People Recite Their Record-Breaking Revenge Stories
11. Treat Me Unfairly After My Shoulder Gets Dislocated? Watch This Company Go Bankrupt
“So I’m working in a metal manufacturing plant that fabricated appliance faces (washing machines, dryers, etc) and shelving for fridges and other such things.
I enjoyed my job as it was pretty laid back. Granted I was hired just before Thanksgiving of 2003, just after my daughter was born. There was a strike going on and I became a replacement worker.
Normally I don’t like crossing union strike lines, but not all of them walked out to strike, I had a daughter that was born in July, and I needed the salary desperately.
I was working the welding machine forever, making the shelving frames and packing them in crates to go to the paint department for a powder coat. One day, however, the machine that cut the rods stopped working and we couldn’t get it going again.
The engineers said it’d be a week or two for parts, so I hopped over to the 12-ton stamping machine and started helping out.
We move dies in and out with a forklift and then have to bolt them in.
It was rather high up, so we had a staircase-style ladder on wheels. The wheels would retract when you put weight on the steps.
At least they were supposed to.
We had warned our supervisors that they needed to fix these darn things because the wheels would randomly pop back out.
That said they did and had it retagged as safe.
I was up there one night tightening the top bolts on the open die when they popped. I went over the rail, and the thing went the opposite way. I pretty much performed a half gainer and fell into the open die, bounced off with my right shoulder, and fell 9 feet to the floor on the same shoulder.
I lay there in some scrap pieces and oil for about ten minutes while my partner and friend, Shields, came over to help me.
He helped me up and then stepped back saying ‘Oh crap.’
Slowly…the pain crept in. I turned my head and looked and my shoulder was fully separated and pushing in the front.
I walked over to the supervisor with my partner and told him what happened.
He looked at my shoulder and pushed on it and said, ‘It’s just muscles you haven’t used before.’
Shields responded with, “What the heck?!”
Me? I was more tactful.
“You bald-headed idiot. Did the radiation from the sun scorch your brain or was it the fumes in the paint department getting to you again? I need to go to the hospital.”
He relented and said okay…but he docked me a point like a jerk, and I had to drive myself. In a freaking manual car. That was fun.
Hours later, they manage to reduce me and gave me a lot of painkillers and muscle relaxers.
I went in the next day before my shift and talked to HR. My arm was in a sling. They set me up with a company doctor and then sent me home.
The next day I saw the doctor and he did several tests, reviewed the x-rays, and scheduled an MRI. He also refilled my medicine.
He wanted me off work until the MRI results and they agreed. After the results, we did physical therapy which didn’t help.
My shoulder kept subluxing (coming out of the socket and slamming back in) or dislocating fully.
Finally, I got a call from work and they wanted me to come in.
The doctor approved me for light duty. This is where it gets fun. I’m in a sling. I’m really jacked up on narcotics.
They want me to inspect the running machines and then sweep and clean them without shutting them off.
I explained that I could do it if they were off but I’m not comfortable around moving and active machines because I’m not really aware because I’m honestly high as crap on these painkillers.
They said ‘Well…we’re not going to pay you while you’re sitting at home playing up your injury.”
I asked them if they saw the doctor’s results. No…of course not…so they should trust their company doctor and HR.
So they set me to sweeping. Which isn’t a big deal as it was a giant open area, but eventually that ran out.
I started getting everyone’s paperwork for them and filling them out and helping out with QA and measuring the parts to make sure they were in spec.
It was going good…too good.
So they took a bar stool and sat me in an open area where the managers’ desks were. They didn’t let me have a desk.
They didn’t let me do the paperwork. They wouldn’t let me bring a book. Or anything to write on.
My original supervisor was fired at some point for something not related to anything really…so I had the original supervisor that hired me.
He was a jerk.
I seriously got up and went to pee, and he yelled and carried on like a jerk.
I asked him if he was done and he got red-faced. I asked him why he had me sitting here doing nothing and he said…well…you’re so hurt…boohoo.
So the next day I brought in a dunce cap I made and a little sign that said I was being punished for being injured.
I talked to HR who said they couldn’t do anything about it even though I had other odds and ends I could do that was beneficial and helped the company out.
I asked if it was really necessary to sit me on a bar stool like I was in time out when I was twenty-five years old because I got injured due to their crappy ladder that they lied about.
She said that they couldn’t pay for me to sit at home.
So…I wore the dunce cap and held the sign all night.
The entire time I was going through the doctor’s visits and gearing up for surgery, and it was looking like I was going to be out for a while.
We are about three weeks into this crap at this point. I end up being told to go and sort parts by the terrible supervisor. The parts were coming off of a conveyor near a stamping machine…and needed two hands to move.
He told me to make due or I’m fired.
So I go over there, livid, and 5 hours into it, I’m sore as heck from doing this left-handed, and I’m getting yelled at because I’m slow…then it happens: I freaking pull muscles in my left arm, back, and neck from being a dummy and not standing up for myself.
He curses me up one side and down the other and just takes me to the ER and drops me off. They see me and confirmed and gave me the paperwork…I thought he was waiting in the parking lot but he actually left. I had to call my mother to come and get me.
And I was really screwed up from all the pain shots.
The next day, I call into HR and they fire me because I had “pointed out,” and I was “intoxicated.”
I had never missed a shift save from the doctor’s appointments, going to the ER, and physical therapy. Even then, I went in right after my appointments.
I was so mad.
Yup. Definitely mad.
I go to my next scheduled doctor’s appointment and he gives me my date for surgery.
I go through the surgery, recover, and do physical therapy while gathering all of my paperwork and preparing to take this to a lawyer.
I’m finally cleared and declared ‘healed.’
Then it happens. One day, I’m getting up off the couch. My little girl is cradled in my left arm, and I push off with my just-healed right.
Nothing too bad or strenuous.
It blows out the BACK this time. I fell and cracked my head on our entertainment center…bleeding and cursing like heck. It was either take the bump or land on my daughter.
ER visit again and they reduce it and say that it looks like I may have muscle damage from what just happened, all the subluxes and what originally happened.
I tell the company doctor at the next visit, and he not only tells me that that isn’t true but that I am taking advantage of him.
He took the sling off and threw it in the garbage can and says there is nothing more he can do for me.
The next day, wearing a new sling, my mother walks me into one of the most vicious lawyers in the city.
Two days later, I’m seeing a new doctor and getting all sorts of tests. They inject dye with a huge needle that they scraped across the bone and gahhh…I do not recommend it.
They say there is so much damage that I need another immediate surgery because I’m Omnidirectional, and the first doctor should have been able to see it. As my new one is looking at my old results he shows me on the MRIs where he can tell how it was apparent in the beginning.
Translation: the company doctor botched my first surgery.
The company is trying to fight me on this, but eventually, they relented and I get my surgery.
I’ve three anchors in my right shoulder holding me together.
I have to now go to checkups every six months, even years later and I’m now looking at another surgery because there is nerve damage.
My lawyer finishes up with them and I won a “several thousand” (into the six-figure area…) buck lawsuit from not only the company but the doctor as well.
Not five months after, the company announced they were bankrupt and were closing its doors. The crappy supervisor tried to get a job at another factory…where my friend was well respected and he knew what was going on.
The guy didn’t get the job, and we all ran into him last year. He was working fast food.
I’d like to think that I had a hand in the company’s demise.
It would’ve been good if they had just taken care of me. I wouldn’t have sued if they didn’t screw me over and try to get me to quit through embarrassment.”
Another User Comments:
“As someone who’s blown out their shoulder, if someone told me to stop being dramatic about it, I would be very tempted to literally pop that freaking jerk’s shoulder right out of his socket and tell him to man the heck up as he inevitably goes into shock.
This is an embarrassment to humanity right here.” Reddit user
10. Refuse To Return The Car That You're Not Paying For? Oh, He'll Get It Back Alright
Try not taking advantage of your ex-husband next time.
“Before I met my now husband, he was married and divorced. We’ll call my husband “H” and his ex-wife “D.” Theirs was not a marriage of love but a marriage of financial benefit.
He was 19; she was a little older. He was in college, but she couldn’t afford to go. He was able to get grants and some small loans to afford college because his parents were dead broke.
Her estranged father made too much salary to qualify. So they got married, so the powers that be no longer considered her parents’ income into her “ability to pay” part of the application for grants.
He worked in commercial real estate and went to school part-time. With his income and both their grants and loans, she was able to go to school full-time, and they graduated at the same time.
They stayed together through and a little bit after college. Although they didn’t really love each other, they did like each other. He started making a decent living and learned to appreciate the finer things in life.
His upwardly mobile career allowed them to buy and sell their 1st house, and then buy a 2nd, nicer home. He also leased them both brand-new cars. In 2000, my husband started to feel like their time together had passed its prime.
