People Leave Us Laughing With Their Revenge
11. Make Me Stand Outside In The High Heat? This Means War
“Some context for you- My town is basically on the edge of nowhere.
We have a medical center for basic stuff but a full hospital is 30 – 40 minutes in any direction depending on where you chose to go. With that in mind, we get people from a huge surrounding area that go to our town center for tests, simple medical exams, etc. Maybe as many as 50 small communities use our center on a daily basis so it is constantly busy.
The center itself is quite small compared to hospitals in the city. The various clinics and a basic ER take up most of the space with an area by the front doors for the public to sit in if they are waiting for a ride or someone visiting a doctor. It is that waiting area that is the cause for my story today.
During the first summer last year, I had to go to the medical center for tests.
Some things to know about me. I am challenged with multiple disabilities. I am legally blind, have significant mobility and balance issues and a rather severe heart condition. As such I use a walking frame and travel using the cities provided disabled transports.
That particular day, I had finished my tests early and had 45 minutes to wait until my transport was scheduled to return to pick me up.
I figured – no problem, I will just sit in the waiting area and – well – wait! haha. I shuffled over to the seats with my walker plainly evident and was confronted by a new sign. STAFF ONLY. Say what now? I looked around at all the empty seats and vacant tables and turned to the clerks at the entrance.
Me- “Can I please have a seat in the waiting area until my transport comes back?”
Clerk- “(coldly) NO it’s staff only. YOU need to wait outside!”
Me- “Uh I can’t stand for 45 minutes waiting for my transport (gesturing to my plainly apparent walking frame that I was clearly leaning heavily on)”
Clerk- “Not my problem! There are benches to sit on outside.”
Me- “The benches are full and we are supposed to be social distancing not cuddling up to random strangers on a park bench!”
Clerk- “If you want, I suppose I could let you take a wheelchair out and sit in that.”
Me – “And how am I to manage a wheelchair AND my walking frame at the same time?”
Clerk – “Again, not my problem. If you want you can call center management when you get home. Are we done here?”
Me – “I guess we are done huh.” And went outside to find a spot to wait.
Well, I stood outside for 45 minutes while the sun beat down on what turned out to be 104 F day. As I stood there, I noticed that there was a line of patients growing steadily longer also standing outside in the heat waiting to be let into the building. Some looked fit but let’s face it- nobody comes to a medical center because they feel 100%! Most of them looked quite ill and some were looking pretty faint by the time they got through the doors.
By the time my transport arrived, I was badly sunburned, thirsty as heck, exhausted, and feeling more than a bit faint myself! My driver was shocked and insisted on walking me to my front door when he got me home to make sure I was ok. (shout out to all transport drivers you guys ROCK!)
The rest of the day was a complete loss. I spent it drinking water, sleeping and nursing the burns on my shoulders and face lol.
I was a right mess! The next day, however, I was livid. I had plenty of time to recover and to think and I kept coming back to that line of patients standing in the heat. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got!
Malicious compliance.
The words the clerk so smugly said –”You can call center management when you get home if you want” – danced through my sunbaked brain like a mantra.
I called center management. What followed was a half-hour conversation with the SWEETEST lady. She was SO nice and so upset when I told her all that went on the day before. She was especially concerned when she found out about the line of people waiting outside on what turned out to be the hottest day we had that summer. After our talk, the manager promised to look into it and get back to me.
Now normally that’s sort of a brush-off, right? Not so with this lady.
Two days later, she called me back. Turned out, she had spent the day before sitting at the clerk’s desk observing things that went on. Things like:
– Patients being forced to stand in the rain waiting to get into the center
– Patients being poorly spoken to by the same clerk.
– And the cherry on top?
At one point a tiny, elderly lady tried to sit down in the waiting area and the SAME clerk ran over and rudely shoved her aide and snapped STAFF ONLY! With her boss sitting right there!
The manager went over, tore down the signs, apologized to the lady and helped her to a seat then took the clerk into her office for a chat.
The center was immediately restructured. Staff were moved into an unused gift shop, the waiting room as returned to the public and best of all?
The registry desks were moved so patients no longer had to stand outside waiting to get into the building!
I never saw that clerk there again.
I know this isn’t as exciting as most stories on here but knowing I was part of making things so much better for so many still makes me happy!”
10. Try To Screw Me Out Of Pay? Um, No
“This story took place about two years ago, over the span of about two weeks.
I work in a factory on an assembly line that makes car parts, and my boss at the time was stingy about meeting quotas and people respecting the schedule down to the minute. Let’s call him Mike.
Now, for some setup: we’d clock in at 7 AM, work 8 hours, and clock out at 3 PM, breaks included. We had to do some paperwork both before we started production and after we ended it.
Mike was up in our faces from day 1 about needing to be in at least 15 minutes before our shift started so we could clear the paperwork (the bus dropped us off at 6:45 AM, and we needed to go to the lockers to change so that was impossible), begin production at exactly 7 AM, and stop 5 minutes before 3 PM so we’d have just enough time to finish the ending paperwork.
But he of course had never done that paperwork himself, and either didn’t know or didn’t care that it actually took closer to 20 minutes.
Now, that paperwork was essential. If a shift didn’t do it, they’d get chewed out hard by quality control. And combined with the fact that Mike was strict about the quota, 8 hours just weren’t enough to do everything they wanted. It was closer to 9 hours.
But I said “fine, I’ll let it slide”, and started coming to work with my own car so I could be early and also stay 15-20 minutes over to finish up. I wasn’t reimbursed for gas, I wasn’t paid overtime for coming early and leaving late, but it stopped the near-daily arguments with Mike so I relented.
Fast forward about 6 months and me and my team had a solid routine in place.
Everything went smoothly, we mostly met the quota, the paperwork was always done, until one day it wasn’t. One Monday morning my car had trouble starting up, and I’d already missed the bus, so I called Mike to let him know I’d be running a bit late. I figured “hey, he noticed I try my best every day and he’d let it slide this one time”.
How wrong I was. Mike was polite over the phone, but he chewed me out the moment I got in (I was 2 minutes late, I made it at 7:02).
“Next time you’re late, don’t bother coming in! I don’t need lazy people working here!” That was just one of the nasty things he said, but it’s the one I remember most clearly because it blew me away.
He used me being late to guilt-trip me into working copious amounts of overtime that week, and I accepted just to appease him. I wasn’t a very confrontational person, so I always took the path of least resistance in an argument. And long story short, the overtime left me so drained that I overslept Friday and was late again. This time I made it in at 7:03.
“I should fire you right now for this! I already gave you a warning Monday!” That was the first thing he said to me when I came in.
“Sorry, I was just too tired,” I foolishly tried to defend myself. “It won’t happen again, plus I’ve been coming in early and leaving late for months, can’t you cut me some slack for 3 minutes?”
“I didn’t ask you to do that!” He answered, which was a lie since he expressly asked us to come in 15 minutes early every day.
“Your shift starts exactly at 7 AM and ends exactly at 3 PM, not a minute earlier or later.”
“Got it, boss,” I said, all giddy inside.
The next week, I came in at exactly 7 AM and left at exactly 3 PM. Production started at 7:20 and ended at 2:40 AM so I could do the paperwork. That, of course, affected our quota, and it didn’t take Mike long to notice.
We argued over that as well, obviously, but I reminded him of what he said earlier and it actually shut him up. He tried to get me to relent and start coming in 15 minutes early and leaving 20 minutes late again, but I just laughed and said “nope, not my problem”.
But the story doesn’t end here, because of course, Mike tried to pull more crap with me.
He tried to get me fired for this, but it didn’t fly with HR. His writeups just bounced when he sent them further up the command chain. But he noticed something that I didn’t: I clocked in a few seconds after 7 (we used an electronic log with individual access cards). So he passed a new rule that he planned to enforce retroactively: only full hours are paid, if you clock in or out too late or early the hour gets cut.
He came to confront me about that the following Monday a few minutes after I got in.
“Hey Exo, I noticed that you clocked in too late every day last week, so we’ll have to cut 5 hours from your payroll,” he said with a smug grin.
This took me aback a bit cause I’d never heard of that rule before and I saw others clocking in at the same time as me, so I just stared at him in shock.
He clearly derived pleasure from this, thinking he finally bested me. I’d have my pay cut for my insolence.
“I also checked and found that you clocked in 5 seconds too late right now,” he continued.
“So this hour will also go unpaid?” I asked.
“Yep,” he said, nearly ecstatic by that point.
“Awesome,” I answered with a poop-eating grin. “See you at 8.”
I turned and left, grabbed a coffee and a sandwich, and I waited in the breakroom.
Mike came after me 10 minutes later and finally apologized, asking me to return to work.
“So you’ll pay me this hour?” I asked.
“No, you clocked in too late!”
“Then I’m not obligated to work it,” I said.
“Fine, it will be paid, now get back to work,” he relented.
“And the 5 hours from last week,” I demanded. “Cause if not, I’ll leave 5 hours early today to compensate.”
He looked like he was ready to strangle me with his bare hands, but he accepted. I got back to work, those hours were paid, and we returned to our normal routine of me coming in early and leaving a bit late. And Mike never bothered me for being late a few minutes ever again, though it was a rare occurrence. For the two years I worked under him (until he left, I still work there) I was late maybe 3 more times.
But he couldn’t stand my guts and actively avoided me after that point.
I know that this story isn’t very impressive, but I’m still proud of it and still brag about it to this day whenever “funny stories from work” come up in conversations.”
I can only imagine how often he got away with his crap. What a serious tool. You are awesome!!!
