People Keep Us Occupied With Their Revenge Accounts
13. Don't Pay The Teachers? You'll Wish You Never Met My Lawyer Friend
“My SO worked at a private school in S. Korea also known as a Hagwon. Hagwon teaches all kinds of subjects and this particular one taught English, they would hire native English teachers from around the world to come to Korea and teach English.
Although I have never taught English in Korea, I’ve been in Korea long enough to be VERY familiar with the laws and practices and heard numerous horror stories.
I also am good friends with a Korean who is a lawyer that specializes in business disputes.
So when I met my girl, she was on her 2nd contract in Korea at a new school as the first school she worked at, the owner retired and shut it all down. That was actually a pretty positive experience.
He always paid on time, and when he informed everyone he was shutting down the school he’d, of course, pay out everything agreed upon in the contracts but also any unused vacation time, sick time, plus he would double that year’s bonus as a thank you.
My girl told him in her contract she had a free flight home at end of the contract but didn’t plan on using it, so the owner of her 1st school told her that’s fine; he’ll just pay her an extra $1,000 as that is what the flight would cost anyway.
So my girl found a 2nd school to work at after her 1st school shut down (due to the retirement of the owner). However, her second school had some warning signs that I was concerned about…
3 foreign teachers, all are on their 1st-year contracts.
Typically if a school is good, you’ll get a few teachers who are willing to sign onto 2nd, 3rd, etc. year contracts. Not the case, which I felt was odd, especially for a school that had been around for years.
The school had a pretty low student population count, just under 100. I’ve always heard you want about 50 students per teacher for financial flow/etc. reasons unless you’re a high-end school.
Also, apparently, payday was supposed to be between the 10th and 15th…they said: “in case of holiday or weekend.”
Oh well, not my business (this was still very early in our relationship).
2 months into our relationship my partner is annoyed. I find out that her school has only paid half her salary and will be paying the other half in one week.
This was a massive red flag to me. I gave my partner advice on what to do at this point, but she ignored me and said “They are just having a little finance flow issue some students haven’t paid on time.” OK, whatever.
2 months later we get invited to a dinner hosted by the owners, a husband & wife. I got off work early and headed on over…red flag number 2.
Both Husband and Wife drove very nice cars. The wife had a Tesla and the husband had a very nice BMW 5 series.
Off we go to dinner.
I get to dinner, and my goal is to learn as much about my girl’s school’s owners as possible, so I jump into pleasant conversation. More red flags to follow.
They have 3 kids, 2 young ones and 1 older one, the 2 young ones attend numerous hagwons for various things (this is expensive) and their oldest is attending college in America (also expensive).
They live in the rich part of the town, in a very large apartment…which I was able to find out is financed (AKA high payments).
They are about to start a new marketing campaign to get more students, as numerous students have dropped out lately, they know they don’t have the student population to maintain what they need to maintain.
Red flags are going off in my head like this place is heading straight for the freaking cliff and everyone needs to jump ship now. Not enough students, owners have a ton of bills, and they won’t be staying in business long.
Again not really my place to say anything at this point but I took a mental note.
Next month, my girl’s pay is late again, let’s just say she kept telling me to mind my own business each time I tried to give her advice.
This went on like this for 3 months. And finally, she went an entire month without getting her full salary, she got about a 1/3…
Final red flag…
My girl comes home to a letter on the door of her apartment for eviction.
You see, in Korea, it’s common for the school to pay the rent and provide housing. Apparently, they haven’t been paying rent.
My girl is mad, she’s broke, and about to become homeless. The time for action is now…remember when I said I knew what to do?
I had her check her national pension, tax records, and health care information. All of which are legal requirements for her to maintain her VISA. Even though her school hasn’t paid for those things for months…she’s required to pay for them.
I’m fuming mad. This school is royally screwing over my girl, and that’s not cool. My girl is distraught cause she’s a very prideful woman that now has to ask her partner, that’s me, for help.
I pull into the savings and pay up all her requirements and set up regular monthly payments to ensure that even if her school doesn’t pay (which they haven’t), she can maintain her VISA.
I then ask her a favor…I want to sit down with her co-teachers.
Experience has taught me, she’s not the only one getting screwed over. However, do you know what the beautiful thing about this is? You see the Korean Govt is sick and tired of schools bringing over foreign teachers and screwing them over.
In the past, those teachers who have gotten screwed over have gone crawling to their respective embassies often times homeless, penniless, with nowhere to turn because their employer didn’t have the resources to meet their contractual obligations, and many schools were getting shut down, especially on the 3rd complaint.
I told all her co-teachers to keep going to work (they have to maintain their VISAs) and that I would get back to them in a day or so.
I also am good friends with a Korean who is a lawyer that specializes in business disputes.
Remember that part?
This lawyer and I go way back, I’ve known him for a better part of a decade. He helped me navigate my divorce, I gave him a couch to sleep on when he was going through his divorce, I once loaned him some bucks (he paid me back) and we both really liked helping each other out.
Now I’ll spoil the fun for you, no this lawyer (my friend) is not going to be suing the school…but…
So I called up my friend and said hey “I wanna go drink some soju and talk to you about something and maybe hit you up for a favor,” and he goes “Sure thing.”
We go to our favorite BBQ place and start pounding back the soju as I explain to him the situation. He’s getting madder and madder. He’s upset because he feels like this is giving those foreigners a bad view of his country and he hates Koreans that make Korea look bad.
And I ask him to help file claims with the labor board. With the goal of
- Getting them paid
- Getting them a letter of release (so they can switch to D10 VISAs and find a better school (or leave Korea altogether if they choose)
- Getting the school shut down
Now my friend wouldn’t be suing the school as a Govt appointed lawyer would be, since this is a labor board issue he really doesn’t need to do much. However when a Korean lawyer who specializes in business law calls the labor board to file a complaint about a breach of contract with an English teacher against a hagwon that carries more weight than if the teacher goes through it by themselves.
Also, I feel like it helps communication and eliminates potential language disputes. This would be compounded by the fact that each of those teachers filled separate cases, against the same school a few days apart.
He agrees to help.
Strike 1
My girl goes up first, my friend sits down with her, collects what evidence she has, and calls the labor board. Compliant 1 filled…BAM.
My girl goes to school her BOSS IS LIVID! Her boss approaches her and asks “How can you betray me?” My girl said “pay me what you owe,” and Boss asks “how can you do this?” My girl smiled and said, “This is just the start.”
Strike 2
Strike 1 is still underway with the labor board coming down the necks of the Hagwon owners demanding payment, demanding to know why my partner hasn’t been paid.
Friend calls the labor board, the same case manager he files case number 2 against the school.
The next day, my girl and Strike 2 teacher are called into a meeting with her owner and husband. They want to work out a payment plan and give them a letter of release. My girl says “full payment in of all amounts owed PLUS bonus for completion of contract pro-rated for months completed or no deal.”
The owner tells her that’s not possible, and my girl said that’s fine; full payment or no deal.
Strike 2.5
My friend finds out what the Hagwon owners tried to do, he advises my girl and her co-teachers that if that happens again, do not engage in any negotiations, hand them his business card over, and told them if they have a settlement offer they can call their lawyer…he gives business cards to all teachers.
Strike 3
Bam, wham, open a can of worms folks we are here!
Co-teacher 3 goes to my friend, he calls the labor board, and guess what? Same case manager has gotten 3 VALID labor disputes over breach of contract from the same school all in a matter of 2 weeks.
This school is now not only a liability to its employees but the Korean govt.
The labor board apparently called the school, demands that all salaries, pension payments, taxes, health insurance premiums, and RENT will be paid IN FULL within 10 days or the education license and business license will be revoked and the school’s assets will be seized & sold to pay the teachers what they are due, in addition, creditors/etc. who are also very likely owed pay will be paid.
My girl said the next day at school was crazy, the owners were freaking the heck out. Their entire lives were falling apart, they had a govt lawyer so far up their butt they couldn’t even sit down. That’s when the owners decided they would pull all the teachers into a meeting and work out a settlement.
Keep in mind at this point the school owed approx $20,000 in back wages, health care premiums, pension payments, and future liabilities on top of whatever rent was due for all their apartments (which by this point were all under separate eviction proceedings).
The owners offered each one of them $1,500 that day if they would be willing to drop the labor dispute…each one of the teachers pulled out my friend’s business card and said “Any settlement offers should be made to my lawyer” (I so wish I could have seen this happen).
The owners grab the business cards, look at the teachers and go “You have a Korean lawyer?”
They answer “yes.”
“You all have the same lawyer?”
They answer “yes” (Can you imagine, having 3 separate legal issues from 3 separate people, and finding out the same lawyer is representing each individual suing you?
