People Get Personal About Their Pleasing Moments Of Revenge
22. Getting You Fired Is Your Souvenir
“In summer of 1991, I found a summer job as a ‘casual carrier’ for the USPS.
They used to hire summer temps to cover for all the full-time carriers who mostly took their vacations in the summer.
The USPS had (has?) rules that things had to be delivered within certain time windows. People could get fired if they took too long to do tasks. Carriers were both openly and secretly monitored and timed on tasks and we had the first computerized time system I ever saw.
They would be secretly followed a few times per year to be sure they were working hard the entire time they were outside the post office. The post office building even had secret back hallways, passive sound monitoring, and hidden raised viewing areas where they could see the sorting floor unobserved – cameras and microphones were super expensive back then so this was all done using tricky architecture and the eyes and ears of the postal inspectors.
We were supposed to walk over and punch in and out of tasks so that they could track productivity to the second. People walking a delivery route were expected to do it FAST and better routes went to faster carriers. Slow carriers got mercilessly hassled to be faster and were disciplined for slowness. Look at Newman on Seinfeld. ‘Going postal’ due to overwork was not really a joke there, because people would flip out and murder their bosses.
I hear it’s worse now with GPS.
Pre-Internet, there used to be a huge volume of mail that got shuffled around the country every day. Quantities of mail that you would find hard to believe compared to what we see now. I was a broke college student home for the summer and was willing to work any hours they gave me, so the supervisors liked me.
I was also very friendly with most of the Full-time (FT) carriers because I was a good worker and didn’t rock the boat. Also, for other reasons that you’ll see below.
I’m a fairly big guy (6’5″ or about 195cm, about 210 lbs back then) and I could carry a lot of weight so that also made management happy. I was also in my early 20s with long legs so I could move fast carrying a lot of weight.
Sorting mail back then was labor-intensive and took a lot of time to learn. I had a regular route that I would deliver in the afternoons that was sorted by a regular. I would usually do oddball delivery stuff in the mornings, help move heavy things around, do special deliveries, etc.
I would also deliver for FT carriers that went on vacation or whose T6 was on vacation.
Side note – mail delivery is 6x per week but FT carriers only work 5 days per week. The T6 is an FT carrier who did the sixth day for five routes. That way it worked out that everyone only worked 5 days per week.
At the time, a lot of retail catalogs were mailed to houses. A LOT of them. Some were substantially bigger than current magazines.
We also delivered magazines, ads, packages, and samples. A lot of companies would mail free samples of products like laundry detergent, shampoo, and other liquids to be delivered to every house on the route. These were the bane of the carriers’ existence because they were bulky and heavy. This slows you down and is physically taxing. Usually, carriers would divide the very heavy stuff up and deliver it throughout the week.
On to the revenge.
I was assigned to do the T6 work for Dave (name changed) for a few months. Picture a failed Phys Ed teacher in his 40s. Bad mustache, about 5’7″, wore knock-off sunglasses like Magnum PI’s, and had an opinion about everything. Dave learns he has me as his T6 and decides he will leave all of the heavy stuff for me.
So, once a week I got confronted with the entire week’s worth of heavy mail for this jerk’s route. I confronted him about it and he basically laughed and said there was nothing I could do about it. The other FT carriers didn’t like Dave much, but I was a temp and he was there permanently so I was encouraged to just******* up.
I went to our boss and escalated to our postmaster but was told that he was FT and I was a temp so I just had to deal with it.
If the mail needed to be delivered that day to meet the deadline, I had to make it happen. The postmaster’s exact words were, ‘Just deliver every piece of mail for the route as fast as you can and don’t worry about the time it takes or anything else. You’re making huge OT on this route.’ They did talk to Dave and the most egregious stuff stopped, but I was still doing most of the hard work on this route.
I mentioned earlier that everyone was always on the clock and tracked. In my first week, some of the nicer people took me aside at the beginning of the summer and made it clear to me that I was not to move quickly when delivering FT carrier’s routes because it could make them look bad and cause trouble for them. As a temp, I should always take longer than the FT carriers because (1) my job was limited and the USPS did not really track temps closely; (2) I had zero experience so everything should take me longer; (3) this was a union shop and they would hate to have to kick my butt for messing up their jobs; and (4) most of these people were awesome and I wanted to be a team player.
So, I was incentivized to move slowly and not make the FT people look bad. Side note – I am very pro-union and pro-labor so this is not intended to knock unions, but the context is needed.
I decided to wreck Dave’s job since he was such a bullying little tool. I requisitioned two additional mail carrier bags. These are the over-the-shoulder satchels you see all the time.
I was asked why and I specifically told them it was to be able to carry all of the heavy items on Dave’s route without having to keep going back to my jeep to reload along the way. The postmaster personally approved it.
After doing Dave’s route 1 to 3 times per week (he called in sick a lot, too) for a few weeks I knew it very well and was staying on top of the heavy stuff.
Once I was comfortable with the route, I started RUNNING it. I would literally load up 3 mail bags for each segment of the route and jog or run his entire route. Dave’s route took him about 4.5 hours per day to walk. This was probably accurate for him and he’d been on the route for several years. I would finish it in 3 hours or less. Every day.
Rain or shine. No matter how many magazines, samples, or packages were waiting.
No one really noticed I was coming back so quickly and punching back out of delivering his route when I was only doing it a few times per week. I would come back, pick up other work and get that done. The fun started when Dave took a 2-week vacation and I handled his route 6 days per week.
Since I was doing the work right, there was never a backlog of heavy items landing on me once per week. This made it even easier to jog or run his route as I was back to using one mailbag and fast-walking/jogging was enough to get it done quickly. I frequently got it done in under three hours and never took longer than about 3.5 hours.
My personal best was under 2.5 hours.
I got pulled aside by my supervisor and the postmaster after the first week. They asked me about my timekeeping practices and I confirmed that I was doing things correctly. I would punch into his route on departure, keep the appropriate logs, and punch back in when I got back. The Postmaster then asked me about Dave’s route. I played completely dumb.
He noted that I complained about the mail volume several weeks ago and that I used to take 6, 7, or more hours to get it delivered. I explained that I was spreading the heavy deliveries out over the whole week and that had really made a difference. He asked me if I was really delivering all the mail and whether I was hiding or throwing away mail – a serious problem if true.
I got very offended and told him I delivered every piece of mail for the route, every day.
Then I dropped the bomb.
I told him I was having trouble understanding why this route was budgeted 4.5 hours to deliver when it clearly could be done much faster than that. I pointed out that it was a lot of dense multi-family housing, which means less walking.
I told him lots of people on the route seemed surprised that I did not want a soda pop or to sit down and talk for a minute like Dave always did with them (pure lies). All in my innocent, gosh-I-want-to-help-the-USPS voice. I told the postmaster that I was delivering all the mail as fast as I could and not worrying about anything else.
I jogged the route again for the next 6 days and kept getting it done in much less time than Dave.
Dave did not know about any of this. He made a point of finding me on his first day back to ask how I enjoyed doing all the hard work for him while he was vacationing. I told him I’d learned a lesson about how to treat your coworkers. He laughed at me and went back to sorting mail. He came back a few minutes later and said he got me a souvenir, he then pulled his middle finger out of his pocket.
Classic Dave.
That was my last week at the USPS and I headed back to college. I kept in touch with some of the friends I’d made there and one of them was very happy to tell me that Dave was fired about two months after I left. Due to the massive discrepancy in how long it took me and him to deliver the route, the higher-ups audited his route and discovered that he actually was lollygagging, taking unauthorized breaks, and apparently having an affair with a woman on his route – all on the clock.
I, on the other hand, was in great physical shape after all that running and had pockets full of money for that semester. His regular T6 also got most of the heavy stuff dumped on her, so she didn’t get into any trouble for her delivery times because she was swamped with heavy mail on her day. She actually bid for and got the route full time when Dave was shown the door.”
21. Dishonest Person Drives 90 Miles For Nothing
“I own a staffing company. Last year I was using a payday app to pay a staffer around $200.00 for a few gigs.
When I tapped her name, I accidentally tapped two other staffers’ names. I didn’t notice it and hit ‘PAY’, sending funds to all 3 people. I noticed it and sent them a text, asking for it back. One girl laughed at me and sent it right back. I sent her $20 for her trouble (and honesty). The other person never returned my text.
This year I placed an ad for an event and the same thief replied to it.
I was dumbfounded but amazed by the nerve on this guy. I quickly placed a dummy ad with a different email account that I use only when I buy things online. He replied and I sold him a story about a gig 90 miles away that would pay nearly twice what my real gig would pay. So last Friday, he woke up early, got dressed for work, and drove 90 miles and back for no reason at all.
”
20. Fake An Emergency? Have Fun Being Locked Out Of Your Car
“I was a AAA tow truck driver and working an overnight shift on a Friday. I received a call around 10:00 pm for a baby locked in a car with the keys inside. AAA policy is to attend to these types of lockout emergency calls before any other calls that may be waiting.
I sped down the highway as fast as my truck could take me and reached the location which was a local mall.
I found the car that was parked in a far corner of the parking lot alongside another car. About half a dozen people were hanging around.
