People Confess Their Revolting Revenge Stories
16. A Battle Of The Exes
“I had been going out with someone for a few months and decided to get an apartment in their hometown. Everything was going fine until I logged into a local chat room (think AOL days) to hopefully make some new friends and find out good places to go sing karaoke, and a weird username messaged me and said, ‘Hello,’ and nothing else.
A few days later, my partner and I (let’s call him Bob), are supposed to meet up for breakfast, and when I get there he has a messenger bag with him. I ask what he wants to eat, and he says he’s not hungry. I ask him what’s wrong and he pulls out about 20 pages of a chat log from that weird user name on the website.
In this chat log, there is some very graphic adult stuff that was being discussed by that username. Also in that chat log, was my name commenting on it, which I never did. I asked him what this was, and of course, he asked me to tell him what it was. I honestly had no idea and told him so. He broke up with me right there over this.
As I stated before that username had said hello to me, and that was it. This chat log was faked and I had NO idea why someone would do that. When I got home crying my eyes out, my phone rang and there was a strange voice on the line, saying how that now that I’m single, I should go out with them and all sorts of nonsense.
It was then revealed it was the EX of my now EX Bob. Called up Bob and told him what was going on and asked him why he gave my number to his ex. He said I shouldn’t have tried to two-time him with his ex. Again, never happened. Up until this, I thought Bob was going to be the person I spent my life with, that obviously didn’t happen.
Needless to say, this resulted in a police report being filed with pictures of all the text messages, and voicemails being given to the police. Bob’s EX created this fake chat log to try to break us up, which it did, just to try to get him back, which didn’t work in the end.
My ex, Bob, was running a computer business and at the time Windows required cd-keys to install.
He was building custom computers for people but using a key generator to make the keys to install Windows and Microsoft Office 2003. I found this out and decided to contact Microsoft and the Anti-Piracy groups, and gave them all the information I had.
I didn’t hear anything more about it. Until…
Just before I moved back to my home state, the hammer fell. My ex lost his computer business and was fined over 100,000.00 for software piracy.
He still doesn’t know who turned him in, but it cost him everything he had worked for. He was forced to move back in with his parents, sell his car, and get a job waiting tables.
Update: I was asked why Bob got the brunt of this, well here it is.
Bob gave my contact info to his EX, and that started a campaign of harassment by his ex towards me.
The police wouldn’t do anything because of his uncle being on the force. So Bob giving my phone number out to people and being the instigator and telling them to hit me up, as I later found out, is why he got the brunt of it. Rather have gone after that sleazeball ex of his, but I couldn’t get info on him.
I suspect the other reason that the police didn’t do anything was that it involved three gay guys.
Maybe if it had been a big city, MAYBE something would have been done back in 2005, but it being the Midwest, probably explains why the police there didn’t give a d**n.
Also, I should mention that I have done some IT work in the past, so THAT’s why I called Microsoft and the Anti-Piracy groups, because I knew what Bob was doing was Piracy, and it would cost him everything if they dropped the hammer on him.
Which, it did.”
15. My Grandpa Became The Owner Of A Gas Station
“My family migrated to America in the 1880s and settled in Nebraska. We were farmers for the first 80 years or so, but back in the 1960s, my Great Grandma decided she was going sell the entire farm before she died and simply give her sons 1/3 of inheritance when she passed (she had 3 sons).
In 1969 my Great Grandma passed, and her 3 sons inherited what she had earned from selling the farm.
My grandpa decided he would basically let the inheritance sit until after he retired from the Military.
In 1971 he deployed to Vietnam for his 2nd and final deployment. At the end of his deployment, he returned to Nebraska and retired after 22 years in the service. Now he had an old chevy truck at the time and was in the process of building a concrete business with the funds he had gotten from his inheritance.
Well during this time, his truck engine blew up. My grandpa was busy at the time and he didn’t want to fool with the truck cause he was busy. So he bought himself the engine he wanted to replace it with, which was an upgrade and he went down to the only garage in town and asked them if they’d be willing to put the engine in the truck.
They agreed on a price and told him to come back in a week or so.
A week later my Grandpa comes back and picks up the truck, he admits he felt like a fool for not double-checking the work but assumed since this was the son of his friend that the son would do right by him. This was a small town.
Well my Grandpa opens up the concrete business, and he’s busy, and it comes time for his first oil change.
This is about 4 months after he got the truck back. He’s doing the oil change and he notices that the engine he bought, isn’t the engine in his truck. It’s a smaller engine. This obviously annoys him to high heaven as my Grandma liked to say.
So he storms on down to the garage and talks to the shop, Earl was the owner. Earl comes out and denies any wrongdoing.
Says he did as he was told, and it shouldn’t have taken him 4 months to bring the issue up. My Grandpa tells Earl he needs to do what’s right. Earl refuses.
It’s important to note, this is a small town. Written contracts, and so forth really aren’t a thing. Your worth is your word.
My Grandpa tells Earl he’s going get him for this. Earl laughs and tells him to leave his shop.
My Grandpa goes down to the county and requests the record for who owns that gas station. Turns out it’s an old family friend named Harold.
My Grandpa stops by Harold’s house and starts inquiring about the business deal Harold has with Earl. Harold says well Earl rents the gas station/garage from him. My Grandpa asks Harold how is everything going, and Harold confides that Earl hasn’t paid his rent in 2 months.
My Grandpa asks, ‘Do you have a written lease with Earl?’ to which Harold goes ‘Nah, I sure don’t.’ My Grandpa then asks, ‘What if I bought the gas station/garage from you?’
Harold isn’t completely on board with the idea, but my Grandpa makes a strong point. Earl isn’t paying his rent, Harold doesn’t seem like he has much interest in being a landlord anymore, and my Grandpa has the funds to buy the place outright.
Harold sensing something is up, asks my Grandpa ‘Did Earl do something to you? You seem awfully interested in this garage, ain’t you busy with that concrete business of yours?’ and my Grandpa fills Harold in on the story.
My Grandpa also mentions that he has a son (my father) who needs something to do, and he’d be happy to buy the whole building from Harold for a fair price, and what happens after that is his business.
Also, it’s important to note when Harold decided to rent this business to Earl, in that deal went all the equipment, and tools that Harold had acquired over the years so those belonged to the building. Harold and my Grandpa came to a number that they both agreed on.
A few days later my Grandpa paid Harold in full for the business. The paperwork is done and my Grandpa is now the proud owner of a gas station and mechanics shop.
Now my Grandpa senses that Earl ain’t going be too pleased when my Grandpa fires Earl so for extra good measure my Grandpa calls up the local sheriff who is a high school friend and asks the Sheriff to come with him to break the news to Earl.
So my Grandpa and the Sheriff go down to Earl’s now-former business and they walk in and before my Grandpa can even say hello, Earl says ‘Now I told you, I didn’t lie to you.’ My grandpa smiles and says, ‘I’m not here about my truck, I’m here to fire you.’
Earl with a look of confusion on his face asks ‘You can’t fire me! I own this business.’ My Grandpa shows him the title and says ‘I’m now the owner of this building’ to which Earl fires back ‘But I got a deal with Harold!’ and the Sheriff speaks up ‘You do? Do you have a lease?’
‘Well no,’ Earl says to which the Sheriff smiles and says ‘In that case, you’re going to need to take your stuff and leave.’ Earl is fuming, grabs his toolbox, and storms out.
My Grandpa ended up hiring the mechanic that would occasionally work on his trucks at his concrete business, he had my aunt and Grandma run the gas station full time and my dad would work there after school.
We owned that Garage for 25 years before my Grandpa sold it to someone else.”
14. Unleashed The Monster Of Bureaucracy Upon My Neighbor And Watched It Destroy Him
“I live in one of those doubled-up houses where they build two houses adjacent to each other with mirrored layout, so we share a wall but are otherwise completely separate.
For years, the house next to me belonged to a nice old lady who you never really noticed or had any trouble with. When she died and the house was resold, the troubles began.
The target is someone who I will refer to as Jack Sparrow, for reasons that will become clear later. Jack owns a sizeable construction business, does some real estate on the side.
He buys the house and rents it to a bunch of foreign construction workers that work for his business. I say foreign because it is relevant to the story: there are rumors Jack is doing some shady stuff to have them work for him dirt cheap, by claiming that they’re national workers in their native country (and paying them according to that wage, and not the much higher minimum wage of my country).
Not exactly on the up and up. Possibly unreported labor as well.
Anyways, he stuffs 4-6 of them in said house for them to live while they work here.
Now I do not have anything against foreign construction workers. But these guys living next door have two very problematic traits: they are extremely loud and they do not give a **** about anyone else. We’re talking nonstop music and partying starting Thursday evening throughout the entire weekend, until they leave at 5 am Monday to go to work.
Seriously I don’t know how or when they sleep, it is literally non-stop. We’re talking ‘I’m wearing headphones but still cannot hear my sound over their music’ loud, since it would appear that they’ve designated the living room (adjacent to the shared wall) as the party room where the fun happens.
