People Speak About Their Perfectly Calculated Revenge
14. Get Mad At Your Neighbor Over Things They Didn't Do? They'll Find A Reason To Report You
“So I live on a little street with about 7 houses. We’re the only student house in the area and so we’re often a target for people looking to make a quick buck by blaming us because they think it’s easy to get us into trouble.
This lady thought WRONG.
So I’m walking back from university when I’m accosted by a middle-aged woman in her dressing gown and slippers.
‘HEY YOU!’
I stop because I’m trying to be polite to the neighbors (the locals have a location Hates Students group who vandalize student property to try and make us leave so I tend to overcompensate to make our household look good).
‘Hi! How are you?’
‘YOU VANDALISED MY CAR!’
(Are you seeing the irony here?) I cross the road to where the woman is stood – and where her car is parked – and ask ‘pardon?’
‘You dumb witch, did you not hear me? I said you vandalized my car.’
She was really trying to sell that I vandalized her car when I was on the other side of the road and she KNEW that.
‘I’m… Sorry? I think you’ve got the wrong person.’
She points at a HUGE scrape down the side of her car and I wince; that poor thing must have been beaten up pretty badly, but I had nothing on me that could have inflicted that much damage.
I explain that the binmen destroyed my moped (still in for repairs), so they might have caught her car too, and her eyes light up.
‘A moped?!?!?!’ I nod.
‘SO YOU’RE THE LITTLE BRAT WHO PARKS ON MY DRIVE??’
Our house has a driveway big enough for 4 cars and is, obviously, right outside my house. So I tell her no, that I haven’t been parking on her drive, especially because my bike was destroyed and has been gone for over 2 weeks.
‘You’re a liar,’ she’s like, spitting in my face at this point. ‘I have photos of your bike blocking my drive from 3 days ago. That’s why I was parked on the road, and that’s why my car got totaled.’
‘Okay,’ I nod. ‘May I see the photos?’
She is all too happy to whip out her phone and show me the photos of what she proudly believes to be my moped (A fire engine red piece of scrap that, to be honest, was well beyond saving even before the bin men mangled her).
Except… It isn’t my bike.
‘Ma’am, I hate to be rude but… That’s a mobility scooter.’
Cue the screaming and shouting about how rude teenagers are (I’m 21) and how we university students always disrespect the locals.
She tells me that I must think she’s an idiot (I do) for thinking that she’s wrong about my bike (she was). So I take a deep breath and say:
‘Ma’am, I’m in a rush, but you really are wrong about the bike… Maybe ask (her next-door neighbor, a kind old lady who owns that mobility scooter but is a little forgetful) about why she parks her scooter on your drive.’
I walk away and think nothing of it. Except now she’s left her totaled car on our private property instead of her own drive, after running our fence that blocks the drive down and complaining to our landlady about anti-social behavior – there isn’t any, by the way, we’re 4 reclusive students who stay in all night watching Netflix with our headphones in, and she’s also like 5 houses down from us, so she definitely wouldn’t be able to hear the noise she was describing.
Pretty much the whole neighborhood is shunning us at this point, as this woman had been spreading lies about our behavior – telling everyone that we vandalized her property so it’s only fair that she uses our driveway as compensation.
I feel responsible for her behavior, as I should have shut her down immediately rather than letting this drag out. So I sit in my room (nothing new there) and hatch a plan.
The next morning, I walk past her house and watch as she lets her dog out, watches it take a crap on public pavement, and then shrug and walk away.
BINGO. According to our local council, this is an offense she can get fined for, as it’s vandalism and obstruction of council property. So every morning as I walk to get my train, I take a photo of the turds – some fresh, some crusty, and some smeared across the pavement by some poor sod who’s stood in it.
Then I email EVERYTHING to my local counselor who is FUMING that someone fully able-bodied is allowing their dog to do this without cleaning it up. She gets fined £1000 with a threat of MORE if she continues to do so.
And guess what? She did. And the more that dog pooped, the more I reported it. She racked up $4,300 of fines just for dog poop alone, and I didn’t even report her trespassing on private property.
But apparently, she’d spoken to someone who was a newbie, and pressured him until he let slip that ‘a neighbor’ had reported it and of course, she happened to 1) realize it was me and 2) know where I live.
She hammered on my door, screaming about how she was going to drown my cat (I don’t have one; my neighbor’s cat just loves me), smash my window, and then catch me when I was walking home.
Now my housemate is also a recluse. He basically stays in his room and only leaves to go to uni or grab a drink and some food. But he is LIVID at the way this lady is screaming at me.
He stomps downstairs, yanks the door open while she’s midscream, and glares down at her. He’s 6’7″ tall and a rugby player, so he’s basically a walking muscle. If I didn’t know that he liked to cry at anime while hugging us on the sofa, I’d think that he was terrifying.
But this lady wasn’t privy to this information. So she looks up at this angry, MASSIVE Northerner and just trembles as he says in a very low, threatening voice:
‘You need to get off our property and take your car.
If you so much as blink at OP, and I hear about it, I’ll not only call the council for the dog crap you flung on our driveway, but I’ll call the police for damage to property and harassment.
Now SCREW. OFF. LADY.’
Safe to say she ran faster than I’ve ever seen her run.
Last week, I heard from the neighbor that someone had sold her car for scraps (she never got the thing fixed) just to pay off the eventual $4,500 of fines she’d racked up, and every time I walk to the train station and see the mobility scooter parked on her drive, it feels like another little win!”
13. Snub My Dad? He'll Get You Caught By The Police At The Right Moment
“My dad was a great guy.
Pretty laid back but sharp-witted with professional-level ball-buster skills. He took everything in stride until you crossed him. This is a tale about one of the poor souls who did.
My dad lived across the street from a guy who worked in the same mill as him, so he would give Dad a ride to and from work and come over when there was nothing else going on just to hang out.
Drank Dad’s drinks, ate Dad’s snacks, what have you. Anyway, my dad quite loudly questioned a company policy that disregarded a state holiday, and they canned him. Dad was annoyed but figured that’s how things work sometimes and took the unemployment comp happily.
He went and informed the guy that he wouldn’t need a ride that afternoon because he had been sacked. The guy made a weird face and said that was fine.
Dad made a mental note of the weird look and went home to start his “vacation.”
Anyway, Dad had been outside playing with my nephew when the guy got home.
Dad gave him a friendly wave. It was not returned. In fact, the guy didn’t even look in his direction. Dad figured maybe something else had happened at work that day that was distracting and blew it off as nothing.
But the next day, he didn’t wave again. Just locked his car up and hurried into his house like he wasn’t even there. So the day after that, Dad called to him and was once again ignored. Dad was starting to get pretty miffed at this point.
Why was this guy being such a jerk now? Because they didn’t work at the same place anymore? That’s dumb as heck! After a few days of this, Dad actually went up to his car and tried to talk to him, but alas, he was still ignoring him.
With the numerous blowoffs wearing on his mind, Dad came up with his revenge.
You see, Dad was a drinker. Not a violent, mean drinker but a daily casual drinking guy.
And so was the guy across the street. So much so that he always had a few drinks on the way to work. At seven in the morning while driving.
Dad never said anything because he grew up during a time when you could drink a bottle while driving, and the only thing someone would say to you was to not throw it out the window.
But he was definitely going to say something now.
About an hour before the guy left for work, Dad called the non-emergency police line. He told them that there would be someone leaving their house at five to seven not only with a buzz on but with a drink in their lap while driving.
He told them where he was leaving from and what direction he was going in. The dispatcher asked him if he was serious, and Dad said (and I quote), “Like freaking cancer.”
At ten to seven, Dad sat at the kitchen table and waited to see if anything would come of his little tip. He saw the guy come out of his house with a few drinks, right on time.
He heard the car start up, saw him pull out of his parking space…and then heard a siren whoop twice. Dad smiled and went out on the front stoop to watch the show.
And it was a pretty good one, too. Apparently, the guy had been busted for DUI a few times, so he was instantly arrested; the car was impounded, and he never saw the guy again.
One time, when he was recounting the story to my sister’s friend, I laughed and said, “Dad, you’re a snitch!” He looked over at me, shrugged, and said “He should have just said ‘hi’.””
Another User Comments:
“Kinda sounded to me like the guy had snitched on your dad, and that’s why he started avoiding him. We’ll never know though. Still, awesome revenge.” Agnesagnesagnes
12. Go Crazy On Me For Not Wanting To Give Out Personal Information? I'll Get You Fired
“When I was in my Senior year of high school, I had to take a psychology class. I was never really interested in the subject, but I needed it to graduate.
Luckily a good friend of mine was in the class with me, so it wasn’t that bad (he will come into play later).
The teacher for this class was eccentric, to say the least. He was one of those guys that you could tell was just a bit off.
