People Hand Over Their Most Delicious Revenge
13. Kicking My Old Boss Out Of My Store
Ah, how great that feeling must be!
“So, after leaving my job with my horrible boss, Mike, of almost a year, I found a job in the other grocery store across town.
This new store that I worked at was a discount grocery store; which basically means that we would get overstock from other stores, stuff that didn’t sell, outdated items (not insanely outdated, we still had some standards on the food we could sell), etc, etc.
Anyways, we would still order regular stuff from the vendors and since we would usually buy some of their overstock and outdated stuff as well, we would get a little bit of a better deal on whatever else we bought.
Getting a better deal meant that we could pass on some of the savings to the customer.
My old boss would occasionally send some of the managers from the other store in to scope out our prices so that they could see if they could beat it and sell more than we could. Normally, my new boss “Ralph” wouldn’t mind, he would always just let it go.
Eventually, he started to get a little upset about it and told me to ask them to kindly leave. I had been hoping for this ever since they started coming in and scoping prices, so I went out to 2 of the assistant managers “Paul” and “Larry”, and I kindly asked them to leave.
Before I move on, here’s a little background on the two grocery stores I worked at.
The first one (AKA the one with the horrible boss), was a chain store, therefore, anybody below a manager really had no power whatsoever.
The new one (AKA the one with the better boss), was only three stores, and the owner of the stores wouldn’t really take much nonsense from others, so we had quite a bit more power than I used to have.
Anyways, they inform me that I’m not allowed to tell them to leave since I’m not a manager and that anybody can shop in there. I laugh and tell them that my manager had told me to ask them to leave and that if they didn’t, I would call the police to have them escorted out of the building. They leave without more incident, I’m happy since these 2, along with Mike, made my life a nightmare for the past year.
I go about my job (warehouse attendant), and start running the forklift and trying to rearrange the warehouse.
I get called up front to go carry out some groceries for an older lady, and as I walk back in, who else would show up? It’s lovely old Mike! He asks me why I kicked out his two managers, and I informed him that if they wanted to actually shop here, they were at perfect liberty to do that, but if all they were going to do was scope out prices so they could beat it, then they were not allowed back in the store.
And if he was going to cause trouble, he shouldn’t even enter the store.
I turn my back on him, walk back in, and tell our checkers to call me if Mike comes in and starts trouble. I go to the back, and not even 60 seconds later, I get a call from my checkers telling me that he’s scoping out prices as well and that my boss Ralph was gone, and they wanted me to take care of it.
I walk out from the back, see Mike write down some prices from something, and approach him.
Me: Mike, if you’re going to be scoping out prices, you can leave now too.
Mike: You’re not a manager, I don’t have to listen to you, and you can’t even kick me out anyways.
Me: My boss gave me permission to kick out anybody from (Old store name here) if they’re just going to come here and scope out prices.
I can tell that’s what you’re doing so you need to leave.
Mike: I’d like to see you make me.
Me: I’ll give you about 10 seconds to start walking to the door and if you don’t, I’ll call the police to escort you out.
10-15 seconds go by where we just glare at each other with as much contempt as we can manage.
I pull out my phone and call the non-emergency line for our local police department.
PD: This is (City name) police department, non-emergency line, how may we help you?
Me: Hi, this is OP, I’m over at (new store name), and I have a customer here who’s causing trouble and that we have asked to leave, but he won’t. Can I get somebody over here to help, please?
PD: OP? I hadn’t seen you over at (old store name) in a while! I was wondering where you were! Anyways, it’s a small town, who is it? Maybe we can just talk to them on the phone to get them to leave.
Me: It’s Mike from (old store name), and he’s scoping out our prices, my boss has given me permission to kick anybody out from that store who is just coming over to scope out prices, and that’s all he’s doing, so we would like him removed.
PD: Yeah… Normally for something like this, I would just ask the person to leave from the phone, but Mike was being a jerk to my wife the other day. I’m on my way.
5-10 minutes pass by where I help out a few customers while Mike scopes out more prices. Police show up, the cashiers tell him where I’m at, and we walk over to Mike.
PD: Mike, you’ve been asked to leave. You need to leave. Technically, you’re trespassing.
Mike: This is a free country, I can go where I please.
PD: Unfortunately, you’ve been told that you’re not allowed on these premises, therefore, no, you can’t go where you like. Leave, or I’ll escort you out with handcuffs.
Mike: Do you think you intimidate me Officer “Jones”?
To clarify, Mike is between 6’3″-6’6″, and 250-275 lbs (190.5-198.1cm, 113.5-124.9kg), while our officer is roughly 5’10” and 175 lbs (177.8cm and 68.1kg).
PD: Mike, I’m going to ask you once more, and then if you don’t leave and try to intimidate me more, I’ll tase your butt, you’ll pee your pants, and I’ll drag you out. I’ve had enough of your nonsense.
Let’s go.
Mike looks at the taser on the cop’s belt, gives both of us the dirtiest look he can come up with, and leaves.
We both crack up laughing, and the cop ends up giving me his direct number. Neither of us likes Mike, and he wants to be the one to deal with him if anything should arise again.”
Another User Comments:
“Seriously. The longer the story, the better. People need to stop apologizing for long stories. They are usually better than short ones.
That is an awesome story and had a great ending. I haven’t read your past problems with this “Mike” person but I was really hoping he’d get tased.” OneFinalEffort
12. Fire Me Over Something Ridiculous? Hope You Can Afford This Nice Settlement
Next time you plan on firing someone, make sure to have somewhat of a reason, at least. Sheesh.
“It happened about a year ago, in the fall of 2018.
I used to work at a distribution warehouse and last summer I got stress and depression that was so bad I got anxiety attacks because of it from the bad work environment. It was mainly caused by a specific employee and the CEO.
I was having way more sick days than before and got asked for a doctor’s note in a meeting between me, the CEO, and the guy who basically ran the company, Cedric (he was great and seemed concerned about me, while the CEO more seemed annoyed that my sick days were higher than normal for me).
We filled out the part of the doctor’s note that is supposed to be filled by the employee and the company, and I booked an appointment with my doctor.
The doctor concluded that I had stress and depression that caused me to have anxiety attacks. He recommended that I got allowed small breaks for fresh air (very bad air quality in the warehouse) and that I go down from 35 hours a week to 20. He also recommended I get therapy. The bill got sent directly to the company.
I was pretty wound up after the appointment and called them and explained that the bill was being sent to them.
I didn’t feel great afterward, so I told them I would be taking the rest of the day off. It was about two hours before I usually got off and I had worked before the appointment. They were very understanding and nice.
The next day I was working I talked to Cedric about the doctor’s note. We agreed that I would have an extra day off, so that I only worked two days in a row between days off, that I would have a longer lunch break (to make the math add up), and that I would come in later which was my idea as I know that’s when they’re most busy which I pointed out to him.
The CEO wasn’t part of this convo because he wasn’t in that day.
The next Thursday I get called into a meeting with both of them again for Friday.
I assumed it was to talk about how it had worked this last week with my adjusted schedule and maybe change it slightly. The CEO was his normal unpleasant self and Cedric seemed unusually silent and uncomfortable.
The CEO went through the doctor’s note with me, saying he didn’t understand the part about fresh air. I explained and told him how I felt the new schedule had worked, how much better it already seemed to be for me, despite the only thing having been put in was me having Wednesday off. He then slid a piece of paper across the desk to me and informed me I was being fired. I was shocked, read the paper through, and signed it since there was nothing else I could do.
I was given my copy of it and then they walked with me to the warehouse where it was announced to the others. My boss was just as shocked as me and angry because she liked me and had not been informed. I went home after that.
I contacted my union, sent them the copy I had, a copy of my contract, and explained the timeline.
I wasn’t working since that day, because screw them, to be honest.
I only came back shortly one day to give back my key and uniform, and to say bye to people. I was put on as cc on every email the union employee that worked my case sent to them and he sent every email the union lawyer sent him to me.
Well, a lot of things happened through them that I won’t write out in detail, but here are the bullet points:
I hadn’t actually been given a proper letter of termination. The one I was given was legally binding, it wasn’t actually correctly made.
My assignments had slowly changed, but my contract hadn’t and was now wrong.
This meant that instead of one month’s severance, I was entitled to three. And as this was agreed on after the one month was started, my severance was to start after – so four months of severance pay.
Since they didn’t actually have a reason to fire me, it was “unreasonable dismissal” (legal term translated) we could either get a settlement or take them to court
Since my union is one of the biggest here and quite strong, and the CEO realized that he knew nothing about it, he hired an attorney (very expensive and the company wasn’t doing very well.)
The settlement was negotiated between my union and the attorney, and I was then given the choice of either accepting or taking them to court.