I jumped out of the truck identified the owner and asked him if this was his vehicle?
‘Yup sure is!’
‘Okay great let me see what I can do,’ I said as I tried to peer into the windows which were heavily tinted. I saw a glow coming from the stereo and could somewhat make out a blanket in the back seat but the tint was so dark it was really tough to make out anything else.
‘The child is in the backseat?’
‘Yeah, he’s asleep.’
It took me about a minute to open the passenger’s front door. As soon as the locking mechanism clicked the owner of the vehicle reached in front of me, opened the door, and reached inside to grab his keys off the passenger’s seat and a six-pack of beer off the floor.
He stepped back and let out a little smarty pants chuckle.
I poked my head inside the car and looked into the backseat. There was no baby.
The driver was still standing close to me and was in the process of twisting off the bottle cap to his beer while holding his keys in the same hand. Instinctively I snatched his keys away from him, tossed them back into the car, pushed the lock button on his door frame, and slammed it shut.
‘Go screw yourself. Now you can stay here all night,’ I said as I walked away and got back in my truck. No one said a word to me and the driver stood there dumbfounded, holding his beer to his chest as I drove away. I called dispatch and explained what happened and they made a note not to send any other drivers out to this account for a lockout situation.”
19. Showed My Painted Nails To My Homophobic Manager
“I work at auto parts store TM with manager Bob. No one likes working with manager Bob. He makes racist, discriminatory, homophobic, transphobic, and otherwise inappropriate comments constantly. I am one of the few workers who can stand working with him as I ignore him but even my patience has limits.
Slight background, both myself and Bob are veterans – he being chair force reserves, myself being a marine. We’re both straight white male Christians so I’m probably the only workmate he has any respect for.
So I’m on a closing shift with Bob and our delivery guy gets here. Bob notices his nails are painted blue. Bob decides he should tell me how he must be a crossdresser or gay to have painted nails.
I don’t know, I zoned him out mostly as per usual.
Petty revenge of the story? I’m closing with Bob tonight. I showed up with sparkly purple nail polish on. He hasn’t been ignoring me but hasn’t been going out of his way to talk to me either (which is highly unlike Bob). I think I like painting my nails and will continue to do so.”
18. Tailgating? Have Fun Cleaning The Cabin
“Went by McDonald’s and this guy in a shining Mercedes Wagon was tailgating me from the drive-through down the street.
I signaled with my hazard light for him to keep a distance. The jerk just pulled closer. I lowered my speed so my car wouldn’t be completely wrecked if I had to brake.
This went on for a few kilometers and I eventually got annoyed. So about 100 meters before my turn I accelerated to get a distance between us and put on the turn signal.
He matched my speed and just before my turn I slammed the brakes. And it was pure joy. Not to hit me he did the same. And several cups of soda, burgers, and fries covered the inside of his windshield.
I had to pull over and watch him and his family get out of the car. He and his wife were drenched from the hair down and kids crying over the loss of their meals.
Maybe he will keep the distance in the future.”
17. You Can't Take A Newborn Travelling
“I have a female relative. She is of the understanding that her way is the only way to do stuff. This is usually stated gently. She is not in your face about her opinions but it’s always there under the surface. I have lived a very different lifestyle to her and she has always looked down on me for it. I didn’t buy a house once I got married nor did I rush headfirst into having children.
Divorced my first husband for reasons and she very nicely told me she knew it wasn’t going to last but I was so stubborn she knew there was no point telling me.
Anyway. Fast forward I found a lovely person I wanted to marry again and we did. He lives abroad and so I went to live with him. Ended up getting pregnant on the honeymoon.
Fun times. When I was about 6 months I wanted to visit my family, so I did. My female relative invited me to run some errands with her and I stupidly said yes. We talked. And it was mostly pleasant, she had missed me and to be fair I had missed her. We started talking about our plans for the future. I told her that we were planning some trips after the baby was born and then my husband had an annual business trip to a different part of the continent about 3 months after the baby was born and I was planning to go with him.
What came out of her mouth was the most condescending thing I had ever heard her say. She, while driving, reached over, patted my stomach, and said, ‘Oh OP, you are so naive to think you could travel with a newborn.’
The petty revenge. My baby was born in May. Business trip in July. I traveled home in August.
I’m not the usual one to take photos.
I prefer to enjoy myself but on that business trip, I took so many photos and posted them in our family messenger group. I captured photos of me and my baby doing everything. My female relative then decided if I can do it so can she. I’ve lived abroad for 7 years. She’s made the trip once with two of her children and my mum.
And told me it’s too hard and stressful. Now, whenever we go anywhere my phone comes out and I snap away. My child is a fantastic traveler, better than me. And my mum won’t stop bragging to my female relative about how brave I am and how laid back my child is while traveling.”
16. Mess With My Christmas? I'll Ruin Yours Too
“Earlier in the year, my Dad quite sensibly suggested that with the size of our family Christmas party, we skip a generation with gifts to ease the financial strain as the extended family grew. At the time I was struggling with my business and athletic career and my wife (then significant other) was working on her second master’s degree, so I suggested names from a hat, but he wanted to spoil all his grandchildren.
I said fair enough, I’ll chip in for Oma’s cruise and buy gifts for my step-siblings, but don’t expect anything grand.
Dramatis Personae for that Christmas party:
Me – 28-year-old (at the time) heavyweight mixed martial artist and strength coach AKA small-time athlete working a day job to barely make rent in addition to training full time.
Martha – Stepsister – 40ish, an aging mombie whose only assets are starting to sag too much for them to be assets anymore, leaving her with no other definable personality traits
Jane – My oldest Niece 12, Stepsister’s Daughter, imagine the vapidest t*******r stereotype you can and multiply it by 1000
Tim – My Oldest Nephew 9, Stepsister’s Son, living proof that you’re never too young to be a jerk
Robert – Stepbrother – 36 Formerly cool dude who gave up on life when his kids were born, years later would gain back enough willpower and gumption to physically assault his wife
Tammy – 6 Bro’s daughter – Sweet and shy girl, terrified by my mere presence, the wisest of the bunch in my honest opinion
Bubba – 7 Bro’s son – A generally nice kid who at this time was partway into evolving into a jerk after constantly being told to look up to and emulate thing 2.
Tammy has brought a Nintendo DS and all the kids are struggling to see/play it together, so I foolishly offer to loan them mine to lighten the load.
Tammy agrees to share with Jane, and Bubba agrees to share with Tim. Having stupidly deprived me of my means to escape social obligations, I go to the living room to acquire that much older cure for not wanting to deal with other people; booze.
Not even having had time to pour a dram, my trained ear picks up from the kid’s room the unmistakable sound of one human being pummeling another.
I politely suggest to Robert that he might want to go have a look, but Bro hasn’t cared about anything in about 7 years, so he waves it off and I go to investigate.
I walk in to see that Tim may be a jerk, but is not untalented, and is managing to strike, shove into a wall and kick Bubba all at the same time, while attempting to play my DS with his other hand, having decided his turn began the moment I left the room.
Jane has simply wrested the DS from Tammy, who is now sitting in the corner crying.
I shout for Martha, informing her that if she doesn’t get in here to break things up before I count to 10, I would have a stern conversation with them. She turns up and separates the kids and I retrieve my DS. Instead of giving Tim a lesson on sharing and not hitting people, she proceeds to berate Bubba (the kid who was beaten) for not simply giving up the DS to her little piece of work and making her son look bad.
Jane simply lets out a tweenage sigh for the ages and tosses the other DS into the crying Tammy.
I then excuse myself from the party, thanking whatever gods may be that I don’t have to provide gifts for any of those little idiots.
6 months later, my firm belief in atheism is confirmed as Bro calls me and this conversation ensues.
Robert – Hey OP, while I really appreciated the gifts last year, you should really get something for the kids this year instead, Christmas is all about the chiiiillllllllllldrrreeeeen after all.
Me – No, I turn up to chat with you and dad and Oma, I really don’t give a d**n about the kids.
Robert – That’s a mean thing to say about my kids, don’t you care about them?
Me – You cared about them so much that at the last party, you couldn’t be bothered to break up a fight where your son was being beaten b****y.
Robert – Tim is a good kid, Martha said he just had a bad day.
Me – He was literally beating your child. You didn’t put pics on social media for a week because of the bruises. If Tim were an adult and had that kind of bad day, I’d have had a stern conversation with him and convinced him peacefully to lay on the floor until the police arrived.
Robert – Well Stepsis and I were talking and we think you should buy stuff for the kids next year instead of us.
Me – Well I’m happy not to buy you anything, but I’m not tolerating Martha’s little idiots, especially when she encourages that behavior.
Robert – Well if you aren’t going to get something for all the kids, you shouldn’t get anything at all.
It’s not right if you don’t treat them equally.
Me – Done.
Now I’m sure they wish it has been this simple, but unfortunately, it wasn’t and I certainly wouldn’t have written such a long-winded story if that were the payoff. Thanks for bearing with me so far, we’re almost at the end.
A few months later, about 2 weeks before Xmas, I get an email from my dad with links to various toys (mostly from toys r us, which still existed at the time).