Most of the class was based around watching movies and then talking about the “psychological” aspect of the movie. To put this into perspective, the first movie we watched was Mean Girls.
We then talked about why each character acted the way they did. Most of us just considered this class to be a movie class.
One day, our teacher (who I will refer to as DT from now on) came up with the idea that we should go see a taping of Dr. Phil because we are near Los Angeles and it would have a lot of importance for our class.
We were all on board with it because it was pretty much an easy chance to get out of school for a day.
DT contacted the show and got all of the necessary paperwork for us.
After he handed it out to us to fill out, I noticed that a minor release form was attached to the paperwork from the show. I had already turned 18 at the time as my birthday is early on in the school year.
I am no longer considered a minor by now, but I decided to fill it out anyway because I know this teacher is a bit off and I feel like it is something he would demand that I fill out.
As I’m filling it out, I noticed that it wanted my social security number. I found this a bit strange because I didn’t really understand why the Dr. Phil show needed such personal information.
I went to talk to DT to ask him why the show needed my social security number. I also explained to him that I am 18 and am no longer even a minor.
I expect him to tell me not to worry about it, that I’m no longer a minor, and to not worry about the social security number.
I was very wrong.
DT lost his darn mind. I endured 15 minutes of him going complete mad over how I absolutely needed to fill out the form in its entirety and that my full social security number better be on there.
He told me that he doesn’t give a crap how old I am, I absolutely must turn in that minor release form, and that I am a crappy person for even asking about it.
I was shocked because I was just asking about it because I wasn’t really comfortable putting my social security number on something when I didn’t even know why they needed it.
I managed to sputter something out about how I just wanted to contact the show to ask why they needed my social. If I know why they need that information, I would have no problem putting it there.
Another wrong move.
DT continues his rant by informing me that I am not allowed to call the show because he is the one handling all the business with the show and that if I do, he will not let me go at all.
By this point, I don’t really know what to do. I end up going to see the school counselor for advice. He was a good guy and was willing to hear me out.
After I explained to him what was going on, he tells me that he is going to call the show. He explains that I am forbidden to call, but DT never says anything about HIM calling to find out.
So he calls and finds out that the minor release form that was handed out to us was an old version of the form and that they do not need my social security number (I don’t know why the old version asked for it, but whatever).
I was also told that the form does not apply to me anyways because I am NOT A MINOR.
I go back to DT and explain to him what happened. Of course, it should come as no big surprise that DT lost his freaking mind.
I don’t remember everything he said, but it was something along the lines of “How dare you go behind my back! I shouldn’t even let you go on this trip.
You are lucky that I am a good guy. But you are still going to fill out that form including the full social security number or I will not let you come.” He then goes off on some weird tangent about how he doesn’t know why I am making a big deal over it.
It is easy to get someone’s social security number anyways and how he was a private investigator before this (I looked it up; he wasn’t), and he could look it up in a matter of seconds.
So when I came in the next day for class, we were watching another movie. I sat fairly close to DT; close enough to hear him if he was talking on the phone.
This is important because he spent most of that class talking on the phone to I don’t even know who, telling them all the mental issues I must have and how I am a danger to his class.
I was livid.
I end up taking the issue to my Vice Principal (his boss) and explain the situation to her. She was shocked and assured me that she was going to take care of it immediately.
The next day in class, DT comes up to me and mumbles that I don’t have to worry about the form. Cool. Everything works out in the end.
The day of the show arrives and everything is going fine.
It was a good show and we enjoyed ourselves. We stop to get food on our way back at this little fast food place up the street from the show.
I order my food and end up getting an order of onion rings. DT asks if he can have one and without even waiting for my reply, takes one. I think “fine, whatever” and try not to make a big deal out of it.
A few minutes later and he had finished about half my order of onion rings. What the heck!? Again, I try not to think too much of it.
The next week or so goes by and the whole incident is pretty much behind me….until my friend’s mom tells my mom about it after my friend told her.
I didn’t really tell my mom about it because I had it pretty much under control I thought and I didn’t want a big fiasco.
My mom exploded.
She immediately called the school and obliterated my Vice principal about it all.
“Who the heck do you idiots employ over there!?” It was pretty intense. My mom is also a teacher, but for a different school district and she teaches 1st grade.
She had all her teacher friends huddled around the table and the phone was on speaker. All the teachers were trying their best to hold in their laughter as my mom utterly demolishes the VP.
She then demands to speak to DT. VP tells my mom that she will have him call her ASAP.
DT calls about 5 minutes later and my mom immediately goes to work.
She barely let him talk for the first few minutes of the call. DT eventually manages to sputter out that I am one of his best students and that we are “such good friends!
We even shared onion rings after the show!” My mom immediately calls bullcrap and told him off for “sharing” onion rings when he was really just stealing them from me because I didn’t say anything because I was just trying not to cause a scene.
At one point, my mom says something like ” I sure hope his grade isn’t suffering because of this!” I know that I had a D in the class because I hardly ever turned the work in for that class.
I hear him shuffle some paperwork around and sputter that I actually had a 98% in the class! My mom tells him off some more and that we will be in contact with the school board.
I made it through the rest of the year and ended up with an A in the class. When I stopped by the next year after I graduated to visit some friends who were still in school, I asked about him.
Come to find out, the school had fired him and he was no longer there.
It was a crazy ordeal and I am glad that DT got what was coming to him.”
Another User Comments:
“Makes me wonder if he wanted the SSNs for a different reason, with how focused he was on you filling in that part.” fallen_star_2319
11. Treat Me Like I Don't Do Anything At Work? I Have A Plan To Get Your Workload Increased
Since you can, you know, handle it for me.
“I work at a small company that primarily works in e-commerce as sort of a jack of all trades. One of those roles includes me overseeing a lot of advertising budgets through a bunch of different mediums. While I manage these passively on a daily basis, I dive into each of these platforms intensively on a month-to-month basis to see where we can be a little more effective – that data along with sales also informs another aspect of my job, which is breaking down unit sales to give my boss a clearer picture when he places reorders.
Since we’re a company with only a handful of people and most have their own specialized roles, we work as a team in an environment that leaves you mostly responsible for your own time.
If something lags behind, it is super obvious as to who is at fault. In my work with advertising and analytics, the situation is a little more opaque as there are ups and downs during weeks; and some of this is fulfilled through other parties.
(Think FBA on Amazon.)
My co-worker who works in logistics is, without a doubt, a solid gold jerk. He often drinks when he begins a shift – think a 40 or a tall boy (or two) – and it occasionally causes orders to be misplaced, wrong, or sent to the wrong address.
As a treat, sometimes the warehouse will smell faintly of stale beer. On top of this, he’s entitled and confrontational because he’s the only one that does a “real man’s” job – i.e. not primarily computer-based and doesn’t like the fact that I have a flexible schedule wherein I can arrive/leave when I please – just so long as the work is done.
Because of this confluence of factors, we’ll go through phases where I don’t interact with him much – at all – over stretches of time that can go through months.
He’s kept around because it’s not easy to find someone who’s familiar with specific logistic platforms and can take over the job on day 1, and if it happened it would require me switching my job duties almost entirely to shipping to keep up with the demand.
Still, with the work required and in combination with the fact that a good chunk of this is third-party fulfilled, he got to enjoy a decent amount of downtime, and there were days when an hour-long phone call, or a two-hour lunch, or coming in for a half-day wasn’t that uncommon.
Earlier in the year, we had a semi-trailer full of product come in that I helped him unload along with the rest of the team – extra hands were welcome, but not entirely necessary.
But I came in on a day when I wasn’t in a great mood. During the unloading, he chided me for being slow and told me to pick up the pace.
“Put your back into it, bro.” After years of snide comments like this and just being generally fed up with his crap, I wasn’t having it today.
Me: “Sorry dude, I haven’t had my morning booze to give me that extra pep in my step.”
Him: “The heck you just say? You wanna freaking go, bro?”
Me: “Screw off, keep your comments to yourself or you can unload the trailer alone.”
Him: “You’re a disrespectful brat, what the heck do you even do here all day locked up in your office?
Lazy jerk.”
Lazy? Ohhhh boy.
At this point, my boss told us both to shut the heck up and get back to work. I threw on my headphones and quietly did the rest of the unload without incident.
But as I mulled over the exchange, I decided that this slight on me was going to be repaid, in full.
A few days later, I felt that it was time for a response, and decided to move up my reviewing processes for advertising.
As part of these duties, I can move a lot of funds around. And in fact, after a long review, I decided that we were just spending a little too much on third-party fulfillment – maybe I can even scrape a few hundred extra dollars in sales and savings if I move a few more orders in-house.
A new module I was working on that would drive sales to our website instead of focusing on other channels? Let’s double the budget and finish that up a few weeks ahead of schedule!