At first, I do the neighborly thing and just******* up, thinking ‘it’s just one party, just one weekend’.
After the third one in a row, I go over to ask them to turn it down, since y’know, night disturbance, it’s technically illegal to blast music this loud (hearable on the street and across the street by my other neighbors who have also complained).
I’m met with a half-hearted ‘so sorry, will fix.’ Except for nothing changes. I go over several more times, each time angrier, each time met with ‘but it’s not loud.’ If I can hear your music in my own house, over my own tv and music, I would say that it is in fact, too loud.
I contact Jack, since he is their landlord, and explain the situation, after which I’m met with an abrupt ‘sorry not sorry, not my problem.’ Basically, Jack told me to get lost.
So I involve the police and call them every time things get out of hand. After about a dozen calls, sometimes even twice in the same night, it is clear that even regular police interference doesn’t help the situation.
I should mention that I am a lawyer, so I know what the next legal steps are. I also know that other than a token paper from a judge saying ‘their music is too loud’ I’m not really going to get anything. Things would (like they already sometimes had) become a cat and mouse game where they would blast their music extremely loud to annoy me or to wake me up, for a few brief moments, so that by the time I could get proof or police to show up, there would be no music.
I’m deadlocked with my only further option being pretty useless and a waste of time.
At this point, I’m biding my time and just waiting till something changes. I’m not saying that I condone people who bludgeon their neighbor to death with a rusty pipe, but I do somewhat understand what would drive someone to that point.
One day I’m at home and I notice quite a lot of ruckus next door, more so than usual. Suddenly, I see through my garden window that a wall is being partially torn down.
You see, sometime over the years, the neighbors had built a small adjacent side building adjoining the main house. It was right on the border between us, and when the gardens were being referenced, the wall was used as a divider to save on fencing. Said wall was now in the process of having its top part ripped off by a crane.
I was not informed of any of this, which, while not technically needed, would have been the nice thing to do.
I go take a walk so I can take a look at what they’re doing and see that they’ve torn down the entire side building, the remaining wall between our gardens is the only part that has been kept intact (and even then, not the top part).
Being a lawyer, and specifically, a construction/permit lawyer, I know two things:
- Things like this are not allowed without a pre-approved permit from the city.
- There is no way they have said permit, as I would have seen the application for it (I regularly have to check the online (public, accessible by everyone) application to see what permits are being applied for my job, and when I do I tend to look over to my area, just so I can keep up with what is being planned in my area.)
This is it. The moment I have been waiting for, the situation has changed and the time has come to exact revenge.
A quick email sent to the municipal authorities lets me do my civic duty of reporting a potential crime, the fact that someone is building or demolishing things without a permit. Since this is a simple report, no response happens since I’m not an official victim or anything yet.
Since no further construction happens for a few days and everything was removed, I assume that was that and they would only tear down the side structure since it was starting to fall apart due to age.
Neighbors have moved all their stuff that was in said building onto their lawn and haphazardly covered it with a tarp.
The next week, more construction materials are being delivered and construction starts.
I send a new email to city services, with new pictures, saying that apparently, there is more planned and that I hope they undertake the appropriate action. An instant response less than an hour later: They’d called Jack after the first time to inform him that what he was doing required a permit, and he had ensured them that he didn’t know that (lie, he’s in construction, of course, he knows) and that he would stop construction and request a permit.
They called him again after my email, reprimanded him for not following his earlier promise and he said again he would shut it down.
I happened to be working from home that day and had to stop myself from waving to the construction crew as they left.
Later that day I get an angry phone call from Jack, who accuses me of reporting him and that I would be sorry, he would come after me for damages for his delays.
I respectfully inform him that even if I reported him (reports are in my name, but not published and anonymized in later files) I wouldn’t have done anything wrong, because from the looks of it he didn’t have a permit and should have known that before he started working illegally without one.
I end the call before I start to sound too happy with things.
Jack has at this point, no idea what I have initiated with this. He is Jack Sparrow and I have just rung the bell that awakens the Kraken that will destroy him, he just doesn’t know it yet.
You see, there is a good reason why most people consult an expert and or a lawyer when they want to apply for a permit. The rules involved are so convoluted and needlessly complex that navigating them as a non-professional is extremely hard and time-consuming, and a single mistake can torpedo your entire case, forcing you to do it all over.
I have killed entire projects (and have seen clients’ projects killed) by pointing out that on page 127, section 35-1-A, something was left blank that should have been answered.
I did some digging and found out that the previous owners of the houses had actually consulted each other about the side building, and agreed on making the wall (part of) the divider between their gardens.
So much so, that they shared the costs of it. And the ownership. That wall that he destroyed part of? It was also my wall. Which of course, means I’m entitled to damages, but that is not the important part.
The important part is that he needs my permission, to do anything to that wall. So when he applied for a permit a few weeks later (bonus, rowdy neighbors stuff is still out in the open, covered by just a tarp, since they expected this to be a quick smash and replace a job that would take a few weeks at most) I went to the city center and looked at the application.
Noticed that they were planning to do some stuff to said wall that I own 50% of.
So I filed a complaint, following proper procedure, about the permit, namely that even if granted, it could never be executed, since Jack needed permission from me in regards to the wall, and he didn’t have it (nor was I intending to grant it). This should kill his permit since permits cannot be granted if you know in advance they cannot be realized. No sense granting a permit to build a certain kind of house when you know they’re never actually going to build it.
Now, Jack was a bit of a smooth talker, and as a construction entrepreneur, had his connections, and permits are a political decision here just as much as a legal one. So despite a 100% correct legal objection that should have killed his permit, it went through. He actually called me about it to gloat a little.
No worry, one can appeal a permit in my country.
The only requirement is that you pay a 100 euro fee, which I gladly paid. The appeal instance is subnational and does not care one bit about Jack’s political ties or the half-hearted lies that the city officials wrote to justify granting the permit in spite of the concerns I raised.
They terminate his permit without any hesitation on the aforementioned legal grounds.
Jack sees his permit blocked until he fixes the issue, which he can’t because I’m not really inclined to agree with his plans for our wall, you see.
At this point, going through two lengthy procedures, it has been over 7 months. The neighbors have had an unfinished construction project in their yard the entire time, forced to store their stuff elsewhere, something that was always supposed to be a temporary thing for a few weeks while we build turned into something that was taking months, with no end in sight.
But wait, there’s more.
The above was the administrative part of the matter, him getting the permit.
Now doing construction work without a permit is also a criminal offense. And of course, my report got passed around to the appropriate instances, so now Jack was also the subject of a criminal procedure for construction offense. Not only did he risk fines and jail time, but he was also a construction business and used his own construction business for the work he did on the property.
So his company was also on the hook, and one of the sentences that can be given in these types of crimes is to be prohibited to do construction or construction-related activity as a business, either permanently or temporarily. Not only was he personally on the line, but his entire business was as well.
During this debacle, Jack tried to sell the property. This didn’t really go too well because of a few reasons.
One, the property was inflicted with an illegal situation: the demolished side building was torn down illegally, and until said illegal status was resolved, it would stick to the property. This tends to kill the property value quite a bit since nobody wants to buy something that they’ll have to spend time and funds to make legal again by either rebuilding the torn down building or getting a regularisation permit for it.
Made even worse by the fact that he applied for said permit and had it denied, so he couldn’t even claim that said permit would be super easy to get.
Secondly, is Jack never intended to sell the property in its current state. What he, as I now know, has done in the past is buy cheap old houses like the one next to me.
He puts some of his crew in it, who can’t complain about the sub-par accommodation. They thrash the place because they don’t care and he lets them, then when the place is done, he tears it down and sells it to a developer or develops it himself.
However, due to his construction crime and the accompanying status for the property, step two was not an option.
He couldn’t renovate it the way it needed to be (small renovations would not be enough), because covering the crime was always a requirement in any permit he would request for the building, and because of me, he couldn’t cover it.
Couldn’t sell it either, because the place was trashed, and any developer looking at it would dip out when they realized there was a construction issue and a vocal neighbor who would oppose anything big that they would try to do there, lost of easier properties to develop than that one.
Anyway, that is where we are today. Jack is staring down the barrel of a criminal court procedure that is about to happen where he is risking his business and livelihood. His existing projects also gather special attention from city services now, since he is now outed to them as someone who cuts corners on permits and regulations.
He cannot really sell the property unless he cuts a massive loss, since in its current state it is absolutely trashed. He cannot develop it or sell it to a developer because all development plans involve the adjoining wall, which he cannot use in big ways unless he gets my permission.
The rowdy neighbors are stuck living in a smaller house than what they had, in a place they trashed but that cannot really be renovated or fixed in the major way that it needs. They have quieted down a lot, possibly because Jack blames them for his current situation (which isn’t wrong, I suppose).