Through a conversation with the union advisor working my case, I decided to accept.
The company’s attorney was being very slow to sign it so it would be closed, I suspect the CEO told him to due to having to pay it the next payday after it was signed by everyone (me, the union employee working my case, the union’s lawyer, the CEO, and the company’s attorney) and as I mentioned, the company wasn’t doing great.
They had actually lost a customer the day before I was fired.
In the end, I got paid to be at home for four months and got a pretty decent size settlement for the unreasonable dismissal and the contract not being updated.
The CEO also had to state that my position in the company had been dismantled and the assignments had been spread between several employees.
This was all mainly because my work had changed so much, I had basically become an assistant manager.
Moral of the story: Be in a union, have them check your contract, and make sure your contract isn’t outdated compared to what you do.”
11. Whatever You Do, You Don't Threaten My Dogs
“Years ago, my mother and I had just moved to a new dog-friendly apartment complex. We had 2 dogs, one was a bichon Shih Tzu and the other a terrier poodle mix. Because of them, we were excited about the community dog park right next to our building.
Also to note, our who building was filled with dog owners, each with dogs ranging from small to huge.
Our apartment was on the first floor in the back of the building, all the way in the corner. It was a nice private area for us with how the apartments were situated.
Since one of our dogs is a terrier, he can be a bit barky when we are not home. Though when we are home we have a clicker to get his attention, which he has been trained to stop barking and come to whoever has the clicker.
Due to our work hours, I was usually home in the morning and mom was home in the afternoon, leaving him alone for a few hours during the day.
After a month of moving to our new apartment, we received a note on our door. It was from one of our neighbors. It stated, “Dear neighbor, I understand that you are new to this complex, but it is rude to allow your dog to bark.
It is ruining my sleep before I go to work, and my job is extremely important. I don’t care how you do it but shut your dog up.”
My mom turned in the note right away to the leasing office as she wasn’t sure what to do with it. That is when the office told us not to worry because he had done this to every dog owner in the building.
They did ask us to see if we can find ways to calm him down when we were not home.
So we did. We found out the kids of the neighborhood liked playing with the power station outside our apartment and that is who he had been barking at. So we closed off that area for him when we went out and no one was home.
We started playing calming music as a way to help as well.
Another week goes by and this time we hear a knock at the door. We go outside, and we meet our angry neighbor.
He explains that our dog has kept him up every day and woke him up with his hours of barking. Both of us had been home that day, and our dog had been a good boy and had not been excessively barking.
I still remember what he had told us when I explained that. “I know what I heard. If you can’t control your dog, then I am going to call animal control and have them both taken from you. I did it before and have no problem getting rid of your dogs too.
Then I’ll get you kicked out for not following your lease, and I can do that because I am very rich and the apartment needs my dough.
So do something to shut your dogs up or else.”
After that and my mom apologizing for what had happened, we went back in. A few moments later, I walked out to get the mail and discovered from another neighbor that he had gone to 3 other apartments and made similar threats.
After some convincing, my mom told the apartment what had happened. We were told not to worry, and if he did that again to please contact them.
We also found out that the apartment had offered him an apartment away from the dogs, but he had declined since the dogs were the problem and not him. However, because of what he had done, my mom began to show signs of anxiety and bought a lemon spray bark collar for our dog. While I didn’t like this idea, it had put her at ease to go outside our apartment.
We did make sure to only put it on him when we both were not home.
A month went by peacefully, then once again we get a knock on our door. This time it was animal control. They had gotten an ‘anonymous’ report of a dog being abused and neglected in our home. They explained that someone has said that our dogs were barking because of neglect.
My mom invited the AC lady inside and explained the situation. We showed her everything we could to prevent our dogs from being taken away. The nice lady noticed how playful and happy our dogs were and figured it was another false call. She explained that they had gotten a few of those from an anonymous concerned neighbor for other apartments in this building. The AC lady left, telling us that if they threaten again to try and get it on record.
This event had turned my mom into a paranoid person who became afraid to leave the house, thinking that if she did, then she would lose her pups. Normally I am the calmest person in my family, never really letting anyone get to me, but this neighbor had done this to hurt us. So I did my research and discovered a few things that could legally help us.
With new information on certain laws and leasing terms, I formed a plan.
During the weekend that my mom was visiting my aunt in a different state, I began my plan. I started it by printing out a few things and then sat outside with my phone and a speaker. I began to play a video of a dog barking really loud. I had figured out which apartment was his thanks to a few neighbors who also were tired of being harassed. I sat there looking across the courtyard to where his apartment was.
I waited with a huge smile on my face, and as I hoped for, he stormed out and headed over to where I was. I turned off my video and turned on my recorder without him noticing.
His face is red with anger as he looks at me sitting there with a smile.
“I’m sorry can I help you?” I ask him.
“Screw you.
I told you what I will do to your family if you don’t stop your dumb mutt from ruining my sleep. Now, I’m going to get them taken from you and get you kicked out for not doing as I said. I gave you a freaking chance. I hope when they take your dogs that they are put down and you and your mom live inside a cardboard box.”
I give him a fake ‘oh dear’ look and say, “So you are saying that I am not allowed to make loud noises including my dogs barking between the hours of 7 am and 11 pm? And that I went against the law by doing so?”
“You know you did.”
“And you are telling me this from my porch? At 2 pm in the afternoon.”
“This won’t be your porch once I tell the leasing office.”
“Oh no. That is a very serious threat for my dogs and my family, isn’t it.”
“Heck yes it is!”
I give him a huge smile and turn off my recorder from my phone. The neighbor is confused now and I ask him to have a seat, I have a few things to show him. I pull out my papers and hand him the first one.
It was the county’s noise ordinance laws. In our county, a dog’s bark was considered the same amount of sound as a loud appliance, so they can bark between the hours of 7 am and 11 pm.
Before he could talk, I pull out another paper. This one states that it is against the leasing terms to threaten another neighbor and after one warning that the apartment complex had the right to terminate their lease.
He looks at me with an understanding of what he had done now. I silence him and pull out one last paper. This one was another leasing term I had found. His face after reading this one had made him turn white.
This last one talked about how it was a complete violation of leasing terms to go onto another renter’s property and threaten them or their property.
This includes the renter’s outdoor area. Those found guilty of this violation will have their lease revoked immediately and be forced to leave the apartment within a set time. The scared look on his face was priceless as I silently got up and walked back into my apartment.
After he finally left, I called my leasing office and explained what had just happened, and agreed to email the recording to them right away.
A week later my mom came home with some news that she had learned from the leasing office. The man had been evicted from his apartment and would be leaving later that week. I found out that my actions had caused the other dog owners of the building to come forward and admit what he had been doing to all of them.
After that, there was never another complaint and I threw away the lemon spray collar.
My mom still gets anxiety attacks once in a while but has been getting help to ease those worries. As for me, I don’t regret what I did, I just feel bad that it had to come to this.”
10. Make New Parts Constantly But Never Ship Them Out? Got It, Boss
“I still have nightmares from working in this company, so I thought I would share one of my stories.
I worked at a factory that I absolutely loved, loved the boss, my manager (now called Head Jerk), really knew his work, and would teach anyone that showed enthusiasm.
But then the company merged, and we suddenly had in my section 3 managers trying to prove their worth, who all turned into massive jerks.
The place quickly turned into every man for himself. For example. The 10mins I spent patching up a coworker before he went to the hospital, came at the cost of being screamed at then forced to stay back to make up for my timesheets being out (can tell more tales of this another time).
And while my section needed 5 people to run, the way they managed it, people walked out, and it came down to me alone. I would have 3 different managers come to yell at me but not help or hire people to do the work, seriously, it would be like a drive-by shooting how fast they would come in, scream, and run out. I was desperate to quit but living paycheck to paycheck, things were brutally hard.
My role was to run a CNC router, (but had to run 2 of them as I’m now alone), complete the parts, and get it ready to send to the customer. Often from start to ship, my parts are only handled by me. This is not normal, normally you would have someone to help complete the parts.
As I am alone, I have to keep up with the machine, it makes sense to have the machine off at times during the day, while I get things completed. You could expect to hear screaming if the place was messy at the end of the day.
Like I mean, ballistic screaming.
Now for the story (keep in mind this is 15+ years ago so might not be 100% accurate):
I had machined a stack of parts and there was no way I could in my right mind make more parts until I had done the post-processing and had these parts ready to be shipped. There were things that HAD TO be sent that day.
Head Jerk: “Why aren’t the machines running?!”
Me: “I’m really behind in this and…”
Head Jerk: “WHY AREN’T THE MACHINES RUNNING!”
Me: “This is really urgent, let me get this part sent and I can run the machines after I finish this.”