9. Work On This Music Knowing There Will Be Problems? You Got It
“I am an Audio Engineer. Around 5 years ago, I was working at a very high-end facility with some amazing equipment. The studio looked beautiful, it was quite amazing. Most of my time at the studio was spent recording musical artists and mixing their tracks. I was booked for an 8-hour block to mix some pre-recorded tracks that a producer was going to bring in. To clarify, “mixing a song” means taking all the individual instrument recordings and balancing volumes, and applying effects.
After a song is “mixed”, it’s sent to a Mastering Engineer who puts the final touches on it and makes it ready for distribution. In most cases, especially if it’s through a record label, the Mixing Engineer and Mastering Engineer are 2 different people, since they’re 2 different art forms that utilize different technologies.
I like to research my clients before they come in, so I did some poking around on the internet and found out very quickly that the producer coming into the studio is a VERY accomplished producer who has worked with some amazing artists.
I was thrilled, I hadn’t worked with a producer of this caliber before. We’ll call him The Producer. I made sure to get as much information as possible from the studio manager so that I could come into the session well prepared. My manager forwarded me an email from The Producer that said they “were just mixing a few songs.” I asked if I was getting an assistant engineer to help, my manager told me that they actually requested that I don’t have an assistant.
That was a first, but I shrugged it off.
I got to the studio early and prepped for as much as I possibly could. The Producer and the band that he recorded arrived, so I started getting files and such from them to start mixing. As I’m doing this, I started to see a lot of red flags. The producer brought in 10 songs that he needed mixed AND mastered today.
Typically, I’ll mix 2 songs in 10 hours, maybe 3 if I’m hauling and not taking ear breaks and such. Furthermore, he wanted it to be mixed on our large recording console (the giant desk with all the buttons and faders and such), essentially bypassing the computer. I let him know the following:
Mixing 10 songs in 8 hours is going to be very difficult, and that I’ll have to sacrifice quality moving that quickly, and that I’ll do my best to mix the songs all in 1 day.
I’m not a mastering engineer, but I have experience mastering and can give him some masters that will suffice. I’ll provide files they can send to other mastering engineers as well.
Mixing on a console instead of a computer means that it will be way more time-consuming since I would be turning physical knobs, pushing physical buttons, and connecting gear with cables, and keeping track of ALL of this.
It also means that if they want any edits or changes after today, they’ll need to book the studio for at least 2-3 additional hours so that I can set everything up again exactly how it was.
I figured that since the producer had worked with such amazing artists before, all of this would make sense to him. I got the impression that he either didn’t care, or more likely, didn’t realize.
He was very nice, but quite dismissive and essentially told me to mix it on the console. To add to my stress, I started finding all sorts of mistakes and issues in the recording that would take more time to address. Despite this, we worked really well together.
I felt I gave him more than enough information about my concerns, so I complied with his requests, knowing full well that we were going to face a plethora of problems down the road.
I got to work as fast as I could. The Producer was quite eccentric, but we got along nicely and he was thrilled with some of the tricks I was pulling out of my hat to address all these issues.
At the end of every mix, I’d take copious notes on what physical buttons were pushed, what cables were connected to what, etc. I did this for every client I’ve worked with, just in case they ever wanted to come back and make edits to their records.
Normally, I’ll have my assistant or intern do this, but they specifically asked to not have an assistant or intern around. I was able to get through each of the songs somehow, I was honestly impressed with myself. The songs sounded good, but not GOOD, as I didn’t have enough time to make them GOOD. They were happy with the mixes. The producer seemed quite surprised that they sounded the way they did, so I took that as a compliment.
We ended on a good note, so I thought that was the end of it.
A few days later, I get booked again for 2 hours. We normally don’t book 2-hour blocks, it’s just not worth it. However, I agreed to the 2 hours because there was another 8-hour session booked directly after, so it worked out perfectly. The studio manager didn’t quite understand what I’d be doing in those 2 hours, the client was very vague and would not answer any of our questions about what they wanted to happen in those 2 hours.
I show up for the session and The Producer from a few days before was there. Before I can even say hello, a car that costs more than what I make in 2 years comes whipping through the parking lot. This guy jumps out and begins barking orders at me. I put together that this must be The Executive Producer. For background, and an executive producer is essentially the guy that knows nothing about the process but has the pocket to fund it.
It’s a fancy name for “the person who pays for everything.” As he’s barking orders at me, about 10 more ridiculously expensive cars pull in. I learned that the Executive Producer brought possible investors for his new record label into the studio to listen to the mixes and watch the Executive Producer “manage” a production team.
After The Executive Producer greeted all his investors, he instructed everyone to go into the studio.
I tried to get him alone to talk to him before, but he responded with, “I’m going to do all the talking, you’re going to do the work.” He clearly wanted everybody to see how good he was at managing a production and such. He asked me to pull up the first song to play for his investors. I told him that if he wants to make any changes to the songs, I need at least 2-3 hours to set everything up before we can make changes.
I told him I could play the songs for his investors, but I can’t make any changes unless I take the 2-3 hours to set it up. I also said that I can’t even do that today since I have another client coming in, in 2 hours. As I’m saying this, I see the Producer behind him smiling, clearly getting a lot of satisfaction from this.
The Executive Producer literally turned red with anger and started yelling. I honestly couldn’t understand half of what he said. When the Executive Producer stopped yelling, the Producer cutely said, “I told you so.” That’s when I realized that The Producer had actually been the one who maliciously complied with the Executive Producer to some degree. This is my favorite part: The Executive Producer handed me a hundred-dollar bill and said something like, “you have 10 minutes to set it up.” He did this in front of his investors, I’m not sure what he was thinking would happen.
Some of them literally laughed out loud and walked out. I was sick of it, so I MC’d knowing that I could never set it up in time, making the Executive Producer look bad in front of his investors. So, I started setting it up anyway (I didn’t take the $100). As I was setting up, one of the investors came up to me and asked if I was actually able to set it up in 10 minutes, I told him it wasn’t possible, so he turned around and walked out.
About 10 minutes later, they all left because I didn’t have everything set up yet.
Later that week, The Producer came back to work with me some more, we had a great working relationship from that point on. I talked with The Producer about this whole thing and he said that the Executive Producer hired him to help get this record label off the ground.
The Executive Producer apparently didn’t listen to anything the Producer advised him on and treated him very poorly, so The Producer decided to just comply with whatever Executive Producer wanted, knowing full well it wouldn’t work out. He got sick of the Executive Producer’s antics and just wanted out. The Producer had informed The Executive Producer about everything that would go wrong before they booked me for the mix, and The Executive Producer completely disregarded him.
The Producer told me that The Executive Producer didn’t want an intern or an assistant at the studio for the mix because he only wanted “high-end music production people there. If ‘assistant’ is in their title, they don’t deserve to be there.”
It turns out that all the investors pulled out and the band started to sue The Executive Producer for copyright infringement (that’s a separate issue that I have no info on).”
8. Make Me Run The Entire Department Myself? I'll Leave You To Deal With The Aftermath
“I worked at a Toyota Service Department for a few months and it was terrible, but today was the worst day I have ever had at any dealership.
The layout is really horrible. It’s in South Carolina where it’s 95F outside in February with 90% humidity. We do not have AC in the Service Drive (where I work and customers arrive). They removed our desk fans since they looked bad a put one big fan in the center of the room. It doesn’t help us at all but it looks nice.
We usually have 100+ appointments a day split between 6-9 advisors depending on staff.
We had 6 who knew what to do and 3 newbies who are just learning that OIL and 710 are the same fluid. If a customer comes in, we greet them, get the info from the car then figure out what their concern is.
You also try to sell them on stuff based off their past declined services a the pop-ups saying: ‘Add engine oil change’ to the Plug-In electric-only car, so its got issues.
You need to get a customer in and out quick without issues and with the most stuff to get paid.
I was hired by an old manager of mine at his new position when he saw on social media that my fiancee and I moved back into town. We’re paid based off of labor hours sold, % of parts profit we sell, bonuses for CSI (customer service), bonuses for selling the most of the monthly item (air filter, battery, brakes, etc.) and no minimum pay.
No hourly, daily, anything. Coming from my old job with my numbers from there, I should be making twice as much. One of the conditions of my hire is I’m not to drive customers’ cars as their insurance wouldn’t cover me. During my first two weeks of learning their programs, my old manager gets an offer to move to another store and is replaced by this guy named Chad.
Chad was this hotshot who was going to set us up to really be a top tier service department and help us manage flow much better. Well, Chad came from a store who worked with a program which is basically Windows 1998BC.
He knew nothing about the programs we were using or, honestly, what an Emoji is. Wanting to help Chad out, I showed him some options for programs that would help us keep track of notes, reduce away time from desks for us and also keep our technicians at their bay.
He got us licensed to used them and I set everything up.
I set up our new programs and also started changing our old ones. I really wanted to make things easier day-to-day. I hated wasting paper and walking to parts to tell them something or to ask my technician for an update.
One of the programs was a flagging system showing only profiles you are assigned or create.
Certain flags show priority, etc., and you can see all notes on all cars. Message parts and flag to your parts person. I basically re-wrote the program to be very user-friendly, brief but detailed and all with just a few clicks.
Instead of having to type “Customer State: Vehicle is vibrating at speeds of 45mph and above. Please inspect”. Then a new line “Customer requests Oil Change”.
A new line “Customer would like vacuum but no wash” and so on. I made it so we could click “Vibration; Front Left; 45mph” “LoF” “Suck no Wash” and it would automatically add the text and print with correct part numbers for Oil Filters, right the oil Spec & Capacity, and everything out nicely.
I did this for about everything I could think of and kept adding more and more.