She agreed.
They started the divorce process, and since her job didn’t pay that much, (they sold the house for a loss during the divorce process, so nobody got that) he decided to give her:
- all the furnishings in their home (paid for by him).
- agreement to finish out the remaining months on her very nice SUV’s lease (in his name and $500+ per month), (ETA: which, if included the divorce decree, and not as a separate agreement attached and referenced in the decree, is considered alimony in our state, regardless if it’s called by the name “alimony” in the decree or not, and as such, can be altered if the supported spouse remarries or either party has a significant change in income; in this case, she remarried, her marital income more than tripled, and H’s income was $0 for an, at the time, unknown period of time).
- half of his, not inconsequential, savings and retirement accounts (100% funded by him; she always spent any change she had left after bills on shoes and clothes…never opened or contributed to a savings account).
He was very generous, considering our state would not have required he pay any alimony and only a split of commingled assets, and he had come into the marriage with a small sum of savings he never commingled that he could have kept.
They used a divorce-in-the-box type place that does non-contested divorces on the cheap. They were amicably divorced 90 days later and both start seeing their future spouses within a few months of that.
My husband and I started seeing each other in early 2001 (2-3 months after the divorce was final). A year and a half after the divorce, I moved in with my husband, and she married her extremely well-off-financially romantic partner.
A few months later, my husband really wanted to make an upward job change (different position in the same industry), which would significantly lower his income for a short time ($0 for at least 4 months, and then a slow but gradual increase, resulting in significantly more income after about at least a year of ramp up.
My income could just barely cover all our bills, my (soon-to-be) car payment (my car was on its last legs and I desperately needed a new car), and his car payment, but I didn’t have enough to cover his ex-wife’s $500+ a month, car payment.
He decided that, since D was remarried, he should not have to continue paying for it and should be able to take the car back, and I could drive that instead of buying a new one myself.
He thought it was fair, and he read his divorce decree and felt it was possible. We consulted a lawyer, who agreed that asking for it back was fair, and although it wasn’t written into the divorce decree as “alimony” it will likely be treated as such if they ended up going to court, so he had a good chance of winning.
H called D to explain the situation. He asked her for the SUV back, but she said “no” and ended the conversation. He called her a week later, and asked again, stating that if she still refuses, he will take her to court.
She said she had spoken to her husband, and they weren’t going to give the car back. As an alternative, H asked if they could take over paying all, or at least some, of the car payment, as the $500+ a month would negatively impact his career advancement.
They said they spoke to a lawyer and refused to pay a penny of the payment. On to the next option: court. Our lawyer had laid out a plan for doing it without representation, so he went to the courthouse the next day and filed his complaint.
A few days later, D calls and said she had been summoned by the court, and she and her husband wanted to come over and see if they could work something out without going to court.
Great! We figured she had seen that these $500+ car payments were basically alimony, and she really can’t have her ex-husband paying for her car now that she’s remarried!
She’s seen the light! But this is Pro Revenge…we know better than that.
The night she and her husband came over, their solution was not to give the car back…no, their solution was: he turns in the $500+ per month vehicle, pay the early lease termination penalty, and get her a (new 36-month) lease on a different, cheaper car…say a $250 one.
Considering there were around 18 months left on the $500+ month, that would actually cost him more in the long run with the penalty. That was a big NO. (ETA: H just reminded me we made a 3rd attempt at a compromise: we asked that they take over the payment until the time at which his income returned to the pre-divorce level, by agreeing to share his pay stubs on a monthly basis to verify he was still below threshing.
Once he was back to earning what was at the end of the marriage, he would take over the payments again. She said, “Well, I talked to a lawyer, and he doesn’t think you have a snowball’s chance in heck of winning in court.” H: “Okay, have a goodnight.
Bye.” And out they went, feeling like they won.)
The court date came, and H shows up in court. D? Nowhere to be seen. His case gets called…still no D.
The judge reads the complaint, listens to H’s story, and makes his judgment, paraphrasing: “I don’t think my ruling would be any different had she showed up to court, but we’ll never know.
I hereby declare a default judgment in favor of Plaintiff.” Once H received a printed copy of the judgment, he hatched his plan.
1- He called D, told her he won the case and asked her for the keys.
She said “no” and hung up on him. 2- He went to the dealership to order 2 new keys. He had the VIN, and the car was in his, so no problem there.
3- He knew where she worked and her schedule. He ordered a tow truck and requested a Sheriff’s officer at 3:45 for the next afternoon at her work.
D DAY 3:45 the next day, 15 minutes before she would finish, he met up with the tow truck driver and the officer in the parking lot of her work.
The officer verified the documents, and they located and loaded the truck onto the flatbed. They moved the truck to the curb right outside the doors to D’s work.
A little after 4:00, D walks out, sees the trio and her car on the truck, and freezes in her tracks. This is the paraphrased conversation that followed:
D: But you can’t do that.
H hands her the judgment; the officer reiterates the court’s judgment.
D: “But I talked to Joe. He said you didn’t have a snowball’s chance in heck of winning….those were Joe’s exact words…snowball’s.
chance. in. heck”…voice slightly cracking.
H thinks for a second to try to figure out who Joe was. She had said it like he knew who Joe was. He tried to figure out a lawyer they both knew named Joe, but he could only think of their mortgage broker, Joe
H: Joe, Joe? Like our mortgage broker, Joe? Your “lawyer” is a mortgage broker?
D: Yeah, he said that it wasn’t written into the divorce decree as alimony, so you couldn’t take it just because I got married.
H: Well, the judge may or may not have agreed with you and Joe, but since you never showed up to court, you lost your opportunity to find out.
She was left mouth open, catching flies.
He shook the officer’s hand, thanked him for his time, said to the truck driver, “I’ll meet you back at my house” said goodbye to D, and walked away.
Just when H neared his car, she screamed, “How am I supposed to get home?” He replied, “Call that man you call a husband that was okay with his wife’s ex-husband supporting her.”
They get back to our house, unload the tow truck, and the driver was laughing his butt off. When he was finished he said, “That was the best thing I’ve ever been a part of on the job.” He ended up discounting the tow by a bit, saying “that’s to make up for you having to be married to that entitled woman.”
I sold my SUV within a week, and I took over the payments for his ex’s car. Their divorce was no longer amicable, we got married, had a kid, and lived happily ever after.
Moral of the story: pay for your own crap and don’t no-show if you’ve been summoned to court…even if you think the plaintiff doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in heck of winning…rather.
Especially if the plaintiff doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in heck of winning.”
Another User Comments:
“I love this. My ex-husband is driving a car that I am paying for, and he’s been remarried. I’m about to file the motion to amend our divorce decree because ours simply says he gets to “maintain the operation of” this vehicle in question.
Now that my ex has remarried, I’d love to stop making those payments!” erinn1986
9. Call Me Fat? I'll Get You To Drop Out Of High School
Body shaming can lead to some huge, long-lasting consequences.
“I was around 13 or 14 years old, so I was in 8th grade.
A few weeks prior, there was a huge s******p in my school’s admin department, so loads of kids were jumbled up in their math and science groups.
A load of the dumb kids was thrown into the top sets whilst some of the smartest kids in school were sent down to a group where they were still learning basic phonics.
I, however, was only affected only a tad. My math was unaffected, but I was placed into one of the lowest science groups in the school. Our groups were called X1 – X5, X1 being the smartest and X5 being the most unintelligent.
I had been taken into X4. This group was where most of the bad kids went who kept disrupting either X3 or X5, so they were solely placed in this single group.
So…you’d think that this group’s teacher would be one of the strictest people you could ever meet. No. No, they were not.
For the sake of anonymity, I will call our teacher Mr. Bird.
Mr. Bird was a small, fat man around his 50s. He had a huge beard and long, scruffy gray hair, so most of the kids in the school would either call him Dumbledore or Santa Claus.
Well, this guy was not a teacher at all. He would show up to lessons late, play lectures off YouTube instead of doing them himself, and half the time would place these outdated worksheets in front of us and, no joke, leave.
You may think,
“Oh, OP, well weren’t you only in there for a couple of lessons or so?”
No. The administrative apartment for our school took well over a couple of months to reset all of our records and put us back in regular groups.
But these months would run over our end-of-semester tests to determine our general grade and see if we’d pass the year.
So this was bad. Very bad.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, I was one of the only smart kids there, so I would be surrounded by braindead jerkwads who would do basically nothing but crack unfunny jokes to one another all lesson.
And one of the worst ones sat right next to me. Let’s call him Jared.
He’d be loud and obnoxious, interrupting some of the only minutes of learning we’d receive from Mr. Bird as well as making crappy, annoying jokes.