Now absolutely screaming and throwing nonsense, “GET THE FREAKING MACHINES RUNNING, ANON!” He starts berating me and saying that the post-processing wasn’t important and running the machines was the most important.
I had to keep the machines running no matter what and that post-processing can be done by anyone in the factory. I’m the only one who can run the machines, so I have to run them and keep them running no matter what.
Cue malicious compliance. For the entire week, I did exactly what he asked. I ran both machines. I would load the programs for the next job while the machine was still running its existing job.
Tool holders were lined up and ready to go. While the machines are running, I would sprint from the machines to the material racks to get the materials I needed for the next job, ready.
I ran those machines non-stop. I did ZERO post-processing as I did not have a spare minute, NOTHING was finished to the stage where it could be shipped, there wasn’t even time for breaks.
I made sure those machines ran without a minute of downtime.
By end of the week, I had machined so many parts, that I had filled up 3 massive workbenches, these benches were something like 3m x 1.5m long, and I just kept stacking the piles as high as I could.
The best thing is that the urgent work is now on the bottom of this pile, and the work due next week was on top.
This is literally 100’s of different customers orders.
(I don’t remember the hours I pulled at this exact time, but I have done shifts such as 6 am to 10 pm, and 7 am to 11 pm. 80 hour weeks without overtime pay were usual for me.)
When things finally hit the fan about work not being sent out, Head Jerk had to come and talk to me, and you could see something snap in his head while he was trying to talk to me.
Head Jerk “ANON…”
Me: “Sorry not now, I have to run the machine.” (I just ignored him and kept setting up the next job.)
Head Jerk: “Stop. just stop.”
He starts by trying to ask where xxx job is and I’m just like gesturing, “It’s under there, man.” I swear you could see him dying inside.
He starts berating me on how there is no point turning the machines on at all unless the work is completed all the way and sent.
He really got stuck into me, but then he’s like, “Just leave the machine off for now and start completing these jobs.” But then we both start on completing different parts and within a minute, he sees me and instantly: “GET THE MACHINES RUNNING, ANON” and I think it’s here when he realized that it’s all his fault.
As I’m walking back to the machine, I swear he looks up at the roof, screams UGH, and it’s as if his soul left his body (and I’m laughing hard remembering this), he yells at me “LEAVE IT OFF,” and as I start finishing parts again, he looks at me and he’s about to say the line again, but instead looks up at the roof and screams again.
It was like every time he saw me, he wanted to say it. He lasted maybe 10 minutes before he couldn’t take it anymore, he stormed off and sent someone over to help.
But all the urgent work was buried deep. We had to complete non-urgent work first to get it out of the way so that we could find it. And guess who suddenly left work on time every day and stopped working weekends…
In short, with people helping me, it took over 2 weeks to catch up and clear the backlog. Those urgent parts were at least 2 weeks late, it took a lot longer for the schedule to return to normal.”
9. Think You Can Keep Me At Work? Not If My Mom Has Anything To Say About It
“My very first job was at Target, in Houston Tx. I worked in the snack bar flipping burgers and working the fryer.
It was a summer job, and I was 14-15 years old in 1978.
I worked evening shifts and was the last person in the snack bar at the end of the evening. My job was to clean the grill until it shined, sweep and mop the floor, and take out the garbage. Then I was supposed to call the section manager over to check off my work, so I could clock out and go home.
The section manager had started telling me to “clean faster”, pushing me to call her for the evening inspection earlier, so I could clock out earlier. But I had the same amount of work, and I worked quickly – the snack bar manager (my boss – and the one who trained me) said that the section manager was leaning on me to make things harder for my boss.
My boss also told me that I was doing fine, that I was supposed to finish at 11 pm, just like I had been.
School was starting up soon, so I had given my two weeks’ notice. On my last night there, I finished cleanup a whole 30 minutes early – at 10:30 ~ a personal best!
I paged the section manager over the intercom to have her check my work so I could clock out.
No answer.
I paged her again.
Someone else in the store got on the intercom and said, “You need to come back to the break area.”
Before walking back to the break area, I walked to the front of the store. My mother was waiting outside to take me home. I told her (through the front window) that something was going on, and I’d be right back.
When I got to the break room, I punched out and met the night manager. I’d never seen him before. He told me his job was to manage the cleaning crew, and that they were locked in from closing until morning – that way Target could be sure that they didn’t steal anything. He told me that the section manager had left at 10 pm, without mentioning that I was still working in the snack bar, so the evening manager had locked the store and gone home.
The night manager told me that he could pull out a cot for me to sleep on and that I could leave at 7:30 the next morning when they opened the store.
I told him that I’d talk to my mother, waiting for me at the front of the store. He walked up there with me.
Mom… well, she’s mom, you know? She just saw red. “What do you mean he can’t leave?” She told me to just walk out of an emergency exit, and she’d drive around and pick me up.
The night manager said that the emergency exits were chained and locked!
Seriously! I don’t even know how they could get away with that – but this was in the 70s, so maybe they could get away with it back then.
But Mom had a solution. She pointed at our truck, a Ford F250. “See that truck? If you can’t figure a way to get my son out of the store, then I’m going to drive it through this window!
Then I’m going to take my son home.”
She was serious, and the night manager believed her. He went back to the break room and started making phone calls.
In the next 45 minutes, the district manager for Target shows up and unlocks the front door. He asked me why I hadn’t left – didn’t I know I was supposed to be out of there by 10?
That’s when I found out that the section manager was supposed to be helping me during the final clean-up! She was supposed to be scrubbing the grill right along with me!
I think he started to understand why we were not clocking out on time too.
He shook my hand, was very charming to my mother, told her I was a hard worker (but how did HE know?
Tonight was the first time I’d ever seen him!), and then we were on our way.
A few days later, I was in Target again to pick up some school supplies. And I saw my old section manager working on the floor, dressing a mannequin. That’s when I found out she’d lost her position. She was demoted down to regular worker.”
8. Threaten My Roommate? Fail Your Class
“During my second year in college, I lived with 3 friends in a house that had another 4 other guys living on the other side of the house.
The two sides of the house had a lot of mutual friends as my roommates had known them from high school. So we had tons of parties together during the year and got along pretty good….. until a few months before final exams.
Each side of the house had its own electric, water, and cable bills which we paid separately. I always handled our bills and paid them each month, but our water bill was actually in my roommate’s name – I’ll call him Bird.
So one day the biggest turd on the other side of the house, Le Jerk, who handled their bills, walked into our house when I wasn’t there and confronted little Bird and yelled at him saying we owed him over $500.
Apparently, their water bill each month was about $125 and ours was $40-$50. Le Jerk thought there had to be a mistake in the billing so we should split the bills down the middle.
After I was told about this confrontation, I contacted the water company and asked about the billing. I was told over the phone the bills were specifically split up to each side of the house but a person would come out to check the water meters.
The next day a technician stopped by and looked at the meters to make sure they were operating correctly and that they were billing to the separate sides of the house.
He confirmed there wasn’t an issue with the meters or billing and basically said they are probably using more water – end of story.
I told my roommates about this but because of my schedule, I didn’t see Le Jerk for about a week. During that time he confronted little Bird a couple more times who told him about the water company’s position but again he was yelled at, inside our own house, and was again told that we needed to split the bills with them.
Then the weekend comes. My roommates and I head to a house party hosted by some mutual friends. At some point during the party, I was in the front yard when a friend runs up to me and says Le Jerk is trying to fight little Bird. We run to the backyard and through about 50 people I can see Le Jerk, with his roommates behind him, in the middle of the circle pushing Bird, yelling that he owes him, and him throwing him onto a beer pong table where he held him down saying he was going to beat Bird’s butt.
I nearly lose my mind as I see this and immediately grab Le Jerk, say a few choice things, and shove him away. I wanted to do more but it wasn’t worth it…..yet.
So Le Jerk and I actually had a class together. We weren’t friends, never sat together, and since the whole water bill incident we never even looked at each other in the 500 person lecture.
He always sat with one of his roommates and I sat with one of my best friends, Rose. As the water bill fight somewhat subsided and the final exam got near, Le Jerk and his roommate started to act more civil and would even make small talk to Rose and me in the hall about the final worth 75% of the grade, topics to study, blah blah blah.
They knew Rose and I had A’s in the class. It wasn’t a very difficult class but I enjoyed it and actually studied quite a bit and knew I’d probably get an A and maybe I had let Rose copy off of me on the first test. I told Rose I had a feeling Le Jerk and his roommate were up to something since they were being so nice and that I expected them to try to copy off of us. So I came up with a plan if they tried.
Now the format of the test is important. It was a packet of questions with the answers “A, B, C, D” listed vertically – and then you transfer your answers to a bubble scantron, which is another sheet of paper that gets put through a machine (not sure how familiar people are with it). With this format I told Rose that I would circle an answer, she would look over and circle the same answer with a big circle, ensuring that anyone looking could see.