How that must feel…)
“Will you take the 1.5 now and we work out a payment plan?”
They all say “Talk to my lawyer” at the same time.
They leave the meeting, and that night, all 4 of us partied, and all felt like complete baddies.
Their owners now knew how truly screwed they were. We had a pretty good party that night, the end was near.
The owners dodge a bullet…for now.
The labor board was really, really, really, really, livid. According to my friend who was following up with the labor board the process to resolve this was being fast-tracked…and the labor board was deadly serious about shutting this school down if they couldn’t pay by the deadline.
Apparently, the owners were trying to secure a loan to pay the teachers and keep the teachers employed and the school open.
They filed for extensions and got some more time. They did pay out partial salaries which helped the teachers get by day by day.
By this point, my girl had already been evicted and was living with me and I was supporting her. She was loaning her partial payments to her co-teachers who didn’t have the same support.
It was a Thursday, my girl had just arrived at work (yes she was still legally required to work at a school that wasn’t paying her) when shortly after she started a bunch of Koreans arrived in suits and posted up notices.
15 minutes go by and one of the Korean men in a suit steps inside the classroom and introduces himself and says all the students are going to be getting bused home for today. All the kids are loaded onto the buses and each one gave a notice to give to their parents.
My girl is instructed to wait until all the students are gone. The process takes about an hour, and then my girl is told she is to go home and the labor board will contact her for the next step.
They step outside, there is a moving van…with a few Korean men waiting around…my girl calls my friend the lawyer who calls the labor board.
The school has been foreclosed on; their assets were going to be seized and sold, and the teachers would be paid out of the proceeds of the sale.
If the school doesn’t have enough assets to cover the salaries, payments/etc the Govt will seize any assets of the owners to pay…the teachers now had a judgment and the courts are going collect and pay out on it.
2 months later, one of the co-teachers opted to fly home my girl, and the co-teacher that decided to stay in Korea found much better schools to work at, and my friend calls me all excited and told me he just got off the phone with the labor board, enough business and personal assets have been seized and sold to pay all the teachers what they are due, each teacher will have $300 deducted for the lawyer fees (not for him, he did this all for free) but for the Govt lawyer who handled the case behind the scenes.
Also, the owners have been permanently barred from ever opening a business, and the Education Board had barred the owners from operating in any school setting again.
No idea what happened to the owners after this, but life goes on.
My partner and I took a nice vacation on her back pay and put the rest in the bank. It felt good to win.”
12. No Phones Allowed? Good Luck Calling For Help Then When You Really Need It
“So, I used to be a store manager for a frozen yogurt shop that’s part of a larger chain owned by a family.
Not Menchies big, but still more than a few stores. As such, I worked in a store where we had a large walk-in fridge and freezer.
We also had a district manager named Jane who had a penchant for ridiculous rules and stern punishments for even the smallest perceived infractions.
Once, the power went out to the plaza I worked in and, as such, we had to turn people away because we couldn’t, you know, dispense product or take payments. I was almost fired for closing in the middle of a workday for that one and was shouted at in front of customers and called incompetent, even with documented proof of being unable to remain open.
We also worked alone, which will be important.
Anyway, you’ve got your picture of Jane. She was a joy and a delight.
So, one day I was working away before unlocking the doors and went to grab some yogurt from the freezer when the door closed behind me.
I pulled the handle…. nothing. Hit the plunger…. nothing. Locked in the walk-in freezer in jeans and a t-shirt. I, luckily, had my cell phone in my pocket and was able to call a coworker to come let me out.
Called Jane, obviously shaken up, and was told “well, don’t let the door close. I’ll deal with it later.” Later turned into four months of bothering her because, you know, a walk-in freezer that locks from the outside is very dangerous when you WORK ALONE.
We found solutions to try to keep from anyone becoming stuck, including a sign on the door to never enter without a jacket and your cell phone in case it managed to fall shut.
We had five more cases of door props slipping and staff becoming stuck (the freezer was very large and the door very heavy) before Jane paid a visit to the store.
The first thing she did was tear down the sign because “it’s an eyesore!” And start shouting that we should never have our phones while working, for any reason. She left, still no fix in sight, promising to cut hours of anyone caught with phones, even in the freezer.
Fast forward another month and one more incident of someone getting locked in and, this time, having to be rescued by a customer who she screamed the back room lock code to.
Jane arrives shortly after opening one day to “discuss the freezer.” And immediately tears down the new safety sign and starts telling me about how I need to start listening to her and stop being so stubborn.
While we’re having it out in the back room, the front bell rings to let me know there’s a customer. Jane tells me to serve them and that she’ll stay and finish up some paperwork before leaving. She makes me show her that my cell phone is in my backpack, because “phones are against company policy, you know that.”
I leave to serve the customers, who it turned out were a softball team on their way to a tournament. About 25mins later I was finished with them and was about to quickly mop the tables when I realized I hadn’t seen Jane leave, and she usually didn’t stay long.
I finished cleaning up and doing some restocking before I heard it: Unmistakable shouting and banging on a door, coming from the back room. I put my ear to the door, turned up the store music a few notches, and then gave the bathrooms a quick refresh before opening the freezer to find Jane, shaking with a rage/fear combination I’d never seen before, and putting on my best shocked face.
“Oh dear! You really can’t let that door close. How long were you in there??? I wish you’d had your phone so you could call me….””
11. Take Advantage Of Your Parents' Kindness? You'll Be Left With Nothing
“So this is about my great grandfather (who I called Pop-Pop), who was on my mother’s mother’s side.
He was a farmer growing up with his 12 brothers and sisters. He had a large family and was the middle child. He quit school when he was in 3rd grade to help out with the family farm. After he turned 16 he worked for a plumber who would sell the business to him later on.
When he was in his late 20s he met and years later married his wife. His wife (my great-grandmother, or MeMe as my mother called her) was from a very wealthy family and was 10 years older than he was. Unlike Pop-Pop, she was an only child and she was a widow from a very young age as she also had an adult son (my great uncle Bob, not his real name of course) at the time.
MeMe’s parents didn’t live very long and had died early due to illness along with her first husband (I’m not sure what they died of, I think it was TB).
The fact that she didn’t have to worry about finances helped her raise her son as a single mother as she didn’t have to work.
When her son was 18 he met a girl at college and they got married within a few months. MeMe didn’t really care for her, we will call Jenny, and she clearly saw that she was just in it for the money as Bob was MeMe’s only child at the time.
Jenny was from a high-class family with money. When my great-grandparents got married, she gave birth to my grandmother. It was an unusual birth as MeMe was almost 40 at the time and was very unusual for her to turn out ok.
Pop-pop was a very kind man and even though MeMe had a lot of money, he felt that it was her wealth, and he would still work for a living to provide. They lived very averagely; if you looked at their house you wouldn’t be able to tell that they were millionaires.
At the time, they were living in a 2 bedroom house. My grandmother was only a baby at the start of the great depression. MeMe was not affected that much due to it but Jenny’s family was affected as they made most of their wealth on Wall Street and banks that started closing.
Jenny’s father passed away when he lost all his finances and Jenny’s mother soon died after that. Jenny had 2 other siblings who were all older and were on the other side of the country with no way to contact them or get to them, Bob and Jenny were homeless.
When Bob and Jenny called, Pop-Pop told them to come live with them, no problem whatsoever. When Bob and Jenny came over, Pop-Pop gave them the whole upstairs (pretty much kicking his family out onto the 1st floor) and renovated and added on the house so they could come and go without waking his new baby up.
He added an extra bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, everything. Bob and Jenny were having a hard time finding work (due to the depression), but Pop-Pop told him not to worry, stay as long as you like until you can get back on your feet.
This went on for about a year until one day he noticed that it had been a while since he heard anything. While it was pretty typical to not see them every day, he hadn’t spoken or even heard anything for about 2 weeks.
He opened the door that he built between the two living spaces and saw the area empty. The furniture, bathroom fixtures, the stove, everything; stuff that he bought and stuff that they brought with them. He had no clue what happened and called the police as he thought something was wrong.
The police caught up with them 2,000 miles away living in Florida. It turns out Jenny’s uncle died and left her with a huge sum of money, pretty much being able to rebuild their life overnight before the great depression.
As soon as they collected the pay, both Bob and Jenny moved out of the house and took everything with them, including Pop-pop and MeMe’s items.
Pop-Pop was angry. He didn’t care about being paid back, he just wanted the items he had let them borrow and just a goodbye, just let them know that they were leaving or something.
If they asked for the items he wouldn’t have had much of a problem but he got no word from them and stole the items. As the stuff was easy to replace, he didn’t want to press charges and drag out the mess.
MeMe and he pretty much stop communications with Bob and Jenny due to this.