But that wasn’t the worst part. When he’d get a lot of the class’s attention, he’d frequently turn around and ridicule me in front of everyone.
Normally, it was about my height (I’m pretty small), which I didn’t care about too much, but sometimes he’d cross the line and say something about my weight.
Back then, I was a little on the overweight side but not by much. These insults would go straight to my heart, and I remember the humiliation I’d feel. Every time he did this, I just reminded myself that they were all just braindead and that I just needed to ignore it.
Thankfully, I had something against him. He was as dumb as a rock. He failed basically every class, and what I’d later on learn was that he relied on people like me to get him to pass.
I learned this when we started doing mock tests to predict our scores. Mr. Bird was lazy and couldn’t bother to move the desks, so he made us just sit with one chair between one another, so we ‘don’t copy off the person sitting next to us.’ Little does he know, he put a short kid, me, next to a tall kid, Jared, which allowed him to be able to just look over at my test anytime without the need to arch his head around me.
I learned this when I was doing my test and kept looking over to see him suddenly look away, making him look super suspicious.
So I began testing him to see what he was doing.
I’d write an answer and then pretend to stretch, only to see him writing down an answer straight after me. I’d pause, and if I looked over, he’d pretend like he was just thinking of the answer.
It all was becoming pretty clear. He was copying my test. Just to do a last-ditch effort to see, I started circling the most random, nonsensical answers out there and cracked a glance at his test – he circled them all the same.
This kind of made me mad, as I realized I was giving the biggest jerkwad in the entire school a free pass to get out of Science.
I wouldn’t stand by that, so I formulated a pretty simple plan.
Those tests would determine if a special few would need to be held back, and I realized that I’d be his only lifeline in passing this grade. At first, I thought of getting two papers and ticking all the wrong answers on one, so he’d fail, but I knew that getting caught trying to get to a paper could get me suspended or expelled. I needed something simpler.
I thought for a bit and reached the conclusion that I just had to make sure that I ticked every wrong answer on that test and to make sure he copied them down.
You may think I’m basically holding myself back a year just to get some revenge, but I had thought of this beforehand. All of my grades from other classes were above Bs, and I knew that even if I failed Science, I would still have enough to pass without too much hassle.
Meanwhile, Jared’s highest grades were probably Es or Cs. You probably know what I did, but I walked into that end-of-semester test with a big, poop-eating grin on my face.
I sat down and made sure to get my chair as close to his as possible, so he’d get the best view. I also got out a bold black pen which will make my answers bigger and easier to read.
When the test began, I just began reading the question and ticking the most ridiculous ones. Questions like ‘what supports Darwin’s theory of evolution would be met with answers like ‘the Hunger Games.’ All the meanwhile, Jared was just eating this up and writing them all down.
Toward the end of the test, I’d turn the paper over like I’d finished, and he would do the same, turning and beginning to talk with others next to him.
Just to make sure I wouldn’t be shooting myself in the foot, I went back over the first few pages and ticked every right answer before he could see. I ended up getting a 24 out of 90, which was better than the 4 Jared got.
That next year, I remember seeing Jared walking to my old school, still in the 8th grade.
You’re probably wondering why that makes it so pro-revenge, and well, I’ll tell you why.
A couple of years ago, when we all graduated, I got the news that Jared would continue to fail for years and lasted until 9th grade before he became a high school dropout.
I indirectly caused this kid to drop out of high school just because he called me fat in 8th grade.
I was a terrible kid.”
8. Try To Revoke My Vacation After I'm Already Gone? I'll Get You In Trouble For Fraud
“I work six days a week as a painter (not the artist type).
This story happened from August 10th (a Saturday) through the 26th.
I got married on August 11th. I had informed my boss and supervisor of this a week prior as per company rules regarding vacation time for our honeymoon.
So just to be sure they understood the situation, I decided to mention it again the day before. They said they understood and told me to enjoy the week off with my husband.
And just to be clear, I usually have a nice relationship with both my higher-ups, JB and Karen, but something wasn’t right during all this.
So I finish my work that Saturday and drive home to make the final preparations for the wedding.
We got wed by the same priest that baptized me back in the day, and everything went perfectly, and I couldn’t have asked for more. It wasn’t the big wedding you see in the movies, mostly because the only guests were my husband’s parents and two siblings as well as about ten of our closest friends.
We finish after some time, and we retired for the evening. My husband had during his toast surprised me with our honeymoon destination, Australia. He hadn’t mentioned anything about it, and he is BAD at keeping secrets from me, but we were both happy about it.
Since most people think I’m a girl because of my build and choice in clothing, you betcha we got some funny looks in Sydney while being there, we always have a good laugh when they realize.
While in Sydney, I get a phone call.
It was Karen asking me where I was, and why I hadn’t shown up Monday morning.
Karen: Where are you? We have an urgent assignment.
Me: I’m in Australia, you know, on the other side of the globe.
Karen: Why are you there? Who approved the vacation?
Me: Well, first of all, it’s my honeymoon.
Second of all, you approved me taking time off.
Karen: Well, that decision has changed; you are needed here ASAP.
Me: (dumbfounded)
Karen: Yea, my son moved away from home and needs his new apartment painted.
Me: I’m not the only employee in the firm, surely you can use someone else?
So, to clarify. Our company mostly hired people without education. I didn’t have an education when I started but took it during my time there.
But we discussed this for a good part of an hour before I got fed up with her and hung up on her. I couldn’t understand why she needed ME to take care of the apartment when there are six employees that rarely had an assignment and were more than good enough to take care of it, but noooo.
It had to be me.
A couple of hours later, I get a call from my boss. He’s a cool guy, and we go out for a drink every now and again, so he knows me.
He was even a guest at the wedding.
JB: I got a call from Karen. She told me you were on leave without permission. And that you were quite rude toward her.
Me: As you know, I’m in Sydney on our honeymoon. I requested permission as per regulations and got permission from Karen herself. She called me earlier requesting me to come home to work to paint her son’s apartment.
I simply got fed up with her and hung up on her.
JB: Well, we all know how she is with people. There is a reason why you are the one handling customers.
You just enjoy your vacation and say hi to the hubby from me.
Me: I will. See you in a week.
We continue our trip, but every now and again, I hear my phone ringing.
Guess who? No one in my firm likes Karen; she is the biggest power-hungry person I have ever known besides my own parents. Since I never shut off my phone, I kept getting calls and texts.
Some were nasty like her personality, others were so sweet I thought she was on something. I got really tired of her, so I answered the phone again (big mistake for her and me).
I started recording our conversations to try to get proof of her harassment. She started threatening me with firing me and telling me that JB was on her side. This continued for a couple of days.
So just for fun, my husband and I start talking about taking revenge after years of oppression from her. So we used some of our time at the hotel looking into her.
And I happen to know some stuff about her taxes and regular finances since she asks me to take care of her tax payments. We contacted some of our friends back home to help us (we have some friends in the local police force), and the plan was in motion.
Friday, we returned home with the biggest jetlag in my life but with fire in my soul keeping me going. We found some dirt on her during the week. We had enough to use.
Because of her union, the firm was unable to fire her because of the certain type of harassment she committed. Bullcrap, my turn to screw her over. My husband and I decided to cut the vacation short so we could start immediately.
So Saturday, I clocked in and had a meeting with the guys on my team. We had five ranks in the company: Boss, supervisor, team leader (me), employees, and interns.
So I had a meeting with my team to get them in on the fun, no hesitation, they joined. No one liked her, so LET THE HUNGER GAMES BEGIN, AND MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN OUR FREAKING FAVOR.
We printed out the tax files I had and collected a total of one hundred and fifty pages with taxes. We made memes of her sleeping on the job and such, and you name it, we did it.
I went to her office regarding the apartment, and she lit up like a pumpkin on Halloween. She hadn’t noticed me being back at work, so she jumped into the air.
But she immediately started rambling about her son and how he needs to get painters out. I said ok and finished preparing.
We drive to the apartment to set up, and wouldn’t you know who came by?
Yup. She came rambling through the hallway. And when she came in, oooohhhoho, you should’ve seen her face when she saw our fabulous job. We had taken every printout of her tax files, every mail with threats to employees, and basically every piece of evidence against her that we had sent a copy of to her union and glued them to the walls and painted around them like a picture frame.
Of course, she would deny everything, but she now had no backup from the union to keep her from being fired.
We sent her tax files to our country’S CRS (tax evasion), we sent both mails with threats and tax papers to our boss, who by the way was in on it from the start, and to top it all off, we got her ex-husband to dig up old files from when they were married, and wouldn’t you know, turns out it was some juicy stuff we found.