I had it auto-send just part numbers, ticket info, and book lines for Internal/Customer/Warranty/Extended Warranty out correctly to save time for everyone. I Made sure current recalls would also always print based off VIN so they weren’t forgotten.
I also made sure our Loaner vehicles could be checked in or out easier and being able to have instant access to all of past agreements if something is found in the car or damage is found.
Skip 6 months, no raise, no uniform I was supposed to be provided.
Also, I was coming in on my days off to help with the programs. It’s Monday and this week I had a nail go straight through my foot at work. I Ubered to the hospital down the road making sure to not remove the nail. Got it bandaged up but still went in every day for my 12+ hour shifts while walking around all day.
From my desk, it’s probably 100 yards to the car wash and 40 yards to the shop. People still don’t always use the system and porters aren’t bringing cars up. I’m not insured by them but still have customers asking politely, ‘Where the F*K is my Prius?! I was here for 26 minutes!”‘ So I hobble down to the car wash where it most likely is and drive it through and up.
My team for Saturday (4 people) had 1 person quit on Wednesday and 1 person had a funeral to leave early for. The other guy was new so he was slow to get stuff done. Chad says he’ll come in and help.
Wednesday we lock it at 60 appointments since we have short staff up front and back. Saturdays are staffed with half the amount of technicians and are no diagnosis days.
We take walk-ins too. Thursday it’s at 80 appointments, and we tell our boss to lock it. Again, on Friday, before closing, we see 110 appointments. He never locked it and took Friday off.
Come Saturday morning we had 130 appointments from 7am-4pm.
I’m having to walk around a lot and ended up bleeding through 3 pairs of socks and bandages I swapped out. I had to chase down about 80% of our customers’ cars because our porters who showed up were goofing off.
I had 53 opened tickets at 12 pm. We had a 4-hour wait for walk-ins, and 2 with appointments. Usually, it would take us 30 minutes for an oil change from ticket printed to the customer paying – just for reference. I haven’t had lunch or a snack since they banned food/drinks at our desks.
My friend is about to leave for the funeral so I cover his remaining tickets telling him not to worry about me.
Then my boss leaves for lunch throwing his 20ish tickets on my desk.
So I’m now 110 tickets deep, helping the new guy with stuff, moving cars, and trying not to pass out. Oh and it’s 95F outside, no AC in our covered area (not inside) and 90% humidity. We didn’t even get a breeze. I would stop by the water fountain near the car wash and dream about running through with the windows down and mouth open to cool off.
It gets to 3 pm and I’m rescheduling people who come in, trying to get everyone out when their cars are done but have to limp them down to pull them in front to leave after they pay. My boss still isn’t back and the new guy quits. He wasn’t doing much, but it’s his first week and today SUCKS!
I end up getting in one car and b***d from my sock/shoe drips onto our paper mats in the car.
I cleaned everything out, vacuumed the car, washed it, and pulled it up. The customer went APE CRAP that she saw b***d on the disposable paper mat, about the wait, not getting a discount for her non-appointment service, and demanded to speak to my manager.
That was it because I wanted to talk to him too.
I called him up and was sent to voicemail.
I explained it to his mailbox, also texted him a brief summary. I then called the GM to explain that I have been alone for about 3 hours dealing with an un-capped amount of customers, 5 technicians walked out, I’m still not recovered from my workplace injury, and that I’m finishing my paperwork to take my lunch break at 4:00 PM with at least 50 customers still waiting.
Boss shows up when I’m about to leave to eat my lunch I brought knowing their ‘provided lunch’ would be gone before I could set my b****y foot in the break room.
He told me that in our state, I’m not legally allowed a lunch break during a shift and that I have to stay to finish out the customers on my tickets. It’s after our regular hours at this point. I mentioned being here since 6 am to open shop and pre-printing everything saying I just need to relax and he said: ‘You didn’t even clock in this morning so unless you do what I say, you aren’t getting paid.’ Once again I’m paid commission here, and % of parts profit for stuff sold.
I don’t even get $0.01 an hour.
So I walked to my station, removed all of everyone’s login copies of my permissions, deleted all of my notes, deleted all of the warranty macros I set, all the spreadsheets, and reset every custom line I added to our programs since I was the original profile.
This reset EVERYTHING for EVERYONE. When I walked out, I got a call when I got to my car asking, ‘Why isn’t your login able to collect credit cards?’ Sounds like a problem, good luck with that.
I have never taken illegal substances, but that drive home was as good as I imagine it to be. To make things better I had two cars there so I had to go back to pick one up while my fiancee is saying how I should burn the place to the ground and how happy she is that I won’t be working for Chad anymore.
We see that the lights are still on in my GM’s office and the service department with both of them there.
I got in my car wanted to do a huge burnout but I got a phone call.
My GM asked me to come back at a pay raise and fewer hours but I knew it was cheap talk. He wanted to know what went wrong with that day and if I would come inside to discuss it with Chad and him.
I just hung up and went home.
Chad ended up getting let go the following month since he couldn’t get things back up to speed. My good friend ended up getting moved to Service Manager for a bit then ultimately moved to Mercedes as a parts person now Director.
I ended up going to BMW for a bit after that and got promoted past Chad’s position.”
Another Users Comments:
“Car dealer here. Sorry you had a dipwad in there. You sound like you’re a hard worker with a brain. It’s harder than crap for me to find talented young people to want to work in the car industry, and it makes me mad to learn that you appear to be exactly what this industry needs, but you’re the one who left the shop.
I laughed at your R&R “windows 1998 BC” reference. I’m on Reynolds. Take care dude.” Wanderlust_520
7. HOA President Thinks He Can Be A Bully? His Ego Allows Me To Bully Him Too
Oops, did that hurt you too much?
“So this story is about a property I own, but rent out.
This may sound strange, but I don’t think I could afford to live there these days – it’s become somewhat exclusive.
I’ve used dollars here because it’s what most people reading this will relate to. This doesn’t take place in the US, and I’ve given an approximate dollar value for local currency.
A million years ago, my property was part of a large farm. I bought it about 30 years ago, long after the farm was broken up, but before there was any development near it.
The piece of land I got was near the back entrance that joined into a dirt road that ran past. The more expensive plots were near the tarred road in the front.
I originally bought a large chunk of the land intending to do some farming, but that never happened. About 20 years ago, some of the owners got organized (We’ll call them the Organised Owners – OO) and had the area designated as a municipal suburb.
The municipality agreed to put in tarred roads, water and electricity if a certain percentage of the properties were developed. A construction company (linked to the OO) went around contacting the owners who had land but no buildings offering to build houses for us at a very (very) reasonable price – contingent on them getting a certain minimum amount of people signing up. While this was happening, one of the OO approached me and offered to buy half of my property.
I agreed, and the moola I got for the sale (which was about 4 x what I’d paid for the entire chunk of land 10 years prior) combined with a small loan from the bank gave me what I needed to pay for a house to be built, and it was a fairly large and nice house too.
I stayed in the house for a few years, and my mom moved in with me.
I had decided to subdivide the property again and build her a house next to mine, but unfortunately, an un-diagnosed tumor took her before the house could even be started (well, it was diagnosed, but too late to do anything).
Soon after she died, we moved out of the house and started renting it out. About a few weeks before we moved out, the OO I’d sold the land to started talking about starting an HOA.
I wasn’t interested and left soon after. About two years later, the neighbor OO contacted me. There were two roads entering the area these days – the original tarred road that was near where the farmhouse had been and was entered from a fairly busy main road and my “dirt road back entrance” which was now a tarred entrance from a wide but not very busy municipal road.
The HOA was trying to get the old farm road blocked off to improve security and decrease through traffic, and wanted the road next to my property to be the main (and only) entrance to the HOA community. And they were pressuring me to join.
I said no, and I was adamant, and eventually, they accepted that but told me they wanted to have a sign near the road welcoming people to the neighborhood, and the only practical place to put it was on the edge of my property.
They also wanted to build a little guard hut and have a security guard permanently monitoring who went in and came out, and they wanted to build his shed on my property. We came to an agreement whereby they would mow the lawn and pay the equivalent of about $35 per month in exchange for the land they needed. I was very happy with this arrangement, since the property was fairly large, and it didn’t really cost them anything since they already had a full-time gardening service servicing the HOA.
This all happened over a decade ago. They eventually got the other main road blocked off, and the HOA is paying for rent-a-cop to be permanently stationed close to my property, as well as mowing my lawn and paying me enough dough for takeaways for the family each month. I’m occasionally contacted by members of the HOA to get me to sign up, but I’m really not interested. My property has been rented to the same tenant for all these years and everything there is going well for me.
Until about 3 years ago, when someone scared the crap out of my tenant’s young daughter by making strange noises and shooting a gun close to her bedroom window three or four times over about a month. This scared my tenant and I guessed it scared the HOA because they AND my tenant contacted me with a proposal – I join the HOA and they give me exclusions from the HOA rules, including exclusions from paying the monthly fees, and in addition, they will build a wall around the ENTIRE HOA neighborhood, including electric fencing and security cameras.
They told me they had wanted to do this for a while but were unwilling to build the wall on a property that was not in the HOA.
I couldn’t see the downside and so agreed.
It took a little over a year to build the wall and get everything completed, which is quite fast. And then a month to the day after everything was done, my tenant got an HOA warning about his dogs barking.
He told the HOA that while the property was in the HOA, it was exempt from the rules. The HOA told him that they had canceled the exemptions and that he had 30 days to comply. He contacted me, and I opened some mail I’d gotten from the HOA (I’d ignored it since I was supposed to be exempt from the rules and fees).
Man, did I get a surprise.
They had retroactively canceled the exemptions, and were claiming:
That I pay late fees going back over a year.