When I call him back to ask what that’s all about, this conversation ensues.
Me: Hey what’s up? I got your email, what’s that all about?
Dad: Those are gifts for the kids for Christmas.
Me: That’s cool if you’re getting them that, I’ll see them when the kids open them.
Dad: No that’s for you to get them.
Me: I don’t buy for that generation remember?
And I already sent you my contribution to Oma’s cruise.
Dad: You need to get stuff for the kids, don’t you want them to look up to you as an uncle?
Me: Not really. Also what part of my life suggests to you that they ought to look up to me as any sort of role model? You’d be better off telling them to grow up to be rockstars.
Dad: Not the point, Christmas is about the chiiiiiiiiilllldreeeeennnnnnn, if you don’t get them this stuff, I won’t put your name on the card for Oma.
Me: That’s a trashy thing to do, considering I already paid into that.
Dad: Will you get the stuff or not?
Me: Well guess my name isn’t going on the card then, this will cost me more than a month’s rent, so you can take this list and grease it up real nice…
Dad (Interrupting): Calm your jets, this is what they want.
Me: I’ll get them a token something but I’m not taking out a loan.
Dad: Fine, just make it something they enjoy.
Me: If what I get doesn’t put a giant smile on each and every one of their faces, I’ll buy you dinner at a steakhouse of your choosing.
Dad: That’s the spirit, talk to you later.
So, Christmas rolls around, and my wife and I have bought not just 1, but 4 gifts for each of the little ones, and wrapped them all beautifully. My dad (correctly) assumes it’s all probably from the dollar store, but it’s nicely wrapped and he gives me a look of approval as I place it under the tree. My wife and I schmooze for a bit and then suggest that since we brought several gifts for each of the kids, why don’t they open one each before dinner so they have something to do while they wait.
Their parents of course agree as it gives them more of a reason to ignore their kids and talk about them instead, so they send us off to hand out gifts to their kids, Martha is looking especially smug. As they begin to unwrap them, I prepare the camera as my wife goes for our coats, and I stick around just long enough to immortalize on film the big soul-eating grin on each of the kid’s faces as they see what their gift is.
Less than 1 minute later, the first blast from the airhorn (Tim’s gift) can be heard in the hallway clearly by my wife and me as we make our way to the elevator. I have no idea how much of the bulk pack of silly string (Tammy’s gift) or the 36 rainbow pack of off-brand sharpies (Bubba’s gift) ended up on the walls, but I do know they repainted the place the next month.
Whether or not the pile of the slap on bracelets we got for Jane ended up on the wrists and legs of the parents as they tried to contain the other three will be left to the imagination, but I like to think they all ended up in the height of 80’s fashion before boxing day.
I may never know if they opened the rest of their presents (everyone got a copy of each of the other’s gifts, you know, for fairness, plus a bunch of gross and mildly inappropriate temporary tattoos).
In the confusion none of them noticed either me or my wife leaving. I’m certain at some point they did notice the pretty gold envelope addressed to ‘The parents’ on the tree. Inside was a very pretty card, blank but for the following note:
‘This was a warning shot from off the top of my head, I’ve got a whole year to get creative for next time.
Merry Christmas, E.’
I never bought anyone steak dinner, however, I enjoyed several more Christmas’s with my Oma and Dad until they passed and I stopped seeing that side of the family at all. No mention of this incident or gifts for the kids was ever made again.”
15. I Recruited An Unwitting Army To Annoy A Jerk
“Back in the early ’90s, my friend (I’ll call him ‘Lou’ because that’s his name) was selling his RX-7 via an ad in the old print Auto Trader. It came out every Thursday, so that first weekend was critical for sales. The very first guy that came to see it on Saturday said he wanted to buy it after driving it.
Of course, he had to finance, so they couldn’t finish the sale during the weekend.
Lou was worried about losing all the bites from the new ad, so he asked for a deposit of $500. The guy wrote a check. Lou told the rest of the callers that weekend that it was sold and, unfortunately, didn’t ask for their numbers in case it fell through; this story predates caller id availability in my area by a couple of years, so those leads were gone.
As you surely expect by now, the guy flakes on Monday, and Lou deposits the check. Payment stopped. Big surprise.
Sitting around my apartment, we schemed revenge, but all we had to go on was the check. Lucky for karma, there was a phone number printed on it. Our first idea was to write a little program to dial his number repeatedly from my modem, but that would be easily stopped and probably get us in direct trouble.
Then Lou got a page from his work: this was back in the one-way pager days. You call the pager’s dedicated phone number, it sounds a tone, then you punch digits for the number you want to be sent to the pager. The person with the pager receives the number you entered and, presumably, calls it. Everyone with a pager made sure that people who needed to get a hold of them had the number for their pager.
You’d see pager numbers in print and TV ads all the time for various services.
Boom: angelic choir sings, heavenly light goes off. Lou’s pager number and my pager number had the same prefix (middle 3 digits). What if we randomly dial numbers with that prefix and page them all to this guy’s number? So we order a pizza, open some beers, and start looking through the yellow pages at locksmiths and tow truck services to find more pager prefixes.
We wind up with a dozen or so.
After that, it’s half an hour of coding in Ye Olde Borland C++. I put together a program that would cycle through our list of known prefixes and add a random final four digits to get a random pager. It calls the pager’s number, pauses, then dials this jerk’s number and throws a 911 suffix on there for good measure, which is something people with pagers understood to indicate an emergency of some kind.
The whole thing was just generating a string like ‘ATDT602XXXYYYY, (jerk’s number)-asterisk-911-sharp’, where XXX is the pager prefix and YYYY is random. Commas make pauses since you need to connect to the paging service before you can enter the message. Make string, send to the modem, wait for ‘NO CARRIER’, hang up, repeat.
We start eating the pizza and let it fly.
I was very picky about my devices, so my modem was a USRobotics Courier. You could set an S register to control how long it would sound each tone when dialing. Uber-nerds like myself would keep tinkering with that to get it as fast as possible while still being recognized by the phone service. It was very fast. I swag it could run through 4 pages per minute, so this guy would get 240 calls/hour.
We just watched it run and laughed our butts off.
We realized pretty early on that we didn’t really know if it was working, so we wandered down to the 7-11 and called him from a payphone, just in case he could somehow trace it or the po-po were on the case and watching. A man answered and I said, ‘Hi, I got a page at this number’.
I heard an audible sigh and then he just hung up. Gold!
We ended up running it for a few hours, then let it go quiet for a few days. Then we scheduled it to start dialing in the middle of the night every few days, plus we’d fire it up by hand randomly whenever we had a party. We checked again from the 7-11 after a week and it went to an answering machine, which did the rapid-tone at the end of the greeting to indicate the tape was full.
We reasoned that the line was still ringing, anyway, so we kept at it for another month or so. Eventually, we got the disconnected warning when we made one of our regular checkups. I’m sure he just changed the number.
I like to think about that guy answering the phone after a few days of silence when we started it up. I can vividly imagine his response at the ‘did someone page me to this number?’ as he slams the phone down, and then it rings again a few seconds later.
Or, of course, coming home from work and having an answering machine full of random people asking about being paged.
And, yeah, we annoyed several thousand people into calling this guy by the end. But each of those people was only put out for a single call. A cost, yes, but a necessary one for justice.”
14. Bully My Friends? Here Are Some Chocolates
“I go to a relatively rich high school. The fancy kind where professionals learn and all that kind of stuff.
And because of that, most of the students get good grades. But because of this, some kids think that they are just better than others. Especially the main villain of our story, let’s call him Kevin.
Kevin thought that just because he was a top student he was God’s gift to mankind and he frequently tormented me and my friends because of it. His parents never believed the bullying accusations and the teachers didn’t really care so he always got away with it with no trouble.
That was until recently. You see my mother had bought electric toothbrushes and with that order came a few other things.
One of these things was a bag of pills. They were basically meant to be toothpaste but we didn’t use them that much. All you had to do to use them was put one in your mouth, break it, and use some water, and boom you get a similar effect to toothpaste.
However, the pill has an awful taste if you don’t use water or just try to eat it. I think you can see where this is going. I took two pills and put them in some sweets I have in my backpack (I carry some with me for when I am bored or just need a quick energy boost) and waited for my plan to go into action.
For a few days I was just sitting in my seat and eating some sweets, waiting for Kevin to strike but he didn’t. Until yesterday that is. Yesterday he barged into the classroom filled with pride and noticed me just having a snack. He came over to me and asked in his friendliest voice if he could have some. I declined and said that I had brought the snacks for myself and not him.
This set him off and he got close to my face telling me that he didn’t care, that he and his friends had just had a hard football training session, and that they were only looking for something nice after a hard day. I looked at him, smiled, and said ‘if you say so’. I rummaged through my bag to find the chocolate sweet that I had filled with pills and gave it to him.
He took it and marched back to his seat. When the lesson began our teacher entered the room and started writing down who was and wasn’t in class.
While she is writing that down I hear a loud ‘UGH’ at the back of the class. I turn to look and see Kevin coughing and holding his hand in front of his mouth trying not to vomit.
