People Describe Their Overbearing Revenge Stories
15. Mean Coworker Has A Word With HR
“Four years ago now, when I was 24, my mom passed from breast cancer, and as both my grandmothers had also succumbed to it, I saw a specialist for a screening. I found out I had some cells that could have turned cancerous at any given moment.
I was told I had a few options:
First, I could have regular screenings every three or four months until it does develop into cancer. I was told the risk of the cells becoming cancerous was very high due to family history. However, it could also potentially never turn so I’d just be getting these screenings for no reason.
Second, I could get a single mastectomy on the breast with the bad cells, but they’d need to keep an eye on the other one, so I’d still need regular checkups for the other breast.
Or three, I could get a bilateral mastectomy and remove all of my breast tissue, basically eliminating the risk.
I went for the bilateral mastectomy. It was admittedly the most drastic option, but after seeing what cancer did to my mom and grandmothers I didn’t want to risk it. I was warned about scarring but told it should be fairly minor. They were so, so wrong.
It wasn’t and I was left with two huge, pink, jagged scars on either side of my chest.
Each was about an inch long and half an inch wide, and it caused me to go into a severe depression. It got to the stage of me not even leaving my flat because I didn’t want people to see me, throwing out my mirrors, and getting physically sick looking at myself.
I went to a therapist, who suggested a plastic surgeon. The therapist said they’d never normally do that, but it was clearly something I was struggling with and I might never get over it, and the therapist could see why I struggled with it.
Although I’ll admit the therapist did send me to ask about scar reduction, the plastic surgeon suggested a cream, a laser, or implants. The cream didn’t work, and the laser was both expensive and risky, so I went with the implants. My natural chest was an F cup, so I went with a slightly smaller DD.
Since then, my mental health has improved and I feel a lot better about the way I look.
My confidence has gone up, as has my self-esteem. I know I shouldn’t put so much into my appearance but I wasn’t exaggerating about these scars.
Huge, bright pink, jagged, raised, just really awful to look at and I hated seeing myself, and they are now nicely hidden away and you can barely feel them. But then came the drama.
In the present day, I’m 28 years old and working in an office.
I’m doing a lot better than I was. My co-worker, Jill, found out about my implants (but not about the cancer thing) when myself and my friend from years before the mastectomy were planning a holiday and she made a joke about me going on a plane with my implants, and Jill overheard.
By the end of the day, the entire office knew I’d had implants, but not why, and half a dozen people confirmed Jill had told them. Over the next few months, Jill made many ‘jokes’ and comments about my chest to co-workers when I was in earshot, at one point saying I had ‘more plastic than Barbie’ and calling me ‘fake in two ways.’
I didn’t hear this one myself, but a friend in the office told me that Jill had at one point referred to me as a ‘sack of silicone.’ I don’t know what her problem was exactly but at one point she mentioned the hospital system, so I assume Jill thought that I’d got my chest done for free on taxpayer funds.
I asked her to stop more than once, but unfortunately, the places I’d talked to her were places like the elevator and the women’s bathroom, where there weren’t any cameras.
Jill just kept making comments no matter how often I asked her not to.
I wouldn’t say it was every single day, but I heard at least three comments per week for three months. So I hit my breaking point. I, Jill, and a few other co-workers were having lunch, and I referred to something as being shallow.
Jill said, ‘You’d know all about being shallow’ while gesturing to my chest. I snapped.
I said, ‘Do you know why I have these? A few years ago the doctors found potentially cancerous cells in my breast tissue, I was advised to get a mastectomy and was left with huge ugly scars on my chest. I went to see a therapist who sent me to a cosmetic surgeon, who advised me to get implants to hide the scars, and I did it just so I could look at myself in the mirror without crying.’
I took a breath here, then said, ‘So maybe next time you want to judge someone for having cosmetic surgery, you should ask them why they had it first.’ And feeling like that was a mic drop moment, I picked up my food and left. For the rest of the day, I had about 1/3 of my office come up to me and offer support, and the rest tell me that Jill was just joking around and I was being a witch.
I replied that Jill was being a witch long before I was. But that wasn’t the end of it. I then got an email from HR saying they wanted to talk to me the following day, and when I called for clarification, they mentioned a ‘hostile work environment.’ I knew the person who signed off the email and who I’d spoken to.
Her name was Debbie, and she was Jill’s friend in HR, so I was fairly confident about who had reported me.
I realized that if this was already being sent to HR, I needed as much ammo as possible, so I went about collecting my information.
As Debbie had dealt with me so far, it was safe to assume she would be the person reviewing the complaint with me, and if that was true I was screwed. However, I vaguely remembered a section on complaints that was in my contract when I first signed with the company.
I flicked through the contract, and there was a part in the complaints section that said I was contractually allowed to request a change of reviewer if I felt my allocated reviewer was biased. It was called an ‘impartial overseer.’ I photocopied the page and highlighted that part.
Then I messaged the people who had offered their support over social media.
I said basically ‘HR has asked to see me. Do any of you remember Jill insulting me to your face and are you willing to write and sign something saying what you heard and when?’ Not everyone was willing to help as Jill is somewhat feared in the office due to her befriending HR and management, but about 20 people were willing to help me.
I guessed roughly when I’d asked Jill to stop previously and I wrote them all down, along with a rough time of when the lunchroom confrontation happened and a list of names of who was there for the lunchroom confrontation. I got to work slightly early the next morning.
I went around to everyone who had messaged me and most of them managed to give me a printed and signed letter.
I wound up with about 16 letters, all from different people, and one of them was in the lunchroom for my conversation with Jill.
Some even had bullet-point lists of everything Jill had said to them about me or other people, as it turns out Jill has issues with a lot of people’s appearances. She apparently made comments about one co-worker’s weight, and something awful about a different co-worker’s nose, all of which were put in these letters.
There are about 45 people in the office so while 16 wasn’t a majority, it’s still a decent amount. The letters weren’t hugely long, most were only a paragraph, but they had all the necessary information. I was asked to come to HR at 10 am.
I took the letters from co-workers, the photocopy of the page in my contract, and my dates and times in a little folder with me. I got there and Debbie was the one overseeing the interview.
She got up from her desk, ready to lead me into another room.
That’s when I put my plan into action. I immediately turned to the other HR worker that was currently there and said, ‘So is my meeting with you, then?’ Debbie said, ‘No, you’re with me.’ I replied that this wouldn’t sit well with me, as ‘My contract states I have a right to an impartial overseer.’
As I said this, I took the contract page out of my folder. Debbie read it and said she could be impartial. I replied that I really didn’t mean to be a pain, but I had it on good authority that the person on the other end of this complaint is her friend, and my contract does say I’m allowed an impartial overseer.
So Debbie stomped off to get a supervisor.
The supervisor asks how I know she can’t be impartial and I tell him that I have it on good authority that Jill, who was on the other end of this complaint, is a close friend of Debbie.
He asked Debbie if this was true, to which she only replied ‘I can be impartial.’ The supervisor took a deep breath, asked the other HR rep to come with him, and the four of us all went to review the complaint.
I thanked them for being so accommodating (I was worried I’d annoyed them), Debbie took out the complaint, and all three of them went through it with me.
Debbie looked homicidal the whole time the interview was happening, as she had clearly anticipated firing me or at least recommending me to be fired. The interview went something like this.
It took over half an hour and they kept asking me the same questions but phrased different ways, so this is a really drastically condensed version.
Q: You said outside that you think Jill Lastname reported you. Why is this?
A: Jill has had an issue with me for about three months now.
Q: Why didn’t you come to us when you realized Jill had an issue?
A: I had no issue with her.
Q: What issue does Jill have with you?
A: Four years ago a specialist identified potentially cancerous cells in my breast tissue. I had surgery to remove my breast tissue, thereby removing the cells and the risk. After the surgery, I was left with large scars on my chest. I went to a therapist for low self-esteem and depression.
The therapist suggested a plastic surgeon, who suggested implants to cover my scars. All of this is in my medical history which you have a copy of in my file and my full permission to review. Jill found out about my implants but didn’t know about cancer.
Jill had a problem with my implants and decided to communicate this problem to our co-workers.
Q: Why do you feel this is true?
A: Here’s 16 signed statements all from different co-workers, all testifying that Jill told the entire office I’d had implants on the day she found out and has since made comments about these implants frequently.
They have quotes of what Jill said to them about it and rough dates and times.
Q: Rough dates and times?