I have awakened the Kraken and set it off on Jack Sparrow, and it utterly ruined him.
And the best part is that I had do to very little to do it. All I really did was nudge the abomination that is municipal bureaucracy and point it in his direction, and they did the rest.
I could tell you that he called me to complain and even begged to let him use the wall the way he needs it to, so that he can get on with his business and fix the issues and use them to show his good faith in court in the criminal procedure, that he was losing funds and customers over this and was in danger of losing his entire business, and that I then smugly replied with ‘not my problem.’
But he didn’t, so for now we’ll just have to imagine that he did.”
13. Punch Me During Practice? I'll Get You Suspended
“When I was in like 5th grade I had a loose tooth and a bully named Lauren. Lauren had a couple of friends but she hated me so much, probably because I’m a brat that is super socially awkward and came off as a youth toity jerk.
Anyways one day during orchestra practice (public school funded. That’s how poor we all were) she was starting stuff with me and after almost an entire school year of it, I was annoyed. So I stood there, locked eyes with her and said something along the lines of ‘You think you’re so big just punch me. Right here!’ (Honestly I was like what, 10? It probably was just super blubbery and full of false bravado) and I pointed to the cheek over my loose tooth.
And she punched me. The tooth came out and I said ‘Thanks that has been killing me! Be right back!’ (once again I was 10 and bullied so it probably was whiney, not to mention I did just lose a tooth so I’m not entirely sure anyone understood me.)
Anyways I walked over to the assistant principal and started bawling and tattled on her like there was no tomorrow.
The assistant principal happened to be the only person in power that was also my color (laws amiright?!) And she immediately overreacted.
Lauren got suspended from school, kicked out of the orchestra, and her mom was angry. At the stupid parent meeting, her mom made her apologize and invite me for a sleepover and be VERY nice to me through the end of the year.
I did not go to the sleepover as I was 90% convinced I was going to be tortured and bullied. I was not a mentally healthy child.”
12. I Got Even With A Former Coworker Who Wanted To Spread Rumors
“I worked as a security guard for a few years at a factory. Last year I had made site supervisor and ran the guard booth.
We were contractors. Our contract was simple. Make sure everyone who comes in is logged, watch the cameras, call bigwigs to pick up their visitors. Now and then we did a walk-through or some paperwork.
Simple. And it leaves you with a lot of relative downtime depending on your shift.
During my tenure, I made a few friends, a few enemies and got along with most of the people working there. It’s surprisingly easy to investigate incidents when people like talking with you. One of the enemies I made was a supervisor, let’s call him Ted.
Ted had worked his way up from a line worker and felt that since he had ‘made his way from nothing’ he deserved his ego.
He had squared himself firmly against anyone he couldn’t control and I never ‘gave him his due’. We all know his type.
Now Ted treated his line workers pretty poorly. And more than a few came to me to report his misconduct. One of our duties was to log any of these complaints as an incident report, submit a copy to the factory admin, submit a copy to our company, and then file the original. Ted had his folder in that drawer.
Ted did not like this. Ted did not like me.
At the start of 2020, we lost most of our staff in the booth. We were down to 3 guards trying to cover a 24/7 schedule. We did a lot of 12 hr shifts starting from March going all the way to October when I left. My company struggled to fill the missing spots, hiring 2 guards during that period.
Neither lasted more than 2 weeks. October came, I was burnt out. Then both my remaining guards quit. I don’t blame them in the least. I immediately turned in my two weeks and refused to work more than 12 hrs a day.
After I turned in my notice my company scrambled to replace me and the missing guards. They got my replacement at the start of my last week and she started on a Sunday.
I trained her for one day and she never came back. I discovered on my last day she had claimed that I ‘intimidated her and made her uncomfortable’. She told my boss she didn’t feel safe around me. Now I was livid at this. I have never mixed business and pleasure. I’m a big guy, I work out. I have never had those intentions at work.
It was a major joke anywhere I’ve worked because my tagline has always been ‘I don’t poop where I eat.’
I was burned out. I had an amazing partner I am now going out with who was coming out to see me in 2 weeks.
I had spent hours training this woman. I had her scheduled during my shift for the entire week so I could walk her through everything to do with the job.
I had squared off with the factory admin to keep it that way. I was doing everything I could to help her cuz she was coming into a major mess. Admin was looking for a different contractor. Supervisors were trying to access our files. We had tons of sensitive information that would have let anybody move up the ladder quickly. Or at the least remove a lot of competition.
It was chaos.
At this point, I hadn’t had a day off or a good night’s sleep in 3 months. And the boss I had only ever talked to over the phone had arrived in person to tell me this thing? I had almost been terminated over this on my last week. If I didn’t have the work ethic my father taught me I would’ve walked then and there.
I finished my day and walked away never intending to think of that job again.
Now the story should end here. But it didn’t and this is the juicy part y’all are hankering for. See after I left a few friends kept me up to date on the goings-on.
My replacement came back for a day and then quit, citing the long hours would keep her away from her kid.
I was salty, but it’s not my problem. Until a few days ago. See Ted had found out about her allegations and began spreading rumors I had been terminated for harassment. He then told people that I was a serial harasser and had caused a former female employee to quit as well. She had left as I had gotten the site supervisor job over her.
I had seniority and she had a dirty disciplinary record. She had a few incidents that had nearly gotten her fired. I didn’t like this. Especially given that ⅔ of the incident reports I had on Ted was for harassment. What Ted didn’t know is that I don’t like being messed with. While I’m quiet and unassuming I had plenty of time to build my m.a.d.
folders.
Little personal history, when I was a computer tech I had been royally screwed over and nearly fired by my then boss. He gave me directives that were a violation of company policy, bad enough that when they came to light I was given an immediate final written warning. Since I had no proof he told me to do what I did I shouldered full blame.
Since that day I have created mutually assured destruction folders, m.a.d. folders, on anyone that I felt would try to screw me. Ted was one such person.
All the originals of my folders are kept hidden in online storage and most are never touched. But Ted annoyed me and was threatening my future job prospects. Reputation is everything. So I opened his folder.
I had access to the camera system at the factory. Folks, small-town factories are disgusting. People do things you wouldn’t believe. One really popular thing to do is hook up in the parking lot. Ted had built a little harem for himself by giving better line positions to women that gave him a little action. And I had pictures and videos. I made a nice little folder with some choice clips and stills.
Then I sent them to his wife and oldest daughter. The dude is 20ish years married with 4 daughters, 2 in college, 1 graduating, 1 graduating in a year or 2. No clue what happened there but I doubt it’s going well for him. And that wasn’t the end. I wasn’t satisfied. This never would have been a thing if that ‘replacement’ hadn’t used me as an excuse to duck and run.
I told y’all there are no saints here.
During her one day of training my replacement had asked me about cell phones with good cameras and a bunch of weird policy questions. A few careful questions and lo and behold she has only fans. I warned her that was a huge violation of our contract with the company, any type of adult entertainment work is forbidden as the company has clients in Vegas and some European countries where that is legal and doesn’t want any workers moonlighting.
The company is incredibly strict on that. Strict to the point I could have terminated her on the spot. They are impartial. Man or woman, it is not tolerated. Thinking on this and being very irate, I track it down. And she was nice enough to have links to her premium snap. I bundle this and send it to three groups. My previous employer, the IRS, and her ex.
She had been in a protracted custody battle with him and our state is a little conservative. Judges here do not look favorably on that kind of work. Most have a prejudice that the women are hooked on illegal substances and will harm the child. And I just gave her ex evidence of inappropriate work and possible tax fraud. If his lawyer can’t get at least split custody no child support, that on the ex for being a piece of trash.”
11. Call The Cops On My Cousin? I'll Get Your Business Closed Down
“My cousin (23, F) recently opened up her salon. From a young age, she taught herself how to thread/wax eyebrows and developed an interest in makeup and hair. Everyone in our extended family would go to her before events and on a monthly basis for their threading, waxing, hair, and makeup needs. In 2020, she had a full-time job (non-salon related) but decided to renovate the basement of her home to create a small salon space.
She now spends her free time taking clients in her at-home salon and there’s nothing but great reviews! Her sister helped with the renovations and now helps her with marketing the business (social media, community pages) and I help with the finances (budgeting, price-setting). We all support her and are really proud of her! The salon is our baby.
We’re now in the middle of a health crisis and this greatly affected her salon business.
As a result, she implemented safety measures and our small team made sure to keep up with health regulations in our city. This included having one customer inside at a time, doing temperature checks, making masks/face shields and gloves mandatory, wiping down the salon after each client… etc. Also, when our city was under restrictions, the salon was closed as it is not an essential service.
Our city is once again under close restrictions from the end of December to the end of January. The salon has been closed since it began. The salon’s social media pages had been updated to let the current clientele know that the salon is closed.
Now comes the Karen. Karen sees a community post from OCTOBER detailing a discount that the salon was having on a certain package we offer.