He runs out of the classroom and a few minutes later returns, sits down, and says nothing for the remainder of the class. I guess revenge is pretty sweet after all.”
13. Kick Us Out Of The Link? Face The Consequences
“At the time, going to campus was a no-go so everything was online. As such, a lot of programs used for course work, which were only on PC, needed a remote link for those of us on Macs or other devices.
This link connects students to assigned desktops physically on campus through an application like Citrix. It would only allow students onto the desktops when another class was not remotely ‘using’ that lab at the time, and at night when registered classes were done. The on-campus computers would show that their drives were in use, so the students who lived on campus would know that someone was remotely accessing it.
Well, I was taking a course in Remote Sensing, which required access to programs such as ArcMap, ArcGIS, R, and ERDAS (you can look them up). They were only available on PC so I, as a MacBook user, needed to use the remote link.
The issue started at the start of October when I was working on an assignment in ArcMap. I was really startled when I was suddenly kicked out, and then furious because I hadn’t had the chance to save my latest input.
I then went back to the webpage, re-input my student credentials, and logged into a different desktop.
Not two minutes later was I logged out AGAIN.
Rightly peeved, I emailed the professor and TAs about it and moved on to other homework. I figured it was a bug that would soon be fixed.
No. It continued throughout the entire month. I ended up having to work on my remote labs between 9 pm and 2 am, as I literally was not able to work during the day without being kicked off.
It was really annoying, especially since I couldn’t even work during my assigned lab time!
Other students started reporting this, and we’d get a lot of emails from IT. Updates, patches, and things like that we had to install to try and patch this ‘bug’. And nothing worked. It was painful.
I decided that enough was enough, and took a train to campus after my online morning classes.
If it was going to keep booting me off the remote, then I would just go in person!
I completed the online health check, got to campus no problem, and made my way to the building that housed all the PCs. Yes, we have a building that houses all the PCs for computer classes. Anyways, I went up and towards the lab that my credentials were registered to.
I’m going to be honest. I wasn’t expecting what I saw. But I sure was d**n annoyed.
Through the windows into the lab, I saw two guys going from PC to PC… logging students off!
At first, I couldn’t believe it, and then I got furious. They were laughing about screwing with hard-working students! (I will call them Dumb and Dumber.)
That’s when I decided to get some payback.
I pulled out my phone and placed it beside the window, and it was partially hidden by the trash bin inside the classroom, recording them and what they were doing. They didn’t notice me, thank God, and I got onto my laptop, remote linking to my phone. I then got onto the university social media page and started to Livestream the video from my phone.
I put a title along the lines of ‘Found the bugs kicking students off Remote Desktop’ (the video has been deleted, and I will explain soon).
It didn’t take long for fellow students to take notice of it, and it went viral within 30 minutes. Names were soon put out as Dumb and Dumber were recognized, and there was a lot of hate in the comments.
Even campus police replied, asking for the location.
I was all too happy to give it.
It was then I saw on the stream that Dumb pulled out his phone, and he started freaking out. He had noticed the stream and that it was live. I quickly rushed to grab my phone and retreat, and that’s when Dumber rushed out the door and tackled me!
We started brawling (it was self-defense, as he kept attacking me to grab my phone), and then I saw Dumb going for my laptop, which was hosting the stream (which was STILL being recorded from my phone!). So… I kicked Dumber between the legs while elbowing him in the neck, before jumping Dumb.
To be honest, I don’t really know what happened next, but I do remember campus police having to pull me off Dumb.
Apparently, I had full-bodied tackled him away from my laptop, and he punched me in the face…
With me apparently grabbing his carry-on bag, bashing him over the head with it… accidentally cracking his laptop. Oops!
So, anyways the fight was broken up and we were all taken down to the campus police office.
To make a very long story short, I got a relative slap on the wrist for my part of it.
Had to do some on-campus community service, but my record was kept clean. Thankfully. I was not charged for the fight or the laptop, as I was able to prove the self-defense, and that they hit me first/tried to destroy my property intentionally (which made it worse for them). I was let off on the laptop for a technicality, as I was punched in the face, and had no idea that he even had a laptop in his carry-on.
Phew.
As for Dumb and Dumber, I was called in to testify at each of their hearings in December. Turns out kicking students off remote links was considered a very grave academic offense, as it was intentional tampering with others’ work.
The video stream I took was a big part of the evidence against them, and CCTV proved that they had been doing it for weeks.
In almost all the computer labs. They had intentionally messed with over a hundred students. Adding to attacking me and my devices… they got into pretty hot water.
Now, the reason this wasn’t discovered sooner was due to the fact that this Remote Link was new to us, and IT was still working through the bugs.
I don’t know exactly what happened next, as they just needed me to come in (masked) and tell what I did and remembered. However, I did get the notification in my email in March this past year that two students were expelled for intentional tampering with other students’ work.
Can you guess who? Yup, Dumb and Dumber got the boot for their dumb actions.
It gets even better though. Turns out they were here on student visas! This meant that not only were they expelled from the university with a black mark on their records, they were also given the boot from the country! And most definitely back to their very disappointed parents.
They were actually put on a cargo flight home, as their country wasn’t allowing passenger flights.
They had to go because, without their visas, they were in the country illegally which would land them in even deeper hot water. The university actually took mercy on them and paid for the flight, and I agree. They may have acted stupid, but that’s no reason to have to deal with Border Security or whatnot. I only know this because I ran into, and was able to talk with, one of the campus officers who told me what happened when went I went in person for a lab this recent September.
So, yeah. Those guys had to take a cargo flight home. I think the uncomfortable experience they would’ve had was enough punishment compared to being in lock-up until their country’s borders opened or until other arrangements could be made.
Maybe it’s karma, but they got publicly exposed on a live stream for their actions for all the school to see (which was taken down due to it needing to be evidence against them and all).
But, Yep. They were expelled twice for their dumb actions, and with their names in campus infamy for their stunt. Hope they’ve learned their lesson!”
12. Touch My Book And Yell At Me? Have The Book To Yourself
“I used to work for a business that was ‘on-call’ type of thing. If it helps, think of a fire station – the firefighters hang out between alarms. Ours was something like that. I loved the downtime because I am an avid reader.
On the day in question, I was reading a 1200+ page HARDBOUND book. It was very well written, and I was lost in it. I was sitting at a table, oblivious to the world around me, and could not be happier.
My coworker, whom I shall call ‘Pie’ (her real name was a dessert, and I think her parents set her up to be this entitled and attention-seeking), decided that was simply not acceptable.
She tried chatting with me, some stupid topic I could not have cared less about if you paid me, probably Jersey Shore or something at that level of ‘I really don’t care.’ Naturally, I ignored her. She was always like this. I always ignored her. She really should know by now.
Pie pulls her chair up closer to mine, leaning in so her hair is starting to get in my book.
She keeps rambling and says ‘hey, I’m trying to talk to you.’ I said ‘that’s nice’ and scooted my chair back. I have no idea why Pie was under any delusion that I liked her. I straight despised her. She had more plastic on her body than flesh. I’m pretty sure they gave her a silicone brain too.
Finally, Pie gets fed up with me, and said in the most Karen voice I’ve ever heard in real life ‘YOU WILL NOT IGNORE ME!’ and she puts her hand over the pages of my book to enforce her new rule.
I looked her dead in the eye, said ‘yes, I will’ and SLAMMED my book shut on her hand.
She squealed and yanked her hand back, then moved her chair to the far corner of the room and curled into a ball, and pouted at me. Then, she faded out of existence, at least as far as I was concerned, because my nose was buried back in my pages!”
11. Fired From The Job But I Got The Last Laugh
“I worked at a retail chain that sold pet supplies and products. When I started working there it was great, family-owned and everyone I worked with was fantastic. The owners eventually wanted to retire and sold the small chain to an investment group.
Once the investment group took over, almost all but a few employees were let go, forced out, or just quit. I hung on for a little while longer before I got promoted at my other job.
The new company brings in a new manager to my store. My store was the top-performing store in the entire chain, bringing in about $10,000-12,000/day on average. It was always more on weekends and especially around the holidays.
The new manager is a Mr. Company man, the company told him they only want employees around for 2-3 years, myself and two others had been there 10+ years. So naturally, he began ruffling feathers and giving us all a hard time. Unfortunately, he decided on me first. Mr. Company man found out I work 2 jobs. The two jobs are not in related fields so there was no chance of any conflicts of interest on my end.
However, my second job requires me to work nights and weekends. When Mr. Company man found this out he demanded I work nights/weekends there, so it was ‘fair’ for everyone. I didn’t work nights and weekends there because I was that store’s only OSHA-certified forklift operator, and deliveries didn’t come at night, they came weekday mornings, every day.
Mr. Company man didn’t want to hear that and told me I either had to work nights and weekends, or that day would be my last day.
I told him, ‘Don’t threaten me with a good time, I suppose today is my last day then.’ I was pretty annoyed about that, but it’s not a big deal now, ended up being the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I went home early, didn’t finish my shift, because screw em. But when I got home I decided to call my local OSHA inspector and report them for not having a certified operator on staff, as well as numerous other hazards.