That the easement agreement had been canceled and that they were retroactively canceling it a year back because the HOA contract allowed them to use “small unused portions” of HOA members land for the common good for free
That I refund them the dollars they had paid for the easement over that period,
That I owed them for the garden service mowing the large lawn, and
That I would be fined for each infraction my tenant failed to remedy.
This started an expensive process involving lawyers and the court system, which ended with a judge telling me that what the HOA had done was mostly legal – they had the right to revoke the exemptions, but that they had to give me 30 days notice.
As I was walking to my car the neighbor OO (the one who bought half my land so many years ago) told me that I was stupid to have refused to join when the HOA started, as I could have been a founder member (whatever that means), and that next time I should be sure to understand the documents I sign before signing them.
Neighbour OO was right, I should have read the contract (better).
Also, I was interested in what it meant to be a “Founding Member” (spoiler: Nothing), and so when I got home I grabbed the HOA contract I’d signed, as well as all the other documentation they had provided me with, and started reading. I was determined to break every rule I could find a loophole to break.
I didn’t get past the first page.
While the street address of the property is used to identify it for all practical purposes, in the city records it has a unique property number that has to be used on legal records.
When my mom moved in, I’d subdivided the remaining property but hadn’t yet started building on it. And when I gave the HOA the easement all those years ago it had been on the property I’d sliced off for my mom. And when the HOA set up the contract, they had simply used the property number from the easement.
The next afternoon the neighbor OO delivered (and had me sign for) two documents – one telling me that my exemptions would expire in 30 days, and one letting me know that the easement would no longer be required after 30 days.
I think he was being a bit malicious here, because I lived about an hour away from the property, and he drove out himself.
EXACTLY 30 days TO THE HOUR after the HOA had given me the 30 days notice, I knocked on the neighbor OO’s door (did I mention he was the president of the HOA?) and had him sign for two documents. The first was that I planned to build a house on my HOA property (which confused him) and the second was notice that they had 30 days to remove from the property the guard shed, the parts of the electric boom that were on my property, as well as the sign.
He tried to engage me but I ignored him, climbed into my car, and drove off.
Early the next morning I got a call from the HOA lawyer who explained to me that their junk would be staying on my property since it was in an “unused” part of my land. I explained that I was building a house there and that the land would not be unused anymore.
I could hear the smirk as he told me that building a second house to be spiteful would not be accepted by the courts. I sure hope he could hear the smirk in my voice when I told him that the property in question did not have a house, and was, in fact, barely large enough for a house to be built and would not be large enough for any extraneous buildings.
I then told him to go look up the property in question and call me back. (I had sliced off just enough to be legal, which was just enough to build a small house).
It took them just under 5 days to get back to me. Their lawyer told me that the terms of the easement meant that I could not cancel without their permission, so I emailed him a photo of the document they sent to me canceling the easement.
That afternoon Neighbour OO invited me to lunch (his treat) to discuss the problem. I said “No thanks.” He extended the offer again two days later, and again I said, “No thanks.” Others of the original OO contacted me to try to talk. Some sounded aggressive, some sounded sympathetic. I said, “No thanks” to each of them.
Eventually, the lawyer phoned and asked if we could come to some sort of arrangement.
I asked what he had in mind, and he told me that he was prepared to discuss exclusions in exchange for access to my property. So I said “No thanks, and please don’t call me again.”
About 9 days before their 30 days was up I got a call from a different lawyer. He said he wanted to “negotiate a surrender” (his words, not mine). I agreed to meet him at his office the next day.
I’d already had documents drawn up, and the meeting was as simple as me giving him the documents and him reading them over. My new easement offer:
Included everything offered by the old easement offer,
I changed the line “mow the lawn” to “get the property to HOA standards and keep it there” since it was now in the HOA.
Would cost them about $500 per month instead of ~$35,
This amount would be increased with inflation (the previous contract didn’t include that bit).
When canceled, for whatever reason, the HOA would have to pay me a cancellation fee of around $7500.
The contract automatically terminated 30 days after
any disciplinary action was taken against me, my tenant, or the property (“the property”),
any complaints were levied by the HOA against the property,
any legal action was taken against the property by anyone in the HOA,
That [lawyer who had offered to negotiate surrender] would be allowed to mediate any disputes between us, at HOAs expense, and that
The HOA would pay all my legal fees if any legal action was taken against me.
I’d deliberately left some insane things in there so that I could appear to “concede” some points or be negotiated down when the HOA got indignant about the points I actually cared about.
The lawyer didn’t look happy. He said that my proposal sounded unfair, but that he’d have the HOA president look at them. I reminded him that in 8 days I’d be setting a group of men armed with sledgehammers and anger management issues to lose on whatever of theirs was still on my property.
That evening I got an irate call from the HOA president. He told me he was never going to sign the new contract.
I said “OK.” He then told me I was charging too much per month, and that it should be at the same rate as the previous contract. I pointed out that when I signed the previous contract the area was under development, and there was at least one other road leading in and out, but that now there was only mine. And besides, mine was now developed with everything they needed. He told me that I was forcing them to sign a document they didn’t want to sign.
I told him that he was free to not sign it. He whined about everything he could think of. And then eventually told me I’d be hearing from his lawyer.
The next morning Surrender Lawyer called to ask if I’d be willing to come to their offices to sign the contract. I agreed. When I got there that afternoon I learned that Surrender Lawyer was not a lawyer, but a Paralegal. He handed me the contract and asked me to sign it.
He laughed when I told him I’d have to read through it first to make sure nothing was changed and mumbled something that sounded like “I’m sure you would.”
I read the contract. Nothing had been changed. NOT A SINGLE THING. And the HOA president had signed it, with the Surrender Paralegal signing as witness. I looked at him and said “Why did he sign this?
It was stupid to sign it!” and the paralegal looked at me and said “I started telling him that signing it would be a bad decision, but he told me I wasn’t being paid to think or give legal advice, and to shut up. So I shut up.” I said, “Do you understand what he’s signed here?” He looks at me and nods. He said “I asked him if I should have one of the lawyers look at it before giving it to you, and he told me that we had already billed enough for this and that he’d sign it and sue me after their easement was safe.
This happened about a year and a half ago. It took 6 months for the HOA to find out how screwed they were. They wanted to sue me, but their lawyers explained to them that there was no way to win. Even if the court sided with them, all they would get is the easement contract voided, and they did not think that the court would side with them.
The lawyers were adamant about one thing – the HOA could not live with the “HOA pays my legal fees if legal action was taken against me” since it didn’t limit the people taking legal action against me to the HOA – as worded, the HOA would be forced to pay for my legal fees if ANYONE took legal action against me. They argued that the courts would probably not enforce that, since the context of the agreement was to do with the HOA, and I told them I was prepared to find out since the HOA would definitely be the ones taking action against me if they challenged it.
I eventually signed an addendum to the contract that said that the neighbour OO (HOA President) would personally pay all my legal fees unless he held no position at all in the HOA and that the HOA would pay all legal fees if the HOA took legal action against me. He resigned from the HOA at the end of that meeting. I politely told him in front of everyone that he should not sign documents unless he understands what he’s signing.
He didn’t look pleased.
It came out during the mediation (you cannot imagine how happy the lawyers were that their paralegal was mediating) that without the ability to control access to the HOA neighborhood through the security boom (partially) on my property (the HOA had become a “gated community” a number of years back) the HOA would be in breach of their own articles and would be dissolved. I also learned (should have been obvious to me) that all the security cameras were wired, and all terminate in the guardhouse/guard shed. So basically, it was my way or the end of the HOA.
That first mediation was really quite funny. My paralegal looked more than a little glum as we assembled and he called everyone to order. I suspected that he had been told to work against me, so I took the initiative. I reminded everyone there that I had agreed to let Paralegal mediate, but that I had agreed to no arbitration at all. If I didn’t feel like the proceedings were fair I’d leave and they could go ahead and sue.
Paralegal brightened up and things actually went quite well.
I’m writing this after getting home from the latest mediation. I built a “paddling pool” for the neighborhood dogs. As in I made it myself. I dug a hole, packed it with stone, and added a concrete finish. It was my first attempt, and if I say so myself, it looked … well, terrible. The HOA called for a mediation meeting (what they do now instead of taking official action.
I’ve declined their mediation requests in the past) in which they told me, as nicely as they could, that the paddling pool was an eyesore right at the entrance of the HOA. I asked them to create a list of what needed to be fixed and how it needed to be fixed to give to me at the next meeting. The list was extensive. It basically required the pool to be rebuilt from scratch, I asked them if there was any way to reduce costs on the work they needed to get it up to HOA standards, and they assured me there was not.
I thanked them, pulled out a copy of the agreement where they had agreed to “get the property to HOA standards” (which I’d highlighted), and handed it to them with the list. I told them the HOA usually preferred if these things were dealt with within 30 days. They started arguing until the mediator reminded them that they could not force me to comply without causing the easement to end.
I should mention that their lawyers usually no longer attend these things. They said they would get it done.
I also learned a lot about neighbor OO today:
I found out that Neighbor OO sold his property about 3 months back, and is apparently leaving the country for Australia.
I found out that the HOA had successfully sued him for a crapload of bills they had lost to his mismanagement as part of his vendetta against me.
I also learned that he had a vendetta against me. I have no idea what I did to upset him.
I’m not sure if I will screw with the HOA anymore. I already think I’m so close to breaking them the only thing stopping them from canceling the contract is the massive financial loss if they do. I guess a lot depends on how they treat me and my tenants going forward.
Also, I do like the monthly payments, though, so I’m motivated to play nice.”
6. Convince A Man He's On The Brink Of Death? Get It Back 10 Fold
“This didn’t happen to me but to my dad.