She comments on the post saying that she can’t believe the salon is open in the middle of the restriction when her salon has to be closed. This is important for later. Karen fails to notice that this post was made in October when salons were allowed to operate as long as they followed safety regulations. Karen doesn’t bother checking more recent posts indicating that the salon was closed. My cousin doesn’t see her reply at this time.
The next day, two police officers show up at my cousin’s door while she’s at a doctor’s appointment. The officers ask for my cousin and my aunt lets them know that she’s not home right now. My aunt does not speak English very well and lets the officers know that she would call my cousin and ask her to come home. Maybe the officers didn’t believe her but they insisted on coming inside the home.
My aunt had already called my cousin as she was worried. My cousin asked what it was about, but my aunt didn’t know. My cousin then asked if they had a warrant for anything. When she found out they didn’t, she told her mom not to let them come inside and that she would be there in about 20 minutes. My cousin began driving home when my aunt called her to let her know that they simply left. Hearing this my cousin was less worried and decided to go grocery shopping as planned before heading home.
Turns out, the officers came back half an hour later and once again demanded to see my cousin. My aunt called my cousin again and asked her to come home but in the 20 minutes she took to come home, the officers were gone. They had left a card and asked her to call back.
My cousin managed to get a hold of the officers and was told that someone had reported her business.
They claimed that she was operating and they had proof. My cousin knew this wasn’t true as the salon had been closed for quite a while. By now, my cousin had seen the comment from earlier and mentioned that she knew exactly what their so-called proof was but the post in question was from October. My cousin was very upset as this post was not even close to being actual evidence of her operating now, in January.
She was also very upset that they insisted on coming inside the house with no cause or warrant when they could clearly see that my aunt does not understand the language very well. At the end of the conversation, the police officer apologized to my cousin and we thought it was the end of it.
You must be wondering how we know that Karen was the one who called the cops.
Well, she told us! The next day, my cousin received a message she realized was from the woman who commented on the post. Karen decided to pretend like she’s a customer.
Karen: Can I book an appointment?
My cousin: Hey love, we are currently closed due to the restrictions. Once it is over, we will be more than happy to book you in.
Karen: Oh my partner was there yesterday, my apologies.
My cousin: You must have gotten the day wrong. The salon is not taking clients until the restriction is over. Thank you.
Karen: No problem, but I didn’t get the day wrong lol. I also know the police came due to you being open. Take care.
My cousin: I’m not going to sit here and entertain your boring life. Maybe for a change, you can find another hobby rather than spreading lies and wasting people’s time, including the police’s time.
Or even better, find an actual job. Have a good night.
Karen: I own my spa that’s closed as should yours be. My mom is the one who called the cops. You are not entertaining me at all. Go back to your own country instead of messing with ours.
My cousin decided to block her at this point. My cousin was happy this was all over.
Her sister and I were still outraged at the racist comment and how someone could make up lies about a small business that led to the cops terrifying my aunt. When my cousin told me about Karen, the fact that she had her spa really stood out. I did some digging.
Turns out Karen runs her spa out of her house. Doing some more snooping, I found reviews from her clients on her business page that were posted on days that the city was under restrictions.
The reviews could be from clients who received services before it and only now had a chance to write a review. To be sure, I found Karen’s social media page. I decided to use her trick against her! I created a new account with a generic name and followed her page so she couldn’t see that I was related to my cousin. I then messaged her to ask about the prices for her services.
Me: Hey, I love your pics! I was wondering how much you charge.
Karen: Hey girl, thank you so much! What service are you after?
Me: I’m really interested in the BB glow f****l.
Karen: That’s awesome. They are my biggest seller for sure. Normally it’s 125 but it’s on BOGO so you pay for one session and get 2!
Me: That’s such a great deal compared to others!
When is your next available appointment?
Karen: Where are you located? I can’t have people come to me right now but I travel to my clients.
Karen was not operating from her home location due to the restrictions but was traveling to her clients’ homes which is still against regulations! I then made up a lie about my home not having adequate space and asked for her address so we could meet up at my friend’s place somewhere between her and I’s locations.
She foolishly told me her address.
During this time, I also tried joining other community groups that she was a part of. In one particular group, people in the community were promoting their small businesses. She had recently made a post about discounts on her services for the month of January! I immediately went online and submitted a report about her business still operating including screenshots, her address, full name… etc.
A few days passed by and I had forgotten to check up on it as I was busy with life again. I saw the incident report number on a sticky note I had on my desk and decided to check in. Apparently, this was not Karen’s first offense! Karen had already been fined $750 for having a client in her home during the first restrictions period in my city.
After being fined, she decided to change her business model and go to the client’s home instead. Now, she was fined $10,000!
I was still following her on social media so I decided to check it out. She had gone on a rant about how she was going to do very bad things to the person who reported her. She also mentioned that she was no longer allowed to run her business!
I’m not sure what type of ban the regional police put on her but I immediately deleted the account and exited the groups I had joined earlier. At the end of the day, Karen got was she deserved and I fulfilled my dream of pretending to be Sherlock Holmes.”
10. I'll Take Our Christmas Ornaments Back
“It is 2020, unfortunately. It’s the day after my two younger sisters and I flew out to Pennsylvania to see my dad, who lives there after getting divorced by my mom for fifteen years for not being a good husband or dad.
He lives with his mom, Cranky Grandma, and her devil cat, as well as my amazing aunt and her angel kitten.
Dad gets home from work. ‘Where’s Emily?’ he asks my Cranky Grandma.
‘She’s in the basement,’ Cranky Grandma says, probably throwing in a snide comment or two about the newly-dyed purple hair adorning my head or the leather fingerless gloves that have joined my black wardrobe.
‘Lookin’ for some Christmas ornaments.’
Dad goes down the basement stairs and finds me rummaging through cardboard boxes. ‘What are you looking for?’ he says.
‘Hi, Dad,’ I say. ‘Well, I noticed that you decorated for Christmas, but you’re missing a few things! Where are The Moose?’
The Moose are a pair of stuffed moose that have been put up every Christmas since I can remember.
They’re brown, about two feet tall, and soft as a marshmallow. There’s Mama Moose, who is named Merry, holding Baby Moose, who is named Christmas and is in a red velvet sack reading ‘Merry Christmas’ on it in gold embroidery. The Moose always go on the couch to watch over the living room and all the decorations and presents in it while we’re asleep.
The problem with The Moose is that when my mom divorced Dad, she was so scared of him that she let him have almost everything. This included The Moose and quite a few more of her treasured ornaments. And since I’ve always been the one to set The Moose on the couch, that first Christmas with a divorced dad just didn’t feel right without them.
Dad helps me look for The Moose for a while. ‘Sorry, sweetie, they must have gotten lost in the move,’ he says.
I smile and don’t tell him that I hate being called sweetie. ‘It’s okay,’ I say and pull out a cardboard box. ‘Hey, look! It’s your What God Wants For Christmas box! I love that tradition!’
We go set up What God Wants For Christmas in the living room.
I say, ‘I think I’m going to go take a nap.’
Dad says, ‘Okay.’
I go upstairs and into my room and shut the door. I walk over to the window seat/storage chest under the window. I open it.
‘Hello, Moose,’ I say.
The Moose lay on top of my stuffed animal collection, looking dusty. Several other ornaments I recognize as moms are keeping them company.
I grin and shut the chest.
It is the day we fly back to my home state. I have The Moose packed away in my suitcase, and the other ornaments tucked beside them, wrapped in my fluffiest (but still black) hoodie to protect them.
I roll my suitcase out to the hallway. Dad is weighing Youngest Sister’s bag to make sure it’s under fifty pounds.
‘Okay, now I need to check it to make sure you’re not stealing any of my stuff!’ he tells her.
My mind says, Oh no.
My brain gives me uncomfortable memories of how Dad raged when he thought one of us had stolen his coffee mug.
My voice says, ‘Privacy invaded in three… two…’ in a joking tone. Dad and Youngest Sister laugh.
Dad does not check anyone’s suitcase.
We are at the airport. Younger Sister’s suitcase is somehow three pounds over the weight limit.
Dad says, ‘Emi, grab one of the suitcases that already went through and open it up. We’ll put some of Younger Sister’s stuff in there.’ He gestures to my suitcase.
My mind makes an earsplitting screeching noise that sounds like someone slammed their brakes to avoid hitting a pterodactyl and hit the pterodactyl anyway.
My brain imagines Dad opening the suitcase and going into a rage at the sight of The Moose.
My voice says, ‘Sure, Dad.’ My hands grab Youngest Sister’s suitcase instead of mine and pass it over. Dad opens it. Her suitcase contains no smuggled goods. We transfer the stuff and the very nice airport lady sends all the bags down the conveyor belt.
Dad asks me why I wave to mine. I shrug. ‘Just being weird,’ I say. Good luck, Moose, my mind says.
We are back home. My family – my Older Sister, who didn’t go with us, Mom, my other grandma, who we call Maga, and my Boppa, or grandpa, are all sitting in the living room catching up.
