because there was an issue with a customer.
When I came in, I was greeted by Mike with a poop-eating grin and he told me to wait in the back and not to work on any computers.
After about an hour, Mike and Brittney come in and ask me to head to the front office.
They started an official write-up process and claimed that I have made a mistake creating a backup of the customer’s data and had placed a DVD with no data on it into the box that was returned to the customer and then wiped his PC clean.
I knew that it was nonsense, since I always copy the data to an external hard drive, run antimalware to make sure that nothing bad got copied, and then burn DVD’s – yet, when I asked to check the external hard drive, Mike said that due to my negligence I was not allowed back in the tech area.
He went to check the hard drive and said there was nothing on it. At that point, I knew he was lying, but he and Brittney were bent on completing the write-up. I have asked for senior management to be present, and was shot down again – turns out GM was on vacation.
They completed the write-up and told me that due to the egregious error that cost the company tens of thousands of dollars I was not allowed to work in the tech room and I would be relegated back to the sales floor.
I told them to shove it and submitted my resignation on the spot.
I later found out that a week later they gave the customer the data that was on the hard drive all this time – Mike simply erased the DVDs (I grabbed a DVD-RW by mistake for that backup) and waited for the customer to come back and complain.
I have also called the corporate HR line and told them what happened – they said that since I quit with a letter of resignation, they would not launch an investigation, but they have received and recorded my complaint.
Through luck and the fact that I was a good hardware tech, I landed a job at a shop that did hardware repairs a week later and started in another week.
Turns out, this depot was the service center that covered the entire district and they had the master contract with the big box chain where I worked.
Since I have worked as the tech in that store, I was more than familiar with their labeling and ticketing system – for tracking purposes the label included the store and technician number.
After a couple of weeks, I gathered some goodwill at my new job and started trading the units with my colleagues to work on as many units from my old store as possible
Over the next three months, I made sure that every single unit sent in by Mike would come back with an extra charge.
Also, it turned out that Mike (since he was in charge of shipping) would sometimes steal other technician’s tickets to boost his personal performance numbers to secure that manager’s promotion.
Well, that bit him in the butt hard. There was one week in particular when he sent in over 15 units out of 20 to get fixed and 15 units came back with extra software charge.
I have also kept detailed records that “proved” that Mike did not follow his own policy of extra checks.
When the performance figures came out for that quarter, the store crashed into fifth place from #1, Mike missed out on his promotion and a BIG bonus that was promised to him.
A good buddy of mine from the store got the manager position a few months after that and I have explained to him how to reduce the number of “software” charges to almost zero – so he looked like a superstar. Mike was first relocated to “lead technician,” then he was either let go or he quit – I’m not sure.
Last I heard he started his own mobile technician business that folded after a year.
What I didn’t know is that this whole incident with Mike messing up led the GM to review everything Mike did – including my write-up and dismissal. As it turns out, they did not even register the write-up since I quit on the spot, and buried it – the only way GM was able to find it is because of the HR complaint that was filed against both Mike and Brittney.
GM was not pleased that they went behind his back to get rid of someone and fired Brittney.
He was a very decent man who called me later that day and apologized and even offered me my old job back. I thanked him but I was making more dough at the new place and did not have to deal with customers, so I passed.”
2. Not My Job? Okay Then
“I currently work in the mortgage industry doing recording, which essentially means I take people’s mortgages and prepare them to be given to the county to be, well, recorded. It’s a fairly easy job, or rather, should be.
I started at my company back in November, which is amazing because due to my homelessness situation, I can’t work from home, and I managed to find on-site work that wasn’t fast food or retail and paid somewhat ok.
Not enough to not be homeless, but still enough that it isn’t really that big of a rip-off.
My first week was spent floating around the various teams, and it was nice. I hadn’t worked in over a year at that point (took off to focus on college), so I had recovered a lot from my previous burnouts, and in turn, I basically impressed everybody I worked with.
I’d pick something up in minutes and within an hour I was twice as productive as the person who taught me, that sort of thing. Most of the teams did what we call post-closing work, which is basically just glorified paper shuffling.