We would do this for the entire 100 questions final before marking our answers on the scantron. The key to the revenge plan was that the actual answer was always going to be the answer directly below the circled answer. So if we circle A, the answer we put on the scantron is B. If the circle answer is D, the answer we put is A.
For a few days I kind of thought I was being weird and crazy to come up with this plan because there was no way this guy actually thought he would copy off of us and I was just filled with anger. Either way, when the day of the final exam came we got to the room early and I sat on the far right seat of a row with Rose to my left. Guess who strolls in and decides to sit next to us for the first time all year after he threatened to beat up my best friend a month before…… oh yeah, Le Jerk.
Dude had no shame and snuggled right in the seat next to Rose with his roommate next to him. Rose and I could barely believe it and had to use some serious composure before the test started. The two of us operated like a well-oiled machine – we circled our ‘answers’ large and at the end, we went back through and marked the correct answers onto the scantron.
During the test, we could both see Le Jerk and his roommate leaning and copying our circled answers. Unreal.
Fast forward to the summer break and Le Jerk’s roommate came over to our side of the house when he saw Rose was there with me. He opened a beer and chatted for a bit before he finally got to what we were waiting for, “So how did you guys do on that test?” I remember looking at Rose and saying something like, “I don’t remember exactly, but I know I ended up with an ‘A’ in the class” and she chimes in saying, “Yeah, that sounds about right because I got a 92 on the test”.
The look on his face told us everything we needed to know and he mumbled out, “REALLY? Le Jerk and I both failed and have to take the class again…..”
7. Be Careful Who You Make Your Business Partner
“A little over ten years ago, when I was a young carpenter, I met a guy who I’ll call “Chad” because screw Chad.
Chad was a new hire by the company I was working for and became my helper.
We got along famously even though he was 10 years older than me, he didn’t mind working under a 23-year-old carpenter as an apprentice.
Chad and I had worked together for 6 months when he brought up the idea of starting a business together, he figured between the two of us, we could easily run a crew and build houses.
After talking it over with my pregnant partner (now wife) we decided that it would be better for me to be an employee, but still a 50% partner for tax reasons, and insurance purposes.
Chad said that was fine with him. So we started laying out who would take care of certain aspects of the business.
Chad was to be the guy to find work, as I look (and still do) way younger than I am, and it doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in the client to think their framer is 16. Chad was also to take care of payroll, insurance, and, any other financial factions.
My duties were simple. Staff and run the crew, and keep on budget, something that came easy to me. I was to be paid an hourly wage, as well as 50% of profit after all business expenses. I never took my profit draw, as I rolled it back into growing the company.
Things were great for about six months, the crew was working well together, we had a few houses under our belts, and a contract for a 10,000 square foot custom house with multiple out-buildings.
Things were great.
So Chad had never built a foundation, and we usually hired a crew to put the foundation in for us, as like I said Chad had never built one, and I personally hate concrete work.
We couldn’t get our normal foundation crew in, so I stepped up and said: “Screw it, I’ll do it myself.”
The company we were building for is one of the best custom home builders around, and doing a good job on this house could mean that we wouldn’t have to pound the pavement looking for work, work would be given to us.
Perfect arraignment.
Until it wasn’t.
Chad started spending like it was going out of style. He sold his 2500 Chevy pickup and bought a new Jeep Wrangler. He had the jeep for about a month before he sunk it in the water while 4x4ing, and it “caught on fire” mysteriously a few days after.
He received the insurance payout and bought a brand new dodge 2500 power wagon, which he (in short order) sunk in water within a few weeks.
I never noticed the red flags as Chad and I rarely spoke face to face, he was the business side, I was the “get stuff done” side.
I finished the foundation and picked up the cheque from the builder. The builder said that we overbilled him by 25% but he was happy with the work we (I) had done, but not to overbill again, as he doesn’t like overpaying, as there may not be any funds left at the end of the build.
I apologized, and asked him to cancel the cheque, and issue one for the work actually completed, he agreed to and said, “I’m so happy to have honest people working for me.”
I usually don’t pick up the cheques, nor did I ever really look at the books, as it wasn’t in the scope of my responsibilities. This prompted me to log onto our corporate account and see that we are so far in the red, that we couldn’t afford to buy a red pen, let alone cover payroll.
I showed up at Chad’s house and tore a strip off of him, he apologized and promised to top up the account with his personal “profit draw” funds.
I go into work Monday to find the locks on our tool bin had been changed, my name removed from all accounts, and a letter taped to the tool bin stating I was “dismissed from my duties” for an undisclosed reason.
I was freaking furious. I was not aware that as a business partner I could be fired.
I found another job quite quickly and tried my best to put it behind me.
That’s when I found out where the funds were going, and that Chad had been slandering my name around town, blaming me for everything, as well as a bunch of egregious statements about my work ethic, trade skills, mental stability, and home life.
Now, I fastidiously tracked all of our interactions with a simple journal and had backups of the transactions of our business account. I also happened to have backups of all our texts, voicemails, and pictures of everything.
This is the revenge part.
I took the “evidence” to my father’s lawyer (RIP) friend, who started a fraud/embezzlement investigation through the CRA (Canadian revenue agency, Canada’s IRS) and called the insurance provider to make sure they were being paid.
(They had never received anything.)
I called the builder whom we were building for and explained what was happening. He told me that Chad had essentially stolen around $30,000 for payment of work not completed, and had broken into their office and stolen another $15,000 (replacement value) of equipment and tools.
I did what anyone would do.
I called the police. Police said they couldn’t help me and said it was a civil case.
And the builder said he wasn’t going to sue, as Chad was broke, and it wasn’t worth the headache.
So I called his auto insurance company. Sent them all the pictures of his sunk vehicles, texts about them, and a short video he sent of him lighting the jeep on fire.
The insurance company filed charges against Chad, and won, Chad is on the hook for around $130,000.
I’ve spent the last 9.5 years telling anyone who’ll listen about Chad and have had him essentially blackballed from the carpentry industry around here because it’s not slander if it’s true.
I have also looked up his criminal history, as it is public domain every 3 months or so, and make a point of showing up at his court proceedings or offering myself as a character reference for the crown (prosecution).
So I’ve gone out of my way to remind Chad that he can’t screw me over without repercussions. And no, this doesn’t end here.
Years have passed, and I am still really mad. I receive a call from a guy offering me a job. It was the builder that Chad screwed over, not remembering that we know each other after I explained who I was, and this bridge is burnt due to Chad.
He still offers me the job. Medical, dental, company van, gas card, corporate credit card. I accept his offer.
The first order of business, find another way to mess with Chad. Through the g*******e, I find where Chad is living and working. The new boss calls the company Chad is working for, and Chad is summarily fired.
I get in touch with Chad’s landlord, explain how he operates, and Chad is evicted for unpaid rent.
He was apparently a couple of months behind.
I also managed to get his partner’s phone number, call her and explain what this guy does to people, and his extensive criminal history, including, but not limited to fraud, identity theft, insurance fraud, his many assaults, and his wanted picture published in the paper.
Turns out she is the owner of his truck, the primary operator, but he pays the insurance.
He cannot insure a vehicle until he pays off what he owes for the fraud.
She asks me what she should do. I say that I’ll take care of it.
I call the insurance provider, explain what is going on, for them to tell me he doesn’t even have a license anymore.
They void the insurance on his (girl’s) truck after speaking to her and set up a sting with the police.
I personally get to be involved as I knew what was going on.
So I sit and wait for the day it goes down. I roll up behind the unmarked police cruiser and quickly explain who I am and what my plans are.
The police are thinking that they are just waiting to pull him over for driving without a license, and no insurance, I said I’m going to call him immediately as soon as I see him.
So he comes cruising out, and I make the call, he actually picked up the phone to call me a bunch of names, and promptly gets pulled over.
Police issue a ticket for; Reckless driving, No seat belt, No license, Using a handheld device.
During this, the girl pulls up and proceeds to give consent to search her truck. In the truck, they find multiple IDs, stolen credit cards, a couple of ATM skimmer machines, and a fake police badge.
He was arrested on the spot.
Revenge over, right?
Nope.
Police then ask to search the residence he was living at, he moved into the girl’s house after I had him evicted from his own place. In the garage, they find a vast collection of stolen tools, a lot of which belonged to the builder I was working for, from when he broke into their office, and they were all stupidly still labeled with the company’s inventory control stickers.
This brought on more charges, and he was remanded to police custody until his trial date.
Well, justice is sometimes slow here in Canada, and his trial date was at the time, 17 months into the future.