I say, ‘I’m disappointed you took the tree down already.’
Older Sister laughs. ‘It’s past New Year’s!’
‘I know,’ I say, ‘but I brought some stuff to put on it.’
I open my suitcase. I show around the ornaments I smuggled back- three tiny stuffed snowmen, our cat’s catnip-stuffed cat ornament, a white clay angel, a wooden rocking horse, a wooden mouse king, a clay snowman, my older sister’s stuffed dog.
When I unveil the rocking horse, Maga gasps. ‘I bought that for your mother when she was little!’ she exclaims. ‘How did your dad get it?’
‘That’s not everything,’ I say. I unzip the flap hiding The Moose from view.
I pull out The Moose.
Older Sister and Boppa clap. ‘How did you get those back here right under Dad’s nose?’ Older Sister asks.
Maga laughs so hard she has tears in her eyes.
The tears in Mom’s eyes are not from laughter.
Slowly, she reaches out and takes The Moose, hugging them to her chest. Over their antlers, she mouths ‘Thank you.’
And then, she gets up, and she sets The Moose down. On the couch.
Right where they belong.”
9. I Got Our Translator Fired
“I was working a job that had me operating in one of our offices overseas. We would have business expenses, and those receipts would be in the language of the country we were in obviously. Those expenses were for things like printer ink, office equipment, cleaning services, marketing costs, all pretty standard stuff.
Well around this time we got a new VP over our region who worked out of head office in LA. This VP came up with this brilliant idea to hire a translator to translate all of the receipts to make sure we weren’t sneaking in nonsense.
Fair enough, however, the issue that arose was that we had to send our expenses to the translator who would translate the receipt then submit it for reimbursement.
The problem was this translator was a real Karen type.
She would demand better scans of the receipts, oftentimes after we had already thrown them away. She would argue if we really got the best deal on whatever we bought.
I remember in one transaction on about $200 of ink cartridges she asked me why I didn’t order online from this common website. To which I said they were out of stock at the time, and we needed the ink so we bought from a local store.
To which she said I was spending too much.
To which I said it’s none of your concern, your job is to translate the receipt.
To which she said if I want her to submit my expenses I need to be nice to her.
To which I said she needs to learn her place. She’s a translator, not a VP that gets to instruct me what to do.
After this encounter she started being extra strict with my expenses, so one day I came in the office early to call her and try and work things out.
She basically told me that I screwed up by annoying her, and she expected my expense reports to be perfect or she wouldn’t submit them unless they were. I told her if she keeps this up she won’t have a job much longer.
She laughed and wished me well and hung up.
A few months later we had our annual meeting in LA and after the meeting, we were at a bar and I walked up to our VP and started up a conversation. I steered the conversation to expenses and I asked him how much in monthly expenses did he typically reimburse us for in the country we worked out of.
He said about $3,000 to $4,000. I acted surprised and asked ‘is that all?’ He goes, ‘Yea’.
To clarify that $3,000 to $4,000 is the typical spend, and he says yea it rarely gets above $4,000.
So I ask him about how Karen our translator is doing, he says she’s doing a good job and I nod my head and I go ‘how much fraudulent expenses has she caught?’
It’s important to note, every employee that was submitting expenses was well paid, they’d be awfully stupid trying to skim some extra dollars via fraudulent expense reports.
He goes, ‘What do you mean?’
I said, ‘Well you hired her to ensure all the expenses you were reimbursing us for are legitimate right? Her job is to translate them for you correct?’ He says it is, and I ask, ‘So is it safe to presume you’ve done that to ensure people aren’t submitting nonsense expenses?’ He says, ‘You could say that.’
I smile and ask, ‘So how much in fraudulent expenses has she caught?’
He thinks for a moment and goes, ‘I don’t think she has caught any.’
So I ask, ‘And how much do we pay her?’
He says it depends on her workload but between $2,500-$3,00 a month. I smile and ask ‘Does it make sense to pay someone $3,000 a month to translate $3,000 in receipts?’
‘Well, she ensures we aren’t getting fraudulent expenses.’
And I counter ‘Well you said she hasn’t counted any in the last 9 months, and the expenses are always between $3,000-$4,000 so as long as the expenses stay in that range wouldn’t it be safe to assume that the expenses are legitimate? And couldn’t you bring on a translator on a contract basis if they get out of hand?’
He sees my point.
‘And imagine the cost savings, we would probably save over $40,000 a year that’s a good chunk of change isn’t it?’
The VP tries to defend his position ‘but she does a good job’ and I counter ‘but you could frame this as you’ve saved us $40,000 a year and created a baseline to judge expenses by, cutting costs is always good for the bottom line and the end of the year bonuses isn’t it?’
FYI I knew that a major % of a VP comp package with the company had to do with the company’s margin at the end of the year, the bigger the margin, the bigger the bonus.
You can see the twinkle in his eye.
We carry on the rest of the night, a few weeks later we get an email from the VP saying that we are submitting all our expenses directly to the admin for reimbursement and that we have let go of Karen.
FYI Karen wasn’t her real name obviously.”
8. Landlord Thinks I Owe Months Of Rent But I Know Tenant Laws
“This took place during the middle of 2018. My wife, 3 kids, and I were looking for a new place to rent because our current renter was selling and had given us a 60 notice to move.
During this time my wife’s mother had a friend let’s call him Sam. Sam had a 4 bedroom 2 bath house that he was in the middle of remodeling to get ready to sell. Because of this certain parts of the house like some of the walls weren’t fully painted and some of the floors were old. At the current time, my family really needed a place to stay and our budget wouldn’t allow us to rent any places over $1000 a month.
Keep in mind I am a disabled Veteran and have a lot of time to sit and research things when I need to.
The first part signing the lease and getting the keys:
During the lease signing, we went over to the house for Sam to point out all the things that were being worked on and what things weren’t complete when we were moving in.
For example, the kitchen floor was being replaced, the kitchen counter, carpet were being added throughout the whole house (currently all wood floors). When we got there we pointed out that there was still trash all over the floor and bug traps all over the ground. He assured us that it would all be cleaned before we moved in. So we hand over our deposit and sign the lease for 1000 dollars a month.
He says that he is going on vacation out of state and won’t be back for 6 months but that contractors will be stopping by to work on the house. He leaves me a list of the work that is going to be done and then we wait.
Move-in day:
3 days later we are given the go-ahead that we are able to move in and that he will be back in 6 months.
We arrive at the house to find his 2 cars and motorcycle in the driveway with nowhere but the street for us to park (this becomes very important later in court.) The house is still just as dirty as the day we signed the lease. But with us really needing a place to stay, my wife and I just take pictures and note everything wrong and get to cleaning.
Now remember this was a 4 bedroom 2 bathroom house, however, the owner left so much stuff in the house that the 4th bedroom was filled from wall to wall with junk. We decided to just close that door and not use the room. Keep in mind that because we didn’t have access to the room because of the owner/landlord, we were allowed to deduct that room from the rent.
This deduction of rent becomes a pattern soon.
Living there:
Now we lived there for a total of 9 months. During the first 6 months, we tried to get ahold of the landlord by phone with a way to pay rent. But we never got a reply from him after the day we got the keys. So everything that went wrong we just kept track of. The place had bugs, nails sticking out of the floors, and many other hazards.
Finally, on the 7th month, Sam returns from his vacation out of state and retrieves one of the cars in the drive. Tells us he is sorry for not responding and tells us we will figure out the rent and fix my issues over the next week. On month 8 I still haven’t paid him anything as I sent him a letter stating that I would be withholding rent until the safety issues with the house are fixed. Where we live this is legal. During this time instead of just fixing the issues and then getting rent from me, we are served with an eviction notice.
Keep in mind we have kept a record of everything wrong with this house including everything to code.
Time in court:
The first red flag in the eviction is the copy of the lease that was attached. It was an altered copy of the original I still had so the documents didn’t even match. So let’s do a little math. Each month I withheld rent I gave a detailed invoice of all the charges I’m reducing the rent by.
I send all of this in the return for the eviction and guess who shows up to the house 5 days before court. You bet it’s Sam. He starts yelling at the front door telling me to give him my debit card so that he can go get my rent out right now. I calmly tell him that even though he is the Owner/landlord that under the current laws he must give me a 24-hour notice before being on the property unless it is an emergency.
I call the cops so that I can document that he showed up and tried to scare me into giving him rent on the spot. 5 days later we show up at court and his lawyer walks over to me and presents me with a deal. He tells me that his client (Sam) would like to just have me move out in 2 weeks and call the debt even.
I say no thank you and we can talk about it with the Judge.