My dad passed away several years ago, but before he did, he told me about why one summer in 1985 growing up had been particularly stressful. All I knew at the time was that there was a lot of yelling between him and my step-mother and that my step-mother used to break a lot of things around the house.
Us kids would mostly just stay out of the way or go outside and spend time with friends to sort of be away from it. After a few months, and around the time school started, things had gone back to normal, and there were no more fights between the two of them. I was 14 at the time.
For a little background, my dad was a rather large person.
6’4″, 275 pounds, and had been fairly athletic most of his life but was very heavyset in his later years. He was also an attorney – who handled both family law and criminal law. (He was a defense attorney in those situations.) Being a family law attorney is very stressful, or at least it was for him. My dad was an avid smoker, and at one time, he was up to three packs a day.
To be perfectly fair, he was unhealthy, and his smoking and profession lent themselves to heart issues. The drinking he did (a couple of shots of Crown Royal after each day at work) didn’t help any either.
So, when talking about this particularly bad summer with him when I was about 23 or so. He told me what had happened. He had had a doctor’s visit that spring, and the doctor told my dad he had terminal lung cancer – and had three months to live.
My dad knew the doctor personally. (I think he handled his divorce, and they became friends or something similar.) Obviously being told you have lung cancer and have three months to live hit him pretty hard. Like I said above, I was 14, and I had a younger brother who was 10. I also had two older step-siblings, but all four of us lived at home. So, my dad is distressed. He has kids, a wife, and very little time left. My dad also knows what lung cancer does to someone and was not looking forward to wasting away, being in a lot of pain, and going through chemo-therapy, etc.
So, my dad tells his wife, and they decide not to tell the kids. Dad is just going to pretend everything is normal and pass on when the time comes. Don’t ask me why he thought this or decided this was the best thing to do, and I think it’s a terrible decision, but it’s what he did.
So, my dad, who is normally under a lot of stress anyway, is now 10 times more stressed out and not looking forward to dying.
He and his wife start fighting a lot.
After a couple of months, my dad heads back to the doctor to get an update. (I believe he had also been a few times during this couple of months, but I don’t know the exact detail.) It’s at this point, the doctor confides in my dad that he really didn’t have lung cancer.
The doctor had just told him that to try to get him to stop smoking, an incredibly screwed up way to try to scare someone to stop smoking in my opinion (probably illegal and unethical as well), but as I said, they knew each other personally, and I think the doctor was just trying to scare my dad straight.
So, my dad leaves the doctor’s office pretty livid.
I mean he had been depressed for the last couple of months, and his home life had been in tatters because of all of this.
So, this is when my dad decides to get his revenge.
Having been a criminal defense attorney, Dad knew some of the local police and local police detectives. My dad called a couple of the detectives, asked them to do him a favor, and had them go to the doctor’s office one day.
The detectives ask to see the doctor, and when they are let in, they ask the doctor to come with them. They say there’s been a pretty bad accident involving the doctor’s daughter. The detectives lead the doctor to the hospital basement and ask him to wait as they sit him down on a bench outside of the morgue.
They said they needed to get something ready for him.
Then the detectives just… left…and left the doctor to sit there worrying about what was going on, and what had happened. The detectives never gave their names, and I’m assuming the doctor was too shocked and worried about what was going on to have asked for them. The doctor never found out what happened or why someone would do this to him. This was all before cell phones were a thing and would have had an easy way to call and see what was going on.
My dad never spoke to the doctor again. He had heard that the doctor sat on that bench outside of the morgue for an hour crying.
But he never let on that he was responsible for it. My dad and I, as we sit and discuss all of this, discuss how it’s wrong to screw with people’s kids…but at the same time, it’s wrong to make someone think they are dying as well.
Even if you are trying to trick them into being healthier.”
5. Terrible Mom Gets Exactly What She Deserves
Not everyone is lucky enough to have a good mother, unfortunately.
“The first example of how evil my mom is was relayed to me by my older brother. He told me, back when I was really young, my dad was in the Army and managed to score some leave (vacation time) from Desert Storm to surprise my mom for their anniversary.
When he knocked on the door, all my mom said was, ’Why aren’t you dead, I need the moola.’ Her new beau then started backing out of the garage in my dad’s mustang cobra.
He got revenge, but that’s a story for later if you guys want.
The divorce was pretty much what you expect, mom got custody of me. My dad later tricked her with some dollars and got me for a visit, then filed for custody since my mom had warrants out for her arrest.
A few years later my dad remarried to your typical evil stepmother who doted on her daughters and hates her stepson.
For example, for Easter my step sisters got huge baskets of candy and chocolates, a couple of toys, etc. I got an old soup can with my name painted on it (poorly) that ‘I could use for pencils.’
This witch managed to talk my dad into sending me back to my mom, and here the story begins in earnest.
Where my mom was living was an old two-bedroom, one-bathroom house. My sisters shared one room, my mom and stepdad shared the other, my brother got the whole basement, and I got a ‘room’ so small that I could touch fingertip to fingertip each wall, and it was double that length.
I had a curtain instead of a door.
I got nothing. I hated living there.
I was one of only a few white kids at school, so I got beat up a lot for being white. It was a low-income area in Michigan, so I was the one who always had to shovel, rake, mow, and then my mom would ‘rent me out’ to the neighbors, and they all just paid her. I did all the chores and was ‘grounded until she felt like ungrounding me.’ I basically sat on my bed for six years anytime I was not in school, cleaning, or making her dollars.
I learned this later, but my mom was ‘extorting’ dollars from my dad. She would demand $3,000 for a school photo, and he willingly paid $700 a month in child support, even though there was no need to (he worked in the oil field business after he retired, on a corporate board). She would make stuff up like, ‘Our car broke, etc.’ and demand dollars. My dad had to fork over $12,000 for me to go visit him for a week.
He couldn’t take me in at the time, he wasn’t home enough (lots of travel) and he was single, but I found out he was sending me Christmas and birthday gifts every year, and I later found out from my brother, my mom pawned them all.
He bought me a brand new Color Gameboy, which was promptly taken away because ‘I was grounded.’ She pawned that too.
She would often hurt me for stupid reasons, like when I once put the dishes away a bit damp or if I managed to get chocolate milk from the school cafeteria. Once I got fed up and pushed her. She called the police and he chided me.
In short, it was awful.
Meanwhile, my sisters got upgraded to a private school and lots of amazing toys.
She took custody of my grandfather who had MS from the waist down and couldn’t even use the bathroom by himself.
She got power of attorney and took all his coin and blew it, as well as taking half his pain meds (like Vicodin) and giving them to my brother to sell. This will be important later.
Now the revenge part.
In my junior year of high school, I was working in the library.
My teachers were amazing and supportive and knew my situation. I got my dad’s email, and we started planning. He figured once I finished high school, he would personally come up and get me. My mom decided to have a ‘graduation party’ for me, complete with inviting all her friends and none of mine (maybe two people I could call a friend) a couple of days before my graduation ceremony.
About two hours before the party was going to start, my dad pulls up. I invite him in, and he looks around, looks confused. He leans in and asks me, ‘Where is she?’ I point. She was right in front of him lying on the couch. He screwed up his face and said he’d wait in the car. He didn’t recognize her after all these years.
While I was gathering my stuff in a single garbage bag, my mom finally realized who this stranger was, and lost her mind – she didn’t recognize him at first, either. She tried everything from bribing me with Nascar tickets (I hate Nascar, she liked it but I knew she didn’t have any) to physically obstructing me.
She had pulled out all the stops for this party, spending a couple thousand and lots of time cooking, errrr… making me cook.
I get outside, throw my stuff in the truck, and we take off.
(Side story. We get halfway down the street and my dad has to pull over. He laughs uncontrollably for a while. I asked him what’s up, and in his Texan accent says, ‘Boy, when I was a kid I always wanted to marry a movie star. I just didn’t think it would be Jabba the Hutt.’ Evidently, they didn’t recognize each other at first, she put on ALOT of weight after they divorced.)
We get to his place, and it starts.
I get updates from my sister-in-law. The party was a disaster. My mom was humiliated. Since she didn’t have me, my dad stopped sending dollars. They had months worth of unpayable bills. She had to pawn her jewelry, pull my sisters out of private school and put them back into public school. My mom had to sell one of the cars she had.
Soon she started calling for payments claiming someone stole the mail all the time and she couldn’t pay their bills and needed the coin to replace the mailbox so they wouldn’t steal it anymore.
It was refreshing knowing I was free, and I could say no with no repercussions.
I was happy to live and let live. I vowed to leave her be and let her sink or swim by her own hand.
I was elated to be free and had no desire to look back at that part of my life.
But she wasn’t done with me.
I decided to follow my dad’s example and join the service. I decided the Navy was the place for me. My job required a top-secret clearance, so they do a very thorough background check, including a credit check.
Turns out I was delinquent in mortgage payments, I was receiving social security, and I owed a power company a lot of dollars among other credit card debts.
My mom stole my identity and ran me into debt since she couldn’t get any more dollars. I knew about identity theft, it just never occurred to me that a parent has everything they need to do so.
This couldn’t stand. After I finished basic training and my technical school, I spoke to my Chief (supervisor). Chief was awesome. She managed to wrangle me a ‘temporary assignment’ to a recruiting station in my old town where my mom lived so the Navy would buy my plane tickets. I spoke to the police and filed a report. One by one, I managed to clear most of the debts from me and send all the debt collectors after her.
Then I made a visit to the social security office. I was in uniform at the time and spoke to a clerk about how I was somehow getting payments when I never got anything. She looks up the account and boom. My mom was listed. She claimed I was permanently mangled and disabled in an accident and I was physically unable to sign, giving her permission to deposit my checks.