But eventually, the shadowing week ended, and on that next Monday, I was handed off to a person that we will call Jack.
Jack was, and is, one of those rare people that I simply cannot ever get along with, because she is too stubborn and ego-driven despite being an effective idiot not only when it comes to leadership but also to just running things smoothly without rubbing people the wrong way.
She’s the type that will never admit her wrongs or faults, yet simultaneously will dictate how everything should be with no regard to anyone else’s input. Even trying to communicate to her that she forgot something is met with a refusal to accept it, that sort of person.
I naturally tend to conflict with people like this, because I too am stubborn and ego-driven, but homelessness has also killed a lot of the cares I used to give and with me needing to not be as timid as I used to be (because failing to assert myself is part of why I ended up like this), it essentially created a perfect storm.
Fortunately, I only had to really deal with her for that day only, but it was enough. I’m not someone who likes to be treated like a nuisance, especially when I’m still new at the job and can’t just go find something to do, so when I kept having to come ask for more things to do from her because nothing she gave me actually took up any time, she kept treating me like I was being annoying on purpose and yeah.
Eventually, I just got stuck back with the people I was shadowing until the end of the day, when I finally got my team assignment on Miriam’s team, doing recording.
Now, I had my problems with Miriam as well, but because he from day one was always on his way out the door to better opportunities I’ll skip over his part to play for the most part.
I held no ill will for Miriam as I knew he just wanted out of the job anyway, so whatever.
But, even so, during this first month, I actually did very little. There was basically no work to go around, and nobody really checked on me unless they gave me like one mortgage to send away.
Eventually, they took on a new client who we’ll call Acronym, and I was to be one of the two people working for that client.
We had our “training” (which was basically just the client showing how their program works and nothing else) and again, not a whole lot to do.
In a two-week period, we had maybe 10 files to work on; for comparison, another group on the team was getting 100+ files per day.
As a result of this, I ended up getting transferred to the post-closing side for Acronym, which meant instead of recording I’d be shuffling the packages around when they come from the signings, but I was still a floater for recording so I basically did both.
During this period up to the end of the year, I made a point of staying on top of how Acronym processes work and what they were communicating, one because I was bored, but as time went on, I kept having to pitch in with recording as the other person was struggling to keep up, despite the volume not really being there, so it was a necessity too given what I was having to do.
Eventually, this same person started calling out too regularly and eventually just stopped showing up entirely, leaving me the sole recorder for Acronym with a giant mess that she left behind. But, despite having at most half a day to work on it, as the other half was still being spent doing post-closing work, I eventually got it cleaned up and had Acronym under control from a recording perspective.
As I was more or less left to my own devices to do this, what I had to do to make this work did go against what the client’s process was supposed to be. But I had no choice when I was by myself with half the time, and even early on my intention was always to bring it back to what it should be as soon as I could.
But, my calls for help were ignored, so when eventually I ended up being the only person working Acronym on either side and effectively one of two people (the other being Jack) who had any idea of how to do either process in the entire company.
So I had to just keep doing what I was doing, and mind you, the work was getting done so the client didn’t care, but in order to bring the process in line I needed time, as it would slow things down to an unacceptable degree if I just did it, and as I was already working overtime every day as it was, the time just wasn’t there.
As time went on, eventually they finally got a second person for the post-closing side, and then a third and that’s when I finally got told I was going to do recording full time.
Amazing, I thought, until they dropped on me a special project they agreed to do for the client, which basically meant that I had a choice of taking the time to rework the process first so it was in line with the client or moving forward with the SP to finish it fast like the client wanted. I had to pick the latter, as there wasn’t much of a choice.
The volume wasn’t something that could wait (it was about a month’s volume all at once) and the client needed it done. So for the daily work, I kept it moving the same way so I could put as much time as I could into the SP, which I still got done fairly quickly.
During this time, Miriam left the company and Jack took over while another team member was in the process of being promoted. But during this time as well, my daily volume tripled and we started getting packages from the client to record separate from our post-closing stuff, but we didn’t know that’s what they were until about a month after the fact.
The client didn’t communicate on it and they just piled up day after day because I had no time to do anything with them, especially when I didn’t really know what they were. Eventually, we got it figured and I started working on them too.