About 25 years later, MeMe has been tested positive for stage 4 cancer. At this time, my grandmother had given birth to my mother and was living in her own house with my grandfather.
After she tested positive, Pop-Pop and MeMe sold their house (the same house) to live with my grandmother to be taken care of. My grandfather redesigned the basement of his house to have the two living in it. My grandmother had known that she had a half-brother named Bob and his wife Jenny but that was about it, MeMe gave my grandmother his last known number.
She wanted to at least try and tell them that she had stage 4 cancer and not much time left. My grandmother placed a call in and found out what had happened between the 25 years. Bob and Jenny never had any kids, but they still had her Uncle’s riches.
One thing about Bob and Jenny was that they were smart with the funds and invested in it whereas MeMe never invested in her earnings nor did Pop-pop, they just let it sit. My grandmother was happy that she was finally going to meet her brother after all this time.
However, they never showed up, even though they said they were going to. My mother said that the first time she saw them was at the funeral. MeMe passed away 2 months later and my grandmother called them to let them know where it was.
So they got to the funeral and the first thing out of Bob’s mouth was “So what is in the will?” not even a hello. My grandmother had greeted them (as she didn’t know the history and why they disappeared, plus my grandmother was too overly nice to family) and was putting them next to the family seating when they saw Pop-Pop.
Pop-pop then said, “Sorry, only family is allowed to sit up front.” Bob and Jenny started to contest when they saw the funeral guide. My grandmother was listed as an only child with nothing saying Bob or Jenny were related. It turned out that both MeMe and Pop-Pop were angry by how they were treated all those years ago so MeMe’s will and funeral arrangements were made to disown her son.
They were strangers to the two. Bob and Jenny blew their top, and while my grandmother tried to cool things down, they left. MeMe’s will left 85% to Pop-Pop and 15% of it to my grandmother, it even made references that Bob and Jenny would get nothing and were disowned. Both tried to fight it but it didn’t work.
However, I’m still not done with the revenge; this part is more natural development than anything else.
My grandmother still kept in contact with her brother outside of Pop-Pop’s wishes (Pop-Pop still didn’t tell her what happened since he kept saying that he had no son) and she knew he wouldn’t approve.
My grandmother, my grandfather, and my mother even visited them at their house during a vacation. My mother said that he always seemed two-faced along with Jenny. They would act nice but it was more of an act, my mother brought this up but my grandmother always shot it down (my grandmother was naïve) and she heard from Bob about what happened between the two.
Bob’s story was that after a year, Jenny’s Uncle died and left them riches. It wasn’t a lot (a big lie) but enough to move out. When they went to tell Pop-Pop about it, he blew up on them leaving and demanded that he wanted the finances to pay for rent (another lie, Pop-Pop never asked for a dime) for a room that he built them along with the labor and construction of the area.
They had to leave under the cover of night to be protected from him and that he brainwashed MeMe into disowning him and only came back because she was dying (which also was a lie, they didn’t show up until the funeral and asked about the will when they first got there, my mother remembers clearly.)
Since Pop-Pop owned 85%, he still had the majority of the finances. Grandma wanted to give part of her earnings, but she had since spent the majority of it buying a house and doing major renovations to it. She would give him the bucks, but it would be after Pop-Pop passed away.
Since Grandma wanted to give finances to her brother, they wrote up a contract that after Pop-Pop passed the funds that Grandma got, 50% of it would go to her brother.
So they waited, and waited…. That never came. What happened is too crazy enough not to tell.
By this point when the contact was made my grandmother was in her early 40s, Bob & Jenny were in their mid to late 50s while Pop-Pop was in his 70s. Most of Pop-Pop’s siblings had passed away and his health was always questionable.
He smoked and drank, on top of having bad knees so at the time; we thought he had only a while left to live. He lived to be 103 years old. Bob and Jenny passed away around 20 years after the contract was signed by them and my grandmother and since Bob and Jenny had no kids and Jenny’s other siblings passed away with no kids of their own, their funds were given to my grandmother after no one else claimed it since Jenny and Bob had no will (I’m not sure the details of how she did it, but she did get it).
My grandmother, later on, found out that what they were telling her about the house was a lie, as she was cleaning out Pop-Pop’s room, she found the old police records and pictures about the apartment along with Bob and Jenny’s records about how much they got.
All of the funds were wasted away years later by Pop-Pop (he got into heavy depression after MeMe passed away. He drank and gambled most of the funds away trying to ease the pain) so even if he died later on, Bob would not have gotten much, if any of it.
My grandma didn’t know about Pop-Pop’s finances until she took over his finances when he went into a nursing home at the age of 102. Yes, at 100 he was still pretty active with his finances.”
10. Let Your Chick Move In Rent-Free? Watch Me Dip Quick
“I moved in with a guy earlier this year, we’ll call him Big, and another roommate, whom we will call Bro.
The three of us got along super well since Big and Bro were besties and they both thought I was cool.
Big was the landlord’s nephew, making him like the landduke or perhaps the landbaron. There was no lease, it was just jungle law, whatever Big said was what went down.
Big gave his uncle $600/mo, and we paid rent to Big. I knew this was a red flag, but I needed a place to stay and it was hecka cheap for a house with a backyard.
Fast forward a couple of months, Big gets a girl.
Bro immediately dislikes the girl and becomes very vocally opposed to their relationship. He thinks she’s using him, isn’t a good person, yadda yadda yadda. I think Bro just disliked the girl monopolizing his best friend’s time, but I kind of agreed with Bro about girl’s intentions.
She seemed like bad news.
After a while, Bro accepts that Big and Girl aren’t splitting up any time soon, so he decides to bury the hatchet and make amends. He says something along the lines of, “I don’t like you, you don’t like me, but I respect you and I want us to get along.” I was present during this conversation and it actually seemed like a nice interaction, so I was pleased.
Girl turns around and pulls some Lannister crap. She cries to Big that Bro said he hates her, he doesn’t want her around, and he thinks they should break up. In light of this, she dumps Big because she “couldn’t be around Bro if that’s how Bro felt about her.”
Big is livid. He confronts Bro and tells him that what he did was unforgivable. Bro tells Big that Girl is lying, and asks me to back him up. I tell Big that they had a pleasant conversation and he never said any of that stuff, Girl is lying.
Big calls us both liars. He says he doesn’t want Bro living in the house anymore, to pack up his crap and leave within the next two days. Two days. They had been inseparable for two years, and Big gives Bro two days to get lost.
Bro and I are stunned, but Bro says, “Fine dude, you deserve her.” We have our tearful goodbyes and Bro moves out. Big has a friend, we’ll call him N. N agrees to fill the room that Bro left behind.
All in all, the new arrangement is reasonable and things go back to normal.
One week later I get home and see a moving truck outside the house. Big is like, “Hey, OP! Can you help me move this couch?
Girl is moving in with us.” He never asked, he never hinted about it, he just kind of whipped the information out on me and slapped me in the face with it. So I helped him with the couch.
Now we have 4 people living in a three-bedroom, and she has a big, poorly-trained dog that she beats all the time, which… sucks.
I hate that crap. Plus I have a cat, and they would let the dog chase my cat because it was entertaining to them. I went from slightly less than happy to furious.
I get to talking to N, and we realize that Girl is not paying rent or utilities.
Here are the numbers. Total rent was $600; split three ways it was $200/month. Not bad, right? This is the poor south we’re talking about, so rent is pretty sweet around these parts. With 4 people, N and I agree that Girl needs to pay rent.
We decide that, since Big and Girl are sharing a room, it wouldn’t be perfectly fair to ask them to split things 4 ways ($150 each). We agree that something more like $175/$175/$250 would be acceptable. That’s reasonable, right? Utilities, however, would be split 4 ways without argument, nothing less would be fair.
So we have a house meeting. First I point out that they need to keep that dog on a leash when it’s not in its kennel. I told them it stresses me out when they let it chase my cat, and Girl agrees and apologizes, but Big snorts like it’s a dumb thing to worry about.
Witch, you’re poking the bear…
Then N hits them with the figures. We want concessions on rent and utilities, and here are the numbers we worked out. Big looks at the numbers and shows them to Girl. She points out that she should not have to pay rent because Big and Girl are doing repairs on the house that benefit everybody equally, so that should cover her rent.
N and I point out that this house belongs to the Big, so renovations are to their benefit, not ours. That’s not acceptable rent. Girl then argues that she’s trying to save finances, so she shouldn’t have to pay rent because she doesn’t want to end up on “the ramen diet.”
Pump the brakes. I worked in retail at the time making under $10/hr. I ate ramen every day because I honestly could not make ends meet otherwise. This girl made $19/hr and had parents supporting her. I gave her the most incredulous look of my life and it went so far above her head that it may still be in orbit to this day.