Well, yesterday was his trial date, so my boss (who Chad ripped off), Chad’s ex-girl, and I attend the hearing. Just to see the man squirm.
His judgment was 8 years in jail (after being granted time and a half for time served) a $100,000 dollar fine, 1000 hours community services after release, and no possibility of parole.
I got to watch him be taken away in chains twice.
Never underestimate the fury of a quiet man.
And screw Chad.”
Another User Comments:
“I cringed the moment I read about being “technically” an employee of your own partnership. I don’t think that type of arrangement ever turns out well. I’m sorry you got screwed over. But I am happy you were able to get back on your feet, relatively quickly.
Great revenge too.” gringofloco
6. Slam Me Into The Door? Watch Your Company Collapse
Your abuse will have repercussions.
“This happened about 7-8 years ago. I was working at a small cafe, which was owned by a young woman in her mid-twenties.
She was a lot of fun to work with, I put my best foot forward, and it had a great sense of community – almost every customer was a regular.
It was in a small town near a lot of car and boat repair shops, and directly next to us was a family-owned business. They were very religious and very kind. I loved the environment there and the customers; it was a regular thing to be given flowers and little things like that.
Anyway, my boss didn’t really have it in her to run the cafe – business was great but it took up a lot of her time, and she was young and didn’t want to be tethered to it.
She sold it pretty easily, and the new owner, a big guy we will call Albert, was gregarious and laughed a lot, told jokes. He wanted me to stay on; I knew how to run the place and how to make all of the sandwiches and so forth.
I thought this would be great, even if I would miss my old boss.
The first day with Albert, he was immediately impatient with me. I couldn’t do anything fast enough, and he hated the way I prepared food. Usually, one person ran the till and took orders, and the other prepared said orders. It was a fast process with me and my old boss – with Albert, he screwed up every time and blamed my short-form way of writing out orders.
I started writing everything out (‘Chicken on focaccia. Tomato. Lettuce. Sundried pesto spread.’) which he would still screw up. He accused me of patronizing him, and finally of sabotaging him. During close-up, he would berate me further.
I dreaded coming to work, which was too bad because he had me working every day but one. His wife was frequently there helping out, and she was always friendly and funny and liked me.
Albert didn’t treat me any better when she was around – he snapped at me a lot in front of our customers, and a few of the guys had talked to me about it. He treated her with a lot of contempt, too.
One day, maybe after a month of this, I couldn’t take it anymore. He called me stupid for some reason or another, the reason wasn’t what mattered to me – up until that point, he’d talked to me like I was an idiot but hadn’t actually called me a name.
I told him “I’m not your wife, you don’t talk to me like that” and he flipped out. He grabbed me by my apron and dragged me toward the back door, yelling at me “get out, who do you think you are” etc; I shouted for him to get his hands off me, and while I was struggling to get my apron off he shoved me outside.
He still had hold of the apron, then let go just as he stepped back and tried to slam the door – it was a heavily reinforced door with a panic bar for unloading stock, alley access, so on. My leg was still inside, and the minute he slammed it on me and I screamed and fell back, I think he knew he had screwed up – he shut the door on me and locked it.
I was shaking with adrenaline and crying some, but more than anything else I was livid.
I got up from the ground, and the father of the family business next door had heard me shout, and met me as I circled around to the front. I wasn’t really that badly hurt, but because I was crying and shaking, he immediately assumed it was much worse than it was.
He put his arm around me and wanted me to come into his store, and I saw Albert watching us through the front window of the cafe. I laid it on thick. I cried harder, I told the dad what happened in big gulping sobs, I held my leg and was overall pretty pathetic. Albert saw the whole thing. Eat it up jerk.
After that performance, I went right home.
I contacted my old boss before anything else; she still had to deal with this guy and I didn’t want to cause trouble for her. She had pretty much finished up her business with him save for a few details and told me he had gotten belligerent with her on one occasion in a way that put her hackles up. She didn’t like the idea of me contacting the cops, but since I didn’t see a way it would impact her at this point, that’s exactly what I did.
The cops gave me a few courses of action. I could press charges – and I was pretty young and now unemployed, so I didn’t really want to do that – or the cops would go have a long heart-to-heart with him. I thought that was a pretty good start. They took pictures of my leg just in case.
A couple of days later, Albert starts texting me like mad.
He wants to meet me to give me my last check; I told him he could mail it. He refused and kept insisting I come to the cafe in the morning before opening so we could talk. This back and forth went on way too long, so I cut him off and told him to mail it to me or I’d come by with the cops during a lunch rush to get it.
After I got my check, I decided I wanted my record of employment, too. There is no reason I needed it at that time, but I just wanted it. I dogged him for days until he sent me one – it had correction fluid on it. That’s not allowed. I dogged him yet again until I got the replacement; I already had another job at this point and just wanted to needle him.
Two weeks after the dance in the doorway, I go back to the neighborhood and stop by the garages and shops to say hello to everyone. They’re glad to see me, they wondered where I went, Albert told them I quit to work elsewhere. They mention the cafe has been pretty slow lately (it turns out the dad from the business next door had mentioned what happened to a few people already).
So I share my side of the story with everyone. I found a way to bring it up in gory detail to everyone – I stopped in each shop to say hello, I was in the neighborhood, do you wanna hear a story?
Maybe six months later, I’m in town and take a wander to check on the cafe and say hi to the guys.
It was always tucked way back from the main road – nobody driving by would notice it and think to stop in. The local businesses around it were its lifeblood. Without that, the jerk had closed the cafe down pretty fast. Everyone had stopped going.
In a small way, it was sad to see it closed and dark and empty. I had a lot of fun there, and losing the cafe and moving on to another job basically meant I lost contact with all the guys.
I think if I hadn’t lit the fire, Albert would’ve eventually ended up taking down the place anyway. It still feels delicious that I beat him to his own failure, though.”
5. Require Our Staff To Engage In Trivia Games? No Problem-o
“At the turn of the century, I worked as an accountant for a major sports team. The owner hired a new VP of Human Resources who immediately fired the Chief Financial Officer. The CFO’s duties were shifted down to the accounting staff, and we were a small staff of six.
We were swamped.
At the same time, the new VP of HR organized an all-staff trivia contest between departments. When those of us in accounting saw the email, we immediately deleted it. We were already working evenings and weekends just to keep up; we had no spare time to spend an afternoon playing games.
When the VP of HR saw that no one from accounting had signed up, he called another accountant and me into his office.
He insisted we form a team and participate in the event. We explained how incredibly busy we were, pointed out the deadlines we were facing, and told him how many hours everyone in the department was working.
His face turned red. He stood and pointed a finger at me and said, “This is not a request. This is mandatory. You WILL attend the trivia contest, and you WILL show the entire staff how smart the accounting staff is.” He glared at both of us in turn.
“Do you understand?”
We nodded and left his office. Halfway back to the accounting office, my co-worker gestured to the restroom, and we ducked inside.
“If we’ve got to do this…” she said with an evil grin, “let’s REALLY do this.”
I nodded, catching her meaning. She was a highly educated, brilliant person who was well versed in politics and current issues. I’ll call her IvyLeague.
My talent is a bizarre memory for odd and normally un-useful factoids.
The trivia teams had to be three-player, and we decided to recruit another co-worker who knew sports statistics to the point of being overzealous. I’ll call him Sportster, and he was the perfect fit because we knew they’d have a lot of sports trivia in the game.
We pulled him aside and went over our plan with him.
We would show ’em how smart the accounting staff was, and we would do it as fast as possible so we could get back to the piles of work waiting for us. He was all-in!
On the day of the trivia game, all staff met in a bar in the empty arena. Ironically, the VP of HR was called away on an HR emergency, so he didn’t show up at all.
There was an open bar, appetizers, and a few of the sports team’s players and broadcasters attended. The other trivia teams represented ticketing, guest services, operations, security, marketing, broadcasting, IT, the foundation, etc. I would estimate nearly 200 people were there. They were all drinking liquor and filling up on the bar food.
The three of us from accounting drank caffeinated soda and stayed sharp. And we DOMINATED!
The game was structured so two teams would play each other while the rest of the staff watched. When a team lost during a round, they were immediately out of the competition. It started as a fun event, with laughter and teasing between departments. During the first round, our team easily and fiercely trounced the competition.
The three of us stayed serious and focused throughout the game.
IvyLeague was superb at answering the classical knowledge and politics questions, Sportster covered the world of athletics, and I was able to pull up anything they couldn’t get. As our team quickly routed our opponents and moved up in the tiers, the laughter died away, and the fun atmosphere disappeared from the bar.
We won the competition, were each awarded a small plastic trophy, and we left immediately, going back to the piles of work awaiting us at our cubicles.