A: No one knew this would be escalated to such an extent so no one really took notes when it happened.
Q: What event or events do you think directly led to this complaint of harassment?
A: For me, the harassment began when Jill told everyone about my implants without my consent, but as to the complaint placed against me, it would probably be what happened at about (time) yesterday in the lunchroom. Jill made a comment about me being shallow while gesturing to my chest and I replied by giving her an abridged version of my relevant medical history and ending with a comment about the importance of getting the full story.
There are cameras in the lunchroom, so I’m sure you’ll be able to find that conversation. I’ll admit I could have handled the situation better, but after three months I felt I had to put my foot down.
Here’s a list of names of people who were also present.
There were six people at the table, including myself and Jill. One of these people is also in those letters, and has written their account of the conversation and signed it.
Q: Had you had a conversation or conversations with Jill prior to this regarding her comments about you?
A: Several, spaced out over the last three months. Each time, I communicated to her that I felt uncomfortable and upset with these comments she was making and would appreciate it if she were to stop.
Q: To your knowledge, was Jill made aware of your former cancer at any point in this time?
A: No. It wasn’t mentioned in the conversation with my friend she overheard and I didn’t tell her because frankly it’s none of her business and I did not feel the need to detail my medical history to a co-worker in order to avoid further harassment.
The supervisor stands up and says, ‘Well, I think we’re done here.’ He shakes my hand and sends me back to my desk, saying that I’d hear from them after they reviewed the evidence (letters, CCTV, medical history, and anything they had already) and made a decision on the case.
I got back to my desk, pulled up my CV, and prepared to start the job search again. Then something strange starts happening.
About an hour goes by, then the person who wrote the letter and was there for the lunchroom conversation gets called for a meeting with HR.
They come back 10ish minutes later. The other people who were also there for the lunchroom conversation get called one by one, except Jill. All of them are gone for about 10 minutes then come back, find a co-worker, and say that HR wants to see them.
Then the people who wrote letters but weren’t there yesterday are also called one by one and are each gone for about 10 minutes each, some longer, some shorter. By about 3:30, it looks like everyone who wrote a letter or was there in the lunchroom has been interviewed. Then, finally, Jill gets called in.
She’s gone for about 30 minutes and comes back fuming.
She glares at me while I work, but I ignore her. 4:30ish, Jill gets called into HR again. 5 pm rolls around, everyone is either leaving or getting ready to leave when Jill storms back into the office.
She glares at me the whole time she packs up her desk. She then starts telling anyone who will listen that I got her fired before shoving her way onto the lift. An email comes in from HR. My case is closed.”
14. Jerk Neighbor's Unregistered Drone Got Investigated
‘About six or seven months ago, my neighbor got a drone.
I don’t mind people having hobbies, but for some reason, he insisted on flying like the biggest jerk possible. He would hover in front of other houses and windows, try to ‘race’ cars going down the road, and worst of all he had a habit of flying his drone in my fenced backyard.
He would start buzzing over my dog, diving low just over my dog’s head before circling around to do it again. My dog isn’t small, he’s about 70 lbs. and a Malamute, but the drone terrified him, and I was worried what would happen if it hit him.
I asked my neighbor several times to please not fly in my yard and explained that it was scaring my dog. His answer made my b***d boil.
He basically told me to get lost and laughed in my face. When it still continued, I called the authorities.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much they could do other than ask him to please not fly over my house and property. Finally, in late December it happened-my dog got tired of his torments and managed to catch the drone right as it was driving towards him.
He shredded the drone, and the thing was just a jumbled mess of wires and plastic. The neighbor was ANGRY. He stormed over to my house swearing and threatening me, which I ignored. A week later, I got a summons to small claims court. He wanted $900 for the cost of his drone and an additional $300 for supposedly denying him access to his property.
See, the drone sat in my yard for a couple of hours before it was retrieved. Screw that. He could have hurt my dog. I don’t have kids or a partner, I just have my dog who is my best friend for the past seven years.
That dog has moved with me three times, was there when I graduated college, saw me buy my first house and my first new car.
I love my dog. But turns out, him suing me was the best thing to ever happen. When we got to small claims court, the judge basically laughed away his claims that I had intentionally trained my dog to attack his drone.
But little did he know I was prepared. I had dozens of photos of my yard showing it was impossible for him to ‘accidentally’ fly that low to my dog.
I also had videos of him harassing my dog in the past, and I had saved all my medical bills from taking my dog to the vet.
$700 for an X-ray? Check. Another $250 to sedate him during? Why not, don’t want him being uncomfortable. Full dental exam with tooth cleaning/repair? $400. Then there was the cost of anti-anxiety meds and a secondary check-up, wet food for a week in case his teeth were hurt, and extra just for good measure.
In the end, the jerk ended up owing me almost $2,000, and now is being investigated by the FAA for not having a registered drone and violating several regulations concerning drone flight, too near an airport, too close to other people, out of sight of the operator, and waaay above the maximum altitude.
Enjoy never being allowed to fly drones again, buddy.”
13. No One Messes With My Daughter
“So, my daughter, who was about eight at the time, was REALLY into Minecraft, as most kids are these days. She was also desperately wanting to join the YouTube/Let’s Play culture, so I had installed some screen recording software that would let her make videos of the games she was playing so she could later upload them to YouTube.
Anyways, one day I’m minding my own business when I hear her quietly sniffling over on the computer. I asked her what was wrong, but she didn’t want to tell me so I let it go but decided to keep an eye on her.
A few minutes later I discovered what was happening. Someone was harassing not only her but also all the other kids playing on whatever server she was on.
This kid was saying stuff about how he was going to harm my eight-year-old daughter (she told him how old she was hoping he would stop), how he was going to hack into her IP and take her information, swearing profusely (remember, this is a game for kids), etc etc. By this time I had gotten my fiancée involved, and she was also obviously quite upset at what this kid was doing.
We then realized that our daughter had been recording the entire incident, and a plan began to form. I started by googling the kid’s username. There were several hits immediately, the most interesting of which involved a page where he was publicly applying to be a mod for a server on Minecraft. I was able to learn a lot about this little idiot.
He claimed to be 15, likes hockey, used to live in Toronto but now lives in Florida. But the bombshell was easily his Skype contact info; it was literally firstname.lastname. I know your name now, you jerk. So I head over to social media and search for the name.
Nothing. Hmmm. On a hunch, I searched for just the last name, while narrowing my results to only the state of Florida.
Several dozen hits. Hmmm. So I have to start combing through each one until I find what I was looking for: A middle-aged man with the same last name, whose profile indicates he was born in Toronto and now lives in Florida.
I FOUND YOUR DAD, YOU LITTLE JERK. So I sent him a message on social media, asking if he had a son named the first name who goes by his username on Minecraft.
Dad confirmed I had the right guy. So my fiancée begins telling the dad everything that his son was saying to my daughter, and we sent him the recorded video as proof.
Radio silence for a few days. Then we got the message back. This jerk had his computer taken away from him for the entire summer. He had also been lying about his age; he was only 11, I think.
His parents were livid with him, and he surely hated the next few months of his life.
No one screws with my daughter.”
12. Steal My Baby Wipes And Toothpaste? Get Ready For A Nasty Bathroom
“A little while ago, my roommate was using up all my baby wipes and he said to me he would stop. Well, the past 2 days he started doing it again along with using my toothpaste and not even…. being kind enough to put the cap back on after using it.
A couple of days ago he said he has a girl coming over and would like to get some action and to leave him alone. I said OK no worries. So about an hour before she came over I pretended to leave and said I am heading out for the night.
5 minutes later I snuck back in while he was making dinner for the both of them.
I got to my room and hid in there knowing that for a fact at some point in the night she would ask to use the bathroom, and I needed to take a dump.
So 45 minutes goes by and she arrived and I am just waiting. About 2 hours after she gets there I hear him go (to the bathroom). Ah perfect! He went first!
Now time to take a dump. I run into the bathroom and go as quiet as I possibly can.
A huge load. And I don’t flush or put the lid down. I go back to my room and wait… There she goes, into the bathroom. She was in there for exactly 6 seconds and came out. 7 minutes later she leaves.”
Another User Comments:
“Suggestion for continued revenge.
Order some ghost peppers, mash up the inner goop into a workable paste. Next, get a baker’s piping bag, take your toothpaste roll and squeeze all the toothpaste into the piper’s bag. Mix the gunk with the toothpaste well. This may take a few tries to get the mix right, gotta make sure it doesn’t seem too different.