I present everything on my part. 100 photos and invoices from each month about my rent reduction. Plus all the safety violations:
1. room no access – 250/month x 9 months
2. work cleaning and taking care of pool (was in lease to have pool guy never showed) – 100/month x 9 months
3. lawn care (also in lease to be provided) – 50/month x 9 months
4. Storage for 1 motorcycle – 25/day x9 months
5. Storage for 1 car – 55/day x 9 months
6. storage for 1 car – 55/day x 7 months (he picked this one up after vacation)
Safety Violations – No CO2 detector in the house, No working smoke alarms, all windows are supposed to have screens most were broken or missing. Because of the pool and no fence around it, the back door needed the alarm to beep when opened (County safety code).
Exposed wires on most electric outlets, ceiling fans not installed but wires just exposed, the improper foundation for rear stairs leading out the back door, no license for inclosed backyard room (had a 30ft x 20ft area off back door which was enclosed by a screened area), county required a license for anything that was attached to the house. Also, the piled-up junk in the 4th bedroom was considered a fire hazard.
Now I picked the rate per day to store the vehicles at the house because legally I could have had them towed off the property even though they are the owners. This is the rate the impound lot would have charged per day the vehicle was in the lot. This added up to a total invoice of 36,750 – the 9000 owe for rent leaving 27,750 owed. After hearing both sides the Judge ruled in my favor giving my landlord 3 options.
1. He could pay me 9,999 Max allowed in small claims court here and I would have 7 days to be off of the property.
2. He could give me a normal 30 notice to vacate and I wouldn’t pay anything and he would return my deposit in full within 24 hours after keys are returned.
3. I could continue to live there but no rent would be owed until all safety issues were fixed and his stuff on the property removed.
He chooses to go with option 2.
On a side note found out from my wife’s mother about a year after we moved out some of the shady ‘upgrades’ he did to the house caused a house fire and burned down. This wasn’t anything I did but it felt so good to know that karma gets you in the end.”
7. Pick On Me? This Song Is For You
“When I was in middle school, I was always picked on in Catholic school by one bad kid and his group of ‘fans’. Incidentally, they all used to be my friends. They jumped ship when he showed up at the school. That one hurt. A lot.
The reason was that I loved to sing, which they thought was the dumbest thing anyone could ever want to do.
We had a mandatory music class (shocking, right?) every other day. The teacher loved me too because I was the only boy in the class who actually tried. He wasn’t helping my situation at all, and eventually, I couldn’t handle it. I asked him one day after class if he could stop. I guess he had thought about my situation, over the next couple of days.
Next class, the teacher tried to stand up for me in front of the class to the bullies. That was the worst thing he could have done, and it got worse over the next couple of months.
Okay, so one last bit of setup. I was a singer for the house band in an after-school program called School of Rock (check it out, it saves lives) and we had a big show coming up where I would get to sing a ton of hard rock music.
Notably, Suck My Kiss by Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
So I invite this bully to the show, and he immediately starts to make fun of me. He laughs and says that he will be there. One of his friends, who used to be my best friend for years growing up, comes up and tells me ‘you know he’s just gonna make all of us make fun of you, right?’ Which I knew, but I had also seen a lot of movies.
It was worth a shot.
The day of the show came, and I saw them walk in, laughing and hitting each other on the shoulder as they took a table. I took special note of where it was. I got up there and sang the first couple of songs. I was doing well enough apparently for a few of the gang to get closer to the stage.
By the time Suck My Kiss came up, the bully was reluctantly standing by his friends who were all upfront having a blast. He stared me down as the song started, and we made direct eye contact. I started the song and made points to regain that eye contact at the chorus. Every. Single. Time. The first time it happened, his friends couldn’t believe it.
He stood there wide-eyed. He continued to get more and more embarrassed as the song went on, and his friends laughed at him harder. I gave him every bit of aggressive physicality and stuff that he gave me over the years, and all he could do was sit there and take it. After the show, all his friends came up to me and told me how awesome that was, and for a second, they were my friends again.
The bully left right away.
I didn’t get all my friends back, and they all still didn’t talk to me, but I had made my point. I never heard another thing about my singing or music or anything after then. Oh, so sweet.”
6. Try To Take Me Home? Better Make Sure I Am Who You Think
“I am a 19-year-old guy. Bi, with a male partner. I’m often told I have a very feminine body.
I was on a hangout a few weeks ago with my significant other, who I’ll refer to as Alex (20). For storytelling’s sake, I’ll go by Liam.
We had just finished a movie and decided to roam the dark streets of nightly NYC afterward, just to chat and spend time together, as we don’t live together.
It’s important to note that I was dressed up. Like a girl. I’m talking a crop top and skirt, plus some thigh highs. Come for me all you want, I like to feel pretty lol.
I was waiting outside the convenience store while Alex grabbed some snacks when a tall man, early 20s and dressed like your local dealer, walked up to me and tried to act hot.
I’ll refer to him as Creep.
Creep: ‘What’s up, baby. I know you shouldn’t be out here so late, all alone.’
I said nothing.
Creep: ‘Now, come on, babe. When a man speaks to you, you respond. How about we go back to my place?’
Now, here’s something I haven’t mentioned. I have a high-ish voice. Still masculine, but high enough to where, if I try, I can muster up a good female voice.
So I do.
Me: ‘Mmm.. no. Not interested.’
Creep: ‘C’mon, I don’t bite. I just want to have a little fun.’ He got closer.
I shook my head. At this point, Alex comes out with a bag of our snacks and notices the scene.
Alex: ‘Everything alright, babe?’
Creep: ‘Babe? What, you’re with this loser? Come on, let me show you what a real man can do for you.’
He put his hand on my hip. Alex started to walk forward but I signaled for him to stay back. I had a plan.
I put my hand on Creep’s, then wrapped his arm around me and cuddled into his chest. He smelled like smoke, disappointed parents, and failed dreams.
I look up at him, still in my girl’s voice. ‘Oh, him? Don’t mind him… if you want me…’
Then I switch to my normal voice.
‘Then you can have me.’
Immediately he pushed me into Alex’s arms and stormed off, yelling obscenities mixed with a few homophobic slurs here and there, plus some transphobia tossed in for good measure.
Alex and I both go into hysterical laughter, nearly falling over each other. Once we calm down, he looks at me. ‘You’re really a jerk.
You gotta stop doing that to guys,’ he chuckled.
‘Hey, they all approached me.'”
5. Make Me Do All The Science Fair Project? I’ll Throw You Under The Bus
“So this story happened when I was in 7th grade. During that time the school district had all students participate in a mandatory annual Science Fair, from Elementary school up to the end of Middle school.
The idea was to get students interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields and occupations.
After participating in Science Fairs for 6 years I was used to the usual rigmarole that a science fair project entailed: I come up with some, hopefully unique, project ideas (most likely the very original ‘Electricity from a potato’ project), I make a hypothesis, collect data, pay the school or Home Depot $10 – $20 for a science fair board, tape up charts and diagrams to the board the night before presenting, and then rinse and repeat for the next year.
However, this year my class was doing things a little differently.
My class had the honor of being the first to be selected to participate in an online science fair. So basically we were voluntold. No one in our section of the district at that time did an online science fair before, so we were signed up as Guinea Pigs to test it out. If that wasn’t good enough my class also had to promote healthy collaboration amongst students, so we were assigned to do projects in a group!
Now I hate group work! I always got the short end of the stick in a group. Either my group gets stuck with someone that skimps out on work and the other group members and I have to cover their portion OR everyone in the group except me avoids work like the plague and no matter how much I urge them to participate I eventually have to do all the work myself to maintain my precious grades.
I was a straight-A student at the time so any group work assigned to me was a threat to my grade and my sanity. If I ever got less than an A on any assignment my mother would ask me ‘Why didn’t you get an A? Sonny boy do you need help at school’. It drove me insane since I wasn’t failing!
Anyways, the online science fair was pretty simple.
As a group, we were assigned access to a group ‘Science fair board’ that we could fill out with our results, figures, hypothesis, etc. We were to have certain parts of the project like the Discussion done by particular dates to get points towards our grade. The overall project was due in two months and then we were to give a presentation. The amazing Teacher was brilliant.
She wanted us to record our project progress in a composition book in tandem with the online portion, which she would review during our presentation in two months. I believe this was to help us keep track of notes in case we forgot to log them into the computer later, but it was used by me as a tool in my revenge.
I was paired with Pathological Liar and Sheep Boy, with who I was kinda friends.
We brainstormed and settled on ‘testing the performance of an individual in exercise before and after they drink an energy drink’. This was in part influenced by Monster energy drink just becoming popular and Sheep Boy’s parents getting a new home gym. I thought it was great since I was playing football at the time and wanted to work out more. Also, Pathological Liar, Sheep Boy, and I literally shared every class and lived within a mile of each other so it would be super easy to communicate.
However… Sheep Boy and Pathological Liar never seemed to want to talk about the project. After two weeks of radio silence from Pathological Liar and Sheep Boy, I finally corralled them in one place and suggested we meet up at Sheep Boy’s house that weekend to start the project. On the day of the meetup, Sheep Boy’s mom had to go grocery shopping or something so Sheep Boy was out.