Right then and there I decided I could not live with these people anymore.
Big agrees with Girl and says our numbers were unfair. N makes a valiant attempt to keep the peace and offers to forego his rent reduction as long as I get my $25 rent reduction and Girl covers her quarter of the utilities.
N says he has a pretty good factory job and he doesn’t need the money, he just wants peace in our house. I look at him in a whole new light because I had not realized what a true bro he was.
The new offer is $175/$200/$225.
Big crumples up the paper and says no, he doesn’t want to do rent that way. They’ll split utilities 4 ways, but rent will be $200 per room, and “if we don’t like $200/mo rooms, go live somewhere else.” He and Girl look at me, waiting for a response.
“Fine. It’s your house. I accept your terms.”
What Big didn’t account for was that I had a place lined up in case he wanted to be a jerk, which I figured he would. I also knew that he didn’t have any other friends to move in because we had discussed it before Bro moved out.
N was literally the only guy he knew who was available on such short notice. I decide to stick it out for the remainder of the month since I was already paid up and I didn’t want to take this crap to small claims to get my portion of the rent back.
The whole time Big makes no effort to keep that freaking dog on a leash, and I’m just carving tally marks on the wall to count down the days.
Now at this point, I should note that Girl and I were on pretty good terms. I didn’t like having a 4th roommate, but I saw what she did to Bro, and I decided to keep her close.
Nobody else in the house smoked except me and her, so we would go outside to smoke together and she would confide in me about what was going on in her life. I couldn’t live with her, but I definitely didn’t hate her.
I felt it was more prudent to keep her as a friend than to make enemies for no reason.
Through our friendship, I learn that she doesn’t actually care about Big. With a little prodding, she admits she’s using him for a place to stay, but she feels like she has to keep up the relationship if she wants to live at that house.
I tell her there’s nothing wrong with that, and I admit that I don’t care about Big either. I point out that she had put a lot of her own pay into renovations, and if she broke up with him Big couldn’t legally kick her out unless he had the finances to pay her back.
She and I both knew he couldn’t afford it, but Girl thought it would never work because they’d still have to share a room. In order for my revenge to hurt Big as much as possible, I had to give him the least amount of notice before making my move, so without spoiling the fun I point out that hey, if N or I ever moved out, at least it would be something to consider.
Two days before the end of the month, I grab a buddy with a truck and start moving my crap out. Big gets home from work and sees my room is empty, I’m just clearing out the last of it.
He’s like, “What’s going on, are you moving out?”
I’m like, “Yeah, I found a place in the next town over. Rent’s a little higher but I get more square footage per buck.”
He’s like, “Well, this is kinda last minute, isn’t it?
I wish you would have told me sooner!”
I think to myself, two days was enough time for Bro, wasn’t it? But that’s not what I say.
I say, “Crap, Big, I thought you knew. This was your idea from the house meeting.
I told you I accepted it.”
His brain had fried temporarily but when the wheels started turning again, he realized I was right. I was so smooth about it he couldn’t even be angry. Here’s the cool thing about living in the south; southern hospitality dictates that if you offer a southerner little pleasantries like a cordial goodbye and a firm handshake, he is literally incapable of being angry at you.
We shake hands and end things on good terms. That $25 he refused to concede to me ended up costing him $200/mo.
Update:
It’s been about 6 months and as far as I know, they never filled that room. The best part about ending on good terms, aside from feeling like an adult and being able to come pick up my mail, was that I had access to the updates on their life after I left. Here are a few fun tidbits I’ve been keeping track of.
- Girl now pays rent.
- Girl two-timed Big.
- Girl dumped Big and made him move into my old room. That sucks for him because she now has the master bedroom with the private bathroom and shower.
- The dog ran away. Sad because I actually liked that dog, just couldn’t stand the poor girl’s owners.
- Girl began going out with her “personal trainer” who was giving her free “lessons” during her relationship with Big. Big now has to listen to them hook up in his old bedroom.
- N hates his life. Ha sorry N, but you gotta admit the rent is pretty cheap.”
9. Can't Find It In You To Say Sorry? I'll Make Sure You Never Go To College
Literally all they had to do was apologize. Easy.
“My best friend, let’s call him Harry (not real name), and I were in our senior year of high school.
We weren’t the most popular kids, but we still had our own group of friends that we were close with. We both realized though that we were the only ones in our group that weren’t going to have dates to prom.
So we branched out from our group of friends and met these 2 girls, let’s call them Sally and Mary (again, not real names). After we met them we instantly started hanging out all the time. All four of us would talk all night and when school time came we’d be with each other all day.
The time came around for prom and Harry decided he would ask out Sally to prom. He came up with a whole idea of how to do it and was extremely excited. When we all hung out, there was no indication that either girl had someone to go to prom with yet, and I already knew I would be working the night of prom, so I told them I wasn’t going.
So the next day, with the help of Mary and I, we set up the prom proposal which spanned the rest of the school day. Then at the end of the day Mary and I made ourselves scarce so it would only be Sally and Harry.
After I dropped Mary home and got home myself I found Harry waiting for me sobbing.
The Problem: Sally had apparently berated Harry viciously in front of everyone that was present at school. She went out of her way to insult him and get others to laugh at him publicly.
The next day when we arrived at school Sally had apparently started a rumor that Harry and I were seeing each other and he had asked her out just for the sake of covering it up. The reason people believed her was due to the fact that Harry, Sally, Mary, and I would always hang out so they thought we had come out to her.
When in fact we were entirely straight. The rumor I let slide because it was senior year and I already had my life planned, but when she dropped the rumor that we had HIV I lost it. The following week Harry and I would randomly receive anonymous pamphlets for various HIV clinics to get ourselves tested in our lockers.
I confronted Sally and Mary and told them to cut it out and asked for an apology within 1 week’s time for Harry and me otherwise I’d ruin their lives like they tried to ruin mine and Harry’s. The apology never came.
The Revenge: The reason I gave them a week’s worth of time wasn’t for their sake but rather to set up what I had planned. I first got all the pictures of Sally and Mary drinking from all the nights we went out printed out and put in an envelope.
After that, I had to go and collect a case of beer and a couple of half-empty bottles. What Sally was unaware of was that the house her family was renting out belonged to my aunt and she put it up for rent after her husband had passed. Since I lived with my aunt during my junior year to help her out I knew how to sneak out and back in.
Sally’s family was also a very very conservative household and her parents didn’t tolerate any drinking whatsoever. So I snuck into the house when I knew that they would all be at church and planted some bottles in very obvious places but still hidden so you wouldn’t find them unless she looked for them.
I then left the beer case on her porch with the envelope of pictures of her and Mary drinking and signed the bottom with Mary’s name.
Outcome: From what I heard from a friend of theirs Sally’s parents apparently blew a fuse.
They searched her room and found the bottles, and contacted and informed Mary’s parents. They both weren’t allowed to see each other and Sally was sent to rehab due to her “drinking problem” and had to go to a community college since her parents wouldn’t let her go to the out-of-state college she applied to.
Mary’s parents took away her car and all financial backing, and she couldn’t pay for college and ended up working in a grocery store which she still works at to this day.”
Another User Comments:
“Maybe this will be an unpopular opinion.
What the girls did was terrible – but I imagine the effects of it would have lasted little more than the rest of the school year. The effects of the revenge have affected at least one of the girls for at least 8 years.
I’m definitely not excusing the girls’ behavior at all, but I also struggle to see this revenge as sweet because it was ultimately between 17 and 18-year-olds. If I were punished for everything I did at 17, I would probably not live the life I live today.
Being 17 is terrible – it’s awkward, and you think you know everything but know so little, and part of growing up is being hurt and learning to overcome it (something I struggle with to this day, truth be told). But sometimes, growing up also means being the one who hurts others.
And sometimes it’s out of malice, but other times it may be out of immense social pressure, or social anxiety, or just trying to do what you think is right to survive high school. Everything in high school seemed so much more impactful than it ended up being – because things are different in the time you’re experiencing it.
So, it’s pro-revenge. But for me, it doesn’t feel good – because 17-year-old me may have been capable of the same, and I think young people should get chances to learn from their mistakes in ways that don’t totally derail their future prospects.
Just my two cents.” maux_zaikq
Reply:
“You’re right…but she had every opportunity to not escalate it. If she had left it at just humiliating him by saying no in the way she did then Harry would have been broken up about it but moved on.
There was no reason for her to continue spreading rumors and involve someone else… 17-year-old me didn’t expect her entire life to be ruined, just her getting in trouble. But hey, actions have consequences, and I did give both of them time to apologize.” DaemonFalls
8. Be The Worst Co-Worker There Is? Let Me Leave A Fake Customer Review
And just like that, Jerry was gone.