And, because I decided to let curiosity get the best of me, let’s move a few hundred bucks from an adequate but middling campaign that used 3P fulfillment and move that towards a different platform that would require us fulfilling the packages in-house.
I told my boss that I was going to be experimenting with the advertising budgets a little more than usual to see if I could get some extra business and warned him sufficiently that it might result in losses or additional bucks burned to get the data I needed. I have a stellar track record, so he was, of course, fine with it.
Over the next few weeks, the funds slowly moved over to ramp up the experiment. At first, it resulted in a net of about 8 extra orders a day out of a typical day of 70 or 80.
A small profit margin was realized as while a few of these were new orders, some were simply moving the orders from 3P fulfillment to in-house.
Fast-forward to the present, months later, and the changes that I’ve made have been fully realized. There are now, on average, an additional 40 to 60 orders that my coworker has to manually fulfill by himself due to the shift in advertising budgets.
On top of that, it has resulted in a not insignificant amount of funds in both savings and profit due to the orders being fulfilled in-house. My boss is pleased and has signaled that a raise is possibly forthcoming.
Since the raise is currently unrealized, I’m enjoying my revenge in the meantime wholeheartedly. That downtime I previously mentioned that he enjoyed? That’s all gone, now. One of the few metrics he has to deal with is getting orders out on time, or it will affect his pay.
As a result, beer time has all but disappeared because there just simply isn’t enough time in the day, and he now averages a 30-minute lunch break instead of the hour he was accustomed to.
Half-days are now a thing of the past. He now complains fairly regularly to my other coworker that the work “just doesn’t stop.”
Far be it from me to gloat.
I haven’t said crap. I’ll let the extra work gloat for me.
Don’t call me lazy.”
10. Make Me Think My Car's Value Is Less Than What It Really Is? Enjoy Constant Calls And Emails
I’m sure that gets annoying really quickly!
“On November 17th, 2010, I was involved in a major vehicle accident (18-year-old kid’s fault).
I was in the hospital for 6 days and was on disability home rest for 3 months for recovery (back issues/fused spine). When I was coherent enough to deal with business, I started talks with his insurance company.
From the very start, they lowballed me on price from just about everything. $600 value for a $3,500 car (Kelly Blue book valued at $3690) and I had a brand new paint job on it from 3 months prior (their value: $32) and 4 brand new tires not even 2 months old (valued: $5 a tire).
They browbeat me into thinking that this was how the process worked. Nearly convinced me to settle.
This insurance company wanted to cut me a check for $700 bucks and some change within 5 minutes of talking to me.
The negotiations started horribly and I couldn’t get them to budge for nearly a week. I talked to my lawyer and he couldn’t help but give me great advice. I got additional advice from my own insurance agent on how to deal with them and basically asked professionals how to approach this.
It turns out, this insurance company the kid used was the shadiest last resort of the last resort kind. My lawyer (who dealt with the medical bills, not car issues) told me with the record this kid had, he was paying close to $1600 every 6 months.
He was uninsurable by all standards but it was his insurance company that was the worst of the worst. They were playing the waiting/scare tactics game with me.
What they hadn’t planned on was a guy with nothing but time on his hands and my Jimmies had definitely been rustled. I inquired about every single item in and on my car.
I located receipts, got estimates on everything I had, and bombarded them with faxes and paperwork. At every opportunity, I begged and pleaded with the companies I dealt with in estimates to over-inflate the price of the cost. $700 repair for a leather jacket, $2300 for a Dell i3 laptop, $160 for “designer” jeans (probably Kirkland signature if I recall).
This insurance company only budged a bit on the fair market value price so they started playing a new game with me. Not taking my calls or not responding to my emails.
When my claims adjuster agent did call back, my phone would ring once… (as in 5 seconds) and he would hang up so it looks like they made an attempt to call.
I would immediately return the call but would get, “your claims adjuster just stepped out of the office” or “he’s headed into a meeting” from the operator/receptionist.
Nearly 3 weeks of these phone tag and email aversions games led me to create a detailed itinerary of my agent’s whereabouts and excuses of why he couldn’t take my calls.
I then upped my game. I called his bosses, talked to other agents, and told my story to all of them. When that got nowhere, I upped my game even more.
I called every hour, on the hour for 8 business days in a row. I was on a first-name basis with 4 of his co-workers, knew his supervisor’s name and boss’s name, and had all of their extensions and email addresses on speed dial. I was even CCing all of them on every email I sent so my agent had 0 excuse that he didn’t get my calls.
Shortly after, a settlement offer was sent via email (as he refused to talk to me over the phone) in the amount of $1,800 for my vehicle and $1,200 for my personal items. I wanted $3,500 and $1,750 and wasn’t going to settle for less.
He chose to make this personal and not business so I did the only logical thing… I made it business in the worst possible way.
I called on a Friday afternoon and left a message on every co-worker’s phone as well as the supervisor’s phone that because my agent refuses to negotiate properly nor return my calls, I would now be calling all of them every hour, on the hour as well as the supervisor and boss.
Leaving detailed messages to call me back and offer me what my vehicle and personal items were worth. I stated I would be starting this on Monday morning, 8 am sharp.
Needless to say, by Tuesday afternoon, I had a settlement offer of $3,200 for my vehicle and $1,730 for my personal effects. (Figures that were very fair and almost generous in the industry) But I replied back with the following.
“See, what bothers me is that I would have settled for less than this amount far earlier in the negotiations. But after all this time and effort, I will not settle for anything less than $3530 for my vehicle and $1810 for my personal effects.
I will start calling again tomorrow morning until these terms are met.”
Within 2 hours of leaving that message, I had a new email with the settlement offer of $3,530 for my vehicle and $1,810 for personal effects.
I accepted much to their delight.”
9. Threaten Me With Child Protection? Pay $1,500
“This story takes place a few years after our breakup and settlement of our house.
We have had 2 years of 50/50 custody of our daughter, one week on, one week off, hand over is Monday after school.
Which is good as I avoid seeing Karen most weeks.
On one of my weeks, the kid comes down with the stomach flu on Thursday (both ends like a volcano).
This carried through to Saturday, Sunday she was tired but had no symptoms. I kept her home on Monday (to ensure she is 48 hours symptom-free before sending her to school).
I dropped the kid off at Karen’s informing her she has had the stomach flu, but she should be fine for school tomorrow. Without asking any additional questions, she utters a sound I’ve only heard Camels make before closing the door… Rude!
But anyway.
Three days go by, I get a call from Karen.
Karen: “The kid is lactose intolerant. You need to get special milk.”
Me: “Huh, where is this coming from?”
Karen: “She had ice cream last night and threw up 45 minutes later. I spoke to my hair & beauty teacher who said she must be lactose intolerant.”
Now it’s time to mention that my partner at the time (wife now) is a qualified and practicing dietitian and is listening to this call as I put it on speaker.
Wife: “I really don’t think so. Lactose intolerance mainly affects the bowels. The kid had gastro last week. The body will often reject dairy foods for 1-2 weeks post gastro, but if symptoms continue after 3 weeks, then it’s something to look into.” She went on to explain the body science behind this, but I’ll spare you the details.
My wife said that she can not make a formal diagnosis as that requires specific costly tests but she can refer and treat such conditions. She said it’s her professional opinion, as these symptoms are sudden and presented around the same time as gastro.
It’s gastro-related dairy avoidance.
Karen: “You’re not a doctor. The kid is lactose intolerant, and if you don’t comply with the treatment, I’ll report you to child protection.”
I thought for a second and said “ok. I’ll make you a deal. You get the formal diagnosis, and I’ll fund the full cost of the test. If it comes back negative, I’m not paying a cent.” Hearing this, my wife smiled.
Karen: “So I pay for the test and when I get the diagnosis, you will pay me back the full amount?”
Me: “ Yup, including flights and accommodation.”
Karen agreed to this deal. I text her this for written evidence, and she replied with “ok.”
A few weeks go by, and the kid tells me, “Mommy is taking me to Melbourne for tests. I get to go on a plane, yay.”
It’s a good time to note that, that week, the kid was having milk with her breakfast, and surprise surprise… No problems.
Another 4 weeks go by, Karen calls me.
Karen: “So the test results came back negative. The specialist said it was probably a gastro-related issue. Nothing that we could have seen coming, but at least now we know.
Anyway, the flights cost me $600, accommodation was $150, tests were $750, so you owe me half, which is $900.
Me: “Um firstly, my wife who treats conditions like this said it was gastro-related. You refused to listen stating we are not doctors, but apparently, your hair and beauty tech is a qualified doctor, ay?
Secondly, $600, $150, $750 equals $1,500, half of which is $750, not $900 which brings me to my main point. We agreed that if the test was negative, I wasn’t going to pay a cent.
You agreed.”
I hung up and sent her a screenshot of our agreement including the “ok” response.”