That evening, I worked quite late, quietly plugging away. Our middle-manager accountant was in his office working and probably didn’t realize I was still there. Someone stormed into the area and went right to the middle manager’s office. “What the heck happened at the trivia thing?” It was the VP of HR.
The middle manager talked about how IvyLeague, OP, and Sportster were so intent on winning, it made everyone uncomfortable.
I realized I had to make my presence known, so I grabbed my trophy and stood, prairie-dogging over the cubicles. “Hey, you forgot to tell him…” I said. “They tried to distract us by bringing in the players and the on-air talent!” I laughed and set my trophy on the corner of the cubicle. “But we showed them how smart the accounting staff is!”
I didn’t wait to see their reaction.
I just sat and got back to work.
In the ten years I worked for the organization, there were no more all-staff trivia games played.”
4. Fire Me For Catching Boss's Mischief? I'll Get Him Fired Too
“This was in the last throes of the analog mid-’90s. Fax machines, FedEx, dial-up computing, and voice mail were the most common business tools.
I was a young regional sales manager for a major branded consumer product. I covered the grocery class of trade in 11 Western States. My division worked out of Chicago, and I had a home office on the West coast. I had made my reputation by typically making my quota and keeping costs within budget.
I would get re-assigned to struggling markets and more often than not, I would usually make my sales number. Nothing too fancy, I just figured where the best opportunities were and concentrated on them. In those days, we had something called ‘Market Development Funds’ MDF or as we called it ‘Making Days Fun’ in the time before such things were deemed illegal, it was funds we could literally use for almost anything you could imagine: wining and dining, sending buyers to the Super Bowl, taking them on ‘market research trips’ (I once took 6 honchos for a weekend of fishing in Mexico).
As long as you had the receipts and your boss knew (except in cases where they specifically asked not to know) we were free to spend as we saw fit. This was old-school Mad Men-style slush funds. All tax-deductible!
Typically the MDF fund was 2% of your total annual gross sales and was ‘use-it-or-lose-it’, meaning it had to be spent because it wouldn’t roll over.
I always had some leftovers. As a team player I would let my boss, Sasquatch know, so he could use it. No big deal.
Towards the end of the year, my weekly FedEx pack from the company started including sign-offs for payments to a supplier I had never heard of before, what was weird is they were for a demo company that wasn’t one of my regional suppliers (if you have ever been offered a sample or a coupon in a grocery store, that was a demo company).
I called the broker/agent in that market and learned that they had never used the company (or even heard of them).
I finally figured out that they were from Sasquatch and that he had thrown them in with my other sign-offs. I called him and asked if he knew what they were. He said that they should be assigned to my MDF and not to worry about them.
This was a little unusual because demos would normally be taken out of other monies or come down from marketing. Whatever, I signed off on them.
About 3 months later I was called into HQ for a meeting where I was told I was being transferred to a market that I had never worked before and would be required to relocate. At the time, my wife was pregnant and we just started an extensive remodel on our newly purchased house.
The company had some relocation benefits, but it was just too hectic to pull up roots and move to the Southeast. I declined the offer and was told that I could look for another job within the company or receive a severance package. I wound up taking the severance.
The truth comes to light.
Several months later, one of my ex co-workers told me that my region had been taken over by one of Sasquatch’s past work associates who he managed to get hired in my spot and that the region was tanking.
Badly. Nothing made sense. Why was I terminated and then replaced by someone who lived in another city and who couldn’t do the job?
I started to think in my naivety that I may have put a target on my back. After some research and digging (which was much harder before the internet) I learned that the ‘demo company’ billing the MDF, was based in my ex-boss’s previous city and was just a PO Box, a telephone, and a DBA registered by… THE NEW PERSON IN MY JOB (I later found out it was his significant other/mistress).
I was livid. Like most people, I tend to plan revenge in my head, but never really go through with it. Most of the time, it’s a coping mechanism and not very useful in moving on past being wronged. But, this was so egregious, so uncalled for, and so disruptive to my life that I felt I HAD to get even.
My plan evolved to take this guy down.
Whatever the time it took. Whatever the cost. I was going to get this idiot. I may have been able to rat him out to the company, but they might have dismissed my complaint as coming from a disgruntled ex-employee with an ax to grind.
I decided that I was going to approach the guy as a phony recruiter, not just a guy collecting resumes, but as a RETAINED CORPORATE HEADHUNTER, someone paid to onboard people for big jobs.
I had spent a year early in my career working for a super exclusive headhunting firm and knew exactly what transpired in the process. My subterfuge required international telexes, phony letterhead, faking English accents, and overseas friends to do my bidding.
Sasquatch was obsessed with expensive watches and golf (he played regularly and watched pro golf both on TV and live). He would incessantly chatter on about both subjects.
To bait him, I arranged for him to be approached for an executive position with a major Swiss watch company for a position tied to pro golf (and other swanky sports) sponsorships and included a shopping list of benefits and perquisites. The job would require hobnobbing with major sports organizers and flying around the world (1st Class, natch). It was a job he could only dream of.
In the slow and methodical long con, I strung him along until the time was right to ‘close’ with an offer. The only catch was that he had to report to Switzerland for the final offer and onboarding. I deliberately scheduled it for the week of the old job’s division meetings and reporting. They were mandatory and impossible to miss without raising red flags.
Sasquatch was worried that his absence would be impossible to cover (especially if he was out of the country).
The ‘headhunting’ firm said they could move the appointment up a few days so that he would be able to attend his meeting, but that he would need to purchase an unrestricted Business Class seat and make his hotel reservations. ‘Save your receipts!’ and the ‘watch company’ will reimburse you he was told.
Sasquatch showed up at his swanky hotel suite (using his credit card for the $$$$ room) and promptly received a note from the watch company that his appointment had to be rescheduled for the following Monday because of a major corporate crisis. Sasquatch called the phony recruiter in a panic about missing the corporate meetings back in the States, it was agreed that he would call in sick and that whatever happened with the old job, he was heading to much greener fairways (hehehehe).
Enjoy your weekend in Europe, by Monday you’ll be in your dream job…
While Sasquatch was cooling his jets in Europe, I nonchalantly called his boss, the President of the division, and casually asked for a reference on Sasquatch’s work ethic and dates of employment. You’d be surprised how often this ‘mistake’ happens. The President, to his credit, didn’t tip his hand or act very surprised by the call, but like a good corporate wonk, he referred me to human resources.
I let it slip that he was in Europe finalizing his new job and that he’d already given the company notice. My bad.
Eventually, I was able to put together the aftermath from old co-workers and other people in the trade (who did not know I was the revenge ninja). When Monday came and went, Sasquatch must have been apoplectic (this is to be assumed since we had cut all communications to let him twist in the wind) because we received at least 20 calls to the exchange and multiple faxes.
Sasquatch hung around the hotel for a day or two and then finally decided to leave for home. I assume at some point he may have contacted the watch company, but I never confirmed it.
When he finally got home he found his office had been packed up and left with his wife. An HR person met him off-site to give him his severance and retrieve the car and other company property.
I heard his wife left him sometime later and his mistress was fired for theft.
I figure he spent at least 10K on travel and hotel.
I wish I could say I tipped my hand and told Sasquatch that I was the author of his demise, but it really served no purpose and in theory, may have exposed me to some retribution of my own.
By my moral lodestar, I got even with a thief who was content to steal and take my livelihood.”
3. Can't Grade Me Fairly? Your Job Will Go Bye-Bye
“I have been debating on posting this story for the past couple of years now, and this happened in the middle of my college career.
I often find myself thinking about this insane woman and the ridiculous things that happened during this class and the following semester, which is why I want to get this story off my chest and hopefully amuse some other people. This post will probably be pretty long because I need to describe all the insane policies/things she did while “teaching” this class, as well as the aftermath and how I got revenge.
So, buckle in.
First off, I was a college student in my junior year when this incident happened. My college is a pretty good engineering school, and I am a STEM major.
I was required to take a Professional and Technical Communications class as a part of my degree. Basically a class on how to write technical documents and give professional presentations. I consider myself a somewhat awkward person and do not like speaking to large groups, so I knew this class would not be enjoyable.
I also have always tried to achieve high grades and work hard in my whole educational career, so while I knew I would not enjoy this class, I also knew it would be like every other class and I would try my best.
I am used to difficult engineering courses involving math, algorithms, equations, etc., so while I knew this class would be different than what I was used to, I did not expect it to be overly time-consuming/difficult.
Let me just say now, this class took more of my time than all of my other classes combined together that semester.
To start, this professor was one of those professors that believed the traditional way of lecturing/taking notes was not effective. Instead, 1 time a week, she would split the class into groups of 3-4 students, give each student a section of a chapter to read, and we would give a short presentation on the material to the class.