Trying to split myself 3 ways left everything to pile up and even with overtime, there just wasn’t much I could do as one person, and it’s exacerbated when multiple things in each process are supposed to be priority one. Anything that isn’t a priority gets left behind, and what is the priority I have to tackle biggest to smallest. I didn’t get very far, is what I’m saying.
But because of it, they finally got a second person to record, and we’ll call them Slow. Slow sucks, to put it kindly, and as I was the one to train him it’s especially disconcerting, though I know that’s on his character and not on me as a would-be teacher.
And this is where the troubles begin, and when this story gets a little juicier. As was the case for months, I was still more or less left to my own devices, now with Slow in tow, and this was fine I guess, as management, Jack especially, didn’t really get the process anyway.
Their concern was always on submissions when that was the one part of the process that takes the least amount of time. Prepping the files, curing any issues, and eventually shipping the recorded mortgages where they go are all what took up most of the day.
So, with two people and three processes (and eventually 4), I did my best to split things up and keep it going, but the problem was that the backlog had gotten completely out of hand. It needed to be addressed at the same time we were dealing with daily stuff, and the fact of the matter is, I needed more bodies to get through it.
Throughout this time I did everything I could to make the processes as efficient as possible, but without butts in seats, there just wasn’t any way to make it work.
And I communicated all this, numerous times daily. I gave any solution I could think of but if it involved pulling people from other teams, even within the recording, it was either ignored, a flat no, or even more infuriatingly only granted for part of a day once a week every now and again.
Suffice to say, things went nowhere, and I was running myself ragged trying to deal with it.
But eventually, the client couldn’t ignore what was going on and brought the hammer down, which I knew would happen sooner or later given that I wasn’t getting the resources I needed. And that’s when Jack and her unfortunate protege (who I don’t blame for anything, so we’ll leave them out) had the sheer audacity to drag us into a meeting and begin dictating to us how things should be to get things under control.
Now, it’d be one thing if they had brought unique ideas to that end, but they didn’t. They very literally just dictated the process near verbatim to how I already ran the process. The only difference was that I and the other recorder would no longer be helping each other.
So, not only am I outrageously angry because they’re reinventing the wheel and pretending it’s their own, but they also just threw a massive wrench into the problem, which will be apparent soon enough.
But on top of that, now that the clients are involved, suddenly they can pull 10 different people out of the woodwork to come pitch in.
Yeah, screw me when I ask for the same kind of help, right?
Being who I was though, I kept working and I followed instructions, but the thing about me is that I pay attention, and I don’t just ignore things that are being done wrong, and if I can help somewhere, I’m going to because that’s how I was raised.
Now, let me explain overseas. They work overseas obviously, and their role is to remotely handle any work that doesn’t strictly need to be handled in person, which is all well and good, but the problem is that these people are not qualified to flip burgers on an easy bake; they’d hurt themselves.
And their relation to me originally was that they just handled submissions for anything we could send electronically. I set them up, and all they have to do is the tedium of the website we use, and that’s all Miriam ever wanted them to do, as he understood their competency wasn’t there for anything more complicated, and as I worked with them, I too came to understand that.
But Jack didn’t or maybe just ignored it because she was desperate. Either way, eventually this group was given a lot of different tasks of mine. Ever since they have royally messed it practically every time. You could go down a list of things they touched and not a single one would be without a critical issue that either A), impeded productivity, or B), made us look like buffoons to the client, and oftentimes it was both.
For instance, if a county rejects a file, they’ll go into the client’s system to say so, but then won’t put any info that would actually tell the client what they need to do to fix it, but at the same time if it’s something simple, like a page out of order or a wrong document type, they’ll ALSO do this, and it is a horrible thing because it wastes the clients time and in a lot of cases money too, as some mortgages can’t sit around waiting for the client to tell us to move page 4 to the 4th position.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg with them. There were a lot of problems when things got bad, and they doubled them.
That’s where the malicious compliance comes in. While this is all going on, I’m still trying to do what I can to get things under control and pitch where I can.