8. Refuse To Compensate Me For The Project Even Though You Promised? You Won't Have Access To It Now
“This all started 8 months ago when my professor called me into his office. He started off by saying how I was his best student last semester (I had gotten an A in the course) and went on talking about how students these days do not understand the necessity of a good education.
This went on for a while before he told me he has a project for me to work on. Next thing you know, I’m signing a nondisclosure agreement to build a data scraper for retail stores and do data analysis on stock management.
He told me he won’t be able to pay me anything as of yet but would do so once he gets funding. I loved the idea and believed it would work well, so I did not question anything.
Jump to May 2018, I have built his core data scrapper that saves files locally as well as uploads them to AWS. Now he asked for a cross-platform desktop application that turns on on startup and runs in the background.
I told him this is a lot of work and I cannot continue to work without pay. He told me he has “people” ready to purchase it as soon as I get it done.
I put even more effort into it. Then he mentioned that he also has someone else building the same desktop app in C# as a backup. I was confident in my work and didn’t even bother about that.
August 2018: My desktop app is ready! Sure, a few minor bugs here and there that I fixed all along but nothing major. He said he will test it and let me know how it goes.
Didn’t hear from him for a month. October 2018: he sends me an email out of nowhere with a screenshot of the error. This dumb idiot entered the wrong value in the date field and was blaming me for the app not working.
Sure, I added a check to it (like I already had for all other variables). He calls me for a meeting to discuss the idea of me working for the startup as an intern, and I question that twice because I have my own work to do.
But then again, it was one way to get paid for it, and we were talking about at least $3,000 of payment for the work that I had already done. So I agree to it.
He said he would get back to me, but I don’t hear from him for a month.
Jump to last week: He calls me for a meeting. It’s been a month; he hasn’t replied to my messages or emails.
I ask him where’s my compensation, and he said there is none because the app doesn’t work. My b***d starts to rage and I lose it. In the middle of the library, I went on a rant to give him the worst crap of his life.
I asked him one last time if he is going to pay me or not, and he said he cannot; his hands are tied. I didn’t even think twice and I left.
Sitting in my room, I thought about how I couldn’t let it all go. So, I sent him a message apologizing to him and said I will get it all patched up in 48 hours.
He agrees.
Guess what? I added a hidden feature that gets data from my AWS storage (personal) checks for true or false and encrypts all his data on the laptop and shows a message, “Go screw yourself.””
Another User Comments:
“Read up on that NDA with a lawyer. You did all the work for no compensation; you can probably go ahead and own that program. Or better yet modify it some more so it would be different enough from the original and rebrand it.
That’s a big screw you and potentially legal.” Reddit user
7. Make Me Do All The Work When We're Scheduled Together? I'll Leave You To Work Alone On Our Busiest Day
“Quite a few years ago, I moved into a house with a few of my best friends.
One of my friends got me a job with her at the local gas station within walking distance of our house and I thought I was pretty set with my new arrangement – living with my best friends, able to walk to work, and having a job that should have been one of the easiest positions I’ve ever held… That is until I met my coworker – Jane.
I worked nights. We didn’t get too many customers during my shift so the majority of the cleaning of the store and grounds and stocking of merchandise fell on the night staff.
We were expected to make sure there was always fresh coffee, sweep and mop the floors inside, make sure that all of our merchandise was neatly displayed, take out the trash inside and outside by the gas pumps, sweep up the parking lot, and stock the beverages which entailed going into the walk-in fridge and stocking it from inside the cooler (which could take 2 hours or more at times).
There were always 2 people scheduled on the night shift, most of my coworkers and I would split the work and one person would don their coat and gloves and go stock the cooler for a few hours, and the other person would keep coffee made and sweep up the store and stop and ring up the occasional customer and then go back to whatever task they were on or one person would ring up customers the entire night and the other would do what needed to be done around the store until it was all completed.
Not Jane. Jane would usually hang out in the back in the manager’s office for hours or stand behind the registers “doing inventory” and make the other employees unfortunate enough to be scheduled with her do all of the tasks that needed to be completed in and out of the store and have to stop and run to the register to ring people up even when she was standing right there “counting” and couldn’t be bothered to even acknowledge the customers.
When people called off, it was standard to call the other employees and see if someone could come in and take the shift. Most people would give a legit reason why they couldn’t when they declined – i.e. No sitter, family plans, etc. Not Jane.
Jane would just answer with a flat no when she was called and would then hang up.
My best friend came to me a few months into working at the place and told me that our manager told her that Jane said that I don’t do anything during my shifts with her.
OH, HECK NAH! I do literally ALL of the work as she sits on her butt in an office or on the counters at the register station doing nothing and she wants to say that I am the one not working?
I decided I was done with that place and began looking for another job.
Jane fancied herself the second in command in our store under the manager. Now, mind you, we didn’t have an assistant manager with that gas station chain.
There was only a manager and there were supposed to be a few shift leads who really didn’t have any power, just a few additional tasks to complete during the shifts where they were scheduled as a lead – inventory, ordering stock, etc. Jane was not ACTUALLY a shift lead but she was able to do most of the tasks of the shift lead and acted like that came with power that it didn’t.
She was supposedly undergoing training classes to be a lead officially and would walk around on her shift with a clipboard and make little notes here and there about things that could be improved in our store.
One of her “improvements” was that everyone during their shift should do 1-hour of stocking the cooler so that it didn’t fall on one person doing it for 2 or more hours on the night shift; stocking the cooler meant having to be in temperatures below 40 degrees the entire time and was not a favorite task of anyone who worked there.
The best part of this “improvement” was that she would harp on my coworkers about it while NEVER stepping foot in the cooler herself to do anything that I saw the entire time that I worked with her.
Another of her “improvements” was that everyone had to attend a weekly mandatory team meeting because she read somewhere in one of her training books that it’s supposed policy – even though none of us, including the manager, had heard of this before she brought it up.
These team meetings were universally hated and completely useless – no one wanted to go to the store for 20 minutes of pay at a time they’d otherwise be off of work and there was literally nothing of value that was ever discussed during them because we worked at a gas station and there wasn’t much to go over that we didn’t already know.
The meetings were just a show of power by Jane where she could go over her clipboard and force people to listen to her stupid observations and suggestions…. Or so I was told.
I missed the one meeting that was scheduled while I still worked there as I told them I had a doctor’s appointment already scheduled but in reality, I went to an interview.
I came to work my shift at the gas station after receiving a call earlier in the day saying that I had passed my background check and employment verification and was offered the job that I had been seeking.
I asked my shift lead how to put in my 2 Week’s Notice and she smiled, and I asked who I would be working with on my last day. Jane. She asked if I already officially had the job and I confirmed that I did and that all of my background checks were complete.
She then asked me if I really wanted to put in my 2 Weeks Notice and I got her drift and told her never mind.
On the shift before my last shift, I put Jane’s clipboard on top of a large cabinet in the manager’s office.
I am tall and it was easy to see and reach for me but would not be for short Jane. I didn’t think much of it, it was just supposed to throw her off for a few minutes until she located it easily and moved on with her day.
I quickly forgot that I even did it.
My last day was Christmas. I was scheduled as a split shift. From 7-10 pm, I was scheduled with my best friend.
My best friend was scheduled to get off at 10 pm and Jane was to come in and work her normal night shift from 10 pm-6 am. I came in at 7 and worked as I normally would and had a fun time clowning with my best friend when we had a rare moment of downtime – being Christmas Day, there wasn’t really anything else around that was open so we were swamped as a result.
My best friend left at exactly 10 pm, but it took a few minutes for Jane to arrive. Jane walked into the store and I came from behind the register and walked up to her and said, “Merry Christmas!
I quit” and started to walk around her to leave the store. She stood there in the entryway looking shook until she finally said, “You’re kidding, right?” I laughed and told her that it would not be a Merry Christmas for me if I was kidding and then left her to the store on her own on one of the busiest nights of the year.
My best friend filled me in on what happened when I left. She went through the phone list calling everyone to see if they could come in to work my shift. Every single person just gave a simple No and hung up on her.
She was left to run the store on her own for quite some time before the manager showed up to assist her.
The next team meeting that she had after I left, she could not find her clipboard and had a meltdown in front of all of the other employees as they all stood there looking at the clipboard still on the cabinet where I had left it.
She couldn’t see but they could and they didn’t feel a need to point it out. They ended up getting to go home without doing the meeting because she couldn’t find her notes.
They stopped doing meetings shortly after that.
Now, before you start feeling sorry for my manager having to lose time with his people on Christmas Day to clean up the mess from my revenge – keep in mind that he has access to video recordings of every inch of the store and outside grounds and could easily verify how much work I was doing during my shifts before he felt the need to insult my work ethic to my best friend based solely on the lie of one person.