We mailed these papers to my friends in the local police and asked them to let us have some fun with her before they took her. We did.
Fast forward to yesterday, I got a call from my friends that Karen tried to use me as a scapegoat, that I was the one who made all those papers to frame her since I didn’t like her.
Well, true, I didn’t like her from the start, but every file and mail was written by Karen herself. She had no credibility and found herself locked up before long.
Just to rub it in her face, I showed up in court with my husband and the entire company just to see what would happen. She was livid. When she saw me and my husband, she immediately stood up, acting like nothing was wrong, and tried to run for me.
I don’t know if she thought she could kick my butt or what, but even though I dress like a girl and have a pretty small and feminine body, I am much stronger than she thinks.
The court came to a verdict. She was to pay about $450,000 for tax evasion + fraud, we found out that she used financing from the company to renovate her own house.
She got fired by my boss and was to spend 3 years behind bars because of fraud, tax evasion, and contempt of court. Overall, a crappy day for her.
On her way out, she started yelling slurs at me and trying to bite the officers in the neck in pure desperation.
This morning when I clocked in, I saw a notice on our board about a possible promotion. I applied on the spot. I went in, had a nice chat with my boss, and got the promotion while still keeping my old position as team leader.
My pay got almost tripled in a span of 72 hours. I’m happy.”
7. Lie To Increase Your Annual Wage? I'll Mess With Your Finances Big Time
Dishonesty always gets caught at some point.
“So I’m 19F and had only been living with my mother for a good 3.5 years (was put into foster care at a young age and don’t remember living with my mother at all).
Before moving in with her, she would tell me how great it would be for me to live there and how I would be treated with respect and yadda yadda yadda.
Well, since I started college, things went to crap.
My whole life, I wanted to go to college for art, but my mother convinced me that it was stupid and so I chose to go for a business degree.
I got into my state’s Business and Marketing Honor Society during my last year of high school for having a 98 average in all 5 of my business classes.
My first semester of college, everything started out fine.
Then the end of September hit, and I got reimbursement from financial aid.
Let me add – my mother is on SSI for minor “disabilities” and hasn’t worked in the past 18 years.
She has arthritis and fibromyalgia, so apparently, she can’t work. I got public assistance that I never knew about since I was never allowed to do the paperwork for anything.
I thought we only got food stamps, but apparently, she lied and said I was paying a couple of hundred bucks for rent, so she could get a higher payment.
So she was getting nearly $500 a month for my needs (I never got anything unless it was Christmas) and $350 a month for food stamps (my partner had to buy me food because I was never allowed to eat at home and didn’t want to get a $3,000 meal plan on campus).
Anyways, I got a healthy $2,000 back from financial aid, which I originally planned on spending on clothes (I hadn’t had a pair of fitting jeans since I lived with my mother), a laptop for school, and food.
Well, apparently every time I get a check, it belongs to my mother.
She demanded I give her most of it, so I spent $1,500 on some jeans for me and a brand new ps4 system, ps vita, ps+, and a bunch of ps4 games for my partner.
(I know that sounds reckless of me, but he’s paid me back for it). She was angry and belittled me till I gave her the rest for “rent” and “bills” and “food.” She went off and bought her partner illegal substances.
I was mad because, obviously, that’s just not okay. I just pushed through the semester and kinda sucked it up like I usually do.
February came along and pretty much the same thing happened. She demanded my $3,000 (I got more this past semester because I only had to pay for 1 textbook) to pay for rent, electricity, the wifi, food, and everything under the sun.
She got mad when I refused to give her more than $350. I went off and spent my check on my anniversary (including outfit, gas, 2 meals, and some gifts), a new phone (my phone barely worked and was 7 years old), and prepaid my phone plan for the next few months.
I also bought myself some food for when I was home.
She was irate. How DARE I spend my earnings on my partner and not the woman who birthed me!
I tried staying away from home as much as possible (driving around with my partner for the most part), but every time I came home, I would get yelled at.
Well, March was when poop hit the fan.
I needed my Medicaid card (they put financial assistance on that card for convenience) and birth certificate for a program that helps people get jobs in the area, and she wasn’t having it.
Apparently saying I needed them was being rude and disrespectful. I ignored her for the most part and kept insisting that I needed them right away because I had to leave.
She gave them to me after half an hour of me telling her I needed to leave and just started yelling at me. So I left for a few hours, and I got a call from my case worker asking when I would turn in timesheets (I had to get a signature from each teacher stating I was in class to keep my insurance benefits and the food stamps – I didn’t know about the financial assistance), and she told me I could lose the financial assistance if I didn’t.
I asked her what she was talking about and she told me I got approximately $500 a month to pay for rent and other things I needed. I informed her that I never knew about that, and she was very upset that my mother was using the funds on God knows what.
She told me to change the pin on the card and to not let my mother touch it.
So I changed the pin on my card, went home, and my room was torn up.
My clothes were everywhere. My old laptop was missing. My Christmas gifts from my partner were gone. I was very upset.
I told my mother that I wanted my stuff back, and she just threw everything at my door.
I started packing my bags cause I was done with her garbage. She demanded I give her my Medicaid card back since she “keeps everyone else’s.” She got in my face, threw my glasses onto the floor, tried throwing my new phone, and was just screaming at me till I gave it to her (I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, so I panic whenever someone is even slightly loud).
After she went to the store and tried buying something with it, she came home and started shoving me around, demanding I give her the pin. I was just like my father, I was a piece of garbage for buying jeans that actually fit me for once in my life, I was trash for liking the presents I got from my partner and not from her (I got pants that were 2 sizes too big and very low rise for Christmas..
Yeah, no), etc., etc.
She went wild till I gave her my pin. So, of course, I was dumb and gave it to her. Someone for some reason called the cops, and they showed up shortly after, and she and her partner started telling them I was abusive and manipulative and a pathological liar.
I tried explaining that she took my Medicaid card, but they didn’t care. The cops never care because supposedly my mom’s partner has put half of our local police force into the hospital.
After the cops left, my mother said that my partner (who has done nothing and has only been supportive of me throughout this) was not allowed to enter the house again.
Then she said I had a new curfew of 6 pm (I had a class that ended at 5 and it took me 2 hours to walk home, so that was stupid), and if I left the house, I was to never return.
So I left. My partner took me to a homeless shelter specifically for teens and young adults that had nowhere else to go. I got my own apartment (with the potential of getting a roommate at some point), and I honestly have never felt better in my life.
The following day, I go to get a new card and my mother had taken out $260 at 5 am with the help of my oldest sister. I had $4 to buy food for 2 weeks before I could apply for my own food stamps and financial assistance case.
Most of the time, I only had water, and I would eat every 3 days at my partner’s house. Soon enough, his dad refused to let me over even though he knew what was going on (to a certain extent).
I didn’t eat anything for a week before being able to get food stamps. I wish I had gotten a job, but having 8 classes (one of which was 6 hours a week for a measly 1 credit) took up the majority of my time.
The college suggested I withdraw to focus on my mental health (I was afraid of leaving my new place because I didn’t want to be attacked by my family or my mom’s partner’s addict friends).
I went from seeing my therapist for half an hour every other week to seeing her for an hour every week. She suggested that I cut contact with my mother permanently even though it meant losing a good $3,000 worth of stuff I bought myself over the past 12 years (I got paid to babysit and take care of the farm while in foster care).
I was so, so upset about losing all 40 of my stuffed animals. They really meant a lot to me, and they kinda were the only things there that helped me calm down from a panic attack.
(I know it sounds immature, but I’ve had most of them since I was about 8 years old).
Then something popped into my head while I was applying for my own food stamps and financial assistance case.
I realized that I could easily report my mother for welfare fraud. Not only had she been taking my $500 a month, but she had lied and said she and her partner didn’t share food and were “roommates,” she paid to use other people’s food stamps, and she has sold her food stamps to buy fast food or illegal substances.
So I did just that. I went to our state’s website and reported her fraud, adding that she took what was on my card at 5 am that one day. I went into detail, and gave the exact location of where she did it and everything.
I said she used other people’s cards all the time (which was very true) and how she demanded my card whenever I had it.
A couple of weeks later, I get a letter from the Department of Social Services (DSS).
They accidentally sent it to my address instead of my mom’s, thinking she moved along with me. I open it and I read that she was denied public assistance, denied medical insurance, and denied food stamps.
She met the requirements for getting them, but because of my report, she lost everything but SSI (as far as I know).
What probably helped was that I told DSS she stole my card and requested a new one, and the lady at the front desk was mortified. (I found out she took the funds out later when I set up the card online and saw all previous transactions for the past year.)