As a result, I end up seeing dozens on dozens of problems every day that, mind you, I’m not looking for; I just see them in the course of my actual tasks because I pay attention. And I report them to no avail; nothing ever got done about it.
Eventually, it all comes to blows over something that, I freely admit, I induced. Jack had decided to rebuild our spreadsheet to better suit her needs, which is whatever, but I took it upon myself to hold the information for my processes (I had 2; my original one and a new one I had gotten since that was small) before transferring to that so that I could clean it up.
Everything about it was a mess due to overseas and before we shifted to a new sheet, I just wanted a day to clean it up and put it in order.
This was not taken lightly by Jack, who was effectively saying I was insubordinate (true) and that it wasn’t “my job” to “QC” the overseas peoples’ work, in reference to my daily barrage of emails outlining all their mistakes that I had uncovered.
You can see the problem here, and I even tried to explain that, no, that’s not what I was doing but Jack being Jack wouldn’t listen and even straight-up walked out before even letting me explain it.
Now, I had a bit of a mental break at this point.
I’ve had similarly troublesome bosses before that I’ve butted heads with, but I never got treated this badly, and especially not as a result of me going above my duties to help. I was, and am, the most experienced with the clients’ processes and it was my job to train everyone else that knows it now, and I was being treated like total garbage.
Not entirely blameless on my part, but I mean come on. I literally put in a month worth of overtime (as in, 160 hours overtime total) and I may as well have been a lazy do-nothing, and nothing I ever did impede productivity or caused more issues, I just didn’t take specific orders from this person who frankly doesn’t know what she’s doing.
So, I had myself a cry, told HR I wanted off the team (which went nowhere of course), and in the meantime, I eventually resolved to comply. During that incident, she gave me three explicit tasks to do, and nothing more. So, once I composed myself, that’s what I limited myself to.
No more overtime, no more extra pitching in. Just the three tasks I was given.
That was about a month and a half ago. Since then, I’ve consistently run out of work practically every day because, lo and behold, my three specific tasks don’t actually take all day to do (nor do any of the processes for that matter, but I’m the only one thus far able to handle the volume).
I still report issues as I encounter them, but now I tie them to the work I was doing that resulted in me seeing it, covering my own butt because now they can’t act like I’m going looking for stuff that’s wrong (and besides if I did I’d have a far bigger list).
And because Jack knows I won’t just be ordered around like a dog, she basically leaves me alone, and thank goodness for that.
During this time, I caught up all my backlog as well and got the process in-line, so essentially I’m now at a point where if I was still the only one, we’d be in good shape with the client.
But we’re not. And it is so so so vindicating to see them reap what they sowed. For all the bluster and nonsense I went through, the tasks I handle personally are still the only parts of the process with Acronym being handled to their expectations, and Acronym knows it.
Unbeknownst to Jack and anyone else at my company, because I was the sole person doing the processes for as long as I did, a lot of the client contacts contact me individually for things they need to be done (which I do, because I’m here to serve the client, not Jack’s ego), and I’m chummy with a few of them who have communicated to me their perspectives and yep.
Now it’s come to a point where the client is getting ready to pull out sans a hail mary, and now I’m being leaned on to help out elsewhere because they don’t have a choice. While my stuff is fairly clean outside of what overseas touches, Slow’s processes have become a total disaster zone, and that’s saying something given how bad they were to start with.
So now I’m in the process of cleaning up his stuff the same way I did mine, and yeah is it bad. I’ve made a lot of headway so far, but only time will tell if it’s enough.
Now, there’s more to this story that I left out, a lot of which has to do with the animosity between me and Jack, and suffice to say it is just bad, and its mostly due to her not valuing my input, even when she eventually comes to the same conclusion (oftentimes months later).
If I say we need to track our mail better, it doesn’t happen until she thinks we need to. If I suggest a more efficient way of organizing the docs, so they don’t get lost, she does the opposite. If I write an entire SOP outlining the processes from start to finish, at the request of her boss, it never gets utilized because I’m the one who wrote it.
This is a person who’s been hiding the fact that we (as a company) lost three of the clients’ mortgages and refuses to own up to it, even 3 and 6 months after the fact. In time I learned that that is on my company too, but even so.