Once mixed, pipe the paste mix back into the tube, cap, and replace. O ya, and get yourself another tube to hide for yourself so you don’t have to have nasty breath.” gtobiast13
Another User Comments:
“It’s not petty, but you should figure out how to squeeze as much of the liquid out of those baby wipes as you possibly can, maybe even leaving them out of the package so they can dry out a bit.
Once they’re good and dry, soak them in isopropyl and put them back into the package, and leave them for your roommate to use.” sec713
Another User Comments:
“That is awesome! I can’t stop chuckling.
It occurred to me that you could swap the baby wipes for Clorox wipes.
You won’t have to tell him twice after that.
Back in college, someone kept eating my Oreo cookies. So the night we were having a big party, I planted a bag of cookies that I had replaced the cream with toothpaste. Right around midnight, I hear an eruption of laughter coming from the kitchen.
Turns out my buddy’s wasted partner ended up eating two before realizing they weren’t mint flavored Oreos, but filled with Colgate. I found her over our trash can spitting and wiping her tongue with a paper towel. I laughed until I almost puked.” pilot_error
11. Lazy Girl Was Asking To Give Her "Effort" Some Credit
“This story takes place in my third year of college. I was taking a class where the entire grade was determined by a semester-long final project. We were supposed to be in groups of three on the project, but the third guy in our group had more sense than me and bailed early.
This left just me and Lazy Girl, hereafter known as LG.
LG didn’t do anything the entire semester. I would ask her to work on pieces of the project, but she always had an excuse for why it wasn’t done yet (or in her case started).
Now, I didn’t want any confrontation with this girl, as she was my friend at the time, but I finally lost it one night towards the end of the semester.
I’d asked her to meet at my house to work on the project, but ‘something important came up.’ Fed up with this one-sided partnership, I decided to air my woes at the local bars that very night.
And guess who I run into? LG and her significant other out drinking together! She made up some stupid excuse for me—so I made a plan to get even.
I powered through the entire assignment, except for the conclusion, which I asked LG to finish.
I held out exactly zero hope that she would finish this section, so I quickly finished it myself and turned in my project with a little note to the teacher. The note detailed how I had done literally everything for the project and that despite my best efforts, I could not get LG to contribute.
I said that I was turning in my version and that our conclusions section may differ, as I’d asked her to actually do that part herself. So here’s a little tidbit about our final projects: We each had to turn one in. LG here not only didn’t do the conclusion, but she also didn’t turn in a project at all!
She tried calling and complaining to me for not ‘giving her credit,’ to which I went off on her for not doing anything on the entire project.
I mentioned how I even gave her the opportunity to turn in my work for a grade if she’d only do ONE thing!
She hung up after that, and that was the last time we spoke.”
10. They Rejected Me Because Of My Stubble Facial Hair
“I got turned down, by the manager, at a job interview for a team member at Dominos because of my stubble f****l hair.
Weeks later I order from that same Dominos, and that same manager is the one who delivers my order, which is around $25, and I couldn’t help but notice he has stubble f****l hair.
So I gave him no tip and told him the exact same thing he told me.
It’s not exactly like this, but something similar: ‘Why do you have all that f****l hair? Do you think customers wanna see that? Anyways, I won’t be giving you a tip this time.
Maybe when I order again, I’ll be giving you a tip. But of course, remember to shave.’
Another User Comments:
“I run a dominos. If you’re going for a job at dominos and they mention your f****l hair it’s just because it’s company policy to maintain a clean shave line.
I’ve told plenty of driver applicants that they’ll need to shave before they can start. To say ‘nope, no job for you’ because of stubble is that manager being a horrible jerk. And I would nope right out because in a pizza place the manager being that jerky is a good sign of illegal labor practices and other general nonsense.
Besides, I don’t know where in the country a hiring pizza manager has the liberty of being that picky with applicants. We employ 19-year-old students and the turnover rate is ridiculous.” F*************a
Another User Comments:
“This makes me really happy, man. I took a job at Papa John’s and they had me shaving my goddarn face because of stubble.
It was either shaving completely, or wearing the corporate-approved goatee, which I tried and I looked like a piece of trash. So yeah man, good on you – and screw that guy. 5’oclock freedom” jizard
Another User Comments:
“Stuff like this really bugs me. They rejected you for stubble (which nobody worth listening to is going to complain about) but they keep rude drivers who are terrible at their jobs.
We had a driver trying to take £10 ‘petrol fund’ off us because we sent back our pizzas. We ordered a pepperoni and one of the meat feasts (can’t remember which) and got a margarita and a veggie supreme. The driver was absolutely furious that we’d complained and argued for absolute ages about it, even swearing at us.
According to the manager we spoke to, this is far from his first offense – apparently, he once held some poor sod’s pizza for ransom after they’d paid online and demanded £20 for it. He was cleanly shaven too – clearly spends too much time shaving and too little time learning basic social skills.” charvisioku
9. Lying Student Ended Up With A Trashy Life
“I’ve been teaching for many years, but it’s important to understand that in my first year of teaching, I got put on blast by an elite group of parents and their kids. Not a week went by without someone either demanding my job, trying to undermine me, or just calling me a piece of trash.
I nearly quit halfway through the first semester, the verbal and emotional mistreatment was so bad.
This was at a school in a tough area, so I was accused of horrific things just for asking kids to stop talking, was ripped into for giving failing grades for missing work, and even enforcing the rules in the student/parent handbook got me in hot water.
My principal reprimanded me for being a negative influence on the school and was told that I needed to let more rules slide because he was tired of hearing from my parents.
I would have parents just show up unannounced to sit in on my lessons and then tell me I was a bad educator, a bad human being, etc. I have plenty of horror stories from that school alone, but the point I want to make is that this experience defined the kind of teacher I became going forward to my next school.
I needed to be that person who was untouchable because I needed to focus on the one job that mattered: teaching kids.
My next school was in a fairly affluent area. It wasn’t uncommon for me to find out that my student’s parents made millions, which brought its own unique set of problems. However, my new principal was super supportive of me as long as I followed the school’s handbook to the letter because, by doing so, I was in line with the school’s philosophy and protected by law-we seriously had parents filing frivolous lawsuits all the darn time.
This school had long ago learned that caving to parent demands spilled b***d in the water and brought the rest of the sharks in droves. My first year at this new school was successful for many reasons, but primarily because the school culture was easily adapted to.
By planning, I was able to head off 99% of all negative parents at the pass.
The few times a parent tried to rip into me at conferences, I ripped back so hard that I developed a reputation amongst the kids and parents as someone you couldn’t mess with.
Everything I did was in line with the rules, and any attempt to take me down got stonewalled by my principal, who would have to say ‘He’s following school policy, so I’m afraid the ultimate decision is his.’
No joke, I had some parents in tears because their kids could no longer get an A in my class.
I wasn’t the teacher who wanted to destroy kids, I just wanted them to be accountable, and sometimes that meant letting them fail. Needless to say, this job became a lot of fun, because instead of waiting to be ambushed by parents, I could work on making my class fun for my students while still teaching them something.
I made ironclad rules for the classroom that brooked little argument and would adapt the following year to make it harder for students or parents to ruin my day. I have many stories like this, but this is one of my favorites. The year this happened, I taught a high school class with grades 9-12 (that’s 14 to 18-year-olds for you overseas guests).
My class wasn’t necessary to graduate but did count as a core requirement. One of my beginning of the year rules was ‘I never want to hear ‘when will we ever need this?’ because you didn’t have to sign up for this class.’ How I structure my class is that I try to make students accountable for their own actions.
My class was built so that it had something to offer everybody.
If you tried your best, you were guaranteed a C. If you worked really hard, you could get a B or an A. I would bust my butt to help a student with any reasonable request. The best example of this was a student who was working hard on an assignment who said, ‘I think I understand it now, but can’t turn it in on time’ to which I answered, ‘Then turn it in tomorrow for full credit.
This is how hard work pays off.’
Other than a few hard deadlines in my class, I would do whatever it took to see you learn the material. Mess around in my class? I have already found ways to run circles around the pathetic excuses you throw at your parents for your poor performance.
It sounds callous, but I was the teacher who would stay for 90 minutes after school to help you catch up, to help fix your project for another class, or even to listen to you cry about your parents’ divorce.