“I’m in college and work at “Food Place”, which is a big, chain, fast-food-ish place in the States. Last May, we got a new employee, we’ll call him “Jerry.” Jerry was annoying from square one, but I tried to be nice/patient at first, as the job does not pay enough to have decent people 100% of the time.
He would constantly disappear and come back clearly high and slouch around doing nothing to help (if you are one of those people who gets high and still works hard, no judgment, more power to you). One day he “lost a contact lens” and left for 45 minutes to get a new one from home (he lived 5 minutes down the street).
Came back messed up out of his mind and pretended like nothing happened. I think he was hooked on something serious, judging by his demeanor and the long-sleeved flannels he ALWAYS wore, even in my area’s extreme summer heat/humidity.
Jerry was constantly butting into conversations, making inappropriate jokes, pretending like he’d known you forever, etc. This could have been overlooked if he was a good worker but he was not. One of the really aggravating things about him was that he (a jerk white guy) used a different accent/vernacular depending on the ethnicity of the person he was talking to, switching from “What’s up, how are you bro?” to (offensive, stereotypical black voice) “Wassup brotha, how you doin homie?” He was one of those people constantly seeking the approval/love of others.
So he was hired in May; by mid-July, all the employees in the store hated him. Everyone would constantly complain about how crappy he was and everyone wished he wasn’t there. He had caught on to the fact that he was widely disliked and became an exponentially bigger piece of crap because of it.
One day in July, he was particularly disgruntled and called one of my female co-workers (“Shirley”) a cruel name for asking him to bring a bagel down to the food production line (we allow customers to switch the bread for a sandwich to a bagel, but don’t keep them on the line).
I wasn’t a huge fan of Shirley either but tolerated her and we worked well together.
When Shirley told me this, I was pretty disgusted, and asked a simple question: “Do you want him gone?” She said yes. I’m a proactive person, so I did the following:
I clocked out for a 15-minute break and went to the employee bathroom. Our company has this website where the customer can rate their experience and leave comments. These reviews are seen by the “Dragon Lady” (Store Manager’s boss) who is terrifying.
I created a throw-away email and went to my company’s website. I went through the prompt, leaving 1/5 stars for every option until I got to the comment section. In the comment section, I left this note (names/company/locations changed):
“Hi, I was in the Food Place in Happy Town, OR this morning and had a very disturbing experience. I asked one of your employees, think his name was Jerry, for extra butter with my bagel. He responded very sarcastically with a “sure thing” and gave it to me.
As I was walking away, I heard him mutter the C word under his breath. THE C WORD!!!! I am appalled and disgusted with my experience. I will not be patronizing your business anymore. He is not somebody you want working for your company.”
So I clock back in and went on working. I didn’t think much would come of it. Best-case scenario, I thought, was that in a couple of days, something would come up about it and he would get a stern talking-to.
NOPE! Literally 8 minutes later, the phone rings. My heart skips a beat. Deep down I knew what was about to happen. I answer. “Good morning thanks for calling Food Place, this is OP, how can I help you today?” It’s the big boss, Dragon Lady.
She wants to speak to the Store Manager. I run to the office and tell Store Manager that Dragon Lady wants to speak with her. A few minutes later, Store Manager emerges and takes Jerry to the office.
30 minutes go by (I assume this was all deliberation between Jerry and Store Manager).
When Store Manager comes back out, Jerry is nowhere to be found. I ask her where he was.
Manager: “Jerry has been fired.”
Me: -with the best disbelief act I can pull off- “What?! Really?! What happened?!”
Manager: “He mouthed off to a customer who wrote a report.
Dragon Lady wanted him gone immediately. Make sure if you’re gonna talk crap about a customer that you go to the back to do it.”
To be honest, I didn’t feel guilty at all during this whole excursion. I definitely had some heart-pounding, “Oh crap” moments over the next few days, but it was because I thought I might be found out.
I honestly made the store a better place by doing all of this.
8 months later and I am still working at Food Place. A couple of other employees know what I did but we don’t ever speak of it. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Store Manager also knows, but she hated his guts as well and was looking for a reason to fire him at the time.
I’ve been looking for internships/jobs in my field and when I quit Food Place, I’m definitely going to tell Store Manager. I think she’ll get a kick out of it.”
7. Almost Be The Reason I Fail My College Project? I'll Send A TV Show After You
“This happened about 8 years ago. I am not a vindictive person and I wouldn’t call this revenge, it is more of a “karma” story.
It all happened when I was back in college studying applied computer science. When I started college, I wasn’t very good at all, but increasingly I managed to pick up more and more. At the time, OpenStack released its first beta private cloud within reach, and I wanted to set one up with some applications and on-demand computing as a PoC final-year project.
To do this we needed to get a server and a rack to store it so we could set this up. The college professor was a cool guy and gave us a one-unit space for us to house the server.
Now what I needed was a server, the project was due in 4 months, which gave us plenty of time to find a server.
I posted an ad on a forum called Tweakers with a request for a 1-unit server with 2 CPUs, RAM, and SATA hard drives (most servers back then ran SCSI which was expensive for high-capacity drives).
Considering we were students we were on a budget.
I was contacted by a guy (let’s call him Zhan) who recycled corporate servers and basically said that considering we were students he’d give us a good deal on a one-unit, two CPUs, 8 GB ram, and two SATA hard drive servers for about 500 bucks.
The equipment was about 4 years old, but it was still a good deal. I wired him the bucks, and that’s when things went silent.
He had multiple excuses for why the server wasn’t delivered:
2 weeks after wiring the pay: Sticker dropped from the package at the delivery service (unlikely, but plausible).
However, when asking for the Track&Trace number, he couldn’t give it (red flag)
2 weeks after that: He would bring it himself, but did a no show
2 weeks after that: He finds a transportation company to deliver the server
1 week after that: received the server …
Except the server wasn’t as advertised (3 units high) with 6 drive slot (which I would have noticed as there’s no way to fit so many drives in a one-unit server). I know I should have asked for pictures or model numbers, but at the time I was glad I found something so fast.
When I tried to turn the server on… no screen… no sound (these things make a lot of noise). I checked and tried figuring out what was wrong. We used to have an IRC channel where a lot of the senior students and alumni hang out, so I asked for help.
One guy came down (he had a consultancy business where they set up whole server farms) and he confirmed the server was basically dead. I was stressing, I just lost almost 50% of my time and we still needed to set the whole OpenStack up.
Finding an alternative with no finances left would be a nightmare…
The guy felt sorry for me and called me the day after that he would be dropping by again. He showed up with a brand new server they had wrongly purchased and couldn’t send back.
He said they would probably use it as a test server in the future, but in the meanwhile, I could borrow it for my project. In the end, I cleared my project (got pretty good marks too!), but I still had spent 500 dollars on an expensive paperweight.
I had tried contacting him before but he went silent. I thought I lost my bucks and the only take-back was a hard-learned lesson.
I didn’t know what to do, so in the end, I gathered all my email trails and sent them to a website that basically goes after scammers and runs a TV show about it.
I didn’t expect much to happen but figured if there are more people that get scammed by this guy, they may have something to look into.
Within 24 hours I got an email back from them that they would look into it.
A day after I get a call from a very panicky Zhan telling me he got contacted by people from the show. It didn’t dawn on me that his business may not have been fully legal and that national television attention may not be something he wanted. He was asking me to drop it giving me some sob story about how he needed to buy Christmas presents for his daughter and didn’t have a penny left. While I felt sad at first, it did dawn on me that the guy tried to screw over my final year project (which could have meant me not graduating).
Now I get another email from the TV show people that considering it’s a small case, they couldn’t spend much time on it, but that they would try and help me get my pay back at least.
Another day later I get an email from the guy he would wire the funds back if I sent back the server.
Considering it is a 30 Kg machine, that would be a costly affair, so I told him to come and get it or pay for return shipping, which he refuses.
After another week the people from the TV show contacted me again to see how things were, I told them again what happened. In the end, he wired me the bucks and told me to keep the bricked server.
In the end, I donated the case to another student that built a NAS with it.
Not sure what happened to him after that, his profile on the forum had a lot of other angry reviews and hasn’t been active since.”
6. Act Wild Over A Parking Spot? Let's Get The Cops Involved
This never would have happened if he was at least respectful.
“A few years ago, I was going through a harder point in my life. I was living with my brother and my mom, and that was it. My brother, albeit a bit younger, could barely keep his grades up or clean his room, let alone help out with the house, so most choices and responsibilities ended up falling upon my mother and me to work out, and at the time of the story, we ended up agreeing that the current city we lived in was too expensive (her side) and crappy because I didn’t like my peers in the school district (my side), and in less than ten minutes, we had agreed to move nearly half an hour away and never look back, and it was perfect.