Undaunted I told Pathological Liar it’d be fine if we work at my house and researched other studies on it to get the ball rolling. But, Pathological Liar never showed up that day. So I decided to confront him on our walk home from school the next day.
Oh my Gawd if you heard what came out of this boy’s mouth as an excuse.
While we were literally within spitting distance of my house Pathological Liar said he couldn’t come over yesterday or today because his grandparents had gotten into a plane crash.
I was flabbergasted and exclaimed ‘What?! Really? But I didn’t see anything on the news about a plane crash.’ Pathological Liar responded indignantly ‘Plane crashes happen all the time OP! They’re not all going to get reported on! Their plane struck another plane on the tarmac and then rolled over and snapped off both wings!’
Me: (insert surprised Pikachu face) ‘Omg I’m so sorry… did they die?’
PL: ‘What? No why would they die, idiot?! Anyways I can’t do the project this week! See ya…’
This little turd then ran home. After I got home and deduced that he just fed me a sack of trash, I just said whatever and filed out the preliminary sections of the project and wrote notes in the composition book to at least ensure we had something to turn in next week.
I was willing to give the group a second chance, cuz maybe their busy middle school lives were swamped.
After another two weeks of attempting to coordinate my group, and getting them to at least contribute a page or two to the report, we finally decided to meet up at Sheep Boy’s house again to start collecting the data. We actually all showed up this time and Sheep Boy’s mom had bought the Monster energy drinks we needed. Pathological Liar started to guzzle them because he wanted to test out the drinks first. Sheep Boy showed off his new home gym and then got us to play Smash Bros for half an hour.
I didn’t want to play at first but then decided to lighten up and we could do the tests afterward. After coaxing my group back to the gym Pathological Liar just rambled and chit-chatted. Me trying to be pragmatic said, ‘Hey guys why don’t we start our exercise now and record some data, and then afterward I can school y’all in Smash Bros?’ Sheep Boy looked willing until Pathological Liar sighed out ‘Oh my Gawd OP (SIGHHHHHH) we didn’t invite you out to do this stupid project we invited you to hang out.’ Sheep Boy’s attitude did a complete 180 chiming in ‘Yeah we don’t want to do the stupid project now!’
I WAS SEETHING. Pathological Liar spouted a load of bull. This wasn’t even his house, I was the one who organized this get-together to collect freakin’ science fair data! I was the one herding these sheeple around! OMG! The second chance I gave them was taken and then stomped all over the ground and they weren’t getting a third one. I relented and said, ‘Okay then let’s just hang out then.’
When I got home that night I was angry and I used that anger to fuel my revenge! I conscripted my parents to the science fair project and they helped me collect the data I needed by volunteering to work out and drink energy drinks, the data collection problem was solved. Once I got enough data I wrote down everything for the science fair project in the composition book.
I even uploaded everything to the online science fair board. I created all the PowerPoint slides and scripts for the presentation. Over the next few weeks leading up to the presentation, Sheep Boy and Pathological Liar didn’t even ask about the science fair project, they had no intention of doing any of the work. Although my anger fueled me to get the project done I wasn’t finished. I did the prettiest thing I could think of and signed a corner of the Composition book with: ‘OP did all the work!’ I knew that Amazing Teacher would be checking our composition books while we were presenting the project and I couldn’t wait to see how Pathological Liar would try to weasel out of this one.
On the day of the presentation, Pathological Liar and Sheep Boy were nervously fidgeting at their desks because they didn’t have anything prepared. I strolled in and told them to relax since I made a PowerPoint. They relaxed not knowing how stupid they were going to look while presenting. Oh, how dumb they looked when we started presenting to the whole class. I had already memorized the slides and my script and was effortlessly strolling around the room, making eye contact, and delivering a killer speech on the science fair project.
Pathological Liar and Sheep Boy just read off the slides with deadpan expressions with their hands in their pants not moving an inch. I was relishing this, all the while gleefully peeking to the back of the classroom where Amazing Teacher was reading through our composition book. Amazing Teacher would stop our presentation ever once in a while to ask questions and compare with what was written down in the book.
But once the bomb dropped my b***d ran cool with maniacal glee. I saw AT stop and read a corner of the book. She then read it out loud: ‘OP did all the work!?’ I felt Pathological Liar and Sheep Boy grow cold next to me. PL, that cunning fox, stammered out ‘Well… yeah he worked on that section, Miss.’
Amazing Teacher brought her glasses down to the tip of her nose and stared at Pathological Liar over the rims and cooly stated: ‘So you’re telling me that OP was just signing his part of the composition book and that you all wrote in here equally?’
Pathological Liar: ‘Yes ma’am.’
Me: (shrugs)
At this point I wavered, I didn’t want to feel the social wrath from them or their friends for stepping out and challenging Pathological Liar’s lie, so I stayed silent. At least I embarrassed them for a moment.
After my crowning achievement of embarrassing Pathological Liar and Sheep Boy, I thought nothing would really come from it, but boy was I wrong.
After grades were released for the project I was totally bummed out that I got a 96%. It wasn’t the perfect A that I was hoping for and knew my mother would be asking me ‘Why didn’t you get an A+? Why didn’t you get a 100%?’
But then Sheep Boy and Pathological Liar ran up to me with their eyes wide with terror asking: ‘What did you get for your grade?’
Me: ‘I got a grade… Why?’ (this is how my snarky butt avoided answering questions on my grade)
Pathological Liar: ‘Sheep Boy got a 66% and I got a 48%.’
I was shocked to hear that, and then I figured out that Amazing Teacher must have interrogated my group mates on the project separately and awarded them the grades they deserved! OMG, my petty revenge tanked their grades!
The science fair project was alone 25% of our total grades that year. I was so grateful that Amazing Teacher saw my frustration and punished them!”
4. Trash Your Own Department? Do A Presentation
“Chad was an engineer with a planning and support department for a portion of his company’s infrastructure that impacted every other part of the company.
Unfortunately, Chad was a real jerk. During less than a year with the company, he had thoroughly trashed everyone in his department to anyone who would listen. He talked about their incompetence, their screw-ups (which were generally minor), and most importantly their failure to properly support the very mission-critical infrastructure they were responsible for. Every hiccough that occurred, however minor, was used as ammunition. What Chad told everyone who would listen eventually made it up to managers and directors throughout the company.
That wasn’t enough though. Chad made the mistake of trashing his director who was also his manager. Over the next few months, there was no one even remotely involved with his department who didn’t know what Chad was doing, including that manager.
Chad’s manager and director was Tim, a pretty spiteful manager by most measures. He paid about 40% less than the industry average and had a staff of ‘B’ and ‘C’ players because of it, but he nevertheless expected absolute dedication from that staff.
If he could have had them wash his car and pick up his dry cleaning those things would have been added to their job descriptions. Tim was also pretty poor when it came to understanding what his staff did and routinely made things up about their work while talking to other people. Everyone involved knew he was full of nonsense because what he said made no sense at all.
Most rolled their eyes, but people also knew that Tim was a force to be reckoned with.
Despite his shortcomings as a manager, the one place Tim excelled was corporate politics. He was able to consistently come through failures without a scratch when those failures would have sidelined anyone else. Tim would deftly play opponents off one another, then stand back and watch the fireworks.
He had been at it for years and seemed to have a Teflon coating. Stuff that stuck to everyone around him would slide right off. Tim, of course, knew exactly what Chad had been saying. Eventually, Chad’s trashing of his department became so severe and their reputation so tarnished that a large director’s meeting was called to discuss the situation. The other department directors were out for b***d.
Tim tasked Chad, the very person responsible for the company gossip that resulted in the high-level meeting, with the job of putting together and then presenting a formal defense against his gossip. Chad had to spend the next couple of weeks creating a formal presentation and repeatedly submitting it to Tim for approval.
The meeting rolled around and Chad was forced to stand up in front of a large group of company directors and managers and formally defend his manager and department.
Everyone at the meeting knew they were only there because of what Chad had been saying, and they sat back and watched him tear himself apart and prove the things he, himself had been telling everyone were flat-out lies.
Of course, Tim and his department came through completely unscathed, but Chad was thoroughly discredited throughout the company and knew it. He left that company for another within 6 months of that meeting and last was heard badmouthing everyone involved with his new company.”
3. Steal My IPod? I'll Mess With Your Laptop
“Imagine being in high school, back in the latter days of George Bush, and finally buying that iPod of your dreams. After saving up your allowance and the funds you made around the neighborhood doing random work, and lifeguarding at the local pool.
Yup… that was me. And I was that jerk 14-year old who would make sure you knew I had one of the better iPods, one that could play video. It was the latest Nano if I remember right. Simpler times.
But every story needs an antagonist – my sister happened to find that role many times. We are very close now, but back then, it wasn’t so rosy.