The clerk read that last part out slower as it dawned on her that I was clearly more than able. She opened a case. For the monolithic bureaucracy that is the government, they move pretty fast when someone’s stealing dollars from THEM.
Turns out when they went to investigate, she had already skipped town. They issued warrants for her arrest but she was already on the run.
This was ten years ago.
So evidently my brother found out that not only am I doing great, I am very successful. I recently left the service and I am starting an even more exciting job. So he told Mom, and she came crawling out of the woodwork via social media for dollars for a ‘doctor,’ but I told her prison gives free medical care, and it felt good.
Turns out, when my aunts (her sisters who lived in another state) found out about how she treated me, she was cut out of everyone’s will including my grandmother.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to my grandfather before she cashed in on him.
Heavily in debt with no family to turn to, no way to get a job, with fraud on her record as well as selling prescription medication, and warrants out for her arrest, my mother, Jabba the Hutt, is receiving hers.
I got cut a check for $20,000, the amount that was garnished from my wages for what she stole from the social security administration, and she now owes that much to Uncle Sam.”
4. Pick On My Coworker? I'll End Your Career By Exposing You
“A few years ago, I was working in a job I really enjoyed with a team I really gelled well with.
There were about five of us working on the same portfolio of projects in different roles, and every single team member was just cream-of-the-crop, incredibly good at what they do.
I can’t overemphasize how satisfying it was to work with such an incredibly competent, likable group of people. In this job, instead of getting the Sunday night blues, I would get excited thinking about the work I would be doing the next day and planning how we would solve complex problems together.
The one downside (there’s always a downside) to this job was Steve.
Steve was not in the supervisory line for me or any of my team members, but he was about three levels above us and very senior. He’d been there for years and was tight with senior leadership. Steve was also a mega-creep.
He said extremely inappropriate things to young women in the office, and he apparently wasn’t averse to being handsy, though as far as anyone knew, that was as bad as it had gotten.
The women in the office all knew to steer clear of him. My first week on the job, the whisper network made sure I knew: Never be alone with Steve. Harassment is difficult to document, and no one wanted to risk their career and put a target on their back going after a big guy like Steve, so he just got away with it for years.
So for a couple of years, I followed this advice.
There were a few instances of Steve saying incredibly uncomfortable things to me in passing, but for the most part, I managed to avoid him. Then I found out that my teammate Rob had gotten on Steve’s radar. For context, Rob is non-neurotypical and has some minor tic-ish behavior. He’s also shy and easily spirals into social anxiety when put in uncomfortable situations.
So one evening at our team’s informal weekly happy hour after work, Rob lets it slip that Steve’s been giving him a hard time. The rest of us are like, ‘Whoa, wait, what?’ because Steve never interacts with staff at our level, except to creep on women, so we make Rob tell us everything.
Basically, for the last few weeks, Steve has been bullying Rob, making fun of his tics, and mimicking his way of speaking back to him.
He’s also been asking Rob how he can possibly be competent to do his job and implying he’s a pity hire. Steve even called him an idiot. It’s clear Steve is seeking out Rob for this, because, again, there’s really no reason for him to interact with our team. Rob has been having horrible anxiety over this situation and has had bad insomnia and stomach issues since Steve started targeting him.
And not that it bears repeating, but just to reiterate, Rob is a beast at his job. And a genuinely good guy.
At this point, I’m seeing red. We all were. We tell Rob to go to HR, that his neurological issues put him in a protected ADA class, that he could get Steve in big trouble. Rob panics and says he can’t do that, begs us not to tell anyone at work, and says he wishes he hadn’t said anything.
We assure him we won’t say anything if that’s what he wants, but we’re all very distressed.
I leave the bar fuming just thinking, OK, that’s it. Screw you, Steve. You’re going down.
I can’t tell anyone about what’s happening to Rob, because I promised him as much, so I start my own paper trail.
I start baiting Steve.
And I don’t mean I behave in any suggestive manner or lead him on: I just stop avoiding him, and I even initiate contact myself.
I IM him through the company’s IM system very professionally/politely asking if a big client will be staying on through the next project cycle, and the floodgates open. He starts sending me outrageously inappropriate IMs. I mostly don’t respond, but I occasionally keep him going by sending extremely literal responses to his innuendo-laden questions or pretending not to understand something suggestive he’s saying.
Sometimes when he clarifies, I’ll outright say, ‘This isn’t appropriate’ or ‘This is making me uncomfortable,’ or ‘Please don’t say things like that, Steve,’ but he steamrolls right over me.
During this time, I’ve also been seeing him more in-person around the office, and he often says gross stuff to me in person as well, a lot of it not just inappropriate, but bizarre and nonsensical (‘Is it legal to have a butt like that in that skirt?’ Lolwut?) Every time this happens, I immediately go back to my desk and write down what he said, the date and time, and the names of any witnesses.
After about a month of this, I compile my creep journal with printouts of the IM conversations and take them to my HR rep. I ask to file a harassment complaint against Steve.
As soon as the words ‘harassment’ leave my mouth, my rep instantly gets the head of HR and two other reps, and they go through my evidence with me and ask me a ton of questions.
The head of HR assures me they’ll take my complaints very seriously, and asks if I know of any women around the office who have had similar issues with Steve. I’m able to give them several names.
They send me on my way, and two weeks later, my rep formally reaches out to me and lets me know Steve has been let go.
Much jubilation is had around the office!
It took a couple of months for me to piece together the whole story, but basically, after my complaint, HR started following up with the names I gave them, both the witnesses to my in-person encounters with Steve and the other women he’d harassed.
They corroborated what I’d told HR, and then through them, word started spreading around the office that HR was conducting a harassment investigation against Steve.
This emboldened at least 15 different women who’d been biting their tongues about Steve for ages to come forward and tell their own Steve stories.
During all of this, IT had been asked to go through Steve’s emails and IMs, and this had not only been used to validate my printouts as legitimate, but IT had found a ton of additional incriminating stuff in Steve’s correspondences.
Somewhat frustrating: Steve received an extremely generous severance package as part of his termination. But on the bright side, word got around the industry quickly, and Steve was poison at that point.
No company would touch him with a 10-foot pole. The last time I thought to snoop on his public social media pages, he was listing himself as an ‘independent consultant’ in our industry, which I seriously doubt he’s actually doing, and based on his public page, he’s doing a couple of MLMs, so that should kill off whatever savings he has in short order.
I don’t work with Rob anymore, but I did recently attend his wedding! He’s extremely happy with his new wife (who is a sweet and lovely woman) and he’s doing really well in his career.”
Another User Comments:
“‘Is it legal to have a butt like that in that skirt?’ How could one not swoon at such romantic rumblings? Move over Shakespeare, there’s a new wordsmith in town.” daniel2978
3. Won't Pay Your Staff? I'll Use The Power Of Humiliation
“As many of you know, the restaurant industry is notorious for wage-theft and illegal diversion of tips from the workers up to the owners and sometimes to subsidize management positions.
Many years ago, I worked for a world-famous celebrity chef and his social-climber wife and was already under pressure from them and the company for turning them in for wage-theft and illegal tip diversion. It is estimated they stole over $1 million from several locations over several years.
They would alter time-cards to show less time worked (they shaved the most from kitchen staff) and diverted tip income to subsidize manager, chef, hostess, etc. positions that are not entitled to tips.
Well, this couple was also tied into Hollywood and the movie business and a prominent director had filmed scenes from a couple of previous movies at the location I worked. The staff lost shifts and was never compensated by the movie shoot or the restaurant owners for our loss.
Well, during the open phase of my campaign against them (where everyone knew what was going on and that a settlement was eventually coming) they closed the restaurant again for the 3rd time so this director could shoot movie scenes.
I happened to come by one day during the shut-down (to get a paycheck or something) and saw sitting out openly on the hostess stand the contract for the movie shoot with the owners.
It stated clearly that the terms of the contract for using the location for the movie that the staff would receive equal or better compensation for their lost shifts (including estimated tips), yet none of us were compensated yet again.
So I copied that contract (copier was unattended) and called the movie studio doing the film and asked for the production office and lied to the person there who answered the phone that I needed to fax something over.
So I faxed over a letter to the attention of this Hollywood director (who was also a regular diner at the place) and let him know that not only were the staff not being paid, that we had never been paid for the previous two movies that cost us shifts and did he know there was a big labor complaint brewing against these scoundrels? I reminded him he was known as a politically active progressive entertainment leader on labor and civil rights issues.
The very next day, everyone on the staff was called and told to come in and pick up a check, we were being paid for our lost shifts due to the filming.
That venue was never used again for filming.
Our settlement for the time-shaving and illegal tip diversion was a joke, like pennies on the dollar of what was stolen from each worker – the federal agency responsible for investigating and issuing penalties for the time-shaving cut a very favorable deal to the offenders due to their high-powered lawyers.
The state agency responsible for following up on the illegal tip diversion dragged their feet and let the statute of limitations run out without taking action – I heard through sources that politicos somewhere in the chain were friendly with the owners … the fix was in.
Humiliation works.”
2. Be Unfaithful To Me? I'll Get With Your Sister
“Part 1: Exposition
This took place roughly 2 years ago, at the twilight of my senior year of high school.
It was early May and our graduation was set for early June, so with most of our brains switched to summer mode and our teachers fresh out of cares, my friends and I finally fell in line with the majority of our class and started ditching.
Our friend group consisted of a handful of minor characters in addition to my man of 3 years: “Kyle,” my best friend since middle school: “Sarah”, myself, and a recent inclusion: “Brad”, who, not gonna lie, was and is a bit of a White Knight.