She’s out $850 a month (more than her SSI) and out of health insurance (which was paid for by the state) all because of me, and I boasted about it to my therapist. My therapist actually congratulated me because I’m very shy with people so to report something like that was very unlikely of me unless you got me very angry.”
Another User Comments:
“I lost a lot of my childhood things due to different circumstances. I thought I would find ones online similar (video games mainly) and purchased a couple second-hand online.
The big brain explosion for me was when a friend said, “So you want things that remind you of your life back then?”
Wow… It took me a while to realize that I was at the happiest point in my life and didn’t want things (although they comforted me at the time) around me to remind me of those times.
Of the things I had replaced already, I thanked them (weird but cathartic) and donated them to a refuge so others could get comfort/enjoyment, as I was past that point and in a good place.
The things that I hold special now are from my now time, not my “before” time.
I hope you see you’re in a better place in your life now.
Removing the bonds of childhood into adult life is a freeing step. Enjoy it.” WhatChips
6. Keep Taking My Stuff? This Milk Is Gonna Give You Some Serious Runs
“I’m a university student, and at the time of this story, I was in my first year, the second semester.
In this country, university degrees are 3 years instead of the more common 4-year program. Now for me, this meant that I only had 3 years to fully enjoy my life living alone with the added bonus of my room and board paid for, without having to get a job.
I was taking full advantage and having the time of my life (whilst still bringing in fantastic grades of course).
I have the type of personality that can forgive the big stuff.
Friends breaking my phone, losing an expensive book that I needed for school, etc., but I cannot stand the small stuff. Pet peeves essentially drive me insane. Not returning my favorite pen, leaving the lights on and in this case, stealing my milk.
The place I stay during my studies at school is off campus. A walking distance of the school and shops if I need more groceries. It’s privately owned and only accepts tenants who are students of the university.
The house has 5 sections, A-E. I live in the E section, with 2 of my close friends, and we share a kitchen, toilet, and shower. Our section is lovely because, unlike the others, it can be closed off with a door that separates us from the rest of the house.
Think of our section shaped like an ‘L’. You enter the E section through the top of the L, pass the 3 rooms, the kitchen is at the right angle, and you turn to go to the bathroom.
Secluded, private, perfect.
Because it’s so secluded, we can easily split stuff like air freshener, toilet paper, hand-wash, dishwashing liquid e.t.c. At the start of the semester, things were going great.
We could keep everything clean, and we knew the rate at which everything was depleted. As more people started filling up the house, we noticed that our toilet paper was going much quicker than usual. As in, 2 rolls a day, even though we were on campus most of the time.
This happened for a few weeks until we got fed up. We decided to just keep our stuff in our individual rooms and use it as necessary.
As time went on, someone kept on using our toilet, stinking it up, and just leaving.
We came home on multiple occasions to find poop stains and little urine droplets everywhere. Our air freshener is finished, soap is mostly gone as well.
You need to understand that we went out of our way to keep this area clean.
As is the norm in this country, we had a housekeeper come a few times a week to clean the house. And we cleaned on top of that (as you can tell, cleanliness is really important to us.)
Then I started to notice my milk disappearing. I don’t drink milk that often, so I make sure to buy long-life milk, and I will finish a liter of milk in about 1 and a half to two weeks.
I was now replacing my milk every 2 days. I knew that it wasn’t my friends, as we all have very different preferences for milk, and theirs were still intact.
Remember what I said, I cannot handle small crap like this.
If that person bothered to ask, I would gladly share. I’m not that cheap as not to share the milk.
The more times they took the milk the angrier I got.
And it wasn’t that violent anger either, it was that quiet, slowly accumulating white-hot rage that’s really dangerous. They would drink the milk and leave half a sip in the fridge for me to find at midnight when I’m craving some cereal. And I don’t do warm milk.
I tried leaving notes on the fridge. Ignored. I tried leaving notes on the kitchen door and the fridge. Steadily ignored. I tried leaving notes on the milk itself. Nothing.
It’s as if they were spitting in my face.
I decided to take matters into my own hands. Since they loved taking big old poops in other peoples’ sparkling clean toilets, I’d give them something to remember.
I went to my friend and took a few pills that help with constipation. I ground them up really fine, and I started to dose my milk with them. Just a little every few days.
I notice that our corridor was stinking a bit more every day. It was a short-term price to pay for long-term success. I then went to the pharmacy and bought proper laxatives.
I mean, little white pills that can screw up your life and mess up your colon. The box said to take one, but I ground up 4 and mixed them into the milk.
I added a little sugar to make sure that it didn’t compromise the taste then I went to the toilet, removed the air freshener, and made sure that the toilet paper was just enough for a normal crap.
Just barely enough.
When I returned back to the house, there was an all-powerful smell coming from our corridor. I mean I had to open all the doors and windows and spray the new air freshener I just bought alongside the old one.
I went to the fridge, and as usual, my milk was more than halfway gone.
My plan was a freaking success. I fished the little rat out of his hole.
As I was hanging out with my friend Will in another section, I noticed a smell in their corridor. That same smell that’s been plaguing us for the past 3 months.
At this point, I could recognize that filth anywhere. I casually asked my friend whether he noticed it as well. And he gave me the most satisfying story I could ask for.
This guy, let’s call him Ray. Ray approached my friend Will and asked him earlier in the day whether he could take him to the pharmacy. Will had noticed that Ray had large sweat patches on his back and pits and that he had a sheen of sweat on his entire body.
Will asked what was wrong and Ray confessed that he had been having very loose diarrhea for about 30 minutes straight. He needed some help in case another wave hit him.
Will being the good guy he is, took him to the shops and they bought some meds recommended by the pharmacist.
As they were about to leave the shops, Ray dropped everything he was holding (phone, some groceries and his meds) and sprinted to the toilet.
Which was locked. Will quickly followed to make sure that Ray was alright and saw brown sludge slowly, slipping down Ray’s leg. Ray then slipped into the female toilets and Will waited outside for about half an hour, and Ray finally walked out looking like he’s been through war.
He was even sweatier than before, his hair was wet and there was a damp spot on his shorts.
The icing on the cake; as Ray exited the ladies’ bathroom, a woman and her friends saw him.
This is the type of woman who wears tan capri pants, crocs, drives a Volvo, has the ‘I want to speak to the manager’ haircut, and thinks that the only shape fingernails should be is square and made of plastic.
Multiplied by three. Remember the brown slipping down his leg? That was before he went into the toilet. It was still on the floor where those 3 lovely ladies and their colorful crocs stood.
Have you seen crocs before? They have holes at the top to let the foot breathe, and in this case, to let other matter in as well. Fecal matter to be specific.
They shouted at him for 15 minutes straight. Spit flew everywhere, clacking their plastic fingernails at him as diarrhea slipped into their shoes and covered their feet. Envision the carnage.
They took a cab home and Ray jumped into the toilet again as soon as he reached the house.
That’s when I caught Will.
Fast forward 3 hours later, Ray is in the shared lounge watching tv with a blanket wrapped around him, pale, shaky, and sipping on pulpy orange juice.
As I pass by the sofa, I stop and ask Ray whether he’s alright. He says he’s fine and just had some bad food. I make small talk for a minute before standing up to leave.
Just before walking away, I ask him whether he had any milk. He froze and looked up at my face, knowing full well that I had half a liter left. The shock and humiliation on his face as it all dawned on him was all I saw as I walked away.
I slept very well that night.
He didn’t move back in the next semester.”
5. Pay Me Like Garbage? Lose $300,000 Worth Of Business
“To put some context on the story, I was working at a multi-national firm, I did my final internship post-masters degree there and they liked me so they offered me a job as a junior consultant.
Fresh from school I couldn’t be happier. As I was naïve, I signed the contract without worrying about the little details, one of the clauses was that the leave notice is set to be 3 months, I raised the issue and they said it’s not a big deal; it was just for compliance purposes to the parent firm, fair enough, I started working.
In my second month, a colleague screwed up big time, he did something by mistake jeopardizing one of our biggest accounts, and one of the biggest banks worldwide easily could have made it to the news headlines.
They fired the guy and offered me to work on the account (at the time I had not enough experience to handle working on a team that manages one of our biggest clients) but accepted the offer anyway.
I start working with a team located in a different country to work on the international bank which has branches practically everywhere, so there were a lot of interactions with associates all over the world.
They were very happy with my work, and I even had my own team to work for me when I have to multi-account. The manager was very happy with me because I exceeded expectations, and I bring more work fees to the firm.
While I was waiting for a big raise and bonus in the yearly evaluation, the manager said that I did nothing special. I swallowed my anger and continue to work flawlessly the same as the first year but with a big screw you attitude.
They even gave me other accounts and a team to manage and because I’m a petty person I wasn’t going to let this slide that easily.