Now I understand this was basically a glorified speech/writing class, so I understood where she was coming from and did not complain. However, for every single presentation like this (remember 1 per week) there would be a total of 3 grades for it. She would grade our presentation, a random student not in the group would grade our presentation, and we ourselves would grade our own presentation.
This meant that missing even 1 presentation resulted in 3 0’s, so I knew I had to try my best to never miss a class. Obviously, we would always give ourselves a 100 when we self-graded, and the random student chosen would always give good grades, but she would always find something wrong and give 80’s. These 3 grades per presentation will become extremely important later.
Next, she also had frequent writing assignments.
I have always done well in English/writing classes. However, she would always grade extremely harshly on these writing assignments, and I would always get high C’s or low Bs on them. Whatever.
For the midterm, she had us break into groups of 3 and we had a “game show” type of test. She would ask random, extremely specific questions from the chapters we gave presentations on, and we had to write the answers on the board.
If our answer was “unintelligible” (basically if she didn’t like your handwriting), misspelled, or grammatically wrong in any way, she wouldn’t accept the answer. It was completely up to her discretion. If you got the answer right, you got a tally and the group with the most points got an A on the midterm, the next group got an A-, the next highest group got a B+, and so on.
This is hands down the strangest and worst way I have ever seen an exam being given during my college career. But whatever, my group got third so we got a B+.
She also had other random miscellaneous assignments throughout the semester she considered being in different categories. So we had the chapter presentations, writing assignments, midterm, etc., as different categories. For final grades, as stated in the syllabus, she would calculate your grade for each category, and each category would have different weights.
I don’t remember how it went exactly but presentations could be 20%, writing could be 15%, etc.
Now, something I haven’t mentioned yet was the category of bonus points. To counteract her harsh grading/ability to lose large amounts of points from missing a presentation, she would give bonus points throughout the semester.
So, I knew I needed to get as many bonus points as possible to guarantee an A in this class.
There were various ways to get bonus points, but I remember the strangest was a “basketball” competition we had in class that involved throwing paper balls into a trash can across the room, and a paper plane making competition DURING CLASS (tuition well spent). During the “basketball” competition, I was the only one to make the paper into the basket, and honestly, it was super lucky but worth a ton of bonus points.
When I successfully made the shot I was shocked and could tell she didn’t expect anyone to make it, but she acknowledged that I had earned the large sum of points. At the end of the semester, she claimed she would apply the bonus points to whichever grading category we were the lowest in, so it would help our grade the most.
Another thing I have not mentioned is that my whole life I have suffered from general Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
It was much worse when I was younger, and certain foods trigger it more than others. I mostly have it under control now, but there are still days when I will get diarrhea and stomach pain and I cannot leave a bathroom for an hour.
Well, one of these days happened during, you guessed it, one of the in-class presentations. I was unable to go to class that day, which resulted in 3 0’s.
Before class had even started, I emailed her explaining that I would not be able to make it to class, and I asked if I could make an appointment with her to discuss it.
I knew I would get those 3 0’s so I wanted to show her I wasn’t just skipping class and I wanted to be as proactive as possible. I had a meeting with her where I explained I have IBS.
At the time, it was my mistake of not having it officially registered with my University that I have IBS, but I told her I could easily get her a doctor’s note if she would like one (at the time I was still seeing my pediatric Gastrointestinal doctor and had been seeing him since I was a baby, so he’s had to write me many notes for school in the past).
She acted like it was all fine and she said she would exempt me from those 3 0’s.
Even if she wasn’t going to remove the 0’s, I knew I had about 400 bonus points to make up for it. However, her next ridiculous stunt was about to be performed.
About 3/4 of the way through the semester, at the beginning of class one day she informs us that 1 of the students in my class had gone to the Dean (her boss) and stated that the bonus points system was unfair.
She informed us that all of the bonus points we had accumulated would be unusable because that student had “broken the chain of command” and not come to her with the issue. This was a MAJOR red flag for me. This was a small class (about 15 students) and throughout the semester we had been complaining to ourselves about her.
Complaining about all of the work we were being given, how she grades harshly, and the dumb midterm.
As I stated earlier, this class was more time-consuming than all my other classes combined. I believe she had developed a grudge against our class and wanted to take away our bonus points as a punishment. I later found out that no student had gone to the Dean about the bonus points, so I can only conclude that I was correct in assuming she just hated our class.
She stated that even though we wouldn’t get any bonus points, she would drop the lowest grade from a grading category, such that it would help our grade the most.
Now it was at the end of the semester, and we would be getting our final grades. There was no final exam for this class (there was a final project that was equally as ridiculous, but I’ve already said enough about this class’ structure), but during exam week, I receive an email from her.
It basically said that she was unable to exempt me from those 3 earlier 0’s because it was unfair to the other students in the class. She was careful to word her email so that she did not admit she had ever exempted me from those 0’s. When I checked my grades, she had removed the exempt status from them and they were now showing as 0’s again.
By this point, I was just done with this whole class. I didn’t want to have to deal with her ever again, so I just accepted it and decided to move on. As I said, this was during finals week and I was busy studying for many other difficult classes. When she published our final grades, she had given me a B-, which I thought was off.
I went to check my grades to calculate them myself to verify, but she had removed all of the individual grades from the grade book and just replaced them with the final grade. This was a massive mistake on my part because now I had no way to verify it.
However, like I said I just wanted to be done with all of this so I grudgingly took the B- and moved on.
I had a feeling that my grade seemed a little low, and I knew that with those bonus points she had taken away, I could’ve at least had a B+ or possibly an A-.
The next semester rolls around and I had a class with another student from that previous class. As we were talking, we started discussing how dumb that class was and he mentioned he also got a B- in the class, which he thought was low.
He also mentioned how over the break, he tried to leave a review for her on one of those college professor review websites.
However, he noticed his reviews would always be strangely removed from the website and there would be many more high-ranking reviews following it. He suspected she was reporting bad reviews of herself to the website to somehow get them removed (there’s a feature for this under every review) and then making positive fake reviews for herself.
Well, I decided to make an accurate review of my experience of the class, which was obviously negative. I was stunned to see that minutes later, it was removed for violating terms of service! I then began trying to make more negative reviews and I focused SOLELY on the way the class was, instead of reviewing her as a person.
Each and every one of my reviews got taken down.
In its place was a new review exclaiming how great the professor was and how some students were out to get her. This seemed to be directed at me trying to make a negative review, but again I was just describing my negative experiences with the class.
I then began to get angry and tried a loophole in the system. I gave her a negative review only containing 1 sentence that I was sure would not violate any rules of the website, and I reported the negative review myself and gave a nonsense reason for reporting it.
I found that a review could only be flagged for review 1 time, and once it was verified, nothing could be done to remove it.
Using this method, I got a few negative reviews to stick and diminished her perfect rating on the website. I could tell this made her mad, as a flood of positive reviews came in.
However, these new reviews became oddly specific.
It seemed that many of the reviews were directly referencing people in my class. Since this website is all anonymous, I believe she realized it was someone from our class because, in my original reviews, I mentioned she had taken away our bonus points. Well, 1 of the new specific reviews was definitely mentioning me! The way she wrote it, she was writing the review as if it was me writing it.
She wrote things like “I decided to skip class one day and got 0’s. So I went to the professor and told her I had IBS. It did not work and I got a low B instead of an A.” I was furious when I saw this because now I knew it HAD to be her doing this. I had not told anyone else that I had a meeting with her to discuss that incident, let alone that I had IBS.
At this point, I decided this was getting too serious and I decided to stop messing with her on this website. I now believed this lady was insane and I did not want to press her further. So, I was satisfied with a couple of negative reviews I got to stick and I thought that was it.
I’m so glad that wasn’t the end because this is the beginning of my revenge, even if I didn’t know it at the time.
The next day, I get an email from the Dean of Students saying that I was required to meet with them to discuss it. I was extremely surprised by this, and I already suspected it was related to this lady and the review website. Before the meeting, I had to call the office to acknowledge I had received the email and set up a meeting time.
I asked the receptionist over the phone if she could give me any more information on why I was meeting the Dean (I played dumb on the phone) and she said they had received an email FROM the review website saying that I specifically had been harassing this lady online.
At this point, I was still in contact with some of the other students from the class, and a few of them had also been summoned to the Dean, even though I was the only one involved with the review website.
This told me she didn’t know exactly who was doing it.
So, now that I was going to the Dean of Students about this, I knew I now had the perfect chance for revenge. I wanted to be as prepared as possible for this meeting, so I began gathering all of my evidence.
First, I wrote down a bullet point list of the crazy ways she “taught” the class including the bonus point fiasco, midterm test, harsh grading, how my individual grades were replaced with the final grade so I could not verify, and anything else I could think of.