Needless to say, they lost close to 3 weeks’ profit from all the violations the inspector found. I was surprised they even showed up. In my state, the inspector will call you back after an inspection and tell you if your claims were founded or not. Mine was. And Mr. Company man got his butt chewed out so bad he ended up quitting.
After I was fired it really motivated me to get behind in gear and get back in school.
Working as a Stationary Engineer now.
To clarify, my state does not have a ‘forklift’ license, it’s really called a ‘power lift’ operators license. The license needs to be renewed every 4 years. There are 7 classes of ‘power lifts’ here. I was certified in 1 through 6, class 7 being ‘any lift equipped with pneumatic tires’ which I would never have needed to use because ours was a class 5.
There is no federal regulation, standard, or language that requires certification to my best knowledge, but my AHJ’s (authority having jurisdiction) are allowed to make regulations and standards that are more stringent than federal ones. These standards and regulations are typically enforced by my local department of labor office or OSHA office.”
10. Don't Pay For A Fireplace? Get A House Full Of Smoke
“A friend of mine used to install wood stoves and sell firewood. He still sells firewood but stopped bothering with fireplaces. This 1 guy bought a fireplace and wanted it installed. My friend did this but told him he would need a higher chimney for better air drawing. The guy refused it (I’m assuming maybe he didn’t want a higher chimney for the look) and my friend kept insisting.
The owner said no and when the fireplace was done, he complained it was hard to get a fire going (due to the chimney being too short, leading to poor drawing of air). My friend came with a chimney extension and it worked fine, but he decided he didn’t want to pay still, even though the job was done, and done well.
So a few weeks later my friend was passing through the area and saw nobody was home, but there was a fire going to keep the house warm (owner must have been at work).
So my friend climbed up onto the roof and got his chimney extension back. It was a plus, but not enough to cover everything that was installed and the time put in. Where things get funny is that once he took the extension off the chimney, due to poor drawing of air, the house started to fill up with smoke as the fire burned. The owner must have come home to a thick smoke-filled home.
Try getting that smell out of stuff. Lol. Probably a layer of soot on everything. To my recollection the owner did not have any pets, so no lives were harmed, but when everything you own is black and reeks like smoke and your home is freezing in the middle of winter, I bet you would have rather paid someone for their products and services.
I hate people like that.
When they know from the point they hire you, no matter how good of a job you do, they will try to find some reason not to pay you.”
9. Don't Pay Me For My Work? I'll Come Back At You
“A few years after I started my business I was asked to clean-up & optimize a number of PCs in multiple locations, as well as set up some forms & templates, for a new client who owned a local restaurant. The work, all labor apart from a little travel, was performed over the space of a month due to scheduling conflicts & school holidays but, on completing the last of it, the client confirmed verbally that he was happy with all I’d done, and to go ahead and send an invoice.
I duly emailed an invoice for a sum just in excess of £400.
I waited for payment; never heard anything, sent reminder emails, called & left messages; but no response. Eventually, a couple of busy months had passed and I met the client by chance in the local supermarket. On asking why he’d not paid or been in touch, he said that all the PCs were as bad as they had been before I’d started and that he HAD tried to contact me with no success.
As my landline & mobile phone had caller display as well as answering services, & there had been no emails, I knew the latter was a lie, and as any PC user knows, a system can easily go back to pot if the user bad habits don’t change.
So I contacted a local debt collector, gave him the details, printouts of my call logs & post-invoicing emails, & he took them to the restaurateur.
On his return, his words were ‘He’s not disputing the invoice, he’s saying that the work wasn’t done right – so it’s his word against yours.’ I queried if it was worth taking the guy to small claims, to which the debt collector said ‘Even if you could prove he confirmed he was satisfied with the work, they might insist you get his computers back to their pre-invoice state again – do you really want to spend more time doing that?’ Of course, the answer was no, so I stewed it over in my mind and came up with a plan.
At this point it was late November so, creating two throwaway email accounts in female names, I got in touch with the restaurant to book a large party for Valentine’s night the following February. I put it down as ‘…my husband’s surprise 40th birthday party,’ confirmed that ‘…my husband’s sister’ (and cc’d her in the message with the other throwaway) couldn’t make the journey north, but would happily pay the £10/head deposit as her share towards the night.
Of course, as time went on the ideas grew arms and legs. The numbers attending increased, until the owner suggested he’d reserve the whole restaurant for the evening, and they’d happily arrange the seating to suit us… but could I ensure the deposit was sorted ASAP, please? Of course, I confirmed that the ‘sister’ was a scatterbrain & that I’d ensure the cheque was with him very soon.
He emailed the sister using the cc address & ‘she’ confirmed it had been posted.
To keep him on-side, I asked for a proposed menu in advance so that I could send it to all the attendees for pre-ordering. Naturally, they were delighted that they’d know this as it makes their life much easier. Consequently, the numbers for all 3 courses were emailed in – with a few ‘fussy eater’ variables thrown in for good measure.
Needless to say by the beginning of February he was getting quite antsy about there being no sign of the deposit, but I reassured him that the sister’s cheque must have been lost in the post, so she’d send another by Special Delivery if they could ensure someone was there to sign for it… I knew the owner lived about 25 miles away, & the restaurant didn’t open ’til 5 pm, so he’d have to come in very early & hang around waiting for it.
A week before d-day and he’d obviously had enough. He emailed in a spat saying they’d turned away numerous inquiries, had no deposit, and could no longer hold back on taking other bookings. This time I didn’t bother replying… my part was done.
My wife (at the time) & I were booked in at another restaurant close by for our own Valentine’s meal, after which we took a walk past the restaurateur’s business premises to see just two cars in their parking lot, one of which was his!
I’m not sure how much he must have lost out on that night, but knowing his prices I’d bet it was significantly more than the £400+ I’d invoiced him!
Of course, lessons were learned by me too – get written or emailed confirmation of job satisfaction for one, & not letting new clients go unbilled for too long was another! Naturally, I had no hesitation letting all & sundry know how he’d behaved either, so he was blacklisted, or forced to pay up-front for any work, by IT & other professionals I knew locally.”
8. No Mom! It's Called Kidnapping
“I had served in both the Regular Army and Special Operations Forces (SOF) community for just over ten years when an opportunity arose.
It was an assignment in the middle of nowhere but was near what I claim to be my hometown (Military Brat). I would later find out that the job was horrible, but that has nothing to do with the story.
We had been in Small Town, USA for a couple of months. We were pretty much settled in. My wife and I were not exactly prepared mentally though.
Both sets of grandparents, specifically grandmas, had been away from their grandchildren since they were born. They were like flies at the house for the first couple of months. It was finally starting to subside when this happened.
I should mention that my mom is different. At least I think she is. I have always been the independent type, and I rarely, if ever, call home.
It’s not because I don’t love my parents or friends. I just don’t feel the need to talk unless I really have something to say. I feel less of a need to call my mother. Generally speaking, don’t expect a phone call from me.
Why? She is scattered and typically has nothing useful to say. She likes to gossip, but she is the lady in the chain of gossipers that twists information and relays the wrong facts or tries to convince me of things.
Typical phone calls from my mother are below.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
OP: Hi
Mom: Hey. What are you doing?
OP: Nothing.
Mom: Remember Jim Bob?
OP: No.
Mom: Yeah you do. You went to the pool with him once when you were six months old. When we lived in Germany.
OP: Sorry mom. I don’t remember Jim Bob.
Mom: Yeah you do.
OP: No. Mom.
I don’t remember him.
Mom: Well he died. Thought you would want to know.
Dear Reader, this happens ALL THE TIME. I have spoken on the phone with her no more than twenty times in the last decade and at least ten people I don’t know have died. Unrelated, but this is our last conversation:
Ring. Ring. Ring.
OP: (Groggy) Hey.
Mom: Hi. You sound sleepy.
What are you doing?
OP: Sleeping.
Mom: Mid-day nap?
OP: No. It’s two in the morning. I am sleeping
Mom: FIRST NAME, MIDDLE NAME, LAST NAME… what country are you in?
OP: Lebanon.
Mom: What are you doing there?
OP: Army work.
Mom: I called to tell you that Random Lady who used to watch you wrestle in high school passed away. Just thought you would want to know.
Love you. Bye.
(I’m bad, but she worries. I have been injured in combat three times. I figure I will just tell her when I get back most times.)
Back to Small Town USA. It’s a Saturday. I am looking forward to having some time off. My wife was a swing-shift ICU Nurse at the time, and she was at work. I was home with the 2 YO, and the miniature human (6 YO).
It was just the men at the house. I had woken up, fed the humans, and plopped them down in the living room to watch Paw Patrol while I took a shower.
I get the Army essentials and return feeling refreshed from the shower. I conduct another inventory, but something is missing. Cake (2YO) is missing. He is a bi-pedal monster so I don’t think much of it.
I just ask Kelly (Mini Human/6YO) where his brother is. I get the typical shoulder shrug response. Great.
I now have 3,200 square feet of house to work with. I will systematically check the house either finding him in his room watching TV or exploring the cleaning products under the sink. The first sweep was unsuccessful. The second sweep was unsuccessful. I now enlist the help of Kelly to find the speed demon.