When those files got lost I had a sense of urgency about finding them and was told to just drop it and so I did, and we as a company have just ignored (or lied through) the clients’ inquiries to those files.
And of course, like everything, it’s coming back, and they’re being forced to address the issue.
Their solutions aren’t ethical, mind you, but it is yet to be seen how that will play out.”
1. Forget Ever Working Or Living In This Town Again
“During the period of my school years, I went to a Catholic school.
I had made very few friends, but we appeared very close.
There were four of us females and two guys.
When I was 16, nature finally decided to take its course and I became interested in guys (girls as well, but this was a Catholic school in an extremely small southern town). My affections fell on a senior in our group, who I will call Adam.
He seemed interested as well, and we began seeing each other.
That summer Adam decided to join the army. Having grown up in an entire family of army and navy, I was very proud of him, and I intended to join the military as well once I could.
(And I did. Hooyah Navy!) So, when he left for boot camp I tried to help him as much as I could. But, alas all puppy loves must come to an end.
You see, high school boys are notorious for being dogs, and my little soldier was no different.
Adam had married an exotic dancer immediately after AIT (or Technical Training for the non-military). But it doesn’t stop there! Oh no, I mean what good would a revenge story be if it was JUST an ex who decided to say screw it.
No, you see, our group of friends had one particularly saucy lass who I’m going to call Lilith.
She also had her eyes on Adam.
Now, it wasn’t but a few months after Adam came home for a few weeks on leave, that I learned about his wife.
But, this was after I found out that he had knocked up my “best friend” Lilith.
As you can imagine, hormones+undiagnosed bipolar+first love+first betrayal equates to a whole mess of nonthought-out actions.
Now, I need to say, this is NOT a path I am super proud of. In fact, I cringe every time I think about what happened.
For anyone who doesn’t know, adultery in the U.S. Military is an extreme offense. Punishable by all sorts of nasty things, such as restriction, docking of pay, court-martial, dishonorable discharge, or even brig time (although while I’ve heard it is a possible punishment I’ve never seen that one).
The very first thing I did was report the adultery and pregnancy to his command, followed by his wife. She deserved to know her less than one-month-old marriage already had a Jodi problem.
Long story short, for his part he lost his wife, rank, and was discharged when found to be drinking in uniform, as a result of the divorce.
Lilith, on the other hand, met a much nastier fate. See as I said, this was a very small and predominantly Catholic town. So, her revenge was much meaner.
My first stop was to the school’s priest. I didn’t make it a confession, as my family was not Catholic (we were pentecostal) so, I spoke with him about “a crisis of faith.” Where I basically spilled the beans that Lilith and school volleyball star had gotten pregnant, and, due to my beliefs I was unsure if I should maintain a relationship with her.
Of course, the priest took that to the school board, as a pregnancy was a violation of our “purity promises” (I know extremely stupid, but, again the southern dogma at its best). She was kicked from the team pending a pregnancy test. Surprise it was positive.
The next step was to ruin her job, the diner she worked for was basically owned by a couple who believed hooking up was for reproductive purposes only, and taking pleasure from it was a sin.
Lilith was fired.
As a bonus, her parents discovered she was not only pregnant but had gotten that way with a married man.
They lost it, and did not speak to her and she was kicked out.
I’ve really lost touch with almost everyone from that time, but from my understanding, Lilith suffered a miscarriage (this is where most of my guilt resides) due to the stress and has since developed a habit, although I’m not sure of what, and I don’t want to assume.
Adam’s wife did leave him, but, not before getting pregnant herself and taking him for everything she could. Due to the dishonorable discharge, he could no longer work in that town and moved somewhere in the Midwest.
Maybe I went too far over a high school crush, but, in the end, it was the anger of a teenager scorned. I feel guilty over the miscarriage, yet, knowing that I’m remembered by even a few people as a force to be reckoned with, does bring a smile to my face.”
Metaspoon Slow or Crashing?
If Metaspoon is causing your browser to crash or run slowly, please try viewing the article in Lite Mode and it should run more smoothly!