I’m actually GLAD that he was caught up in my wonderful revenge, truth be told, I couldn’t have planned it any better. I still smile broadly every time I think of this memory or walk into that chain of gas stations.”
6. Have A Weird Way Of Running Your Business? Let Me Make A Phone Call
“Used to work in private security (rent-a-cop/bacon bits jokes go here).
When I was first hired on, thought the company was fairly upstanding yadda yadda because the owner and I would bullcrap a little about our respective military careers. “A guy who used to be in pararescue can’t be that bad, right?”
First year was relatively normal security work, mostly fixed post (think Walmart door greeter but with a badge and handcuffs) and general “I’ll tackle you if you steal things, but otherwise I’m just a breathing security camera” stuff.
About a year in, I finish all of my qualifications for armed work and get assigned to patrol. Patrol is basically private police: companies would hire us to make rounds and respond to things at their locations (mostly apartment complexes, and mostly noise complaints or occasionally towing off cars and such, but occasionally managing residents during a fire or breaking up disturbances).
The company handled pay in a kinda wonky manner. Twice a month (on the 1st and 15th) we got paid for two weeks worth of work, and every now and again (it seemed like whenever they felt like it was getting too far behind) we’d get an extra paycheck slipped in with our normal one.
I got my first paycheck five weeks after starting, and there was a point where we were receiving December checks in February. Pay rates were determined by the type of work: entry-level staff made $7/hour, more advanced made $8, and armed paid $10.
Raises were available on top of that (for the record, I worked there for 3 years and never got a raise, and the two people I know who got raises each got 25¢ an hour after 4 years, also all of this was during a $5.15 minimum wage).
Patrol required armed officers but paid as advanced, but was also a guaranteed 42 hours a week on a set schedule (three 12-hour days, a 6-hour day, and three days off) so most of us didn’t really complain.
Moving up into patrol taught me a lot about the company that I didn’t know. I figured the owner was a little sexist (ex-military types tend to be) but the depths of his sexism caught me a little off-guard.
And then there’s the racism. I’m Latino, but I look white (because I avoid the sun like the plague and got my bone structure from my white mother’s side), though my surname is a dead giveaway: there’s a state in Mexico to which I’m apparently related (must be a distant relative on Abuelita’s side).
I was apparently good enough to be on patrol, but not promotable (even though I worked my butt off, even though supervisors routinely recommended me for promotion) for some reason.
Or the fact that we had one black guy on staff, and he was fired for something that other people got away with. The female officer was assigned the easiest shift because “it’s all she can handle” and “this way, it’s obvious I’m trying to work with the women.” Those are as close to verbatim quotes as I can recall.
Or the time he held a contest between patrols for excellence and canceled it after 2 months…two months in which it happened that the female officer won once and took second once, and the Mexican dude won once and took second once.
Between those two months, I made an extra $30 in gas cards. WOOO!
For a frame of reference, here are a couple of things white dudes did that they didn’t get fired for: hitting 120mph in a company car in a 40mph zone (after over a year of doing 20+ over), carrying a gun without the proper permit, blatant harassment, admitting to skipping stops on a route and just sending the business a false statement, writing racist slogans on the front of company-provided TASER cartridges, tasing people without proper justification, sleeping on the job, working intoxicated, etc.
I also learned about how they screwed over clients: this company pays for 12 hours of continuous patrol between their three properties, but the owners want more funds so that route also covers 5 apartment complexes and handles finances for a couple of stores.
Another business pays us $1M a year for 5.5 hours per weeknight and 7.5 hours per weekend night (approximately $450 per hour) and that route jumps off property like clockwork every night to take care of 3-5 other properties at specified times, leaving that client without their only security at key times.
This group of apartment complexes pays for 1 hour on property per night, might get half of that if the night is slow because of the workload.
And then he decided to screw over his staff (more).
Patrol was offered a salary (that was 10% less than the minimum legal salary), with the strong implication that if we wanted any hours at all we’d take it. Once we were all salaried (or gone), things shifted over to 48-hour weeks.
I did the math at one point and realized that if I watched a movie at the theater and ate twice at fast food on every day off, it was still cheaper for me to not work than to work (because of gas and food while working, considering I walked about 12-15 miles every night as part of the patrols, which requires a fairly brisk pace, which requires calories galore).
But if you were scheduled off and they called you in, you either accepted the extra hours or you got chewed out, and if you made a habit of saying no you’d get written up for anything they could think of.
Then one of my colleagues got into an accident at work. He was hospitalized for like 9 days and ended up making a full recovery. But he was in the company car, so according to the company he was responsible for paying the $2500 insurance deductible.
I’d had it at that point. I borrowed some change from my mother to talk to a labor attorney. Best $200 I ever spent.
Attorney gave me three pieces of advice:
- If there’s a problem with the way we’re being paid, talk to the labor board.
- My colleague was not on the hook for the car. That’s why the company had insurance.
It wasn’t our fault that he was too cheap to spring for a lower deductible.
- Document everything, but keep my name out of anything.
I passed word to the injured colleague about the insurance thing, and he lawyered up pretty much immediately (his family had enough savings that he didn’t have to work).
I also made a not-so-anonymous phone call to the state labor board (asking that they not reveal it was me). 3 weeks later, I’m in the office handling post-shift paperwork when the rep comes in.
I leave as fast as I possibly could. I didn’t want to be there for that whole thing.
Fast forward about 6 months, and the labor board has finished its investigation.
Turns out that the salary was in fact too low to be legally allowable, but also that our positions were not legally eligible for salary anyway. So all of those 48/60/72+ hour weeks were full of overtime.
Unpaid overtime. Unpaid overtime on which we were owed interest. Also, requiring patrol to be armed but not paying them armed rates wasn’t legal (based on the employment contract, any work for which we required that license required we be paid the rate associated with that license).
Also, the “twice a month you’re paid for 2 weeks of work” thing isn’t legal either. So we got several oversized paychecks covering back pay, plus others covering interest (which had to be noted in the check stub as interest on back pay).
The labor board rep couldn’t do anything about the ways they were screwing over their customers, but she did have someone she could call. Someone she did call. A couple of weeks later, that investigation started. I don’t know all the details (I left during that time to start some higher education) but a few months later they sold the company to someone else, and I heard through the g*******e that part of the reason was that they lost several contracts and all that back pay pretty much wiped out their savings (I got something like $8K in back pay, and there were another dozen patrol officers in that time frame, so I figure around $100K total went out just to patrol, and apparently there were some discrepancies in how they managed fixed post staff as well) and they had to move to a smaller house.
The rumors also said that after the sale, the new owners renegotiated all the contracts (including getting a few that the previous owners had lost to being shady) and somehow they’re still profitable (even after giving raises and whatnot).
It’s almost like the previous owners had just been trying to milk everyone for as much as they could get.
Oh, and an aside: I got to know the manager of that business that paid us $1M/year pretty well afterward.
She neither confirmed nor denied that $1M figure. So take it with a grain of salt, but if it’s true (she manages the most affluent shopping center in town, which includes a restaurant where prices aren’t on the menu because “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it”) that one contract would cover all the expenses of all of patrol.
The owners always seemed really intent on keeping her happy (and made sure that we knew not to tell her we left the area for any reason except end of shift).
And they always had savings to spend on things like a large house in one of the more affluent areas, the private school for their daughter, and buying a new gun or two (higher priced stuff, where the name stamp adds $1500 to the price) every couple of weeks…”
5. Cost Us Our Jobs? It's Time To Pay Up
“Don’t worry; the statute of limitations is way over, and I was absolved of any and all involvement in this mess.
After being brought up to speed on what my boss was doing by taking Company A’s customers and using their resources and manufacturers to sell the same product through Company B.
My boss started confiding in me and asking for my help to get Company B up and running because, in his words, Company A’s days are numbered because the customers are tired of the owner.
I helped my boss mostly by making drawings on Company A’s time and dollar for Company B.
To be honest, Company A’s time was to be short mostly due to the owners’ methods, but my boss was definitely working behind the scenes to crush any new products or customers’ chances of purchasing from Company A.
I spent 6 months on a project that would have netted the company about 6 million a year to a very big and powerful company. The markup on the product was way more than usual because of this and would have been huge for the company.
However, the owner got into an angry match with the customer and the customer got tired of it and left negotiations. Of course, this was after I had spent all my time designing the product.
Eventually, Company A had to lay everyone off because of the way things were going. My boss of course assured me that I would have a job with Company B the moment Company A terminated me.
The very next day after I was let go from Company A I went to work in the same building, the same office, and the same chair for Company B.
I was using all of Company A’s equipment, drawings, etc to do the job for Company B. By this time I saw the writing on the wall and was simply waiting for the chance to get out of this mess while looking for work elsewhere.
While working for Company B, Company A needed someone local to clean up and ship everything and hired a few of us back to do that. So basically 2 paychecks for doing the same work for about a month.