We are now about ten sweeps in and I am PANICKING. I’ve talked to my wife many times on the phone. We have had the ‘lost’ conversations. ‘Babe. I lost my car keys. Do you know where they are at?’ ‘Babe. I lost my Army thing. Do you know where it is?’ No husband ever wants to call their wife and say, ‘Babe.
Do you know that bi-pedal toddler we have? Yeah, that one. Do you know where it’s at?’
I was there though. The house we lived in was old. The locks on some of the doors were ‘different.’ Very old and some were complicated to open. Cake could not penetrate the front door. It just was not physically possible. This dude is Houdini, he was an escape artist. I was at my wit’s end.
I had to call my wife. The conversation went exactly how anyone would expect it to go. She was worried. She was hysterical. There was no way I would ever hold that, ‘#1 Dad’ coffee mug ever again.
I did one last sweep under the direction of my wife, but it was now time to hand in my man/parent card and call the police.
9-1-1
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Lady: 9-1-1. What is your emergency?
OP: I lost my son.
Lady: Sir. You lost your child?
OP: Yes. I took a shower and now my two-year-old is missing. I have checked the house and he is not here.
Lady: What is your location, Sir?
OP: Address
Lady: What is your son wearing?
OP: Thomas The Tank Engine shirt.
Blue. Diaper.
Lady: Where did you last see him…
I have a large bay window. Very Large. Something caught my eye. The reflection of sunlight that bounces off cars screams through the window when they pass or park. A car had just parked in front of my house. It was my mother. Great. I am now about to have a Mom conversation and this is how it would play out in my head.
(IN MY HEAD. DID NOT HAPPEN)
OP: Hey mom.
Mom: Hey.
OP: Remember that toddler I had?
Mom: (Unlike me) Yeah.
OP: Well. I lost him! Bye.
I am dreading the fact that I have 9-1-1 on the line and I am about to tell my mother the dreaded news. Then I see it. What was ‘it’? Cake. My toddler. I kindly explain to 9-1-1 that I had found my human.
Now I was only a bad father in the eyes of my wife and the entire dispatch center. I was seething with anger. I am a happy-go-lucky guy. Super calm. Even in firefights. I simply don’t stress out about much. This was not the case. I go charging out of the house.
OP: WHAT IN THE WORLD DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?
Mom: (Calm and shocked).
What? I just went to the grocery store.
OP: With my child. You took my child.
Mom: Yeah. I stopped by and asked if the boys wanted to go. Cake did.
OP: You stole my kid mom. STOLE-MY-KID.
Mom: (Chuckles) No I didn’t. I asked. Cake wanted to go. Kelly didn’t. I told Kelly to tell you.
Side Note: Paw Patrol is like a trance for your kids.
The g*****n rapture could happen around kids while watching cartoons and they are unaware. God forbid the cable goes out though. Then the real chaos starts. I am a warfighter with fourteen combat deployments. I have said, ‘Daddy doesn’t want to watch Barney for the 20th time today’ exactly once. Some fights just are not worth it.
OP: You told Kelly!?! Did you tell my six-year-old to relay a message to me?
You thought that would work? Did you make that message contingent on a toy? Because he didn’t know where his brother was.
Mom: Well I told him.
OP: Mom. You stole my kid.
(Then she said it.)
Mom: I am a grandma. I can take him.
OP: Mom. You stole my kid.
Mom: Oh. I just took him.
OP: It’s not called ‘took’. It’s called KIDNAPPING!
Mom: Oh I didn’t kidnap him.
OP: You walked into the house. Asked two children if they wanted to go. Told one to relay a message to me. WHY DID YOU NOT ASK OR TELL ME.
Mom: I screamed out. Thought you knew.
I lost my mind. It went on and on with her trying to convince me of her point. I was not having it.
I was beyond mad. I called my dad to get his opinion and he just laughed, ‘Grandma is in TRUB-ULLLLL.’ She was leaving anyway, I couldn’t kick her out. It didn’t even concern her mentally. She was oblivious to the gravity and severity of the situation. I was not done yet though.
It just so happened that this specific weekend was a four-day weekend for me.
I had the next two days off with the boys. My mom was unaware. She called on Sunday and asked what time I was dropping the boys off. Ding, Light bulb moment. We had just adopted a new dog that was crate training. Let us capitalize on this!
OP: Do you think you can watch the boys at the house so you can take Lola out?
I don’t want her in the cage all day.
Mom: Sure. I can do that.
Great. Now my mom would be at my house from around 0600-1900. Even better. My dad would be at work as well.
D-Day (0600)
My mom arrives at the house. Still oblivious that I was still angry. No worries. I now have 12-hours to work out my frustration. I depart the house and promptly arrive at her house.
Find the spare key, and let me in.
I reorganize everything. I mean EVERYTHING. It didn’t take long to do the living room. I moved the couch. I moved the love seat. I move my fathers’ chair. The coffee table. The TV. Everything gets rearranged. I even move pictures from wall to wall and use sticky tack to hang them upside down or wonky.
Moving into a new place can be a hassle during military moves.
I love cooking. The kitchen and woodshop are my sanctuaries. It is such a pain to move into a new kitchen and get things where you want them. What’s not a pain? Reorganizing someone’s kitchen. Everything from top to bottom was reorganized. The powder room was close to the kitchen so I put plates under the sink in the powder room and toilet paper in the kitchen draws.
Again, EVERYTHING WAS moved.
I work my way through the house ensuring that nothing was left untouched. The only room I didn’t enter was the master bedroom. I am one of three siblings. I was not interested or mentally willing to sleep in that room. I did however take great pride in her ‘Cricket Room’ to ensure that I moved everything. My last act of ‘screw you’ in the house was taking every single remote in the house.
TV, DVR, Cable, Lights… you name it. If it was a remote, it was now in my possession. I then returned home at the normal time.
The changeover was typical. She asked me how my day was and let me tell you, it was a satisfying day of work for me. She acted as if the kidnapping event never happened. Well, she was about to be reminded that I didn’t forget.
It was time to drink, play with the boys, and wait for that phone call.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Mom: (Remember. She is my mom. I love her. But she is ‘different.’) Were you at the house today?
OP: (Brain: Is she serious?) What?
Mom: Did you stop by the house today. I think we were robbed.
OP: (Laughing. Robbed? Yeah. Robbers typically move your stuff around) Yes.
I stopped by the house.
Mom: You rearranged the living room?
(My dad just gets home. During the conversation)
I hear my dad talking as he enters the house, ‘Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?!?!’
Dad: (Still overhearing him). Karla. What did you do to the house?
Mom: I didn’t do it. OP Did.
She is oblivious still. Just looking at the living room. She laughs a bit, and we conclude the conversation.
Now I am baffled. Oh well.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Mom: Where in the world are my pots and pans? There is toilet paper under the kitchen sink. Toilet paper does not go there. G*****n it OP.
(Dad in the background) Where is the remote Karla?
I hooked everything back up. I just moved it. Things still worked.
Dad (Background): Karla. REMOTE.
My mother is now walking through the house.
She arrives in her arts and crafts Cricket Room.
Mom: FIRST NAME. MIDDLE. LAST. WHAT DID YOU DO.
OP: I reorganized everything for you.
Mom: Oh. My. God.
Pause
Dad: KARLA. KARLA. Where is the remote for the TV?
Mom: Where are the remotes?
OP: Oh. I took them. I called out your name. I thought you heard me.
She now explains to my father.
Now there is hysterical laughter in the background.
Mom: I am on my way over.
She arrived at the house. I am willing to break bread and settle this. Under one condition.
OP: All you have to say is you are sorry for kidnapping my child and you won’t ever do it again.
Mom: I didn’t…
OP: Ah. Ah. Ah. Do you want the remotes back?
OP, I AM SORRY for KIDNAPPING your kid and I will never do it again.
Mom: I am sorry for kidnapping Cake and I will never do it again.
OP: Thank you.
Mom: What time are you dropping the boys off tomorrow.
OP: Ah? I think you should come here until you figure out where your pots and pans are.
Mom: See you at six.
Love you. Bye.
And that’s that. Military life is different. Really different. I never thought in a million years I would live in my hometown and still be in the Army. It was great at times. I was totally not expecting all the things that come with living in my hometown after being away for over a decade. The grandparents wanted to make up for years of not seeing them, and they did.
There were obviously some learning struggles. Karla admitted defeat and my dad eventually got his remotes back. Everybody won. She is still a crazy lady. I love her, but boy is she different.”
7. Please Fix My Daughter's Laptop For Free
“My moocher friend isn’t tech-savvy, like at all. He has zero respect for tech and constantly uses me as his go-to man when stuff goes sideways, almost always his doing.
This is from the olden days of Windows 8 being a fresh hot mess that was the next big thing everyone hated because it took the standard Windows interface to the trash can. (I hate Windows 8 in case you didn’t pick up on that.)
He had recently bought a laptop for his daughter since she was starting to need it for school and he wanted a mobile pc to use when he felt like it, pretty sure he just wanted it for himself but needed to convince his wife to ok the expense.