But if I caught you goofing in class instead of doing your work (my rule was that at least 70 percent of class time was intended for homework, quizzes, etc.) I would warn you a couple of times, email your parents, and then wait and see if they even cared. If they didn’t, I would let you keep digging that hole until you were hip-deep in water and begging for a ladder.
And then I would toss you a rope instead. You could still climb it if you tried hard enough, but a lot of kids would just cry until that hole caved in and buried them. I also utilized my school’s online grading/assignment system for nearly all of my assignments, which meant I could document when a student looked at the assignment, how long it took them, etc.
All of this allowed me to see what my students were doing, when they did it, and also if they were plagiarizing. This was one of the tools that helped me make important decisions about leniency, and also allowed me to say things at conferences such as ‘of course the test was hard, your child didn’t attempt the nine homework assignments until 11 pm the night before the test.’
Being able to prove that a student wasn’t trying made it impossible for blame to be laid unfairly at my feet. It also meant the worst kids avoided my class. Bonus. However, this year, something magical happened. Every other year, I would get a wave of kids who just wanted to screw around and blame everyone else for doing poorly.
At the end of the year, students would trash-talk me, my class sizes would drop the following year, then I would receive high praise from those kids, so everyone would sign up, so on and so on. But this year, not only did I get a giant wave of knuckleheads, but they came with parents who loved to Make Trouble.
I had already heard tales of some of these parents.
Other teachers were just dying to hear stories about our interactions because these parents were very much Entitled. They would name-drop lawyers when they didn’t get their way, try to badger teachers into giving their kids extra credit, and would largely deny any wrongdoing on their kid’s part.
These were the parents who would get called in because their student was busted for doing nasty things, then accuse the teacher of making the class too hard, therefore validating their student’s need to manipulate their answers/grades.
So about these knuckleheads. It was a group of roughly seven senior boys who all shifted their schedules to be in the same period with each other.
The other teachers could not believe that I had all of them at the same time, but I just shrugged it off. Every week, the staff lounge was dying to know how I dealt with their shenanigans, but for the most part, I had shut down most of their stuff from day one.
I actually got along very well with them, despite their constant goofing, because they had mastered the ability to appear busy and didn’t distract my other kids. Then came the first group project. My class size was just right for seven groups of four to form.
The idiot collective formed two groups of 4 by pulling in a kid who had been absent on the first day of the project.
These two groups crashed and burned on this project super hard for several reasons, but the biggest was that a) they screwed around during class time and b) put off a two-week assignment until the weekend before and then dumped all the work on everybody else, which resulted in everybody doing the minimal effort.
I handed out the bad grades and was immediately pulled into parent conferences with several of them (one at a time, obviously).
Every meeting was the same. ‘My kid did all the work, so he doesn’t deserve a bad grade’ or ‘My kid didn’t understand the assignment’ to which I handed over my hyper-specific rubric (which is a checklist for how I grade things-I never wanted to be accused of grading based on not liking a kid).
These exchanges largely went like this:
Parent: My kid did all the work and I don’t think it’s fair it should hurt his grade.
Me: Here is the work your student turned in. (hands it over) Here is my rubric which I printed and emailed to your student the day the project started. (hands it over) As you can see, I have itemized the grading for ease of use.
I would be happy to go over the grade your student earned.
Parent: (Reads through all the evidence, looks at kid) Where are the missing parts?
Student: Uh, my group members were responsible for that.
Me: I can’t grade what I never received, so I can’t reasonably just raise your kid’s grade.
Sorry. Now, good news for all my students. I make assignments worth more throughout the semester with the idea that kids who screw up early on can make it up later by working hard.
I seed Extra Credit throughout the semester and all of these parents are disgruntled but happy to hear that their entitled embryo can still get an A in my class.
Now, the result of these meetings was that it clearly wasn’t my fault (remember, I had all this data to prove that I made every effort to contact everybody, etc.)… so it must be the other kids’ fault.
So these parents all decide that their perfect angel is no longer allowed to work with their previous group mates.
Like cancer, this failure of friends distributes through the rest of the class. Like the genius that I am, I make my students write a group contract for every project that details who does what and when it is due. Why is this important? Because the contract provides me the documentation necessary to allow me to dismiss a bad group member and give them a zero without their parent ruining my day.
So here is where the problem begins manifesting.
These seniors begin bouncing from group to group like cancerous ping pong balls, wreaking havoc. I let students choose their groups, so these seniors are desperately integrating with anybody that will have them. Because of my class size, every group has at least one coddled child to deal with, and these children just end up rotating until all of my students have worked with one of these seniors at some point.
Now I am getting constant complaints from parents of other kids about these boys. Their kid wanted a good grade, which means they ended up doing all the work while the senior slacked. This is usually after the fact, at which time I bring up ‘I would love to yank that leech out of your grade pool, but you have to use the contract.’
Students don’t want to say anything because they fear retribution from the seniors, but I can’t do anything because I will be accused of harassment. The contract can provide me with the leverage I need to prove that these kids were doing no work because these seniors have been playing with their parents for years.
I make my class utilize Google docs because the changes are time stamped.
No joke, I’ve had students produce all the work the morning of a parent meeting to try and lie their way out and make me look like a piece of garbage, but that timestamp is a godsend.
Luckily, my class is balanced. A bad groupmate can make things hard, but not undoable, and parents are appeased that I have an out for their kid, but disappointed that their kid doesn’t use it.
Every time I announce a group project is on the way, some of these seniors sucker up to the other kids to the point that it is expected that a spot will be made for them.
I’m talking about buying kids lunch, bringing them gifts, etc. Seriously, the day before a group project starts, all of the seniors now sit at separate tables from each other so that they could pull the ‘I’m already here, let’s be in a group’ card (which works most of the time).
The strain on class morale is difficult, but I am biding my time. The other students are grabbing at Extra Credit opportunities constantly so that their grades can absorb the blow, and parent complaints are completely mitigated because I am still offering every chance for success.
My principal has a copy of my syllabus on his computer so that he can quote student policies that the parent signed off on.
It’s not uncommon for him to hear ‘I don’t read that, so it doesn’t apply’ but he reminds them that the clause above the signature line says ‘My signature denotes that I have read this document in its entirety and agree to abide by all the rules’ or something similar and that this should be a lesson to the parent and the student that when you sign something, you should read the fine print.
So right now I have seven slothful seniors, but I shall name the worst of these Larry, Curly, and Moe. The fallout affects all of them, but these three are the ones whose parents love Making Trouble. Every time they threatened the teacher into compliance, I imagine they sit around in a room, laughing at how they got their way yet again with a lowly teacher.
I know that anything I do will be heavily scrutinized once the grades start falling and I need to be able to shrug it off because I have other stuff to do, and I refuse to be the smiling topic of discussion in their celebratory conversation.
However, a special note about Larry-since he turned 18, his parents now travel nonstop and are impossible to reach. Larry is now just a huge jerk because his parents no longer care about what he does.
I closely monitor their grades in my class, but also others.
This may sound sketchy, but I routinely do this with any of my students who struggle with the material so that I can identify if the issue is my class or all of their classes. Students have been known to fake their grades using Inspect Element and I got tired of hearing ‘But they have As in their other classes.’ Because then I look like the liar.
Anyway, after a check, I speak with the other teachers. It isn’t hard to find out that these boys are doing minimal work in other classes, and I actually discover something worse about Larry. He has been finding ways to get other kids to do the work for him and then disseminating it among his friends.
Other teachers have been threatened into lowering test percentages in their class, and guess what? He and his friends are enrolled in these classes.
Despite failing these tests, homework and project grades give them a comfortable cushion so that most of them are floating at low Bs.
I can’t prove this (they are using Snapchat) but when I bring it up with their teachers, the teachers don’t feel like trying to prove it and duke it out with the parents. Now, they are gaming other classes for minimal effort.
However, their only recourse in my class is to keep rotating through groups and leeching off of their hard work to maintain Cs and Bs, and the other kids are too nervous to utilize the group contract to get them fired. Remember how I mentioned that I steadily increase the value of my assignments to keep kids working and give them a chance to fix their grades?
Well, it was about to come due.
Me: (Random Day in Class) Hey everybody, I was looking in the schedule and realized that your last project before finals may stress you out unnecessarily. Would anybody mind if I dropped it?
My class: (Tired of getting bombarded with Group Assignments) Nope, drop it, Best Teacher Ever!
Me: Okay, well just so you know, I’m going to move our next project back a couple of weeks and extend the deadline by a week. Also, since I canceled the last project, this means that the next project will now be worth roughly 20% of your final grade, so do your best. Screwing this up could ruin your grade.