Kyle belonged to a Christian family. No, not the nice, charity giving, actually Christian Christians, but rather the homophobic, slur-slinging, will kick a homeless guy in the face and then sit in church like a saint Christians.
They always went to church every Wednesday and Friday, and while they invited me, I never went due to being a) an Agnostic, b) a closeted bi and c) almost physically sick from their hypocrisy. They never really liked me because of this.
They also were entitled. It wasn’t evident until they got into trouble. You see, they helped organize the Church’s funding (grants, donations, charity, maintenance, etc), which put them pretty high on the pecking order.
The Church, while not the centerpiece of our part of town, still claimed A LOT of the district’s authority figures as patrons. It was the sort of unofficial institution that sneaks its way into politics without ever being directly involved. So whenever they got pulled over or issued a parking ticket, they’d drop a couple of names and dodge the whole thing.
Kyle himself was decent.
I’d known him since elementary school, he was usually nice, and he was hot (shallow, I know, but it was high school), so I tolerated his idiotic and oftentimes narcissistic behavior (they treated him like God’s gift to Earth). But it was his sister, “Charlie,” who redeemed the whole family. She was a year younger than Kyle and me and was the only genuine Christian in the group.
However, she also had an impish streak in her that led to some fun hi-jinx.
You could always tell she’d had a devilish epiphany with this little half-smile she’d make. We’d often hang out and she was a blast to be around. We were very close, and she often confided in me about stuff she couldn’t tell her family. To me, a great friend. To them, the perfect little Christian daughter.
Sarah was a really good friend who had helped me through the passing of my mom. I wasn’t diagnosed with depression or anything major, but I loved my mama to pieces and it shattered me.
She and Kyle were always there for me and she was the one who pushed me to ask him out. I trusted her about as much as any teenager could.
One fateful Tuesday, Kyle, Sarah, myself, and our mutual friends headed downtown to get food, skate, and generally do stereotypical annoying teenage stuff. Getting bored of our current activities, I asked Kyle if he wanted to race on our boards to the end of the street (it was just past the lunch rush so most people were either back in their offices or stuck in traffic).
He accepted and about 30 seconds and a loose flagstone later, I ended up planting my face into the sidewalk and fracturing my arm. I tried to shake it off but no one else was having it, considering I was walking like a newborn deer and my arm was beginning to swell. We ended up making a visit to the ER where they confirmed that yes, I did have a fractured arm, and a concussion to boot.
The concussion was my idiot tax.
It wasn’t too big a deal as far as accidents go, but considering my sorry state, they wanted me to stick around so they could do a few more tests, brace my arm, and generally just ensure that I was healthy enough to return to my sillness. Thankfully, Kyle and Sarah had offered to stay with me, because apparently their parents didn’t care, and we were already ditching so school the following day wasn’t a big issue.
I ended up spending the night in the hospital (the hospital had been understaffed for years, so once your condition was deemed stable they tended to shove you into limbo) and went home the following day with the usual concussion orders. Effectively I was to become a vegetable for 10 days. Wanting to get back to my recently attained freedom I complied, meaning I spent about 7 days sleeping and eating.
I only picked up my phone after the doctor cleared me, to which I found an unexpected message.
Part 2: The Act
Brad had gotten my number from Kyle, and sent me a link to a private data storing account (one of those services where you can upload videos, pictures, etc and lock it behind a pass-code for personal use only) and a password. I, being intrigued by this sudden plot hook in my boring life, followed it to find literal GIGABYTES of pictures, all showing Kyle and Sarah in compromising positions and captions hollering things that were definitely not beneficial to their relationship with the Lord.
I’m talking about everything from individual adult photos taken from the Chat of Snaps to full-on shots and everything in between. It looked like an “adult” album. The most recent of which was dated to, as you probably guessed, that Tuesday evening.
Brad explained that Kyle had this whole thing where he’d upload videos of him and Sarah doing it for his close circle to watch.
I personally would’ve simply used adult websites like a normal human, but Kyle had always been a little self-infatuated so I wasn’t too surprised at this Narcissus level move.
Brad had apparently just been included and was sickened by the whole thing.
For context, in our 3 years of seeing each other, the furthest Kyle and I had gone was second base after a football game that January.
He spewed BS about “saving it for marriage” while playing around with my BFF.
I. Was. Shattered. The two people I had placed my unconditional trust in had, without my knowledge, been taking turns pounding that trust away, all the while being fully aware of their importance in my life.
I confronted Kyle about this when we next hung out at his place, and he denied everything at first. Said I was being a paranoid witch.
When I showed him the evidence, he involved his parents, who started claiming I PHOTOSHOPPED the photos and videos, and threatened that they would report me for making such explicit underage content (Sarah and Kyle had only just turned 18 the past September). Knowing the police would prove me right, but not wanting to tank Brad for possession (our city had been throwing the book at people for this for years) I dropped it and left.
I thought we’d broken up, but apparently, his parents insisted we stay together until after graduation to save face with his extended family. Apparently, they knew deep down he was guilty, but the usually entitled parent tendencies flared up. Not wanting to make waves (yet) I reluctantly complied and began regressing into my earlier negative mental spaces.
Part 3: The Revenge
The funny thing about religious families is that they are just as prone to producing LGBT children as non-religious ones.
Kyle had avoided the “sickness.” Charlie hadn’t.
Not one week after our argument, I was at Kyle’s house, helping him keep up the act. We hardly interacted, so I turned to Charlie for companionship. This typically happened when Kyle and I would get into fights, as Charlie’s chill demeanor and deep concern often led me to confide in her, sometimes with things I didn’t even share with Sarah.
This, being the biggest “argument” of our relationship, was no different.
While we were chilling in her room, she started to get really antsy. Her normal bubbly demeanor was gone. Contrary to your typical h**o, I didn’t have a strong gaydar, so I assumed she’d learned of Kyle’s infidelity.
Well yes, but actually no.
I asked her what was wrong and she said she had a secret to spill.
I wasn’t really in the mood for drama or comforting, but it being Charlie I let her go.
In what has yet to be the second biggest surprise of my life, she told me about how she’d been in the closet for years (14 or 15 was when she first started figuring it out), and apparently, for a long time, she’d been trying to get closer to me because I was the only person she truly felt comfortable around.
Her family was almost stereotypically homophobic and really only approved of her church friends. She was jealous of Kyle and our relationship but thinking I was straight and not wanting to rock the boat she resigned herself to her angsty teenage heartache. That was until the HMS Relationship struck an infidelity iceberg and she figured she could finally shoot her shot.
Now, given any other circumstance, I would’ve said heck no. We’d known each other for over a decade, and I’d been seeing her brother for 3 years.
It would’ve been scummy and Charlie was practically a sister to me at this point. But then the b***d started rushing and the lizard brain started screaming for payback. I’ll spare the details for her privacy, but one woo-hoo later she and I were enjoying the afterglow when the gears really started turning.
I felt like crap. I knew what I’d done was wrong, but given my current situation, I frankly didn’t care about that.
I more so felt bad for Charlie.
At the time, my feelings were twisted and painful, and I thought I didn’t really like her that way, so I thought I’d just one-and-doned the only non-family member who I still trusted. She caught on to the vibe I was giving off and ended up talking me out of some bad thoughts while we got dressed and said our goodbyes.
We ended up continuing the relationship after that. For her, she finally got to be with her longtime crush, and I got an escape.
When the day of graduation came and went, we maintained the charade until both our families, as well as their church group, went over to their place for a massive dinner celebration and commemorative slideshow.
Now I’d known about this event since the fall and hadn’t thought too much of it until the incident.
During our fling, Charlie had been pushing me out of my slump and towards thoughts of vengeance. Apparently, her parents had been spreading rumors to their church group that I had been unfaithful to Kyle, and they were saying that after the dinner, he was going to dump me.
In front of an entire crowd that included MY FAMILY.
I didn’t really care about myself, but my dad had gotten a lot of flak for remarrying after mom died. Some of it even came from me, but having the perspective of age and distance I got over it.
I was not about to have him publicly embarrassed by some crapheads who thought they blessed the ground they walked on. Before, it was just petty high school drama.
But this was no joke. My dad worked for the District Rep’s office. The District Rep grew up at that church. It was part of his “one of the people” persona. A few choice words my dad’s job would be history.
Guess Kyle’s parents in their malignancy never thought that part through. Or maybe they did and I’m giving them too much credit. Either way, this was now personal.
So Charlie, being her impish self, began scheming.
She was loved by the Church group, so it was easy for her to get the role of prepping the slideshow. She even gave a whole speech about how she couldn’t wait to “finally give her brother and his friends the recognition they deserved.” She then began compiling the videos and photos from the account Kyle had made (dumbbutt hadn’t changed the password), alongside screenshots of their conversations in a group chat they had (she got those by “borrowing” his phone, making a “call” and sending the screenshots to her phone before deleting them from the message history) and integrated them into a slideshow.
It was structured so that a slide would pop up with a bunch of pictures of the boy in question alongside their favorite bible quote. Then the next few slides would include the screenshots of their respective conversations and whatever pictures they had listed as their favorites (censored and from after they had turned 18 for obvious reasons). Altogether this slideshow took Charlie days to compile, but not once did she complain or ask for a break.
She was on a mission, and alongside being hot in its weird way, it was also shifting my perspective on our relationship.
So the night comes and we’re all sitting around the table, making small talk and putting on our best fake smiles. Several church families are giving me smug “you’re gonna get what’s coming to you” looks, but I shrugged them off and stuck with my family for most of the night.
Charlie and I avoided each other to ensure no one got suspicious.