Instead of asking me for input, he decided he was just going to go to the big blue multi-story and buy the cheapest laptop model that rhymes with well. It took less than a day of him fighting with it to call me to ask if I’d put Windows 7 on it because he hated Windows 8. I asked why not return it and get a windows 7 model, to which he responded: big blue doesn’t have any windows 7 only 8 and my daughter really needs this computer…
Sure she does…
I agree and he drops it off within an hour. I should note that this happened just after windows 8 dropped and there were no classic shell programs out that simply said ‘Screw a new piece of ugly tablet design we’re using the old one everyone knows and can use’, so my options were limited. Did an initial look at what I was getting myself into and lucky me, Well had only put out drivers for windows 8 for this model.
Yay! I do about 6 hours worth of hunting/downloading/tweaking drivers, and praying/cursing the tech gods as I installed Windows 7. I had to cherry-pick working drivers for most of the hardware, the rest I got to work through sheer trial and error. I made a restore disk, backed up, and labeled every driver for this system in individually numbered folders in case I needed to redo anything on this piece of work, my friend is notorious for messing up his computer’s operating system.
I give him a ring and let him know it’s good to go and he picks it up the next day.
Less than 2 weeks later he texts saying something’s wrong with it, it won’t do blah blah blah or I can’t get it to do what I want.
SHOCKING, I know…
I just restore the disk I made and give it back the same day.
Let’s see how long this lasts…
Almost a week later, the same thing…
Again a quick restore and I give it back.
This time it took almost a whole 3 weeks till I got a text… Now I’m annoyed, what is he doing to this thing to mess up the operating system. I finally took the time to look at the system and see what in the world was going on.
He had a bunch of cracked games downloaded and was trying to run those, a bunch of bugs/malware on it, oh, and a bunch of shady sites in his browser history. I’m livid, the only reason I kept fixing this d**n thing was that it was supposed to be his daughter’s. I got ahold of his wife to see exactly who was really using the laptop and for what, turns out he told her it was having issues and he was constantly trying to ‘fix’ it at home and even took it to work to mess around with it when he had time, he was a manager at a Hut that sells pizza.
He’s one of those real hands-on managers who let everyone know what needs to be done then gets lost in the office. So I get the evil idea of fixing things my way.
My first step to fixing things my way was to make an admin account that only I had the info for and limit the other account to a limited user. When I talked to his wife I got a good idea of what his daughter really liked as far as shows, games, etc. I then proceed to p**p this laptop out for a 10yr old girl.
My little pony wallpapers (about 100 on rotate), the entire my little pony cartoon show stored directly on the computer, Bratz, Barbie, the works. I even redid the icons to my little pony theme and tweaked the user interface to be pink/purple-colored. I made sure there was a parental lock on the browsers to prevent anything adult video-related from even showing up on the laptop.
I installed TeamViewer and locked in my personal credentials so I could get on anytime I needed. And just for good measure, I installed a handy program called deep freeze. For those unfamiliar with it, it snaps shots of the drive as is and restores the drive to that exact image every time the power cycles. The only downside to this program is you lose anything you save on the computer when the power cycles, not a problem since I had gotten a bulk pack of thumb drives that were multi-colored and came with lanyards.
I even went a step above and beyond and got my little pony skin for the laptop lid in case he thought of taking it to work again.
I personally delivered the laptop this time when the wife and daughter were home, the girly high-pitched squeals of joy that nearly ruptured my eardrums made it all worth it. She went off on a joy-induced tirade as I showed her and her mom everything I did.
Including all the shows and games I put on just for her. I then gave her a bright pink thumb drive with a purple lanyard and explained that when she wanted to play the games or save anything the drive needed to be plugged in, I set the save path for all the games to the thumb drive and added a shortcut to the drive itself on the desktop to make sure she wouldn’t lose any school work she was doing.
I made sure both she and her mom knew the thumb drive had to plug in otherwise things wouldn’t be saved. I didn’t mention the parental lock I set up or deep freeze, I wanted it to be a surprise for my friend later. Both she and her mom thanked me, I got a big hug from the daughter who was still flying around on cloud 9, she was begging her mom to watch my little pony with her before I even left.
I knew it was only a matter of time till I got an angry text/call from my friend as soon as he got a chance to use the laptop. I was waiting with gleeful anticipation. I had dropped the laptop off on Monday and I knew he wouldn’t get a chance to use it till Friday when he got back from a trip he took.
Cut to Friday night and I get a call around 8 pm, which I ignore and let go to voicemail. I get 3 more calls every 5-10 minutes which I also ignore. Then I get a bunch of texts which I ignored till about 11 pm when I figured he had ample time to try and mess with the laptop to only be shut down at every attempt.
I call him up with an especially snarky attitude, acting half asleep just to annoy him.
Mooch: Finally where in the world have you been?!? I tried calling you and texting but you never responded.
Me: Yeah I had a long day so I took an evening nap, what’s up?
Mooch: What’s up?!?! This piece of trash laptop is busted that’s what’s up! I can’t get anything to work right.
I downloaded a game and tried installing it but it says I don’t have admin rights. I restarted it and the game files were gone completely so I redownload it but still couldn’t install it. It’s not even letting me browse the web! I thought you fixed this.
Me: Calm down, I’m sure it’s something simple. Let me remote in.
Mooch: Wait you can do that?
Me: Yeah, I got sick of having to have it dropped off so I installed remote software. Let’s see… first thing I do is remotely restart the system.
Mooch: IT DID IT AGAIN!!!
Me: What?
Mooch: The game I downloaded is gone from the desktop!
Me: Oh yeah, I put software on the laptop that restores it to a default setting, anything not saved on an external drive gets removed. I gave your wife and daughter a thumb drive.
Didn’t they tell you it was needed?
Mooch: No! Oh my God! Why’d you do a stupid thing like that?
Me: Well I’ve had to fix this thing 3 times already and I got sick of it so I made sure anything you downloaded or tried to install would be deleted and blocked. You don’t have admin rights, I do. Last time there were over a dozen bugs/malware from your games and the games you were trying to run would barely run on this laptop even if you had legit versions.
Mooch: OH MY GOD!!! (Insert 15-minute rant I didn’t pay any attention to because I don’t care) Well, why won’t it let me browse the web?
Me: Are you sure? Let’s see… I bring up Google and start browsing standard sites, hit a few cartoon sites I favorited for his daughter. Everything looks fine to me. Could you be referring to the adult sites that were in the browser history on YOUR DAUGHTER’S LAPTOP!?!?
Mooch: Um…
Me: Yeah, I thought so. See, me being the upstanding guy I am, I turned on parental controls to keep web browsing safe for your 10yr old daughter. What is wrong with you?!?
Mooch: But…
Me: No, no buts. It took a lot of work to get this thing working for your daughter’s sake and then you use it as your personal play toy which I had to fix 3 times.
I’m done with your nonsense, I made it so your daughter can use HER laptop when and how she needs it, if you want to get your own laptop and mess it up beyond repair that’s fine by me. No more freebies if you mess something up being an idiot. If you think this is unfair I’d be more than happy to let your wife know exactly what the issue with the laptop was including screenshots of your browsing history.
I don’t mind helping but you go above and beyond being a mooch a lot of times. Anything else you need ‘help’ with?
Mooch: No…
Me: Have a great weekend! (click)
Having spent over 18 years in customer service/tech support so I went a bit nuclear on him but I had had enough of his stunts. Reminded me of all too many times the problem isn’t the hardware/software, it’s the meat puppet smashing their face against the keyboard and wondering why stuff doesn’t work.
So I simply removed that part of the equation. Amazingly enough, he didn’t have any more issues with that laptop. Wonder why? The only time I was gotten ahold of was by his wife asking me to update some things and install some software the daughter needed for school. Which I was more than happy to do.”
6. Cut Me Off? I'll Make You Wait
“I am a rideshare driver. I was driving in the parking lot of a strip mall with a passenger who had a stop at a store there. I was at a T-junction kind of thing in the parking lot going straight when a car that should have stopped until I passed and then turned comes flying by and cuts me off with her turn. Turns out she was going to the same store too!
I parked right beside her on the left, and my passenger getting out first prevented her from getting out until the passenger reached the sidewalk in front of the store. The other driver was visibly angry. Gave me a little chuckle.”
5. Enjoy The 1200-Mile Drive
“I was living in an apartment in California and had a really terrible neighbor. Super noisy, let her toddler run around unsupervised – I once saw the kid run into the street.
One day she shows up at my door and asks if I’ve seen her pet ferret. Which is illegal to keep as a pet in that state. I called animal control.
The officer shows up, tells her she has to get rid of the rodent. She says she’ll take it to her sister’s in Oregon. Officer wrote her a ticket, told her to get it signed by animal control in Oregon within 30 days proving she took the ferret there.
Enjoy the drive – 1200 miles round trip.”
4. Accuse Me Of Stealing? You Will Lose Everything
“This happened way back in the dark ages, 1986. I was 21 at the time and working for a gas station that was associated with a certain grocery store chain in Washington state. It was owned by a company not affiliated with said chain but had locations at nearly every one.