Next, I contacted some people that I had taken the class with and asked if I could use them as a witness. They all gladly agreed and said they could confirm the things that happened during the class, especially her taking away the bonus points. Some of these students were the ones who were already summoned to the Dean, and some were not.
Then, I got the screenshots of her referencing my IBS on the review website, and I decided to contact the website myself.
I sent an email describing how I was being summoned to my University’s Dean and they claimed they got a complaint from the website. They replied back saying that their website was completely anonymous, and they would never contact a University like this, proving that it must have been the professor pretending to be the website when she reported me.
Coincidentally, I had actually had further tests at the time for my IBS, and I had a doctor’s appointment anyway.
So, I got a new doctor’s note proving I have IBS to corroborate my 3 0’s being exempt then not exempt. Additionally, I also brought the test results further proving my IBS.
With this mountain of evidence, I felt extremely prepared. When I went, I basically recounted the entire story as I described it above, and I showed all of my evidence. Not only did the Dean believe me, but they had already concluded that the email received from the review website was fake and did not actually come from them.
The Dean was extremely helpful, and when I described that I believed I could have been graded unfairly because my grades were hidden and how I knew my grade would’ve been better with the bonus points, she mentioned meeting with another Dean, who was the professors boss.
I said I wanted to escalate this situation and I would love to have a meeting with him, and she helped me set up an appointment with the other Dean.
The meeting with the Dean of Students ended with her basically saying they would be investigating this lady.
I do not know the exact details of the meetings with the other students, but I know they had similar stories as far as their classroom experiences.
Next, I had a meeting with the other Dean. When I met him, I basically described the whole story again.
He had already talked to the previous Dean, so he knew most of the story already. He was able to request my individual grades.
I was able to go through them, and I found that she had, in fact, graded me incorrectly. Even without the bonus points, I was able to see that my grade should have been a B+ even with those 3 0’s. She had given me a B-.
If you factor in the bonus points, my grade was an A flat. This Dean was extremely apologetic and my grade was changed from a B- to an A. He also told me (off the record) that no student had come to him during that semester to complain about the bonus points, so she had taken them away just because she didn’t like our class.
Now, I don’t know for sure, but I believe that she had graded everyone in my class incorrectly and given us all grades that were lower than what they should’ve been.
My meeting with this Dean ended with him saying he would be investigating her as well. This all happened at the end of the semester (I originally took the class in fall, and I spoke with the Dean/got my grade changed at the end of the following spring), but I had 1 final meeting with the Dean of Students the following fall (1 full year from when I originally took the class).
From that meeting, I learned that she no longer worked at the University, but she couldn’t confirm whether she was fired for this incident or not. I have a strong feeling she was fired as a result of this and I have a strong feeling she had graded my entire class incorrectly.
In the end, I wouldn’t have gotten my revenge if she didn’t stupidly report me to the Dean using a fake email, so I’m actually glad about that.
I am extremely glad I took the time to compile all my evidence against her. I wouldn’t have gotten my revenge if I had just gone with my story. If you have read this for this long, thank you. I hope all this makes sense, and I’m just glad I never have to see or deal with this lady again.”
Another User Comments:
“I had a similar experience with a professor. College had a mandatory Foreign Language requirement, so I took French. Professor sucked. I wrote a bad review mentioning things I didn’t like and (truthfully) saying that a lot of people in my class dropped out of her course and enrolled in the other French professor’s classes.
Days later I get an email from the Dean’s office saying they need to meet with me.
I ask why. They say they just want to talk about something in person. I say I’m not scheduling a meeting with them without knowing why. Finally tease out that it’s about a review about my professor from a 3rd party website.
Long story short, they made a bunch of nonsense accusations that I blew off. My favorite was “hate language”. “You said, I hate this class.
That’s kind of like saying ‘I hate the Jews.'” I replied, “No it’s not.” “Well ok it’s not.” Also, the review was anonymous so they had no proof I wrote it, and I wasn’t dumb enough to admit to it.
Now that I’ve been graduated for years I still occasionally go on ranking websites and leave that professor terrible reviews. I mean, maybe that’s gaming the system, but so is crying about hate crimes to the Dean’s office to suppress negative reviews.” JCMcFancyPants
2. Screw Over Your Employees? I'll Let Your Secrets Out In The Open
“I used to work for a plasma collection center back from 2008 to 2010. Even though I was a certified phlebotomist I was placed up in reception and I slowly worked my way up to senior receptionist and trainer. I was also training for quality control and was known for keeping detailed notes of issues that were in need of fixing/training which I would forward on to management.
Some of the things I’d keep track of were violations of FDA and GHA (German Health Authority since we were run by a German/Swiss company) as well as OSHA issues. Because I wasn’t seeing anything being done, I eventually stopped reporting the issues to avoid being labeled a troublemaker and just kept time/date info and if I could I got pictures with date stamps just to cover my own butt in case something bad went down.
Fast forward to June of 2010 and I was talking with one of my coworkers about the proposed cuts to benefits and the high turnover rate at our center. They were complaining to me about being afraid to call in sick because others had been fired for it, and I mentioned that they were putting donors in danger by us being sick since we weren’t allowed to wear face masks unless we were in the back in the donor area and even then it was the clear face shields to prevent getting hit if someone “leaked” on us.
Without thinking about it, I talked about how unions protected against this sort of thing in other medical fields, and how that might be something we should consider to help protect us. The coworker got weirdly quiet, but I figured it was because I was talking about a subject most people don’t like talking about.
Nothing really happened until about August when another coworker grabbed my ponytail while I was working with a donor and yanked down on it, jerking my head back.
I’d informed everyone I worked with to never touch my hair because it was a trauma trigger for me from being abused, and so this coworker knew I would wind up in panic mode from this.
She’d seen it happen before when a donor touched my hair, so this was deliberate. I remember telling her to not do that again, or I would make her go away.
She, of course, walked up and yanked my hair even harder, and I hit her.
The supervisors went into damage control mode as I fled the area, still in a panic response, and one of them cornered me and demanded I write down what happened because I had “assaulted” someone on the property. I wrote my side as well and told them to check security footage since the camera was aimed right at the booth I was working at and had a clear view of the events.
Turned out everyone else told an entirely different (and creepily similar) story than what I told, and the footage couldn’t be found even though less than half an hour had passed. I was fired for assault less than an hour later and escorted off the premises after being given 5 minutes to clear out my locker and get my belongings.
So on to the revenge, which was two-pronged.
My partner was there on that day and saw what happened, and tried to offer to write up what he saw, but was denied. So the next time he went in, he wound up being screened by the coworker who yanked my hair (who didn’t even get a write up for assaulting me) and asked her loudly enough that the whole reception area could hear, “So how’s those 50 shekels of silver, Judas?
Was it worth it?” which left her in tears and another person had to finish screening him. He wound up being banned for 6 months for his attitude, but he claims it was more than worth it.
While this was going on, I had been reaching out to the various organizations and departments that oversaw plasma donation and collection, the FDA, OSHA, CDC, GHA, and the like.
I informed them of the fact that we always cleaned prior to an inspection but we didn’t keep things that clean today, and suggested a surprise inspection should be in order. I also handed over copies of everything I’d collected and tried to report, but always got shut down.
I learned a few months later that all of the management and several of the other techs and supervisors were all “suddenly” reassigned and the FDA, GHA, and OSHA had all slammed fines on the center for violations going back almost the whole time I worked there.”
1. Snoop Through Your Daughter's Texts? You Won't Like What You Find
“So I’m married to a wonderful woman. She’s smart, funny and very kind.
Her mother is generally very nice and tends to have a great attitude and be very enjoyable, a bit of a prude but generally enjoyable, however, can be a bit of a major snoop.
If my wife leaves her phone sitting around she will just pick it up and start going through it. My wife has kind of laughed this off as a remnant of her mom being controlling when she was a kid.
I’m not a fan of this because my wife and I will sometimes text about things that simply don’t involve her mother and I don’t feel are her business at all.
So over Christmas, I saw my wife set her phone down on the kitchen counter and I had a brilliant idea. Her mom was still in the kitchen and I sent my wife a text about all the naughty things I was going to do to her when everyone left. (Honestly, most of them are things we haven’t even done, but I had to make it extra scarring …)
I sent this text from the bathroom. And maybe it was my imagination but I could swear I could hear an audible gasp shortly after her phone went off.
When I went out, her mother absolutely would not look me in the eye. Then not-so-discreetly asked her daughter to come talk to her in the other room.
When my wife came back into the living room I thought she had been crying, however, upon closer inspection, she was laughing.
Her mother had questioned her about me abusing her and if I always talk down to her like that.
My wife had told her kindly that what we do is between us and us only. Probably the best gift this Christmas.”