Company A hired a few of us back to inventory everything and pack it up for shipping to the main office located in another state. I wasn’t involved much with the physical inventory as I was with the IT side of things like computers copiers, printers, and drawings.
Shortly before Company A went under I had convinced them to let me purchase and build 2 computers with a very nice $6000 cad program. My boss wanted to keep those and instead sent them the old computers.
He also had a laptop that belonged to Company A. Now this laptop is literally the heart of his entire operation. He had 2 email accounts, company A’s and Company B’s, on this laptop, which was Company A’s property.
Which meant that all the emails on there from Company B were technically the property of Company A. So instead of sending it to Company A with all the inventory he had me purchase a duplicate laptop from eBay and send that instead.
Now in the eyes of the law replacing property is still stealing it. My boss may have sent them an identical if not better laptop but the one he had was still very much the property of Company A.
He even advised Company A to sell back the copy machine to the company they bought it from, then turned around and bought the copier from the company. Another task he had for me was to find the pricing spreadsheets for all of Company A’s products and give him a copy.
That way he knew what he could charge the customers.
During this time, my boss had purchased the business next door as the old one had relocated and the building was up for sale, so he used it to store a bunch of inventory he skimmed off from Company A.
Basically we had to move everything over there for a couple of days, so someone from Company A’s office would come and inspect the place, write us our checks for the work we did and head back to the main office.
The next day we moved everything back, why? Because my boss knew the landlord of the building Company A was renting and had purchased it from them. He was effectively Company A’s landlord for the last 8 months and tried to use this to get company A to pay out their lease for breaking it early.
He of course used the original landlord and building owner to do this. Because in the lease it stated that Company A had the first right to purchase the building should it ever come up for sale.
Company A had now discovered that something is wrong. Inventory is way off which is funny because it wasn’t off because of what my boss did but what his partner in crime had been doing for years.
One of the other members had been running scams on Company A for a long long time and was a big contributor to the demise of Company A. So with the two of them, they sunk Company A.
They had been working together but separately for a long time and eventually became aware of what each other was doing. As such, they decided to work together to keep Company A off of each other’s backs.
After finding a bunch of things wrong or missing, Company A filed a lawsuit against Company B and my boss’s partner. It listed everyone in the company that was at my location as an accomplice including me.
At this time I was getting phone calls from Company A about what I knew, of course, I played dumb and went along with Company B as I had yet to find a job.
Well turns out my boss wasn’t satisfied with screwing over company A he kept putting off the pay adjustment he had promised me and others for working with company B.
He started us out very low on hourly pay, it was a few dollars less than what Company A was paying because well he’s getting things started and doesn’t have the funds.
So of course he decides that he needs a new Cadillac Escalade for company purposes. I later find out that he is going to move the company to a new location and is in the middle of closing on a half-million-dollar house.
But of course, he tells me and the others that he isn’t even paying himself so that he can pay us more. I had been using the work computer to do some designs for myself on the side, after hours, and one day I left to get something to eat and came back.
I punched in my disarm code to the alarm and it no longer worked. The alarm company called to confirm if there was a problem and told me that I was no longer an authorized user.
My boss then got a call from the alarm company that I was there working off the clock. He was no longer OK with me using ‘his’ property for personal use.
That’s when I decided enough was enough. Job or no job, I’m noping the heck out of this mess.
Well remember the heart of my boss’s whole operation, that laptop he kept from Company A?
Well it still belonged to company A and all the information on it did too. So I copied all of the emails from my boss’s computer because well I was the only IT-literate person there and had all the passwords.
I then set up a meeting with the owner of Company A and told him that I would give him all this information if he would clear me of everything and wipe the slate clean.
He then paid for me to fly to the location and meet with him, and his attorney who after I told them what I had, was more than happy to write up papers saying I was free and clear of this mess.
I also agreed to provide written testimony to what my boss had done with the computers, drawings, inventory, and ownership of the building. It became a slam dunk so to speak for the attorney after he got all this information.
The emails alone were used to sink any rebuttal from my boss.
When I got back from my meeting I packed up my office and left, saying I had found a new job.
I was never part of the actual discussions between the two companies and they are sworn to keep the details secret but from what I heard Company B had to pay large sums to Company A.
The partner in crime lost a lot of standing with the manufacturers he dealt with and is still trying to scam his way through businesses. Company B is alive but is much smaller than it would have been had it not suffered so much trouble.
Boss didn’t get his big half-million house and sold his Escalade.”
4. Want To Treat Your Staff Like Slaves? I'll Make You A Slave Of Your Own Store
”So a few years ago, I worked at a popular fast food chain.
I had just moved to a new town with my family and applied for my first job. Luckily for me, the boss was willing to give me a chance after running late for an interview or two because I had just started driving on top of being new to the area.
Now this is a very small, old, literally falling apart store in a college town. Everything is outdated. At first, things were pretty great. My boss, we shall call him Mr. T, was a little difficult to get along with sometimes because he was getting older, and most of the employees were incompetent, some addicts, some thieves, and some just plain bad people.
A few months go by, I’m getting “promotions” (register to window to grill) and regular raises, but more importantly, I’m making friends. Some friends that are basically family to me now.
There are about 25 employees in total, and although sometimes we don’t get along during the shift, we all usually partied in some way or another on the weekends. After a while, I become good friends with the supervisors.
So time goes by, and all of a sudden, I’ve been there a year. I’m now a supervisor. Becoming a supervisor is sort of a “big deal” because Mr. T asks the other supervisors if they think you’d be a good fit and really respects their opinion because he’s a good boss, and he knows that they see a part of the employees he doesn’t.
With that being said, understand that the employees are kinda crappy, but the supervisors are all very competent. Some would even say overqualified. They may not like the job, but they have pride in their work ethic to do it well.
I soon learned that the supervisors were the inner circle. They were all very close because 1) they’d all been there for a few years and 2) they all were good human beings.
They were also basically the reason the store was still running. So like I said. Things were pretty cool.
However.
Mr. T’s daughter worked there. She was in her late 30s, about 5’8″, maybe 130.
Pretty small woman. But GAWT DANG. She made life heck for us some days. Sometimes she’d be fine all day, other days she was a nightmare. She had the title of Assistant Manager but did jack crap.
Worked for maybe 6 hours whenever she saw fit because she made the schedule. She’d chew out employees for trivial mistakes, get in exceptionally loud arguments with Mr. T regardless if the store was empty or packed shoulder to shoulder, purposefully schedule people in a way that she knew would make people upset, and worst of all, make wild accusations about the supervisors doing things to hurt the business (stealing).
We would later learn she had a lot of mental health problems, so that is probably why she was so irritable at work.
After a year of me putting up with her, and years for the other supervisors, we had finally had enough.
Now, we didn’t want to do anything drastic, because we actually liked Mr. T. He was a good man. He had owned that little store for so long. As I matured, I realized the reason we had so many problematic employees (why he probably hired me, a 15-year-old high school kid who was late to both interviews and made it known I had no work experience) was because he believed in people.
He wanted to help somehow and give these people chances to get their lives on track. We didn’t want to drive a wedge between him and his daughter, but something had to be done.
So we had a supervisor meeting and tried to help while also trying to push her out. We offered to take on many of her daily tasks to ease her workload (which was basically nothing) so that she wasn’t as stressed at work and therefore stressing us out.
The most important of these tasks was making the schedule.
2 years. This is where the revenge begins.
Mr. T calls a meeting. He’s selling the restaurant to a local guy that owns another store of the same fast-food chain in the same town.
The deal will be finalized at the end of the month. This was all rather sudden (we were all a little heartbroken but knew he needed to let the work and the stress go), but he assured us that the guy buying the place gave him his word that there would be no roster or pay changes.
The guy was pretty sleazy but he at least held up to it. We will now refer to him as Sleazy McSleazyface (SM for short).
So now Mr. T is out, SM owns the store.
But he’s running his main store on the other side of town which is a lot nicer than ours. So he appoints a manager for our store to run things for him.
Nice Guy, NG. The guy is pretty cool, way too nice, a big pushover, and just generally doesn’t know how to run a business. He used to be an assistant manager at the other location but never had to make the hard decisions.
He never did anything to wrong me. But I took advantage of him being a pushover (the reason I say this is because it was upsetting to me knowing that I could get away with stuff if I wanted to.
There was no structure).
Well at first, everything’s cool; some of the supervisors that have been there a while start leaving and I eventually become “head” supervisor and start making the schedule.
Everyone basically looking for a way out but nothing serious yet. Now that Mr. T is gone, I make my first order of business to get his daughter out of the store.
I start hiding her pens, putting things where they don’t belong, basically doing everything I can to make her hate this place. (Mind you, this is before I knew of her mental health issues; I’m not that cold-hearted.) She eventually quits.