The second-year evaluation, because of my screw you attitude, they tried to dig dirt on me so they can punish me, but they found nothing, the client was very happy with my work.
The manager and HR Director (HRD) went the extra mile to dig dirt on me from my team. They found nothing. My academic background gave me a lot of tools to work with to manage.
I was a good team leader, I trained them well, and I took responsibility for every decision made.
On the yearly evaluation, the Managing Partner (MP) and HRD said that I’m very competent and I did a flawless job, but I wasn’t motivated enough to climb the ladder even further this year, the jerk gave me the poorest raise, and bonus even though they have a set of “objective” rules for that and the defining factor is the client appreciation which was excellent for me.
It was like the stars were aligning for me, In that big bank account, I was the only one remaining from the team, and because it requires a lot of international coordination, not everyone could keep a tab on everything and there was an account history to keep an eye on, we worked with a lot of high profile associates around the world and they are pretty much zero mistake tolerance.
As I was the remaining member of the old team, the accounting associate requested me to come to visit him in another country and expressed to my manager how much he relies on me in the upcoming season.
Here comes the fun part.
The hot season for work starts from January until late April, with 3-month notice they hadn’t much to worry about, so that’s what they thought!
In late December, I resigned and demanded to perform only one month’s notice. I know their drill; they’ll say they have to consult the MP and they will get back to me with a response as soon as possible, but in the meantime, I should train someone to replace me, at the end of the month and once a replacement is trained, they will say he said no you should stay 3 months or pay up the 2 months (They did this to everyone before me).
As I had one year to plan my revenge, I waited a week and went back to see the HRD, she said she’s waiting still for the MP’s okay.
I went back to my office and I canceled my 5 days paid vacation for the end of December. I had the following conversation by mail:
Manager: OP, you can’t cancel your paid vacation as there isn’t much work to do at that time, YOU WILL TAKE PAID VACATION LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.
ME: I won’t take it, I’m not like everyone else; I’m on resignation notice.
Manager: Doesn’t matter; you’ll take it nevertheless.
ME: As stated by labor laws, the employee on resignation notice can’t take paid vacation otherwise it will extend their notice by the said vacation unless there is an agreement between the two parties on it.
WHICH IN OUR CASE IS NOT.
With nothing left to say, she forwarded the mail chain to the HRD, and she sent me a mail to come discuss this matter with her.
ME: I’m being professional. I demanded my notice reduced and a person to train. 1 week passed and no replacement, and I’m still waiting for your feedback.
HRD: We didn’t find the right person to replace you, and we are still looking.
ME: I don’t care that much. You said in the evaluation I did nothing special and I don’t have what it takes.
HRD: (Noticed my evil look.) Sure it was brutal how we treated you.
But you can’t leave. You’ll stay for 3 months and we have plenty of time to find someone to replace you and you will train him.
ME: That’s not going to happen.
At the end of the month, I’m leaving and you can’t stop me.
HRD: In this case, you pay a 2-month salary which is a lot.
ME: No problem!
I was prepared for that eventuality; my check is ready.
She panicked and she called the manager and the Operations Director (OD) to the meeting.
Them: You can’t leave, even with paying, we have to accept which won’t happen.
ME: As stated by law, section X paragraph Y, I can in fact leave and I don’t need your approval.
The OD is a poker champion, and he was in the meeting just to call my bluffs.
I leaned on the meeting table to give him enough physical reading of my intention so he can see that I’m not bluffing, I said that I’m leaving at the end of the month.
You have two options, Option 1: I pay you the 2 months but I will train nobody, or option 2: I’ll train somebody to replace me, but I won’t pay you.
You choose wisely.
HRD: This is blackmail.
ME: You can call it whatever you want, but that’s my offer. Take it or leave it. You have less than three weeks to decide.
OD: How we can make sure you will train him well?
ME: You don’t! If you want the second option, I need a written agreement before I start the training.
In the rush, they agree to give up the 2-month pay in exchange for training someone. They find a junior without any experience to fill in for me. I gave her lousy training, and after 2 months, the client wasn’t happy; he dropped our firm.
To have some perspective, on the bank account, I alone scored 2,000 hours with hourly fees of 200 bucks. They basically give up over 300K annually from that account because they thought it was wise to screw a junior staff on his raise and bonus for two years.”
4. Abandon The Project Halfway Through? You Bet I'll Find You
“So the story begins with my needing to hire a contractor to repair damage to a pole barn that I was constructing on our property.
The structure was partially done when a storm hit, and the structure had substantial damage. So, we bid a few contractors, and the guy that seemed to be the best one (who was actually a referral from a friend), we signed a contract and he started work within a week.
We had also signed with him to complete the structure after the insurance portion was completed because his crew could do this much more efficiently and a better job than we could do ourselves (which is what we were originally doing).
His crew completes the insurance portion of the job but then abandons the project just before starting the rest of it. No call, no email, nothing. I called and texted, and not one of my contact points was ever returned. At this point, it was late December, and we thought maybe he and his crew had holiday plans but would resume right after.
Then another windstorm hit and his crew hadn’t braced the partially-completed structure correctly…and it almost collapsed again.
I tried for 2 weeks to find him. I even drove out to the address on the contract we signed. Which ended up being a house on a rural road, next town over.
I knocked on the door, seeing his car there. No one answered. I stopped by this house several different times, trying to catch him. The last few times, his car was no longer there but the work truck of another company was.
Wanting to know if he owned the house, I pulled up the tax records for it in the county it was in. The name on the house was not registered to him.
So, sounds like he rented or at least was staying with a friend. The company info on the truck was registered to someone unrelated and not on the tax records.
The tax records showed that the actual taxpayer of the property lived elsewhere. Here where I live, the property owner’s name is listed, and if they do not actually live at that property (such as in using it for an investment), their address that would have the actual tax bill sent to is also on there.
Given that knowledge, I pulled the court records for him to see if maybe he had been recently arrested or if there was any other info. What I found was about 30 years of driving offenses, including a lot of DUI/DWI charges, and other records.
At this point, I figured he was long gone, and being as I hadn’t paid out anything to him for work that was not complete, I would just move on.
At least until the structural engineer I hired to assess the damage to the work that was done, stated that the structure had to be started over on that part, and the building materials that the contractor had left scattered around the job site were also unusable due to being left improperly stored. I had hoped that the structure could just be pulled back into place and re-secured but I was told this is not the case.
So began the bigger drama and my determination to find him. So far, his negligence has cost $1200 for a structural engineer opinion (our insurance company paid for a 2nd opinion because they didn’t like what ours said), $2,500 for the insurance deductible to the newest contractor hired to repair the exact damage that happened 3 months prior and $7,000 in materials that his insurance company refused to cover or pay for, and my insurance policy on the project did not cover either.
The adjuster for his insurance company said that he was able to locate the contractor but refused to give up any information for him directly.
That and the fact that the project wasn’t finished had detriment to my farm and boarding business because two of my pastures that were connected to where the building was sitting, couldn’t be used. This limited my ability to use natural pasture grass in the summer months by rotating pastures for each herd and had to purchase hay, which gets quite expensive.
By the time the building was completed, and I could get my pastures back to normal, I had losses of over $14,000. Because I didn’t know where he now lived, I used the only address I had for him to file for small claims court, which here has a limit of $15,000.
The court documents I served came back undeliverable. This meant that I was kind of stuck because a court date cannot be scheduled until all parties are properly served. But how do I find an address for someone who doesn’t seem to register to any particular address directly?
Time was still on my side as this was still early-mid last year. So I kept a watch on social media for anything with his name, which was a VERY unique one.
If there was another man of the same name within this state, within even the same metro area, it was unlikely because of how unique the name was. Then one day this past fall, after Google searching the name again, there it was: his social media page.
His name hadn’t shown up before on social media with several searches. Not sure why this was the case. Even better, all his settings were set to public. I could see everything he wrote about.
Including his recent commitment to stay sober earlier in 2017 (just after he abandoned my project), and… his employer’s name! He had posted a pic of him on a job site, and someone asked where he worked now.
He named the place. So a quick google search and voila! Got an address to serve him court papers to. So I re-filed with the new-found address. But I still needed a home address to enforce the judgment once I won the case.
So what did I do? Seeing that he was listed as ‘single’ on his page, I used a fake profile that I originally had in use to test various features I enable on pages that I start up under my real profile.
Truthfully, I only used that profile for that purpose to make sure the settings I put in place truly work. But now it would serve another purpose. Getting this guy to give me all the information I needed, playing on his being middle-aged and single.
To create my alter ego, I found a website of a cute blonde lady in her 40s (so as to not be too young for him, since he was around mid-40s himself), and just yanked pics.