Well, it was perfect for about a week, if that. Because the moment we moved in, our jerk of a neighbor existed. Enter Roger, who made the mistake of taking my mom’s parking spot. This was an issue because if we didn’t have a parking spot, we had to park five minutes of walking away from the house, which was unpleasant for us.
So we decided to politely ask for our spot back.
Mom: “Hi, is this your car?” My mom asked as she saw Roger walk back to his car.
Roger: “Yeah, and it’s my spot, too. It’s always been that way.”
Mom: “Well, you see, the spots are numbered, and this is clearly our-”
Roger: “Screw you.”
And with that, Roger had driven away and set the tone for the entire lease between us. My mom and I agreed we’d try to do what we could to get the neighbor to reconcile in his ways and keep notes of anything, well, noteworthy, but otherwise, not much could be done.
The landlords did crap all to help us, so we were out that spot.
About a month in, I left school about an hour early and found a free parking spot when I drove there with a friend, and decided this would be the day we gave him a taste of his own medicine.
Turns out, he wasn’t very rational either. This led to him blocking my friend in so he could threaten to assault him until my friend insisted on leaving.
I told my mom about this, and she agreed that this was the last straw.
We were taking this guy down. So she told me to wait and do nothing for a day… so she could get in touch with her friend, who happened to be a Sheriff for our local county.
Now, I do want to defend myself a bit here… Nah, just kidding, we’re totally freaking snitches, especially when it comes to people like this!
Anything that comes their way, they deserve. So we told this guy everything small that happened since the month we moved in; they were constantly loud, we heard yelling from Roger all the time, at one point they broke some furniture outside, and my mom could smell crap through the walls (this turned out to be substances).
The Sheriff seemed intrigued.
Sheriff: “Now, Mom, how much do you hate this guy?”
Mom: “I just want my parking spot.”
Sheriff: “Well, here’s the thing. We can’t do anything about your parking spot. That’s a civil dispute and not our territory.
But…”
Mom: “But?”
Sheriff: “You mentioned you smell stuff through the walls, right? Well, we’ve been arresting an awful lot of people driving under the influence, and it’s really close to this complex. If we got him for that, he’d have no car to park in your spot behind bars.”
And so our plan was born. We wrote down everything we smelled, we wrote down the plates of every car that was in our and his spot, and we even set a camera up to automatically take pictures of cars and log when they left and pulled in (a motion camera I set up on a high window), and basically every noise we heard.
And when the time came and the Sheriff needed evidence, we forwarded it all to the police officer.
Fast forward through months of this. Half of our apartment is packed up, I’ve resigned to always walking home and not even bothering having my mom drive me most days, and our neighbor is still being obnoxious as heck.
And then I saw a truly beautiful sight: the apartment right next to us, swarmed by six law enforcement cars. Two of which were for CPS, and four of which were, well, armed freaking cops.
Turns out, almost every single plate we noted down and sent to the friend had been arrested for some form of substance possession.
He wasn’t just buying substances, he was SELLING substances. Basically every kind of them. We know he had multiple substances in his house, and there was probably more we weren’t told of.
And that CPS car? Turns out, he had shared custody of three kids!
“He definitely won’t be seeing those kids again,” the Sheriff told us. He also told us later that Roger got years behind bars, though I’m not sure how many. Probably something over ten.
The funny part is that nobody except the Sheriff knew my mom was behind this.
She said she wanted to remain anonymous and even turned him down on taking us to dinner. When he asked her why, she replied “Well, it was a bit late, but you got us that parking spot back, didn’t you?””
Another User Comments:
“This is just proof that if you’re going to do something illegal, don’t be a jerk to people who live near you.” BlindDragoon
5. Attempt To Swipe Our Security Deposit? See Ya In Court, Buddy
“So this story takes place like five years ago when my husband and I were broke college students with a young baby.
We worked hard to afford our crappy little duplex ($600/month) and necessities while trying to finish our degrees to one day get ahead. Our duplex was one in an entire neighborhood owned by a large company and managed by a super sketchy married couple who lived on the same street.
Before our kid was born we did the normal excited-new-parent thing of painting his nursery and decorating, blah blah. Our lease stated we needed permission to paint, which we obtained from the property manager (the husband of the couple). He insisted it would be fine and, being young and naïve, we didn’t get it in writing because he was so chill about it.
So we paint and move on with our lives.
A little while later our lease was up and we had given notice to vacate as we were moving closer to my husband’s school. The property manager was understanding, everything was fine, and we scheduled our move-out inspection.
Prior to this inspection, we specifically asked him for the name of the paint color we needed to use when re-painting the nursery. He flat-out refused to give it, saying it was unnecessary to paint as we’d been there so long they’d be painting the whole duplex anyway.
Okay, cool.
Move-out inspection day comes and goes. We left the house in better shape than we found it, aside from a small area of torn carpet right along a seam in a doorway. The property manager inspected and said everything looked “great” and we should get our whole deposit ($400) back minus “a few bucks” for the torn carpet.
Sounds good, boss.
Enter a period of weeks where we waited and waited for our deposit, eventually leaving messages upon messages with false promises or no return calls at all. Eventually, over a month later, this culminated in a phone call with the property manager where he said, and I remember this almost verbatim, “I don’t know what you’re so worried about anyway!
It’s only like $200 you’re getting back!” He cited the painted nursery and “the huge mess left behind” as deductions, and I coldly informed him we’d be going to court then because we didn’t feel we owed for those reasons (the place was spotless when we left aside from the 6-pack of beer we left him in the fridge for being chill).
Not one hour later, he called back and miraculously our refund check had “just shown up in the mail!” Already knowing he was trying to screw us, we installed a recording app on my phone (one-party consent state) and went to the office.
The check indeed was only for $200 of our deposit and included no list of what they charged us for (important detail). We intentionally goaded him into admitting that he had told us not to paint and that the house looked great on move-out, and went on our happy way, revenge plan already unfolding.
We didn’t use the check and instead emailed the CEO of the entire property company, copying in the property manager, and detailing the entire process.
The CEO sent back an email with a cute little typed-up list of deductions, including all the things we were specifically told we wouldn’t be on the hook for.
A fun detail was that even by his own math they owed us $230 of our deposit. No one really had an answer for why they then tried to issue a check for $200… but whatever.
The joke was on him because we began digging through all the state regulations on security deposits and refunds, hoping to prove that our length of stay meant he couldn’t charge us for “wear-and-tear” things like carpet cleaning, etc. And in our search, we instead happened upon a statute requiring landlords to return security deposit refunds and an itemized list of deductions within 30 days… or lose the right to withhold for actual damages and be subject to treble damages if the landlord is thought to be maliciously withholding the refund.
So we typed up a demand letter for our entire security deposit, citing the statute (which he had broken because we didn’t receive any refund offer or itemized list until six weekends later). And when he sent a smart aleck reply, we filed in small claims court for our entire deposit plus treble damages and court costs.
Now, I don’t know if it’s clear at this point, but I can be really freaking petty if I feel like someone is trying to screw with me. And it was clear this guy made a career out of stealing finances from low-income renters who likely could never afford to fight it.
I was livid.
I spent the next month before our court date compiling all email correspondence (in which he’d screwed himself over numerous times by providing written documentation that he exceeded time limits, charged incorrect amounts, etc.). I also compiled phone records showing dozens upon dozens of unanswered and unreturned calls to the property manager and detailed accounts I’d made immediately after hanging up of lies from the property manager.
I printed out a screenshot from the company’s own website detailing the CEO’s role as the “Legal Advisor” (so I could innocently claim, “shouldn’t he have known the statutes for these issues?”). I printed all the relevant statutes and highlighted the important parts.
And then I made three freaking copies of everything and nicely compiled each in a binder complete with sleeve protectors and page numbers – one for our own reference, one for the property manager and/or CEO (we weren’t sure who would show up), and one for the judge himself.
We also took our handy little recording of the property manager admitting to all the crap he lied about and then pretended to have never said.
Needless to say, the judge laughed at how prepared we were, asked if we were law students, and then awarded us treble damages and court fees as well as interest. I will never forget the CEO’s face when we looked over and smiled at him.
All his emails and disregard for the law were on the table and, rather than giving us the original $350 or so we were promised from our deposit, he ended up paying us over $1300 a month later. It was glorious.”
4. You're Allergic To Sugar? Sorry, No Bacon For You
“I’ve spent my career working in restaurants, mostly in the dining room. I worked my way up from host to management.
Along the way, I had some really awesome mentors who taught me the fine art of not taking crap from customers while remaining completely classy and above reproach. This incident happened a few years back, and it’s one of my proudest moments.
It’s a busy weekend night and I have my A-team servers on the floor. One of them comes to me with a concern; a lady at his table informed him right off the bat that she was allergic to sugar, then she proceeded to insist on getting bacon on her burger.