(Revenge within revenge here.)
Now I put up working there for years cuz it wasn’t too bad, but now that management changed, I began to resent the place. Supervisors and the general workforce were being worked thin, and the place is becoming more of a mess and falling apart, quality of service is terrible.
SM was trying to pinch every penny from that place, but he did it all through NG. SM would show up every couple of days to check on things, he would bash NG in front of employees and customers, and he’d talk crap about the employees to the supervisors thinking that we were all just “on his team” because we were close with the last owner.
People started quitting, so he sent people from the other store to work at our location. They would tell me stories about him hitting on the young female employees, how he would do illegal substances with ex-employees and talk crap about his stores with them, and rumors of him having an affair on his wife.
He was making it heck for us to work there and trying to make it look like it was NG’s fault. The supervisors knew the truth though.
So right about here is where all of the job searching the employees were doing that I mentioned earlier, really got serious.
I would say approximately 25% already had interviews lined up.
So one night (roughly 4 months after management had changed), I came to work and something just snapped. I was done with the place.
My first job in what used to be a cozy, little hole-in-the-wall was now full of resentment. I put my 3 weeks in (huh, 3 weeks, I wonder why?) and talked the rest of the supervisors into quitting with me.
All but 1 followed suit.
Now the reason I put in 3 weeks instead of 2 was for 1 reason (see what I did there?): I wanted to make sure that place was run into the ground when I left. And I knew I could have put in a 52-week notice, and NG would have accepted it.
NG never talked to me again, and I don’t blame him, but there was a deep-seated hate in me for what SM had ruined. Some of the other supervisors left immediately, some did two weeks.
Which would leave me a week of being the only supervisor to shamelessly sabotage the place.
So it began.
I heard that supervisors were gonna come from the other store to fill our places.
That wasn’t gonna help because the other supervisors were the polar opposite of us: lazy, terrible people. All of a sudden, the storage sheds and freezers/coolers are in complete disarray because the employees never put stuff where it belonged AND yours truly was stocking things completely out of order to facilitate the chaos.
Customers begin to complain about the food quality. Guess no one was taking the time to properly clean the equipment. Oh no, the warehouses accidentally shipped us too much stuff.
Guess we gotta send it back. Oh, you sent it back already? Darn, it was just a mistake on the inventory sheet. We NEEDED that.
And so it continued, I made sure I didn’t break any laws and I made it heck for people working there, but it was all because SM thought he could treat us employees like lifeless robots and blame it on NG.
Part of me feels bad for it, but I wasn’t close enough with the other employees for it to really affect me.
And on the final week. He asked that I teach one of his employees how to do the schedule.
I called in sick every time I was supposed to train them. But I promised him I’d give him the schedule for the next week on the day I left. I never made it.
And I deleted all the resources to make the schedule and copies of the schedule from the store computer BUT I knew they had a log of all the dates and times employees were there that I couldn’t delete because it’d be a little on the illegal side.
All the employee preferences of “I’d like to work on this day but not this one” and all the Request Off slips somehow got lost in it all. Whoops. And the schedule was supposed to be posted on my last day for the following week.
Whoops.
I visited this year and the place is still open but it’s almost exclusively run by SM and a handful of other employees. SM’s wife divorced him apparently, and his other store is closed. I don’t know why it is, but it’s a Hardees now with what I assume is a new owner.
I didn’t stop in because pretty sure SM would recognize me, but I bet he hates his life in there. But maybe it’s just karma.
And Mr. T was like a cool great uncle to me.
When he left, he gave all the supervisors a bonus equivalent to an 80-hour paycheck and a birthday bonus. He was a good man.”
3. Keep Stalling My Drawing Request? Your Other Customers Are Going To Find Out
“I had this artist/musician friend (can’t remember how we became friends, we just kinda were), and during one December, he was doing a 3-for-1 deal on stuff for $15 in-stream commissions (two-character max, colored, shaded, and lined), so I figured “Heck, why not.” Well, he streamed every day for the next month and got to me about two weeks through that.
He did one and said he’d get to my other ones at a later time. This is when the shenanigans started.
Once the new year began, he only streamed about 2-3 times a week and said that if people wanted it done, they would have to wait around in his stream, which could go on for almost 5 hours straight.
I got frustrated and eventually started just outright asking if he thinks he would be able to get to one of mine on that day. I was either met with a “Yes (not really),” “Maybe,” or “Be patient” if it wasn’t outright anger.
In February, he did something smart and posted on social media saying that anyone who still had stream commissions left from the year before should just email him their forms, and he would take care of them independently.
I did this and tried contacting him on a monthly basis. Usually, he just said he was working on other stuff. I figured I would be patient, cause his art was improving and I only stood to benefit from waiting at this point.
Towards the end of that summer, he asks in a Skype group I was in with him (yes, that’s how old this story is) for someone to buy an art-slave comm from him (basically you pay him $75 and he’ll draw whatever you want in a stream for 2 hours).
I said I would if he would be able to spend some of that stream time afterward working on one of my commissions. He agreed, and on the scheduled date at the scheduled time, I paid him the $75 and we got started.
Now, because he had me wait around in his streams so long, I knew full well the art-slave stuff was a total scam. 2 hours, whatever you want? It would usually take this guy 2 hours to do his usual stuff, and I wasn’t going to be scammed. So, I simply asked for sketches instead.
About 45 minutes in, he gets mad and starts saying “I’m not doing this crap, just ask for something lined, and then we’re done.” Since I was still waiting on two other things from him, and already made off with 6 sketches, I just asked for one to be lined. When I asked about the comm he said he was going to work on, he said “Not today, I’m done.” I was a little angry but somewhat staved off.
About two months later, he reluctantly agreed to do one of my commissions but said I would have to pay him $30 for lining, coloring, and shading. When I pointed out I already had when I first got the commission, his response was that “my detail in those have gotten much better and take more time.” I was already riding this guy for a profit, so I decided to be nice and just nix the extra stuff, I was fine with a sketch.
He drew up something quick and, well, not really up to snuff with his other stuff, but still fine I guess. While he was drawing, I got private messages (this was in picarto) from other people asking about how long I had been waiting for him to do it.
I simply told them, and that seemed to be enough for them.
Come October, I’m back to waiting in his streams, asking if he’ll be able to get to my stuff.
Now, I guess a year of me asking this every month finally got to him, as he ripped into me on skype about how I should have sent in an email back in February (I did, and even made sure he got it), how I need to be patient (I had waited almost a full year), and how he needs to work on other people’s commissions (he spent most of his streams doing personal projects, half of it not even drawing).
I didn’t respond, and just figured I’d leave him for a week or two before I noticed I got a PM on the stream again from somebody asking me the same question.
What was different was that when I told this guy how long I had waited at this point (10 months and counting), he told me that my friend owed him 200$ worth of commissions from the past 3 months.
It turns out this guy was a total pushover, and that any time he tried to cancel, my friend would try to emotionally manipulate him into getting more.
I told this guy, “Demand he finish them within the next two weeks, or you’ll get PayPal to refund every cent.” To which he eventually agreed after enough pepping.
Eventually, I tell my friend “I sent you a form for a commission, let’s try and not make this a year-long wait.” He sends me a sketch, and I am floored. It wasn’t even close to what I asked for, and he had simply copy-pasted the character bodies, despite them having ridiculously different physiques.
I tell him so, and he just goes silent. I figure I’ll just wait a little bit.
Fast forward to the beginning of the next year, I get tired of waiting, and just ask for him to refund me $10 (luckily we had both forgotten he had done the second one during the stream).
He said he was in the red right now, and couldn’t pay me back. I said that was fine and I would just ask next month. The threat of having to go through my monthly pestering again was enough to make him say “Fine, screw it, it’s just ten bucks.”
Before I politely left him and cut contact, I said “Oh, and don’t forget to do (person I spoke with before’s work).” His response made me schadenfreude (that’s a verb now).
Apparently, the reason he was in the red now was that people, over the past month, had been retracting their commissions and that the guy I spoke to actually had 400$ worth of stuff that he had rescinded.
I wished my friend good luck and cut contact for good. I think he’s managed to get back on his feet, but I’m not sure.”
2. Bully Me For My Small Size? Enjoy Cleaning Pudding Out Of Your Yard
“I am a female with Asperger’s syndrome who didn’t experience her last growth spurt until she was almost in college.
I was SMALL during my Freshman and Sophomore years of high school, only weighing 65 lbs (29.5 kg) and 85 lbs (38.5 kg) in those respective years, and was a very easy target for bullies due to attempting to be a ‘good girl’ and not fighting back.
That changed after my first and only explosive blow-up that ended with a particular bully sporting several broken bones and me being suspended for a few days. Following that event, the bullying died down quite a bit for several months when several of the worst of the bullies realized that I wasn’t going to beat them on a weekly basis.