My class: Whatever.
So in one step, I have inflated this assignment and also moved it. I send out an email to parents and students letting them know about the change to the syllabus and the assignment. Get no responses other than happy that I am removing stress from the end of the semester, etc. I actually did this primarily because another teacher (who was a huge jerk) plunked down a monster project that same week and I knew it would burn out my students prior to finals, so figured a break was in order.
Win-win for me, really. Now, why did I move it? Well, there’s the rub. The Friday before the project started, I announced at the start of class, ‘Okay, I am introducing the project now so that you can get into groups today and we can do it first thing Monday morning without delay since this project is so important.’ This announcement elicits a room full of grins.
Why? It was Senior Ditch Day.
Our school didn’t condone a ditch day, so the kids tried their best to keep it a secret, but I found out a month in advance. All seven of these kids were absent from class, which meant that I had just given the entire room freedom from these weights.
Immediately, groups are formed, and even better, I had a couple of kids transfer out of my class, which meant, numbers-wise, these knuckleheads will have to work on this last group project together (in two groups).
I emphasized that everyone needed to get to class as soon as possible so that they could start as soon as attendance was called. My original intention was to light a giant fire under all seven of these chumps, to get them to actually put in the effort they had neglected to do all year.
Most of them had grades in the low C range (except for one in the low Bs).
As a bonus to all my students, I put an extra credit portion on this project so that they could recoup their early semester losses, but also allow these seniors to do very well if they put in the effort.
This wasn’t meant to be a revenge tale, but an attempt to give them one last lesson in responsibility. Before the end of the day, I send out a parent/student notification that the project had been started and that any absent students needed to contact their classmates to establish groups before Monday morning.
I’m sure you can guess what happened next.
The next Monday, the seniors come traipsing in seconds before the bell to discover that there are only two tables to sit at. Whatever, they take their seats.
Me: (After attendance) Okay, everybody has a copy of the rubric, so go ahead and get started.
Rest of Class: (Immediately pulls out rubric)
Seniors: (looking around frantically)
The seniors quickly realized that they have been played, and the arguing starts. The first thing that happens is that Larry, Curly, and Moe decide that they now belong with whoever they happen to be sitting with and scoot their chairs over to sit with different tables.
I catch this right away and tell them that the groups are already at maximum size (4 people per group).
The other four seniors are already fighting with each other because they know that none of them will actually do any work. Larry (who thinks he’s God’s gift to everybody) tries to sweet talk me and his group into special privileges and allow a group of 5.
Now, I see some of the other kids wavering and I know that Larry is putting pressure on them to argue his case.
I designed this project for specifically four people and had a job for each one, but I extended a separate offer. ‘I will let you join, but since there will be five of you, I expect double the work.’ Literally, I told them they would have to do the project twice.
Larry tries to argue, but I point out the roles I have established and inform him that if four people could do it once, having five should make it easier to do it twice.
Sounds like a jerk move on my part, but I have now intimidated the other kids into saying HECK NO and even have them put it to a vote.
Unsurprisingly, Larry is the only one who votes that this is a good idea, and when the other kids catch wind of my offer, they physically shoo off the other seniors trying to pull this deal as well.
You will all be delighted to hear that the rest of the period for my seniors is spent arguing over who will work with who.
They end up forming three groups and I nod my head, make sure they have the rubric, and then wish them the best of luck. Being the smart teacher that I am, I email Curly’s parents and Moe’s mommy that they have chosen to work with each other.
Moe’s mommy shows up to argue with me all the time but has quickly learned I won’t take her baggage. At a previous meeting, she even laid into Moe and told him ‘I’m tired of fighting all these battles with your teachers and I’m starting to think that you’re the problem,’ but I suspect this is for show.
Curly’s parents email me back and say they will make sure Curly writes a group contract.
You see, Curly has sold himself as the best student ever, and clearly, he will do the work and fire his classmates. Moe’s mommy immediately requests a meeting with me.
Per school policy, I do not have to respond to an email for 48 hours. I wait until hour 47 and email a noncommittal, ‘I would love to meet, when are you available?’ and wait for a response. I then wait another 48 hours to inform her of a time the following week that works for me.
Now, some of the other senior parents have emailed me angrily demanding why I let their kids choose to work with ‘the bad kids’ again. I had to inform them that I didn’t expect all of them to be absent. Immediately, some of my seniors get burned at home because they ditched and their parents tell me ‘Just try to help them pass,’ which I agree to.
Some of them need this class for graduation, after all. Moe’s mommy, on the other hand, shows up ready to wage battle. She starts by demanding that I put Moe in a different group. I decline because the project has now been going on for a week and it wouldn’t be fair.
She demands that I add him to another group. They’re all full and students have already done the lion’s share of the work.
She demands that I let him work by himself with an extension. I gladly offer him an extension and slide a copy of the rubric over to him… and he goes white.
At this point, he knows that he is never planning to do any of the work. In fact, I know that his group hasn’t even started. I have a copy of their group contract, which was hastily scribbled in pencil with no due dates on it.
He starts arguing with his mom that he would rather work with his friends and that he is upset that he got stuck in this situation.
Contemplating this, she accuses me of deliberately waiting until that day to screw the seniors over. After all, it was a school-sanctioned event and I’m being a jerk about it and she’ll go to the board with her story.
Wrong. The joy I get from all of my prep work is shutting down stuff like this. All seven of the seniors hung out on ditch day at her house and told her that the principal had given them the day off.
Even better, they called in and pretended to be their own parents so that it was an excused absence.
He is immediately busted and his mom flips her switch and jumps all over him. You see, she can keep pressing me on this issue, but I now have evidence that he pretended to be his own dad, and this is a suspendable offense. I buy myself into her graces by telling her that I had no idea that Senior Ditch Day was that Friday, but I gave her kid a free extension on the homework that was due because I thought seniors deserved their own traditions, blah blah blah.
She buys it.
Also, I can prove that I emailed him (and her) and gave them plenty of notice before Monday morning that they needed to pick groups before something like this happened. Obviously, once I found out about Ditch Day I tried to give her precious treasure a heads up, but I don’t know why he didn’t take it.
So she makes him open his email. When I saw it, I nearly burst into laughter.
My email is sitting there, unopened, and I have won this battle. She thanks me and takes him home. Class morale is now super high unless you are one of the seniors.
A week before the project is due, neither group has actually started and the H.M.S. Class Average is about to hit an Iceberg. Then the project comes due, oh boy.
It comes as no surprise that my enterprising seniors have turned in easily some of the worst work ever.
One group got into a text argument the weekend before it was due and made one of the kids do all the work. Moe and Curly are in this group. The other group (with Larry) has also turned in a steaming pile. I make sure to grade these two projects first because I know the fallout is going to be big.
All the seniors dropped at least one letter grade. A couple dropped two. This is four weeks before graduation. Larry appears to take his F minus in stride (they got something like a ten percent on it), so I know he’s plotting something. Curly’s parents demand a meeting and so does Moe’s mommy.
Curly’s parents are super upset that they got a bad grade and demanded to know why.
What they didn’t know was that I had already met with the student who did the entire project (poorly) and his parents. I informed Curly’s parents that I had seen the text exchange between the seniors that pretty much ended up with ‘You freaking do it.’ Curly refused to turn over his phone to his parents for confirmation.
I also show them Curly’s project and hand over the rubric.
Mom and Dad are not happy. You see, Curly has been blaming everyone else for his mistakes since the dawn of time and his parents have bought in completely. Until today. Dad pointedly asks ‘Which part did you do?’ and this causes Curly to spout actual tears.
I then pull up a spreadsheet of all of the group project scores from the year and have highlighted his scores, which are among the worst.
The purpose of this was to use data to prove that their son, frankly, never does the work. Curly is absolutely destroyed by this.
His parents kick him out of the conference because they are tired of his excuses and ask me what they can do. I tell them I would be happy to offer one-on-one tutoring and that he can still pass the class if he does his homework and gets a B on the next exam.
They agree to this, we all shake hands, and they leave.
Curly’s story largely ends here. He never shows up to tutoring, and I email his parents. After three emails, his dad finally responds with, ‘His mom and I have decided that he needs to learn to be an adult and are leaving him to his own devices.
Thank you for your efforts.’ Curly will spend the rest of the semester doing little to no work.