Bacon is cured with sugar. Bacon is literally meat candy it has so much freaking sugar in it.
This is definitely a problem, and after a quick internet search, I confirm there’s no way she’s allergic to sugar. Nope. You can be allergic to types of sugars, but not all of them.
Armed with this secret knowledge I gird myself and head out for what I’m sure will be an entertaining battle of wits. I approach the table and see four middle-aged, affluent people. Three are smiling and chatting, one woman looks like she’s spent a lifetime sucking on lemons.
Guess who wanted the bacon? The ensuing conversation went something like this:
Me: walk up, introduce myself, get right to the point because I’m busy and I already know this is total nonsense, “I’m sorry, but your server has informed me that you have a sugar allergy, is that correct?”
Lemon Lady: rolls eyes and assumes superior tone, “Yes. I’m allergic to sugar! That’s why I told him! Did he have a problem with that?” Rude and arrogant are huge turn-offs for me btw.
Me: “Ok, I just wanted to make sure, because you ordered bacon on your burger, and bacon has sugar in it, so we can’t honor your request. Did you still want the burger without the bacon, or would you like to change your order?”
Her SO sitting next to her is now looking from her to me with actual fear–I’m pretty sure he’d never seen anyone stand up to her before–and the couple they’re with are smirking at each other like this is the moment they’ve been dreaming of.
LL: visibly angry now, “I know what I’m allergic to! Just put the bacon on it! The sugar cooks out. I eat bacon all the time!”
Me: oh jibbers, how dumb is she? Now I’m smiling, because this witch deserves to get schooled and I’m gonna enjoy doing it.
“I’m sorry ma’am, but no, sugar does not cook out of food. That is physically impossible as it doesn’t vaporize at lower temps like water does. I don’t know what bacon you normally eat, but you have been EXTREMELY lucky not to have had a severe reaction since all bacon has sugar in it.
So you see, I cannot in good conscience serve you bacon because it’s only a matter of time before something terrible will happen to you from it. As the manager, I can’t risk being held responsible for your health that way.”
LL: Stunned. TICKED OFF. “So I don’t get bacon!? I can’t believe this!” She keeps ranting until her husband furiously shushes her. The couple across the table is desperately trying to hold back giggles.
Me: Smiling my best smile, “I’m really sorry, I know you must be disappointed, but I’m only looking out for your safety.
I’ll just have them make your burger without it, and please let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.”
I walked away and informed the server what had happened. He later told me she didn’t make a peep for the rest of the evening, then the other couple paid and left him a fat tip as well.”
3. Not Shiny Enough For You? Enjoy Taking A Tumble
“I used to work for a retail cleaning company. Around 70% of the managers we undertook work for were nice people, however, 30% were totally demanding ridiculous pastiches of how to fail in life and maroon yourself in a dead-end job and torture your personality to resemble a despotic control freak with a tendency to patronize and denigrate anyone who works for you.
So we were just finishing up laying the hard protective coating (screed) over the concrete floor in this massive retail outlet that sells sports equipment in the UK (which sponsors a large northeastern football club).
The manager comes in and says “Are you finished?”
We said, “Almost, we have to polish this section now.”
“It’s 1 am and I want to go home.”
“It should take around 90 minutes to polish and then 3 hours to harden so you can walk on it again, then another 12 hours to go off completely.”
“Sigh. Fine. Show me when you’re done.”
He marches off all fed up and angry. We finish up polishing, and it’s come up good and we don’t need to lay another coat. We call him over.
“I can’t see my face in it.”
“Erm, it’s not supposed to be that shiny. If we polish it that high, it’s dangerous for people to walk on.”
“I want to see my face in it.”
We polished the ever-loving freak out of that floor, a good hour more than we needed to.
It was incredibly slippery almost everywhere except for a corridor that we left so we could walk on and off the surface without slipping while we gathered our tools.
He was up on the balcony and said “Good job”. We got the payment invoice and we headed home and I saw him stack it out of the corner of my eye and fall flat on his butt.”
Another User Comments:
“Oh good lord the claims that are going to come back to whoever signed off on that work order.” _Wartoaster_
Reply:
“Funnily enough, we got an email from the Procurement area manager congratulating us on our work and were happy to pay the extra 5% “Exceptional work” bonus we had in our contract.
They sent the funds the next day via BACS (bank transfer) and we shared the bonus equally among our team, which was the equivalent of about £250 each. We got wild on the weekend and went go-karting.
A day later we got a call from the same area manager demanding to know why we had caused injury to the branch manager and that they would be pursuing legal action if we did not return and remedy the floor problem.
The boss consulted their solicitor and was advised they didn’t have a leg to stand on in court.
We agreed to return and “undo” our polish only if we were allowed to charge 50% of the original contract payable in cash on the day after the work was completed and that the branch manager apologize for putting us in a compromising position.
None of that materialized, unfortunately, which is a shame because it would have been hilarious.” airwalkerdnbmusic
2. Light His Yard On Fire? He Cleaned Up Yours
“I was visiting a friend who owns and operates a trailer park – basically his house is the main office. A couple had just moved into a lot with their mobile home. The dude seemed fine, and he and his lady had just had their first kid.
Well, at 3 AM just a few hours after I arrived, the partner showed up at my friend’s house (the main office). Apparently, he had a DNA test done, and he found out the kid wasn’t his. So while the chick was still in the hospital he started screwing around on her to get back at her.
Well, earlier that day, she got released from the hospital, and he refused to go pick her up. So she walked from the hospital to the trailer park (easily 20 miles) and found him hooking up with this girl. She went crazy.
She started trashing their tiny mobile home while he and his mistress quickly got their clothes on, and the partner opted to drive the mistress back to her place.
When he got back, his soon-to-be ex locked him out of their mobile home.
So, at 3 AM he showed up at the front office to call the police. My buddy woke me up, filled me in on the situation, and I went out to his living room to keep the dude company. I explained that if the kid isn’t his and he signed the birth certificate, he has 60 days to remove himself from the birth certificate – otherwise, he’ll be on the hook for child support.
I also explained that while calling the cops is a good idea, they likely won’t be able to remove her from the mobile home since she had established residency.
Well, the cops showed up, knocked on the door, she answered, and the cops just did a welfare check on the kid.
They left, and he was allowed back into the mobile home by his soon-to-be ex. It would have been nice if that were the end. Nope. Not even close.
Not even 30 minutes after the cops left, the dude came back up to the main office, and said he needed to call the cops again – she stole his car.
From what he said, she even tried to run him over before she sped off into the night. Before the cops could get back to the park, she came back, and she started doing donuts in my buddy’s yard. She ran over his garden, and just screwed up his yard, in general. She finally stopped about a minute before the police arrived. The cops got out of their cruisers and arrested this chick on the spot.
The charge? Misdemeanor malicious mischief. They charged her for ruining my buddy’s garden, and that was it.
A day passed, and the crazy lady got released on bond. She came back to their mobile home and got right back into it with her soon-to-be ex.
During the fight, she started scratching at her throat until she had left a lasting mark. She called the cops, claimed he laid hands on her, and the cops came and arrested him for domestic violence. The cops took the kid and placed him in protective custody.
As an aside, I know that she fabricated the “he beat me” story because she bragged about it after the cops left. She even went so far as to call the dude’s parents and brag about getting their son locked up.
Now, my buddy is freaking out. He’s got a crazy lady on his property, the crazy lady has no income, and she just had their only source of income locked up and subsequently fired for being locked up. There’s no way in heck they’re going to pay rent any time soon.
He wants her gone, but legally, he has no recourse because they aren’t past due on rent.
Another day passed, homie was still locked up, and the crazy lady had started throwing all of their belongings into the yard of their lot and partially onto my buddy’s property.
My buddy told her she needed to clean up her yard by 6 PM, or he would write up a violation. She ignored him.
An hour or so after that, I was helping my buddy move some stacks of bricks in his backyard, which was right next to the lot her man had rented, and the entire time she was just talking to herself.
She wasn’t talking to herself in a normal way. No. She was yelling random crap like: “MINIMUM WAGE AND THEY FIRED ME, $10.75 AN HOUR AND THEY FIRED ME, 35K A YEAR AND THEY FIRED ME! MOTHERSMUDGERS!” or “I JUST WANT TO ENJOY MY LIFE IN PEACE, BUT THEY WON’T FREAKING LET ME!
I’ll KILL THEM!”
We decided it would be best not to acknowledge her at all. We stopped working and went back inside for some lunch. Then we saw the smoke.
This crazy witch was piling up her own crap and lit the pile on fire – on my buddy’s property, not even on her own lot.