I only set one to the profile photo and would use the rest if he asked for more. I changed all the pics in the profile to look like it was a typical page of the average mid-40s female.
Holy crap did this work… and it worked so well. I used some information I found on his page to strike up a conversation about stuff stolen out of his work truck in the alley behind his house (big clue!), and it was reported to the city police dept (he named the city, so another big clue).
So, using this information, and telling him I had grown up in the same area, I got him to give me a general area where he lived. Keeping conversation cool like “is the pizza joint still there?
They’ve been around forever” etc so he wouldn’t get suspicious. Thank goodness for Google Maps giving me a better idea of that area so I could talk about it like I did in fact grow up there.
In reality, I have only ever been in that city twice, and other times drove through on the way to somewhere else.
I was able to narrow down the area he talked about, and using that info, I pulled the police report records from that city.
There were 3 reports done within the same area on that same day he reported. So… using that information, I pulled the county tax records to see who owned the houses.
I found 3 houses within that area that could possibly be rentals since the owner’s name and taxpayer billing address did not match. This could be a long shot to find the person, but I didn’t have anything to lose by searching.
Just as I was about to call the homeowners to see if anyone by the name of the contractor rented from them, he posts some info on his page that made the calls completely unnecessary.
He posted the name of his roommate in a status update, who I then check out the profile of. The profile lists the roommate’s landscaping business. A quick google search of that business name and BINGO… his state business registration address matched 1 of the 3 addresses I suspected to be the rental house.
So now I have his home address. He had already been served at his employer’s address for the court date. Fast forward to the court date. He didn’t show up, which I suspected he wouldn’t, so I got default judgment.
Between serving him papers and the court date passing, the profile I was using to talk to him was helpful in getting info out of him about his life, his job situation, how much he made per hour (me feigning knowledge about what construction trades paid), and the fact that he was looking at changing employers.
He even told me the name of that employer. So I was armed with info, should he decide to not work with me.
He played right into my hands. Once I got the official judgment from the small claims court win, I decided to contact him myself using messenger.
I sat down and wrote out a whole paragraph to him, first typing it on Word so that I could print it out and edit it, and have my husband read it as well.
I wrote that while I was angry at him, I was going to give him ONE chance to work a deal with me, rather than using our state dept of revenue play collection officer for me.
I hate dealing with our state dept of revenue. They make the IRS look like Sunday school teachers. But…if it came down to that I would, and they would start garnishing his wages, and here they take 25% of each paycheck after taxes, and have the person’s employer do it for them, and then send it to me.
However, I hate letting the state be the middleman because they just complicate things. But I told him straight out that if he refused to work with me directly, I would go to that extreme.
I told him that I know he was an addict and has had struggles in the past. I told him that knowing he has had struggles, I was willing to work with him directly and give him an opportunity to offer a monthly payment amount that works for him and his budget, rather than have the state decide the amount for him.
To shorten this up… he replied, agreed, and signed (and had notarized) a monthly payment agreement, complete with a list of manual labor tasks that he could use in place of a payment or two to help with some projects on my farm.”
3. Get My Team Member Fired? You'll Be The Next To Be Unemployed
“About a year ago, a new VP of Development turned our company upside down by introducing “The System” of his own invention. Actual name. Was going to be the Agile killer.
He was shopping for book deals and everything.
The System meant taking any and all decisions away from what he called “the assembly line” (software engineers) and adding a huge new layer of middle management, with a central team of Decision Facilitators routing each type of decision to the proper decision-making department.
But that’s not important right now.
What’s important is that one of the many, many people emergency-hired to implement The System was Pat.
What makes her unique?
Well, for one, Pat’s entire 27-year career was running one dilapidated mom-and-pop shop in a completely different industry.
The only similarity to what we did was the word “manager” in her job title.
Second, she was unbelievably slow on the uptake. Never met anyone like that. She needed an ‘explain like I’m 5’ summary of everything, and she was incapable of translating existing knowledge to similar concepts.
It sounds like hyperbole, but I’m not exaggerating. Any time, any topic, she’d be like a recently thawed-out Neanderthal. Blank state.
Last but not least, how do I put this diplomatically?
Her wardrobe did not have a single item that would fall under a conventional definition of business-appropriate attire. Ow, my peripheral vision.
Now, it’s really not my place to comment on that.
I know. However, two and a half weeks after Pat joined our team, one of my developers, a 60-something recent grandfather, was walked out by security because Pat ran to HR in tears about him “constantly staring”.
Apparently, if that guy was allowed anywhere in her vicinity ever again she was going to quit on the spot and sue the crap out of everyone.
I know this is the most controversial part of my story.
A few people I told this one before would instantly jump to her defense: if she felt she was harassed then she was, end of story. Who knows. As an aside, I found it extremely interesting that mentioning the guy’s race instantly changed those people’s minds (Pat’s white; the guy who got fired was the only African American on our team).
In any case, the incident that sent her to HR in tears was the two of them walking out of the bathrooms at the same time, and the guy smiling at her.
A 5-second interaction in the hallway.
As the guy’s direct manager I got into trouble for “allowing it to happen,” even though I first found out about it as he was being escorted out of the building.
For me, this meant many, many, many meetings, memos, reviews, CC list longer than the actual email, and all sorts of drama. After a few weeks, this was finally killed when our in-house council advised that with no verbal contact whatsoever, staring is really hard to prove as harassment in nature.
End result for the team was a huge hole in our ability to maintain obscure legacy systems; sensitivity training for the entire team; and a giant red mark on my annual review which denied me my measly raise and a not-so-measly bonus.
I also had to spend at least an hour a day, every day, educating Pat on basic human knowledge instead of doing actual work, while Pat herself completely dropped the ball on every single thing she was supposed to do.
Sadly, The System meant I could no longer make any decisions myself. A single minor change would need to be routed to testing, then integration, then verification, then deployment management, with “assembly line” people, i.e. actual people doing the work, strictly forbidden to even touch it without being assigned to it by jargon-spouting MBAs that filled our halls.
Since The System meant that I was required to offer at least two options for every item, Pat was unable to blindly rubberstamp anything. At first, she’d run to me and have me read everything I wrote out loud and explain every sentence and every word to her.
Then she’d kick it up to her manager with a “please advise”. He’d kick it back down saying “no, it’s your job to figure this out”. And that’s where it would die.
I still can’t comprehend how Pat managed to attend daily meetings where everyone was yelling at her about work stoppage, quite a bit of which was caused by the gaping hole left by the guy she fired. Pat continued to do absolutely nothing.
It’s quite possible that she really was not all there.
After a few short weeks, Pat just stopped checking her email completely. Like a one-year-old playing hide and seek, she seemed to sincerely believe that if she just shut her eyes really tight, she would be invincible.
She wasn’t even a bottleneck. Pat was the dead end. The event horizon.
One morning, I came in, looked at the backlog, and realized I just didn’t have the motivation to keep begging Pat to do her job.
I figured I’d just do mine.
I did contact her boss, who was CC’d on all the communications anyway. Got a spectacular one-liner back saying, “Don’t bother me with this, and don’t ever go over Pat’s head again.”
A couple of months later, a major part of The Big Project failed in a spectacular fashion.
There was an emergency meeting late that evening. Stern faces. All the big brass.
Pat and her boss swaggered in. He gave me the look like he was almost sorry I was getting fired.
What did I have in my defense?
82 critical and 166 major issues in the tracking system (actual numbers) were assigned to Pat with no action in months, other than daily comments asking Pat to take action.
72 daily emails from me to Pat with my entire team and her immediate manager in CC about impending doom.
She laughed: “Well, I told everyone I don’t read my emails.
Why did he keep sending these? He should have talked to me in person!”
Ignoring a couple of raised eyebrows, I produced daily meeting minutes which proved that literally every single person on the team did, indeed, bring these up to her in person.
Her defense? “I didn’t understand what any of those things meant! How could I choose from options I do not understand? He didn’t explain any of that mumbo jumbo to me.”
I went right back to the tickets and the daily emails which spelled everything out in excruciating detail, time and again.
Pat began to look confused. “If he thought this was urgent, he could have told someone else!”
As she was saying this, her boss suddenly looked up from his iPhone and horror flashed across his face. He was right. I like to think that the slo-mo memory of me whipping out the print-out of his “don’t bother me with this” email will be forever ingrained in his mind.
Pat got fired.
Her boss got fired.
A few weeks later VP of Development got demoted and his successor quickly replaced The System with a common-sense industry standard.
This was almost 10 months ago, and from what I understand, Pat was unemployed the entire time until finally starting a new job last Monday.
She was terminated from her new position yesterday.
I might or might not have contacted her new employer to clarify an error on her LinkedIn, which as it turns out also made it into her resume, where she claimed a more senior title and uninterrupted employment at my company.”