Because he is grounded at home, he is now just watching YouTube videos on his phone during school. The ripple effect is glorious. Because now Curly is doing this in all of his classes.
I speak with his teachers and they all email that he has quit doing work in class and get the same reply I did rather than the vehement responses they are used to.
When Curly fails his classes, he still graduates, but his parents have informed him that they are no longer paying for his college and it’s time to get a job.
Moe’s mommy, however, flips her lid and demands answers. Unfortunately, Moe is in the same group as Curly and she gets the same answers from me. Strangely enough, once she’s exhausted every effort and attempt to somehow blame me for this, she admits that she knew Moe was part of threatening the lone senior and that he should be ashamed of himself.
She deliberately tried to play me but outed herself once she knew that I already knew everything. Super annoying, but I agree to help tutor him one-on-one too, which makes her happy. So Moe’s mommy is emailing me every few days now. ‘Is my son doing his work, did he get help with his homework, etc.’ Non-stop, but she knows better than to fight with me.
And then there was Larry.
Larry is unusually chipper and is no longer doing his work. I find out that Larry is supposedly going to a college where he just needs to maintain his GPA over a super low number. He claims an F in my class won’t change anything, so I make sure he doesn’t distract the others.
Moe shows up only occasionally, but strangely enough, Larry pops in ‘just to say hi’ whenever Moe is getting help.
I can’t fathom why he does this but suspect he is up to something and already has a backup plan in place. You see, Moe’s mommy is nuts, and I make sure that there’s always another person in the room with me when I tutor him.
Anyway, Moe’s mommy is constantly checking in. I start waiting 48 hours between emails (cause I can) and she starts dropping by in-person unannounced to check on him (me).
She’s been acting cagey lately and I’m starting to suspect something. It’s freaking Larry. Larry is a friend of Moe’s, so he’s been in her home feeding her made-up stories to convince her that I have been emotionally mistreating Moe when other students aren’t around.
Stuff like I was calling him names after school, etc., and then telling her, ‘you can even have the school check the cameras to see that I’m there.’
This starts a whole thing where she is now demanding answers from the admin. BUT! I’m smart.
Admin asks me about details regarding my interactions with Moe and I end up sitting down with my Principal, Moe, and Moe’s mommy. She details that Moe is struggling, might not graduate and that she believes that I have singled her kid out and wants his grade raised.
You see, Moe is dumb and lazy, and his mom is just as bad. When Larry went to her with his story, she never bothered talking about it with her own son. He just agreed and went along with it, so I asked Moe point-blank to please describe what has been said during our sessions and then offer to leave the room so that he can tell the principal without me there.
She tells me to stay because she wants me to hear from her son what I’ve done to him. What neither of them knew was that I was a mentor teacher. That meant I had a first-year teacher as my mentee and I had her working on grades and such in my room after school on the days I agreed to meet Moe.
She was young, so Moe thought she was another student and never questioned it, and couldn’t even remember that she was in there.
My Principal already had statements from her detailing my interactions with Moe, and Moe was unable to give any actual details and suddenly forgot what had been said to him.
This lands Moe’s mommy in hot water with admin, and she blames the whole thing on Larry and becomes visibly upset that she fell for such a stupid ruse. This results in an email cautioning teachers from being alone in a room with either student.
Suddenly, after school help evaporates for both, but hey, I always have someone in my room, so whatever. After that meeting, Larry is now suddenly super concerned about his grade. I rationalize that he was hoping to burn me out of my job and then use the fallout to get a free passing grade.
Obviously, it doesn’t work, so screw Larry.
I have kids who actually want to succeed. My free days are now on days I know he works, and he never shows up for tutoring anyway. Now that other teachers are hesitant to meet with him, he is unable to cut deals to raise those grades either.
Moe’s mom makes a last-ditch effort and tries to convince me that the parents of the seniors have scheduled a meeting with my boss to have me fired for giving their kids a bad grade and that she would be willing to put in a good word for me if I meet with her first.
I’m sitting next to the principal when I get this email, and he has no idea what she was talking about. I tell her I’d be happy to meet everybody but that I would probably eat my lunch during such a meeting and that I hoped people didn’t mind the smell of fish.
I got a ‘No, seriously, they are threatening to sue you,’ but I had the perfect response. I feigned stupidity and informed her that I couldn’t be sued for eating fish during a meeting.
She now realizes I don’t care about anything and can’t be threatened. Again, there’s nothing she can do because I am simply following policy.
The last few weeks are frantic for these seniors. One by one they fall, because they’ve done little to no work for a couple of years now and they have no idea how to apply themselves. Other teachers are emboldened by how hard I shut them down and finally hold them accountable.
A few of them just barely manage Ds in my class, and the rest fail. I get a few last-second squeaks of ‘What can I do to raise my grade?’ but have now documented that none of them attempted the extra credit assignments and that was their chance.
It’s hard for a parent to get angry at you when you can prove you actually tried to give their student extra credit, and can then prove they never opened the assignment online.
These guys are now failing some of their other classes, too. A couple has breakdowns in my class and leaves crying.
Their friendships are fracturing with each other because they now all hate each other for what happened (which they will get over during the summer). My last test came and I made it an online multiple-choice test.
It was easy enough to have the questions and answers shuffled in random order, meaning they couldn’t copy off each other.
You see, I knew for a long time that they would sit next to each other to try and copy on the exam, and Larry had blown a ton of money on a tutor to try and carry his friends. This throws them all off, and when Moe’s mommy accuses me (again) of trying to trick her kid with a much harder test, it was easy enough to shoo her away with a simple email.
Larry passes the exam, but his grade moves up to a meager D minus. Here are the final results. Of these seven seniors, one didn’t graduate and had to transfer schools. His parents were embarrassed that they paid to fly the whole family out for graduation that he didn’t get to take part in.
Two of the seniors lost all of their scholarships and could no longer attend the schools they wanted.
Their fallback plan was to attend the same school together and become roommates, which they did with three of the other seniors, including Moe. Larry’s college was not happy with his final GPA.
I’m not sure what his long game was, but it sucked. The college kicked him out before he could even start, and I found out his huge web of lies extended to his parents too.
He toured Europe over the summer and tried to surprise his parents by coming home instead of going to school.
Apparently, they kicked him out immediately after because they were selling their house to get a condo somewhere else (remember, they travel for work all the time now so wanted to downgrade). Last I heard, he made up a story that he joined the forces but got released due to sickness.
Curly’s parents relented and decided to pay for Curly to go to college after all. Curly got kicked out halfway through the year (he got busted more than once for underage consumption) and then they kicked him to the curb after living at home for a year and refusing to get a job.
Moe went to school and used his book smarts to try and pay other kids to do his work for him since his mommy is rich.
When that failed, he faked his grades to get his mom to keep footing the bill. Eventually, the school kicked him out and he moved back home.
The story his mommy told a friend of hers (who I ran into at a school function) was that he decided that he would rather be an entrepreneur than go to college and that he bought a drone to film weddings with.
Last I heard, he was acting as a distributor for his dealer but had moved up to selling on the side.
His mommy thinks he is working at weddings. But there was one happy ending. One senior went to college with his friends and immediately realized he needed to change. He quit hanging with his friends and, last I heard, graduated with honors in a lucrative field.
He emailed me once to thank me for challenging him in high school, because it prepared him for college, so that was nice.”
8. Lie To Impress A Girl? Get Busted
“A couple of years ago I was in the gym and I overheard this guy (we’ll call him ‘LT’ for Lying Tool) ‘warning’ a girl.
He said something to the effect of:
‘Hey, sorry to bother you. But I just overheard that guy in the red shirt (pointing at my friend who was across the gym) saying some extremely crass stuff about you in the locker room. It was really graphic, talking about your purple spandex… I couldn’t just listen and not tell you because you deserve to know what certain people are really like.’
Listing to this I was furious. This guy had obviously seen my friend and the girl talking in the gym (she approached him) and gotten jealous because he wanted to get with her… So he finished up his tall tale and before the girl could respond I scoffed really loud and said: ‘She knows you’re lying just to try to get in her pants.
That guy would never say those kinds of things about her because she’s his sister, you moron.’
The look on LT’s face was priceless. He went pale and stammered something about how he must have gotten the guy mixed up. But the girl (who had caught on and was playing along) pointed out how he had been very clear about pointing her ‘brother’ out.
So LT shifted his story again and said he must have gotten the girl he was talking about mixed up. So I pointed out that she was the only girl wearing purple spandex.