My buddy called the cops, who arrived in record time along with the fire department. They arrived to find her with a lighter and a can of gasoline in her hands. She had the water running, and she tried to go turn it off but the cops stopped her.
My buddy opted to turn the water off for her, so he went and turned the water off to her mobile home. She screamed her head off at my buddy for doing that – despite the cops telling him to go ahead and do it.
The fire department put out the fire, and the cops put handcuffs on her and stuffed her into their cruiser. I thought to myself, finally, this crazy witch is getting put away for arson. Nope. The Fire Marshall refused to come to investigate, so it couldn’t be classified as arson.
The cops wrote her a citation and released her. My buddy told the cops he wanted to press charges for trespassing, as she had started the fire on his property. The cops advised that they couldn’t because they would need to show intent.
She needed to know she was trespassing, in other words. Since there wasn’t a clear marker indicating that she was, the cops couldn’t arrest her for it.
So, my buddy told the cops where his property started, and asked if the cop would explain that to her so that when she inevitably does trespass again, they will be able to arrest her.
The cop agreed, he explained where her property ended, and that she was under no circumstances to step foot on my buddy’s land.
As the cops were leaving, she looked at me and my buddy, and said, “You’re lucky I don’t bash your heads in with my baseball bat.” followed quickly by “I’m going to blow your freaking heads off, mothersmudgers!” The cops had their windows rolled down, but they did nothing.
They just left.
An hour passed, and we see the crazy witch standing in the middle of the street, stopping every car that passed. Finally, one of them pulled into the park, parked on my buddy’s property, and let her use their cell to call the cops.
Why was she calling the cops? She tried to get them to come to arrest my buddy for turning her water off for her, on police orders. Since she was standing on my buddy’s property to call the cops, he whipped out his phone and recorded her standing on his property.
Then he called the cops himself.
When the cops came, she was certainly surprised when they put her in handcuffs immediately. The cop who had responded before (the one who explained to her where her land ended) came over, watched the video my buddy recorded on his cell, and then he explained that he would not be arresting her for trespassing.
He was going to do an emergency order of detention. Basically, she was going to be forcibly taken to the closest hospital where she would be evaluated briefly and then released. He explained that she would be back out before the day was done.
My buddy didn’t bother insisting that he wanted to press charges for trespassing.
I wondered why, but after the cops left he called her ex’s parents who, as luck would have it, had the only key to the mobile home.
It was given to them by the police as it was on their son when he was arrested for domestic violence. They came out, and they locked up the RV. My buddy then noticed a water leak coming from the valve.
So he turned off the water to the entire park (briefly), cut off the section of pipe attached to the valve, and capped it off to stop the leak. Lastly, remember how he warned the crazy lady to clean up her yard or she would get a violation?
Well, she never cleaned up her yard, instead, she threw just about everything that was in the RV into the yard. Well, as it’s written in the rental agreement, my buddy “cleaned” her yard. He took everything that was out in the yard (TV, mattress, microwave, etc.), and he hauled it off to the dump.
Then he wrote out a violation as well as a bill for having to clean her yard.
Well, crazy lady got out a few hours after she was taken in, and she called her ex’s parents to try getting a ride.
They promptly hung up on her, and they immediately called us. We had plans to grill out for dinner, and my buddy invited them over for dinner and a show.
She arrived after the sun had set, and well after we had eaten dinner.
We were sitting out on my buddy’s patio, which had a very clear view of the mobile home. When the crazy lady saw us, she let us know how she really felt. She called us every name in the book.
She hadn’t gotten to the mobile home yet, and because it was dark, she couldn’t even see that her yard had been “cleaned.”
We sat there and took every name she could dish out, and we collectively laughed as we all knew what was about to happen.
After she realized we were laughing at her, she hit us with a final “SCREW YOU!” before storming off to the mobile home. As she got closer, she could see that her yard was barren. When she got to the door, she could see the notice attached. When she went to turn the door handle, it wouldn’t budge.
After a few moments of silence, it finally clicked in her head. She screamed out into the night, “MOTHER SMUDGERS!” She must have been thirsty after her long walk because she went to the water hose, only to find that it wasn’t on.
Then she went to turn on the water, only to find that it had been capped off – no valve in sight. My buddy yelled out to her, “Sorry, there was a water leak at the valve, it was park property, so I capped it off.
I’ll have it repaired within the next two weeks, though.” Coincidentally, two weeks was the earliest time he could start the eviction process.”
Another User Comments:
“I just really hope that you and your friend follow up when the guy goes to court.
You need to testify that she fabricated the evidence that led to his arrest for domestic violence. Anytime someone gets charged for a crime they didn’t commit it’s a bad deal. But with a crime against a woman, especially domestic violence against a new mother, this guy could really get the shaft. Not only with sentencing, but since records are available online it could affect his ability to get a job in the future.
At the least, it might keep him from getting trashed on social media. Please find it when the court date is for his sake. His parents will know, and you’ve been in contact with them. It would be worth it to reach out to the PO.
See if they can get in touch with the court to get it annulled/stricken/dismissed retroactively. Whatever they want to call it.” rudbek-of-rudbek
1. Try To Withhold Our Pay? We'll Steal Your Sales
“I work for a Technology Company, which falls in the startup/medium enterprise category. Let us refer to this as MyCompany.
We were working on the creation of an internet of thing (IoT) based product for large industries, but as we were new to the domain, we hired a couple of industry experts to help us understand the domain and help us with understanding the gaps.
This is a common practice.
Enter BiggerCompany, a company that has been dealing with devices for over 15 years now. They had a product in our same domain named BigProduct. They had BigProduct version 5 running in various places which was built on a legacy stack.
Their new version BigProduct 6.0 tanked really hard among their clients and they needed someone who dealt with better technology to help them build their product and that brought them to us.
The coming of BiggerCompany was really good for OurProduct as they had really good insights to bring to the table.
As a major player, they wanted us to build BigProduct 7.0 instead of OurProduct, but being a product company that was out of scope. Thus we decided to be API providers for as to backend capabilities while the UI looks different.
Think of it as different buttons on your webpage, but with similar functionality. We were also responsible for bundling and deploying the application.
Legally, we have signed a contract that says MyCompany clearly owns the code and they have no right to see or recreate our code, just to make us indispensable as API providers for BiggerCompany.
Things have been going well for both of us and both products were shaping up well.
Suddenly, one day, BiggerCompany gets a new guy to handle the product, BigManager, and we see some red flags immediately. Major escalation and blame-gaming for every deployment and everything, eventually to a point where we were tired of the engagement with BiggerCompany.
We were targeting a major product expo for October 2019 and so were they.
With the BigManager came in some associates who kept asking technical questions and logic and stuff and pestering our developers, this led to a suspicion that they were trying to micromanage and peep in on our tech stack, which made our team work on better encryption for our code (essentially making things even better for us).
He changed a few keys in the database and complained that there was a bug. We sealed off the database. He decided to not pay for the engagement showing our “incompetence”. He also sold the license to the product without paying us to some of his clients.
One fine day, they called a junior developer asking some doubts which resulted in him joining a call with them. The link was soon shared in our team’s chat and almost all of us, including my CEO, joined the call.
Now, we promptly had things recorded. Our plan was simple, make sure that their product doesn’t get presented for the major expo. We pulled sufficient proof to prove that there was non-compliance with our contract.
The next day, we pull in the legal team and decide to call off the engagement.
We also hand over the entire documentation on the same day. (The team pulled an all-nighter, also, we had seen this coming.) One of the things that was scheduled for next week was to make their deployment https complaint. Now, for most on-premise deployments in plants, people really don’t go with SSL-enabled products, but for the expo, a secure deployment was mandatory.
They did not have this, which meant they can talk about their product, but can’t show it in real time.
(We actually were open with a “try it out for free.”)
Now, things looked bad for them for the expo, but they were still bigger players and had a larger client base.
We changed the look of our product and called it OurProduct 2.0. It is the same product but looks different, and word got out that BigProduct 7.0 runs on OurProduct1.0, and man, our stalls were filled with their clients who were not pleased with their earlier product.
(6.0, the one that tanked)
What BigManager might have never understood is what actually went wrong for him.
With every escalation mail he sent, our team became slower for him. We pushed him to a place where he decided to build on his own.
What he did not realize was that was exactly what we wanted him to do. We had started the preparation of 2.0 in parallel with the expo. We had every intention of ditching them before the expo. We had no intention of upgrading their security for the expo.
Soon after the expo, we canceled licenses to all their clients and when they came barging into the doors of BiggerCompany, they pointed to us. We were more than happy to reinstate their products and as a gesture for their inconvenience, we gave them OurProduct 2.0 with no migration charges.
BiggerCompany currently doesn’t sell the software, or do they? They are pretty much irrelevant.”