2. Try To Get Me To Quit For Wanting My Birthday Off? Your Job Will Be The One Gone
“Quick background: From 2009-2012, I worked at a local quick lube chain. Oil changes in under 20 minutes only using a trusted oil brand, etc., etc. Going into this job I assumed that’s all I’d be doing.
Quick oil changes & the occasional tire rotation. I was wrong. Working for this specific chain is all about the extra services and products to bang customers over the head for what they might actually need, but not for double the price of the local auto parts store.
Maintaining a higher average sale every month was very important for keeping your job. And just for reference, the district managers wanted all service techs to at least have a $60+ average every month.
A basic oil change was $35. On average, we would do anywhere from 20-50 cars a day depending on the day of the week in a 3-bay garage. It’s also worth noting that if you maintained a high monthly sales average consistently, you were considered better than everyone else and put at the front of the line for promotions.
It was also very common for someone with a high average to go from a tech to being a manager of their own store within a year. Yes, there was a high turnover rate.
And yes, it was most certainly due to management consistently hiring addicts and not running background checks on people. Now starts my story.
Over the course of my employment, I worked my way up to being a shift supervisor.
This was one position below assistant manager, but I still held keys to the shop and had the alarm systems code. I opened and closed the shop regularly and if I wasn’t too busy with college I could have been an assistant manager any time I wanted. Managers I worked with loved me & the district manager as well.
It was honestly a fun job, made a lot of friends working there that I still am friends with to this day. But then we got a new manager we’ll call Johnny.
Johnny was a jerk. Younger guy, 25 at the time, thought he was hot crap cause he held an $80+ sales average consistently since he started. Some people considered him a blessing because he helped other techs get their averages up too.
Turns out, he only helped them to make himself look better for raises and promotions.
Here’s a quick list of things Johnny did once he took over my store. Consistently disappeared while working for hours at a time to go walk around talking to the local college girls.
Left every Saturday (the shop’s busiest day) 3-5 hours early and would have someone else clock him out at the end of the day. I soon discovered he lived in the next town over from me and knew people that knew him.
“Johnny? The manager? The last time I saw him, he was so messed up that he punched himself in the face till he bled. He dropped out of high school and ended up living in the park for a while.
How’d he get the job with no diploma?” He was bipolar, so screaming matches and temper tantrums became a regularity. We had an employee that I believe had some form of autism and Johnny would make him do dumb stuff cause he thought it was funny.
He dumped a mop bucket filled with dirty water on the shop’s floor as soon as I finished mopping it at the end of the day cause I made him mad somehow.
He got people that he didn’t like fired by making fake schedules showing they were off for 3 days straight when they were actually on the schedule to work and when the employee didn’t show up for the shifts he would write them up in secret for a no call no show for each day but didn’t tell the employee until they came in for their supposed shift and would fire them on the spot.
“If you want to argue call corporate.” And now my favorite thing he did often that I walked in on him doing. Remember how I said he held an $80+ average?
Well, he did that by ripping off elderly customers by lying to them about their cars, selling them services that either weren’t actually getting done or weren’t even needed, and selling parts that weren’t even parts the car had that could even be replaced or just wouldn’t be getting replaced.
I discovered his little scam by getting stuck closing the shop so he could go home a few hours early. I decided to use the time to go through the day’s invoices and finding two huge sales on cars that I worked on.
The only problem was that I didn’t do any of the services on either of those cars. Heck, one of the invoices said the transfer case & rear differential were serviced. Those don’t exist on 2011 Honda Civics.
I then started watching the customers he would ring up and write down notes like the car, time, and customer. At the end of the day, I’d find those invoices and get the internal numbers.
At the time, I didn’t think I’d ever use these notes but I 100% thought they would be useful. And it certainly was useful the day before my birthday.
I requested my birthday off 2 months in advance by submitting a formal request form and handing it to the assistant manager who just started learning how to make the schedule and left a copy on Johnny’s desk.
The day before my birthday, Johnny and the assistant manager were looking over the schedule in front of everyone to see who was working the next day and when he discovered I was off he asked why.
To which the AM replied, “Well yeah, he requested it a while ago didn’t you see the form?” Johnny replies with, “Yeah I did… Screw that. Request denied, loser; you’re working tomorrow.
Got a problem with it? Turn in your keys now cause if you don’t show up, you’re fired.”
I promptly changed into my street clothes, took the key off my key ring, handed it to Johnny, and left. He called me back a few hours later begging me to come back but I would still have to work on my birthday.
I laughed for a few seconds and hung up. Now it’s time for the revenge.
I got in contact with someone in the corporate office a few hours away, explained the situation that had occurred in the morning, and gave a few examples of what Johnny was doing wrong at the store.
They asked if I could email them everything I had and promised they would look into it. The DM gave me a call asking if I wanted to work at a different store, but I turned it down deciding it was time for me to move on.
The job made me hate cars and people, so it was time to move on. I didn’t hear anything about it for a while till the guy who is now my best friend called me laughing hysterically with news about Johnny.
Apparently, Johnny had been begging for a raise or a promotion to start training people to become managers so he would be out of the stores & customer service completely.
One day, he got a call from the corporate office to discuss this. He was beyond elated and told everyone who would listen. Turns out that was a lie. They had him drive 3 hours away to sit him down to review footage of the things he’s been doing, going over those bogus invoices, and listening to voicemails of customers calling and complaining about getting ripped off.
He was immediately fired.
Found out he ended up never finding work in the state again and actually ended up moving a few states away.
I ended up in a different industry working for the state making way more with a ton of benefits.
Unless Johnny hit the lotto, the winner is me.”
1. Argue With Your Students Over Your Own Mistake? Enjoy Being Unemployed
“In my 8th-grade year of middle school, we had one of our teachers leave at the very beginning of the year to go teach at another district.
So the school’s administration had to find a replacement in very little time, and about two weeks into the school year, they hired a teacher I’ll call Ms. E.
Immediately she gave off a vibe that screamed, “I’m only nice when my boss is in the room.”
The next few months went by and the majority of the students who had her as a teacher all agreed that she had no idea how to teach, nor did she make any effort to show the students some respect.
I’m talking about daily incidents of her picking on the class, complaining about not getting work done, and then wasting 20 minutes of class time while complaining.
Ms. E. was also the type of teacher to pick favorites and pick on kids who she didn’t like as much.
She absolutely hated me, as I often made it a point to start messing with her during class after realizing what kind of person she really was. Stuff like getting a whole group of people to move their desks an inch forward every few seconds.
We also got access to her in-class phone number, which we spent a lot of time calling her on it just to see her reaction. A whole lot of other incidents occurred in that class which would tell some great stories, but I’ll keep this short since it’s already pretty lengthy.
In May of that year, we were finishing a unit on a book and took a test on it. The test was created by Ms. E. and had a lot of errors in it.
Some of the test questions referred to very small details of the book or contradictory story pieces that made no sense.
We got the tests back about a week later, with the highest grade in the class being a 70%.
This clearly isn’t right, so a few of us went to talk to her about it, even showing evidence from the book that some of the questions that were wrong happened to be right, or there were two answers, etc.
Ms. E refused to listen to any of us, and told all of us to sit down, a group of about 5 people including me. She got up and went on about how she felt (word for word), “personally attacked” and “undermined” and had something made up about how the two points don’t matter when our concern was focused on the whole test.
Remember how she referenced being “personally attacked”? The next thing she starts talking about is MY personal grade on it and how I went to her and attacked her about my grade.
This went on for a while, mainly back and forth between her and me for about two days. At times people would speak up and agree or add to something I would say, but in the end, it turned out to be a debate between Ms. E and me.
So what did we do?
After the first day, as soon as I got home I turned on my computer, opened Gmail, and wrote about 4 pages worth of descriptions and complaints to our principal and vice principal. I was brought down to the office the next day, where I was given detention written by Ms. E, given for “insubordination,” “intrusive undermining,” and “disrupting instruction.” Total bullcrap, so I told him I wasn’t going.
He asked me to verify most of the information and elaborate on some of the incidents I described. His idea was to have me form a group of all of the people involved and have us write a list of complaints and incidents from the class, and if everything cleared up, I’d get off without punishment.
As a group of about 10 students, we wrote 17 pages of grievances and evidence that Ms. E was clearly not fit for teaching middle school students. The principal read all of it at once, and for the next week instead of class time, we worked on other classes while the principal interviewed everyone in the class, including Ms. E.
After it was all over, Ms. E was required to give a formal apology, where she spouted out some fake tears and a bullcrap written-up apology that ignored the majority of the problems we were actually referring to.
My detention was waived, and next year, she was no longer teaching in our school district.”
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