He actually looked like he was about to cry, and I never saw him in the gym again after that.”
7. Bully Got Suspended Because Of Me
“Throughout my time in my 1st and 2nd-grade classes in school, there was a classmate named Jonathan who would torture me daily.
From name-calling, pushing me, and ridiculing me in front of other classmates – this boy was an absolute nightmare.
It all came to a head one day when we were sitting across from each other at some tables and he asks to see my hand.
I hold out my hand on the desk and he proceeds to slam a pencil into my thumb. (Leaving a permanent mark I have to this day). This incident was reported but he was only ‘spoken to’. The bullying still continued.
Fast forward a few weeks and I’m walking throughout the school playground during recess.
Being the dumb kid I was, I wasn’t particularly watching where I was going and walked straight into some monkey bars. The force was enough to topple me backward and flat onto my butt. Humiliated, I looked around and was thankful that no one witnessed this happen.
Once recess was over and I was back in class, the teacher gasped and asked what happened to my face. There was a gigantic bruising/black eye forming on my eye.
Without hesitation, I blurted out, ‘Jonathan punched me!’ He yelled out that he didn’t, but I quickly had a rebuttal. ‘How else would I have got this?’
He was suspended for a week. He never messed with me again.”
6. I Watched Them Pick Up Coins On The Floor
“Four years ago, I’m working the register as a cashier. It’s 10 pm and these two young men in their early 20s come up to the counter. They have three random novelty items (I don’t remember what they were), but it was strange and unusual to get odd items this late at night.
Maybe it was for some fraternity, I don’t know. It’s a college town, so I get weird stuff from frats a lot.
I scan the items and tell them their total is $22.31. Grinning at each other, they reach into their jackets and slam down two-gallon zip-lock bags.
When I saw what was in them, my eyes rolled back into my head. They were full of only pennies. I stare them in the eye, but they didn’t even look back at me. Everyone else in line groaned and went to other registers.
These two kids knew what they were doing, but they didn’t know what they were in for. I prepared for this. I knew this was going to inevitably happen. I grinned with them because I was gonna get paid during this, while these pranksters were only here for recreation.
This conversation occurs between Me, the Ringleader (the other guy was silent and awkward), and a friendly co-worker of mine.
Me: Is this $22.31?
Ringleader: …
Me: Did you count it?
Ringleader: Nope.
Me: Are you going to?
Ringleader: Nope.
Me: Is it at least $22.31?
Ringleader: Don’t know.
Co-worker: Hey! You guys can use the self-checkout. It can take all of your coins at once.
Me: Oh, don’t worry about it—
Ringleader: Nope, don’t trust them, lady.
Co-worker: What? Why!?
Ringleader: Doesn’t count all your change right.
Co-worker: I’ve used them before.
It really works!
Me: (to Co-worker) I got this.
I unpacked the Ziplocs and threw all the pennies on the counter. It was a beautiful, massive mess. And I dug in. The two, still avoiding my gaze, start chuckling as if they were taking away my dignity.
They whisper to each other ‘Dude oh my God,’ ‘Dude yeah,’ ‘Dude, hilarious.’ I counted each penny, one by one.
My co-worker comes up to me.
Co-worker: Guess I’ll help you count this.
Me: Don’t worry about it. (She looks at me confused. Then she puts on her ‘get down to busy’ look.)
Co-worker: I got your back.
Me: Oh…ok.
We worked up a system where we counted ten, put them in a pile, then with ten stacks of ten pennies we separated them, making $1 piles.
We made progress slowly but surely. Some customers came to the line, but we advised them to get to another line.
Some of them looked at us confused, but when they saw the counter full of pennies they understood. Some decided to wait, but when they realized it wasn’t going to take just a few minutes they took their leave. Another register opened so it wasn’t too bad for other customers.
We get to about $12 (about 10 minutes in). Then I enacted my revenge. I ‘knocked’ over the piles.
Co-worker: Hey!
Me: Oops. Sorry. (Co-worker looks at my grin. I give her a wink and tilt my head, motioning her to leave)
Co-worker: You know what, I think I better let you do this.
Me: Ha, alright. (Co-worker leaves. I look at the two guys. They are absolutely stunned at the fallen piles of pennies.)
Me: (To Ringleader) Yeah, I’m going to have to count all of this again.
Ringleader: … Ok.
I started from zero. I count slower than ever and made my way back up.
The duo is entirely silent. I get to about $7 when suddenly I say: Drats. I lost count. I better start all over again.
Ringleader: Really?
Me: Oh yeah man.
Ringleader: Why!?
Me: I lost count, sir. I could be in trouble if my register doesn’t have the right amount, and I don’t want to rip you off.
Ringleader: …
Now it’s about an hour later. My manager walks past, looks at me. I smile at him, and he looks at the counter. He walks away without a word. I eventually count all the change. Here comes the best part.
Surprisingly they had only $18!
Me: Hmm, I think that this is $18. (The duo has been completely silent. They look done for the night.) I’ll recount it.
I freaking recounted it.
Me: I think this is actually $19.23. (Without a word, the Ringleader whips out a $5 bill) Seriously? You had cash?
Ringleader: Needed to get rid of my change.
Me. No problem. I’ll just recount this again. I want to make perfectly sure that this is $19 since I counted $18 the first time.
Ringleader: Are you kidding me? (I shake my head no, completely serious)
He then takes out a $20 bill straight out of his pocket and throws it at me.
My co-worker gives the biggest WHAT THE HECK face.
Internally, I’m disappointed, because they were smart enough to have a backup plan. And the fact that he was touching his coins in his pocket the entire time kind of messed with me. I take the cash, do the transaction, give him his change, thanked him, and wished him a good night.
The two start to put their pennies back in the Ziploc bags and I didn’t help them at all.
I watched them just how they watched me. Lots of pennies dropped to the floor, but they didn’t care to pick them up. It looked like their souls were sucked out of them.
It was past midnight and I clocked out way past when I was supposed to. A lot of my co-workers gave me a thumbs up or told me good night. Even my manager told me ‘good job,’ the only two words he ever said to me.
Went to bed at the dorms after such a great petty penny night and crashed. Strange to say, but I’d love to count pennies again.”
5. Take My Spot In The Theater? I'll Force You Out
“So, I decided that I wanted to go see The Martian today. I took the bus and ended up showing up 50 minutes early. So I was the only one in the theater for a good 25 minutes so I took my time picking out my ideal spot.
I decided to go to the bathroom before the movie so I didn’t miss anything.
On my way back with a soft pretzel in hand, I see the woman with her kids and she’s moving all of my stuff to a different seat so she and her kids can take my spot.
I stomach it, grab my stuff and move to a different spot. While I’m sitting there eating my pretzel, I notice her and her kids all going to the bathroom.
I seize the opportunity. I run, grab all their stuff, and move it to seats right in front of the entrance so they’ll see it as soon as they walk in.
I then reclaim my rightful place in my perfect spot. The lady comes in, sees her stuff, looks at me, connects the dots, and now has been shooting the occasional (bad) glance from the front row and every other spot filled up.”
Another User Comments:
“I love when these situations come up of circumstances being reversed.
I had it happen when I was a cashier. A woman came up with her basket of things and realized she had forgotten something, so she left her basket and went. No Problem. Another woman comes up with her cart, starts unloading, realizes that she forgot something, and went to go get it.
No problem. Before I had scanned two of her items the other woman came back. I looked around and the second woman was nowhere to be found, so I voided off the item and started ringing up basket woman. About a minute into that the other woman comes back and starts flipping out, packing up her things in a rage to find another cashier.
The whole time I was just like ‘I’m sorry, she did the same thing you did.’ Fortunately, my supervisor happened by right then so I was able to explain the situation to her and I never got in trouble.” beregond23
4. Steal My Food? Suffer The Consequences
“My old college roommate didn’t know how to cook or do dishes and didn’t go food shopping much.
This led to him eating my food, especially my leftovers as those were prepared meals. Now, I would use my leftovers to meal prep for the week and told him to stop as it was expensive as well as inconvenient. The behavior did not stop and he actually seemed to be eating more of my food out of spite.
To punish him, I baked a chocolate cake with habanero peppers and mixed the frosting with wasabi. I labeled it with my name and a highlighted ‘Do Not Eat’ and waited. This guy has a very low tolerance for spicy foods, so I thought he would take one bite and quickly realize the error of his ways.