As this was long before the days of debit cards, this was a cash-only gas station. We didn’t even take credit cards. Customers would pull up, pump their gas and then come to my window to pay. No drinks, no snacks… customers couldn’t even get into my booth. I had been working there for about a year when the company announced it was closing the location.
My manager and I were offered positions at another location upstate and we both accepted. We moved our respective families and started our new jobs. As new hires (ugh).
This station was incredibly busy. We did more business in 8 hrs than my old location would do in a week. This location also had a different setup: here you would pull into the station from a single entrance, pump your gas, and then drive forward to a single exit where the ‘Pay Here’ booth was located. There were always 2 cashiers on duty.
Each cashier had a cash drawer.
One thing I should note, there were also no computers. So closing the drawer down between shifts was time-consuming and tedious. We had to manually count the pack of smokes remaining and count the cash drawers. We would fill out an end-of-shift report listing the starting balances and the ending balances. We also had to list the gallons sold from each pump.
At the end of the shift, the total of gallons sold and the total packs sold should equal the balance. It is important to note here that not once in the year I had worked for the previous location had I been off by more than 10 cents.
The following morning after my first shift I was informed by the manager that I was short $50. Impossible I said, I balanced out yesterday.
He said that I must have stolen that after I had completed the paperwork. I just looked at him and said, no I didn’t. He gave me a verbal warning and said if it happened again I would be fired and the stolen funds would be deducted from my paycheck this week.
In the 5 days that followed, I realized quickly the manager was up to something.
My old manager who was just another worker now was also accused of stealing. As was one other new employee. I can’t vouch for the other employee but I’m pretty sure she did nothing wrong. The employees that had been there a while were never accused of anything. I did some checking and found out this manager was relatively new (had only been there about 6 months) and the other cashiers had been here before him.
Only new cashiers were being accused of stealing. And that location had been having ‘stealing problems’ for about 6 months and the turnover was high with the new employees.
I came to work at 6 am on a Monday only to be told I was being fired. For cause. The manager accused me of taking $500 out of my drawer the previous Friday. He said he only discovered it this morning (even though he had worked Sat and Sun).
I said ok and left. I was pretty angry and instead of going home, I parked in the grocery store parking lot and proceed to settle in to watch the gas station. I knew that at 9 am sharp, he would take the cash in the safe and make the weekend deposit. At 9 am he left the gas station and headed to the bank. But instead of walking into the bank, he walked into the ‘casino’ next door.
It’s not really a casino like we think of today, but more of a betting parlor for the races. It did have slot machines, but no card tables.
I think ‘Well, this is interesting.’
He comes out of the casino at exactly 10 am, walks next door to the bank, does his business, and then heads back to the gas station. I head home with a plan.
Every morning I follow him from the gas station to the casino. I take a picture of him leaving, and one of him arriving at the bank and walking into the casino. I take pictures of him coming out and then heading to the bank. I do this for 5 days straight. He even went on Saturday. On day 3 my old manager was fired for ‘stealing’ $150.
I get the film developed, (no digital camera in the dark ages) note the times and dates on the back of each one. Then I call the main office of the gas company. It’s after 5 but I’m hoping someone is there. And there is. I speak to a woman and explain my situation and she says she knows exactly who I should speak to and transfers me.
By some grace of God, she has transferred me to none other than the President/CEO of the company!
I tell him my story and tell him I did NOT steal from his company and could prove who actually did. He took down my information and said he would be in touch. I’m thinking to myself ‘yeah right.’ The next morning I went to the station to perform my usual observation of the manager.
At 9 am he leaves for the ‘bank’. At 10 am he comes out. At that moment 2 stern-looking gentlemen approach him. One pulls out his wallet and shows him something. The other one is talking. The manager goes pale and takes a step back. The next thing I know he is being escorted to a car I hadn’t noticed and they drive off. I lose them at a traffic signal so I head back to the station.
They all show back up about 5 min later, and a few minutes after that a police cruiser pulls in. The officer talks to the stern gentleman and proceeds to place the manager in handcuffs. The other man says nothing but is glaring daggers at the manager.
The President called me later that afternoon and informed me that the manager had been arrested for embezzlement (turns out that in 6 months he had managed to steal about $5k).
He would take the store funds into the casino and gamble with it; if he won, he would make the normal bank deposit. If he lost, he would make the deposit and note in his records that we had been short the previous day. The CEO had already been focusing on that location because of the stealing and high turnover rate, but my information helped them figure out what exactly had been going on.
I was thanked and sent a substantial check as a reward. My old manager was offered the manager’s job and I was offered my old job back. I declined as I had already found another job that I liked more and paid better. The gambling manager was sentenced to 1 year in jail and ordered to attend counseling for his gambling addiction. His wife divorced him and took their 3 children to California.
His house was foreclosed on and he ended up in a homeless shelter.”
3. Move The Trailer!
“Years ago I worked at a cabinet shop. I went on an install with the owner, and when we came back he parked the empty trailer close to the dumpster. No reason, in particular, there was just space there, so that’s where he left it. The next morning I come into work and Jerry (not his real name) comes up to me looking annoyed about something.
Nothing new, he’s always sort of a grumpy old fella. The conversation went something similar to below (18 years ago, so I don’t remember exactly).
Jerry: Did you park that trailer there by the dumpster?
Me: No, the owner drove yesterday.
Jerry: You can’t park that trailer there, then I can’t get to the dumpster!
Me: I didn’t park it there, the owner did, but I can move it.
Jerry: I don’t know why you would park that trailer there. You know we need to have access to the dumpster.
Me: but I didn’t park it there. Why don’t you talk to the owner about it?
Jerry: blah blah blah your fault, d**n kids have no respect, blah blah blah.
Me: It was not me.
The conversation continued in that manner for several minutes, with him berating me for leaving the trailer in the way that I didn’t leave in the way.
From that day forward, until I left that cabinet shop a couple of years later, anytime I worked late (which was more often than not) and the 5×8 trailer was at the shop, I’d pick up the tongue and roll it right up to the dumpster for Jerry to find in the morning.”
2. Sell My Wife A Bricked Phone? Okay, Let's Have A Little Chat
“Probably about a year and a half ago my wife was in the market for a lightly used galaxy s10 or s10e. Finally, while I was at work, she found a really nice one for a pretty good price ($200) on OfferUp. She jumped on it and drove out to a sketchy area to pick it up. The phone looked great, worked, and the IMEI checked out on the random site she checked it on so she bought it.
When I got home I decided to double-check the IMEI with T-Mobile and it came back as bad. But the phone still worked (at least for now). I tried to get more info from T-Mobile but all they could tell me was that it was not paid off and that it could be bricked at any moment.
Okay, time for some revenge. I waited about two days, made myself a new OfferUp acct, and found that seller.
On his page, he had a slightly older phone for $150 and some kind of Gameboy for $120. I sent him a message and asked if he’d take $250 for both. He agreed…
Now I wasn’t the biggest guy (29yr old 5’9” 175lbs) but I boxed for a long time when I was younger so I have confidence during confrontations.
That night I drove out to the sketchy neighborhood and met up with these two ~18yr old guys in a jack-in-the-box parking lot.
And no, I did not bring the bricked phone with me… I said hi and one of them handed me the phone and Gameboy.
Okay, game on. I took the items over for a minute, asked a few questions, then put them into my pockets. At that point, I aggressively told them that a couple of days ago they had sold my friend (didn’t want to tell them she was my wife) a bricked phone.
They denied it being bricked so I yelled that it was a $200 paperweight and that this other phone and Gameboy are mine now. Unless they have my $200…
One of them quickly (and remarkably) proceeds to pull the $195 he had left out of his pocket and hands it to me. I gave the cheaper phone and Gameboy (which I don’t think were even worth $200) back and they started running.
Fast! Once they were out of sight I hopped into my truck and gunned it out of there. Success!
Oh and here’s the kicker. Shockingly, at the time bricked galaxies were still worth nearly $200 for parts on eBay.”
1. Petty Fight Over Toilet Paper Roll
“My wife and I have been married for 25 years, happily, I might add.
There are however things that annoy you in every marriage. For me, one of which is my wife’s inability or lack of motivation at least, to put a new toilet paper roll back on the dispenser. In the part of our Master Bath where the toilet is, as you sit and do your business, the toilet paper hanger is on your right and the edge of the tub is equidistant on the left. For some reason, when my wife has to grab a new roll, she always leaves it on the edge of the tub rather than hanging it.
If left there she will continue to use that roll, always returning it to the side of the tub.
I’ve fixed it thousands of times over the last 18 years living in this house. I’ve made all the passive comments, jokingly of course, as she is the love of my life. Recently I came up with a new strategy. Now, every time I go in there and the TP roll is sitting on the tub I put it on the dispenser, but I now put it with the paper coming out from underneath rather than over the top.
It’s the WRONG way, and I’ll argue that till my death! She absolutely hates it that way.
The funny thing though is that my wife has started to put the roll on the dispenser when it runs out, most of the time at least. When she doesn’t, I just repeat the WRONG type of install as a reminder.”
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