One particular bully lived in my neighborhood, practically across the street from me. He had been merciless in the past, doing everything from shoving me down and pulling off my shoes and tossing them into a pond where alligators lived to tearing up several of my books.
The day he decided it was safe to start bullying me again, I was reading a Star Wars book on the bus, Shadows of the Empire. (Yes, I’m a Star Wars nerd.) As our stop approached and I got ready to disembark by closing my book, he came barreling down the aisle of the bus, slapping heads as he did, and snatched my book before I could stow it in my backpack.
Knowing where this was likely headed, I attempted to hold on to my book only for one of his friends to reach between us and grab the book as well.
They were able to take my book through sheer strength then, and I watched as they tore out pages.
That evening, I attempted to approach the first bully’s parents with my book, determined to have them replace it.
My own parents would have done that, so I was certain that I would be facing similar people who would listen and agree.
To say I was mistaken would be an understatement.
The boy’s father thought of me only as ‘the disabled freak’ despite me having better grades than his son and said it served me right to have my book torn up.
My grandfather had taught me to never start fights, just finish them. To make the consequences for messing with me dire enough that people would think twice about hurting or bullying me.
My parents had told me to not get in fights. Considering the trouble that my first and only fight had gotten me into, I realized that I could finish this fight without throwing a punch.
The family of the boy who tormented me, specifically the father and his son, were very proud of their yard. They did all of their own landscaping and mowing and were very particular about it being exactly as they liked. Their big ‘father/son bonding activity,’ so to speak.
They always made sure that their sprinklers came on at a particular time of day, with was several hours before dawn. The bully didn’t like getting up in time for the morning bus which came at 6 each morning, which gave me plenty of time for my revenge.
Cheap instant pudding that didn’t taste good once could be bought in bulk-size bags. When you live a mere mile from a store that sells those bags, which wasn’t uncommon 18 years ago, it is easy to get your hands on several bags of this pudding.
It is also easy to spread this pudding powder across someone’s lawn at 4:30 am when no one else is up.
An hour later, my own dad thinks I’ve just gotten up and watches me head out the door to school right as the sprinklers across the street turn on and the garbage truck makes its morning run.
The bully wasn’t in school that day. I only saw him that afternoon when I returned home, standing in his ruined yard with his dad as they tried to clean up the chocolate pudding mess from their yard.
Both glared at me, knowing I did it.
I can’t say that the bullying stopped with this event, but the school finally noticed that I was being targeted in particular by this guy and several of the teachers who liked me began to stand in the halls, so he didn’t dare do anything at school.
Bus rides were still heck until a neighbor saw him kicking me on the walk home and began to organize a carpool, deliberately excluding him from the group.”
1. Mess With My Credit? I'll Get You Deep In Debt
How does it feel, huh?
“I became a father at a young age. I moved out of my parents’ house at 17 because I felt like they treated me like a child when I was working as much as I could to support my own child.
I would get grounded for being out late when I would stop by my partner’s home (baby mama) to see my little one after work.
After I moved out, I lived in my truck for a couple of months, showering at my (now very hateful ex) partner’s home before and after school.
Her mom and stepdad agreed to let me live there rent-free as long as I continued to work and keep my grades up and not fail school.
Once I became 18, I picked up a full-time job, kept my part-time job, got a credit card, and was able to change the ownership of my car (which I bought, but for legal purposes, had to have my parent’s name on it), started looking for a place for BM (baby mama), baby and me.
We split the rent, phone bill, gas, electric, cable, etc. However… it was ALL under my name.
I wasn’t the best person, I admit. I’m a HUGE flirt and trying to keep up with school, (I had to do an extra semester) 2 jobs and a baby was hard… I would lose my temper, raise my voice, and start arguments even if I was in the wrong, but NEVER hit my partner or child.
I may be a vindictive monster, but I won’t do anything like THAT!
She broke up with me due to my short fuse, an hour before my shift started in a McDonald’s, and told me I had until the next day to pack up all my stuff and move out.
Looking back, she did what was right for our child and her. I have no animosity when it comes to the breakup, however, what came after that killed me… financially.
We agreed to keep amicable and pay our half until the lease was up and then she would get her own accounts. About a week later, I failed my final semester and lost my full-time job.
I still had my emergency credit card if I needed it and I had moved back with my parents to save for a new place and find another full-time job.
6 months go by, my lease is up, she changes the accounts to her name, I have a job in line, I’m making good on my payments and still in my child’s life, staying civil with BM, talking, flirting, or fooling around, just spending time together.
I had a new girl (one that I didn’t realize was jealous of my child and BM until it was too late). BM and I still adored each other’s parents, so family get-togethers were frequent.
I contact the gas company, the electric company, and the phone company to have them transfer my account to the new place. Only to find out she hasn’t paid her half… I’m told by all of the companies that I have to pay the overdue balance before they can switch to the new address… $2000 total!
I pull out my credit card and start my first payments on them. I confronted BM about it and she just smiles and says “did we have that in writing?
It was under YOUR name, why should I pay?” I swallow my pride, and my credit card swallowed my debt. During our time together, we had become close again. My jealous partner had left by then and I had hopes of getting back together with BM.
I decided to just grin and bear it.
Because of my “good standing” with the CC company, they boosted my credit line, then I lost my part-time job and had lost the prospective full-time job.
Struggling, I managed to find another one, but not before maxing out my CC with bills and wound up delinquent on my account for choosing to pay current bills instead of my CC… my credit went from AMAZING to WHAT THE HECK!
In less than 6 months from when I first used my CC.
I get back on my feet and still have my CC debt looming over my credit score. Years pass and we decide to give it another go.
After 8 months, we decide to move in together, my credit sucked, hers didn’t… the only way we could get anything (new place, utilities, etc.) is if she was the primary account holder and I was secondary (no control over anything, just allowed to make payments).
(I forgot to mention that by this time I had ditched my truck for an older sports car). Another few months go by and we decided a 4-door was more advantageous than my sports car.
Go to the lot and trade my car in for a spacious 4-door. Her haggling was horrendous and she refused to let me help (Story for another topic). Due to my crappy credit, I couldn’t be on the lease.
She signed for a $19,000 car without me. Since her POS car was paid off, she immediately turned and said “if something happens between us, you get my car and I get to keep the new one.” A small argument ensued, however, she won… her name was on the title, I really couldn’t argue.
She held the fact that her name was on BOTH cars, she was the PRIMARY lessee on our home and utilities and I was the “supported one”. Yep… after I fell in love with her again, once she had me by the balls, she turned evil, spiteful, and dangled our failed first relationship in my face.
I. Was. Done… I wound up having an affair on her with my next chick. I realized that I was no longer in love and sat her down, admitted what had happened, and told her “we are done.” After she slapped me, called the woman I had an affair on a bad name, and said a few choice words about what I had done, she pleaded, asking me to “work it out”, never see “that girl” and I would be on a tight leash.
I turned away (like a coward) and said, “no, there’s obviously something wrong with us.” She slapped me again and kicked me out. (With reason, I admit.)
The next day, I explained everything to the landlord (well, just that we are no longer living together and that I would not be able to pay my half of the rent in full because I was looking for a new place and needed to save up) it was an older couple who adored us, they said they understood and as long as I paid 1/2 of my half, they would accept it.
I took my name off as “secondary account holder” on the utilities. I went to pick up the POS (as per our VERBAL agreement) and she said “no, you screwed up, you have to take the new car and take responsibility for the payments ($850/mo plus $300 insurance all under her name with me being the “dependent” I guess you could call it…)
She threw the keys at me and locked the door. I moved the car from the shared lot (if parked here, it had to be moved within 24 hours, otherwise it would get ticketed) to a Walmart parking lot.
I left the keys in the trunk (she had a spare set) and my new girl drove me to her place to calm down. A month goes by and she texts me “why haven’t you paid the car and the insurance?” “I have no savings!
The agreement we had was I get the POS and you get the new car.” “Do you have that written down?” “I didn’t think I needed to.” “Well, too bad, payment was due by Tuesday.
You have to pay it.” Then a big smirk came across my face (I wish she saw it) “BOTH cars are under your name. Insurance is under your name, I took my name off of the utilities… so they’re under YOUR name!” No reply…
My debt from our first split still looms on my credit score… a whopping $4,000! Her debt… $19,000 car, plus monthly insurance payments, plus half of the rent, plus a fee for repossession, plus utilities… she had the car repossessed (despite her brother, and I told her it would be better to surrender the car before it got to that), she was “evicted” from our rental home, (the landlords let her stay for 1/2 rent until they could find a new tenant, BM moved in with her mom again before that happened), the landlords had to take action against us for breaking the lease – no ill will towards them, they were 100% in the right; they deserved their bucks… and a valuable lesson learned.”