About two days later, he and a couple of his friends got to drinking while I was at work and decided to dig into my food.
Somehow, they ate about a third of it before realizing it, and when they inevitably went to throw up from over drinking and eating spicy foods, the cake hit them a second time.
I don’t know for sure, but it couldn’t have felt good coming out the backend either. When he asked me why I made this monstrosity, I told him I found a chocolate habanero recipe online that I wanted to try. He stopped eating my cooking after that.”
3. Cut The Line? Nice Try, Girls
“On vacation, my partner and I stop at the Louvre. There is a lineup at the little cafe/snack bar. They have those standing barriers with ropes to guide the line-up, but the ropes aren’t pulled across – because people are grownups and can see that it’s just a single line down one side of the front display.
Cue a group of young girls in blinged-out clothes deciding they don’t have time to stand in line. They go to the front and stand behind the person currently paying. They pretend to be oblivious to the 4-5 other people in line now giving them nasty stares.
I am not in line but I see their little act. So I go along and start hooking up the ropes. The girls are gossiping together and ignoring everyone else around them, because hey, what do they care right? So they don’t notice when I move the barrier just a smidge forward… and hook up the rope in front of them.
The look on their faces when they turn around to order their coffees and find themselves quite obviously outside the queue was just… soooo priceless. Huffing and puffing, they had to totter their high-heeled selves to the back of the (now much longer) line-up.”
Another User Comments:
“I’ve worked in the service industry for a long time and still have a job that deals with the public. I’d like to think the people at the coffee stand would inform them that they needed to go to the end of the line when they got to the counter.
I know I would’ve. Not even to be like a nice person towards the other customers. Because I don’t like spoiled jerks who think the world owes them something. It would’ve been mostly out of spite.” MrGritty17
Another User Comments:
“I used to work fast food YEARS AGO and did this once while working at the register.
Young rowdy bro teens came in and jumped ahead of an older couple who looked a bit miffed but obviously weren’t going to say anything about it. When they approached to order, still cracking curse-laden ‘your mom’ jokes and feeling like they were worth something, I just ignored them and addressed the couple until their order was completed.” NamesArentEverything
Another User Comments:
“I was in a line at the gas station waiting to pay for my drinks, I was in the middle of the line of about 15 people. Some guy comes up and just goes straight up behind the person currently at the register.
Being me, I said something and he just looks at me and then the lady behind the counter rung him up. Once I got to the register I said something to the cashier about how I can’t stand people like that, but I got a reaction I wasn’t suspecting.
The lady said, ‘well he had to go to work’. Baffled, I simply replied, ‘so the rest of us in line apparently have nothing other to do than stand in line?’ I never went back to that gas station. How do people think that they are the only ones that are in a hurry?
I actually didn’t have anything else to do since it was my day off, but the presumption some people make about them being in a hurry when no one else can possibly be in the same boat is appalling. Just wait for your darn turn or, better yet, if you’re in that much of a hurry maybe you don’t need that soda you took time out of your day for.
Edit: And the other people in line acted like I had done something wrong as well. Apparently, you aren’t supposed to confront these people and just let them go about their jerk business.” thewalruskookoo
Another User Comments:
“Worked at a 7-11 before where a coworker justified someone cutting in line like that.
On one of our tills, we not only did the regular purchases but also had to man the gas. When the place wasn’t busy, customers would come up to the side to pay for gas. One morning when we were switching shifts during the Monday rush, an older type lady came in and stood at the side.
There was a huge line of about 6 people, with one till open, yet she got served first. The reason?
‘Oh but this lady has work in ten and her job is half an hour away! She’s really in a hurry!’
How did the cashier know this?
It’s because this lady had been coming in the past week pulling that stunt! She got gas, a lotto ticket, and an opportunity to tell a sob story.
I was in disbelief. The customers were in disbelief. My manager, who was standing next to me, was in disbelief.
Don’t know what happened to the cashier, but the lady was never offered special treatment again.” PandasHouse
Another User Comments:
“One time at my bank, I had been waiting in one of two lines for about ten minutes as they slowly dwindled down to just me waiting, when a lady walked in and got in the other line which was just finishing up.
I was saved by the bank teller in her line who asked for me to come up. The lady protested that I was in the other line and she was next, but the teller nicely replied that I’d been here first. To this day I’d like to thank that teller again because there was no way I could have explained the injustice of it having to wait so long just to get cut in front of at the last second to the lady that just walked in.” maybe_yes_but_no
2. Annoying Guy On The Phone Gets Irritated
“So for the last 3 weeks, at least 3 times a day, I get a scam call from this dude claiming he installed security software on my computer and there’s been a breach, etc., everybody knows the drill.
This guy leaves 3 minute long voicemails repeating the same 30-second spiel over and over.
It’s annoying. I called the number back a few times just saying ‘hey dude I know it’s a scam, stop calling.’ He always sassed me real hard… so I thought hey, I have an idea. I just kept calling him back and saying nothing.
I could hear him yelling through the receiver. Once he’d hang up, I’d call right back. All in all, I blew up his phone for over an hour, I called him back 44 times in one hour.
After the last call, he was screaming nonsense and said ‘I am blocking your number, this is harassment, you will never contact me again.’ Sounds good to me.
No calls today, and usually by 3 pm I’ve gotten 2 already. Feels goooooood.”
1. Overcrowd The Elevator? Enjoy Your 20-Minute Ride
“I was staying in an older hotel in San Francisco. The elevator was very small, very old school, and had signage everywhere about how you couldn’t operate it with more than 4 people.
I’d also been stuck in there twice already that weekend. Each time, I called the front desk and they were able to recall it to the ground floor but I’d learned to be wary.
I should have started taking the stairs, but was on the 8th floor and was feeling lazy.
So on Sunday morning, I waited for the elevator for quite a while. It arrives, I hop in and a family of 5 walks up to the elevator and follows me in. They were all large people and they all had huge suitcases. I politely pointed out the sign and said that I’d already been stuck in the elevator twice and that we should split the group into two.
They laughed and said they were all staying on. Welp, I thought, enjoy your ride.
I proceeded to run up the stairs and hit the call button on every single floor. The best part was that I could hear them complaining from the stairwell every time the elevator opened and nobody was there.
Petty revenge never felt so good.”
Another User Comments:
“I cut a massive, massive fart in the elevator once. It was the day after a big flight from Syd-LA so I was very hungover, and of course, I’d eaten hot wings the night before, but I wasn’t at the top of my game essentially.
So instead of crunching out a stinker before I got in the elevator, it escaped in transit. The other dude in the lift with me (a friend) smashed alllll the buttons and hopped out on the next stop, and then he wouldn’t let me get out of the lift.
It was pretty rough.” Joabyjojo
Another User Comments:
“I have a similar Story!
I was doing my mandatory stay at the underworld (call center job) and had a TERRIBLE supervisor. He was your run-of-the-mill passive-aggressive man who did nothing but talk down to everyone like he owned the place.
He singled me out on occasion to make jokes at my expense and generally, they fell flat.
Fast forward about a year later and the call center is shutting down. He’s no longer a super and I’ve been moved to another department. I find out that his schedule and mine actually line up to where he gets off at the same time as me.
In our building, we were on the bottom floor of a 3 story building. The weird part was you entered on the 3rd floor from the parking garage and had to walk down about 5 flights of stairs or take a really sketchy elevator. Jerk Mcgee (the old super) loved taking the elevator because he could corner people and force them to interact with him.
As we approached our final few weeks of the center being open I started to get the timing of his leaving of the call floor to where I could be in the lobby and then take another set of stairs to beat him to the 2nd and 3rd floors and press the call buttons.
This stalled him by about 30-40 seconds but it was enough.
After the 4th/5th time of doing this, he comes storming up to my desk telling me I’m a stupid child for doing this.
Needless to say, I continued until the ship finally sank.” obvioustroway
Another User Comments:
“Nice one, that’s so satisfying.
At my old job, the people on the lower floors would use the up button on the elevators when calling them at the end of the day, and it would always be full whenever the lift arrived on our floor going down.
On days I worked late if I ever saw people going up in the elevator just to guarantee themselves a spot (for example, if I’m coming back from break whilst most are getting ready to leave for the day) I’d press every single floor above ours before getting out and look them right in the eye while doing it.
So very, very satisfying to know that it would’ve taken them 30 seconds to take the stairs and now they’re gonna spend 10 mins stopping on every floor both on the way up AND back down.” HKburner
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