Finally, the moment of truth came. Everyone was called into the backyard where they had rows of chairs set up in front of a massive projector. Charlie portrayed her best innocent little sister act before starting the soundtrack.
The slides began to roll, and people began to gasp and yell in tune to Good Old Days by Macklemore.
Seeing the looks on Kyle and his family’s faces as they realized what was happening was priceless. In turn, each boy was brought onscreen and put on blast, and each time everyone was too busy recovering from the whiplash to stop it.
The few that did tried to grab Charlie’s laptop, but she quickly scooped it up and ran into the house, locking herself in a bathroom (the projector was wireless).
No one thought to turn off the projector. Idiots.
Finally, after almost five minutes of bible quotes and inappropriate photos, the boy of the hour was put on screen. His quote: Hebrews 13:4 “Give honor to marriage, and remain faithful to one another in marriage. God will surely judge people who are immoral and those who commit adultery.” It was intended to create the setup for my humiliation.
Oh how the turntables.
A handful of videos played showing his 18+ exploits, alongside screenshots of the rows of content he had made, with texts from back to the summer of 2017 implying the length of his fling. It hurt to watch, but I found my solace in the sweet nectar of vengeance laid before my eyes. Finally came the last slide, a blank white page with a single audio file link.
Even I was confused at this part, seeing as audio wasn’t included in our plans.
Charlie crept back outside and clicked play, and Kyle’s parents’ voices came screaming through the speakers. Apparently, Charlie had recorded their entire humiliation plan in detail and had added it to the slideshow as evidence of my impending setup. The girl had covered all bases, and when the show ended, she stood next to the projector beaming that devilish half-grin.
It took a few seconds for anything to happen. Kyle and his family beat a hasty retreat to the house, but the party is at their place they had nowhere to go.
Several church members conveyed their disgust at Charlie, Kyle, and the boys in equal measure for the event. She ignored them, called out to her parents, and waited for them to peep their heads out.
When they did, she quickly planted a massive kiss on my cheek and pronounced herself as gay. Needless to say, that didn’t go down well. My parents and I left in a hurry, and Charlie, now in deep crap, came with us.
Part 4: The Aftermath
Charlie and I have been seeing each other since. As you probably guessed, her family cut ties with her, so she ended up crashing at my place.
My stepmom wasn’t too pleased with how she’d gone about my revenge, but my dad thought it was hilarious. He collected his $20 from my stepmom (they’d had a bet over when I’d come out, apparently) and argued on our behalf for Charlie to stay. After all, they had an interesting first impression, and there was no risk of pregnancy.
To top it off, it was the perfect way for them to spite Kyle’s family after they’d trashed my reputation and tried to make me an outcast. He caught some jokes and snide remarks at work for the next few weeks, but given the circumstances and the fact I was a teenage daughter (apparently we’re prone to bouts of roguishness), he got off.
No harm.
As for Kyle’s family? Well, his family got barred from their church after his collection came to light, which caused them to fall from local grace.
They lost the ear of local officials, and the various name drops they’d been using to avoid various fines and penalties caught up to them. Last I heard from Sarah they had moved to the next state over and Kyle was living alone in his parent’s basement, squeaking by at a community college.
Sarah and I made up eventually. It took a lot of apologizing and no small amount of groveling on her part, but not wanting to resent her for the rest of my life I got over myself and allowed her back in.
We’re not as close as we used to be, but that trust is slowly growing back. Let’s just hope she keeps her stuff in her pants this time.
Charlie and I lived together until I went off to college, where we’ve been long-distance since. She managed to get into a school two hours away, so we often spend weekends at each others’ dorms or somewhere in between, doing our typical hedonistic thing. It’s taken me some time to fully recover.
As cathartic as our revenge felt, it did little to truly bring me solace.
Despite the implications of this story, I had a really deep connection with Kyle, and while it’s easy to write off as teenage drama, it still scarred me. My family and Charlie have helped me rebuild. Our relationship may have begun unconventionally, and could certainly be classifiable as “trashy”, but we don’t care. We’re happy, and I have a girl who’s gone above and beyond for me.
Not everyone can say that.”
Another User Comments:
“Man, my chick’s best friend/ex did that to her in high school- while her doctor step-dad was unfaithful to her mom with several women, then pinned her mom for a bunch of fraud that he was committing.
She still has mild trust issues with me (even after we’ve been seeing each other for 7 years), it’s gotten much better since we started seeing each other, but that anxiety is still there, and it pains me to see her so worried that history would repeat itself.” Baileythenerd
1. Ruining My Ex-Best Friend's Reputation Big Time
“Back in high school, I had a very small group of friends.
My then best friend, who we’ll call Jenna, was one of the only people who knew a lot about me. Not that I wouldn’t tell people about myself, I just never bothered to unless asked. But Jenna and I would talk about everything and anything we could, as best friends do.
We had our ups and downs for sure, but in the end we were inseparable. That is, until “the incident” happened.
To make a long and frankly complicated story short, what happened is that one of my other friends and I wanted to celebrate our birthdays together since we’re a couple days apart.
My friend was best pals with Jenna’s ex, so I asked Jenna if she would be okay to party with her ex there.
I said it was fine if she wasn’t, and that we could go out to lunch or do something else. Jenna said it was okay and we had a fun day at the amusement park. Up until about the last hour, where I was in line with Jenna’s ex and a few of our friends while she went to get a locker.
I guess I said something that her ex took as flirting and they kissed me.
Literally out of the blue. I wasn’t expecting it, no one else was expecting it- least of all Jenna, who had turned around and was walking back to us at that exact moment. I was absolutely mortified.
I profusely apologized to Jenna, even though everyone in my friend group agreed that I didn’t initiate anything and that I was caught off guard and wasn’t a consenting member.
But Jenna was absolutely livid. At every opportunity she could, she’d bring it up- to invalidate anything I disagreed with her on. It didn’t matter what I said, how often I apologized, how genuine I was, or how crappy I felt about it, she kept bringing it up to hang over me. It was a gotcha card in any argument we had, and I eventually got sick of it and told her that, look, I have apologized so many times for an event that wasn’t my fault.
I wanted no part of it, and everyone in our group agreed that it was out of nowhere.
After a while, we drifted apart because she was emotionally abusive towards me, and I finally put my foot down and ended our friendship. Come to find out later though, she was spreading lies and rumors about me to anyone who would listen- that I was an attention seeker, that I loved drama, that I was a terrible human being who feels nothing, basically she was telling people I was a sociopath with no empathy and an inability to care about other people.
She used a lot of the deep, personal things I had told her against me. She turned people against me before they had even met me. I told them that I was witchy and callous and that I was looking for a reason to start drama- which cannot be further from the truth. I actively avoid drama at all costs because I do not have the time or energy to deal with the emotional toll it costs- my parents gave me enough emotional trauma to deal with.
This is when I finally snapped. Because it takes a lot to really get me riled up to a point where I’m gonna do something about it. But I had dealt with her emotional abuse for years, and I finally got sick of it and ended crap between us. But when she made a point to try to ruin my reputation, I finally snapped and had had enough.
So I made it a point to do the same crap she was doing to me, but worse and make it seem like I wasn’t doing anything to her at all.
In fact, I played it off like nothing was wrong at all.
She had found another best friend after me, who we’ll call Martha. Martha had just moved from Florida and had no previous knowledge of Jenna or me, but Jenna had turned her against me based solely on her undying thirst to get people to hate me.
So I turned my kindness up to an eleven. Martha and I had the same lunch, but Jenna didn’t.
I’d sit and talk to Martha, and lowkey put in little digs about Jenna that I knew Martha had a hard time dealing with. It didn’t take long before Martha and I were best friends and Jenna had to find someone new to associate with.
She moved on to another girl who we’ll call Katherine. The same thing that I did to Martha, I did to Katherine. I found a little bit of irritation and made it grow into full-blown annoyance, nearing hatred.
For some reason, Jenna could not keep a best friend for more than a few weeks before they’d blow up at her and stop talking to her.
This would happen to every single person who would be her “best friend.” She’d befriend them, and I would swoop in and slowly turn them against her by using nothing but truths about her. Unraveling her friendships before they could really take hold with only the issues she would cause herself.
Sometimes these problems would take a little longer to manifest themselves, but I’m a patient person when it comes to these kinds of things.
The moment I saw a weakness, I would talk them away from it simply being a minor issue to part of a full-blown problem that they personally had with her. I suppose I’d talk them up, in a way. Rile them up so they’d be the ones to get mad at her without them ever connecting the pieces that it was me who got them there in the first place.
When we eventually graduated, Jenna had no friends and was nearly universally hated. Not that I made up lies about her, everything I did or said was true and based on actual things she said or did that already annoyed person. I just got good at pointing that stuff out and forcing people to re-examine their relationships with her. She could never figure out why no one wanted to be friends with her, or why the people she was briefly friends with would leave her in the dust after a very short period of time.
She had to move out of state for college because she had no friends from high school at home that she could associate with. No one wanted to be around Jenna.
But in truth, all I had to do was point out how poorly she was treating people for them to realize how she was using them. She did most of the work herself. I just shortened the lifespan of her friendships and made it so she got a taste of her own medicine.
Minus the bullcrap and lies.
This may initially seem a little petty and childish, but I assure you. I cannot express how much her social life was secretly ruined without her even realizing it. She never suspected me because I made sure to never say what annoyed me about her, I’d simply listen for a small bit of information then take it and run with it.
People never said it was me who was talking trash because, in their minds, it was their own personal issue.
In reality, I was the one who sent them over the edge.
She believes people just hate her for no reason. Not because she took her anger a step too far and pushed me over my limit.”