She was a teenager as well and spent most of those years resenting me. If I had something nice, screw you for having that. I was quite protective of my precious iPod – she raised quite the roof when my parents refused to buy her one. ‘Your brother saved up, we didn’t pay for it – we are not stopping you from buying one too if you save up.’ That was their attitude toward any luxury that us kids wanted, even up to that time when buying the first car was on the table.
We each had to buy our own, it built character and taught responsibility.
Well, that iPod goes missing one day at home when I knew d**n well I had left it charging at the family computer. I left it unattended. My parents confirmed they did not touch it, and all eyes were on my sister.
I’ll jump ahead here – as it turned out, she had indeed taken it and had one of her friends temporarily store it until the heat was off of her.
She knew my parents would essentially strip search her. After this unraveled (one of my buddies saw her with the iPod at school several days later), it was time for payback.
Back then, I liked to think of myself as a bonafide hacker. That’s right – I knew all about batch files and how to open a command prompt. Don’t cross me. You have no idea what I’m capable of.
Yeah anyway… we don’t talk about those dark days. But I actually did know enough to copy/paste some destructive commands into scripts, using ‘del’ and ‘reg delete’ commands and the like. In the days of Windows XP, this would essentially require re-installing the OS. I also was aware of a program called Bat2EXE which could package your batch files (and associated files it would call from the same directory) into a normal EXE file.
And you could pick an icon to slap on that EXE if you had the ICO file on hand.
It doesn’t take a genius (because as much as I thought I was one, I wasn’t) to devise a plan here. I put a script together with the worst thing I could muster and gave it the Internet Explorer icon. This went on to my sister’s computer, which was an old Pentium M laptop that barely had enough anything to load MySpace at the time.
My ‘hacker’ abilities allowed me to log into the administrator account by booting into safe mode or something and simply replacing the iexplorer.exe main file with my science experiment. I believe I had it to where it actually opened the real Internet Explorer in parallel, so I could deny this more easily.
Fast forward to that magical moment. She’s home from color guard practice and is ready for an evening full of trashy webcam photos that use every mid-2000s effect ever created. But before she can upload them, disaster!
The screen resolution messes up, and the color profile is 16 colors for some reason. Random pop-up messages every few seconds… ‘Microsoft Windows has detected a giant idiot, please consider a system upgrade’ and stuff like that. ‘Your hard drive is jammed with peanut butter. Restart required.’
The whole script plays out and she’s left with a paperweight until someone can get around to sorting it, unfortunately, the ‘computer guy’ in the family took quite a while to get around to it.
My dad knew d**n well that I had something to do with this, even if he didn’t understand it fully. He made my sister apologize to me before I helped her with her laptop and made her buy me a new case for it after she threw away the one I had to try and make it less identifiable.”
2. Lying Partner Gets Dirty Linens Aired And Loses Job
“My partner George and I were monogamous for 10 years. Sure we had an occasional threesome before that. But nothing long-term. I know I am potentially going to get a few people who will say that’s where it all started. The understanding was that we would not do anything behind the other’s back. And whomever we brought into the relationship would be equal in the relationship.
We wanted to have our couple evolve into a thruple.
Needless to say, it didn’t work out. We tried and basically the last person we tried to court ended up gaslighting me and playing the victim with George.
Admittedly I wasn’t bringing my best self to the relationship. Two people who basically raised me died and I was in mourning. And I was focused on the rest of my family whom I love dearly.
Partner uses my lupus and choosing to spend time with family as his justification for having an affair and lying about it.
D-DAY: Spread over a few days. In March, my partner had told me he wanted some time apart. I initially agree, but then things just didn’t seem right. I thought we were fine relationship-wise. But something seemed amiss. I have my own place and I give him some space.
D-Day 1 – Sunday, he tells me he has a spa session (legit massage) that evening and that he would be busy and wouldn’t be able to meet till late for dinner. I didn’t think anything was going on behind my back, he said he would call when he was done and not wait for me for dinner (we were still having meals together since it’s something we were so used to doing together).
I needed some notebook I had left at his place and thinking he was having his spa session, I let myself into his place. Lo and behold, he’s having dinner with John. I leave and he assures me that he’s just having dinner with a friend and that his spa session got rescheduled. I asked, point-blank if anything was going on between them and he said no.
D-Day 2 Wednesday – I’m just a complete wreck. I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know what’s true and what’s real anymore and I get the gut feeling that there’s more to George and John than George is letting me in on. I do some sleuthing and find out that they’re friends on only one social media platform. Curious, no? Yet they’ve been liking each other’s posts on another.
I remember George logging into my iPad so I go on and check for any message history. And wouldn’t you know, I see exchanges between them going on for months.
Once again, I ask George who is this person whom he’s friends with on only one social media but not on others and why are their interactions so bizarre. George tells me he’s just a friend nothing more, and that I’m crazy.
My b***d must have been boiling at this point. I then remind him that he’s still logged into my iPad and his face just changes. He tells me that I betrayed his trust and that I really shouldn’t have done that. He must have been in full-blown panic mode.
In their messages, I find out that they’ve been seeing each other since September 2019. I had an emergency appendectomy in October 2019 (turns out what I thought was indigestion was actually chronic appendicitis and it had finally ruptured, and the very next day while I was recovering in the hospital, George and John went out for dinner and John stayed over after.
No rewards for guessing what happened that night.) They’re talking about me in their conversations, and they even arranged to meet on Monday (after D-Day1). John asked if I would show up again and George said that I wouldn’t.
At this point, my whole life before just felt like one big fat lie. I’m having plenty of sleepless nights, thinking about how I’m the chump they were fooling for 5 months.
I was none the wiser.
Furious, I engaged revenge for hire service. I wasn’t thinking clearly and caveat emptor, I lucked out with a service that did a good job. I gave them all the information about John I had (not much, just his social media accounts) and they did some investigative work, they dug up quite a bit of dirt on him.
Turns out, John was in a relationship as well.
(Inform the partner? Check). George wasn’t the only person John was fooling around with. They managed to find some chat history of his hookups all the way to 2017. What’s most interesting is that John enjoyed using illicit substances while having these trysts, complete with contact information of parties involved and locations where it happened.
They dug deeper and found conversations where he would advise friends to commit insurance fraud.
Nothing major mind you, but well fraud is still fraud. And from the conversations, it seems that the insurers did pay out for bogus travel delays.
The Revenge Agency then asks me how I would like to proceed with the information. I told them, I just want his life ruined. My life and relationship have been ruined why not share a little of the pain I was feeling?
The agency said that they had informed all parties involved. Last I heard, his insurance agencies dropped him (on the basis of encouraging insurance fraud) and he has a criminal record for substance use. And now that he has a criminal record means he can no longer travel to Canada or Japan (countries he loves to visit). His family knows that he’s been lying and using illegal substances.
And his partner knows he’s been messing around.”
1. Threaten To Sue Me Over 16k? I'll Cost You A Bigger Amount And Your Parents' Marriage
“When I (25f) was 3, my grandparents passed away. They set up a savings account in my name. The account was meant to be accessed by me when I was 21. At that point, it contained just over 300k. My grandparents left me a letter saying they would like me to share the amount fairly with any other ‘Smith-Jones’ children, meaning my full siblings (dad’s a Smith, mum’s a Jones).
By ‘fairly’ they meant that they wanted me to assess the situation and judge for myself what was fair. I never had full siblings, but I have 2 half brothers, ‘Mack and Joe Smith’, who are dad and stepmom’s kids. Due to the specific wording my grandparents used, I legally never had to give Mack or Joe any amount. However, I see Mack and Joe as my brothers, and as the funds came from our grandparents, I felt that the fairest thing would be to assign each of us 100k, so we all got an equal-sized lump sum, and I figured that when Mack (the youngest) turned 21 and took his 100k, we could split any remaining funds.
When I turned 21, dad suggested I buy a house with my 100k. I found a place I loved but it was 130k and I couldn’t get a mortgage, so dad said I should borrow 30k from the account. I did, figuring I could pay it back before my brothers turned 21, and I have been repaying it. The account should be at 208k right now, but due to me withdrawing and then repaying that amount it’s at 195k, so I still owe 13k.
Joe turned 21 recently, and as I was giving him his 100k, Joe noticed that there was less in the account than there should be. I explained and said I was going to put it all back before Mack (now 19) turns 21.
Joe told Mack and both boys said I stole from them and owed them the full 13k back plus 3 grand of interest that they felt they would have gotten, and they wanted it all paid by this summer, which gave me less than 6 months to bring the account up to 211k.
I said I’d do it, but over 2 years as planned.
The boys then wrote up a contract to that effect. I went to sign it until I saw that it said 6 months to pay it all back. I wouldn’t sign as we agreed on 2 years. They said I should figure it out as they were entitled to the funds and would be seeking legal advice.
Later that day I got an email, clearly written by them, saying that they intend to sue me for the 16k, plus whatever is currently in the account, and additional ‘damages’ and ’emotional distress’ on top of that.
At this point, I’d given Joe about 50k of his 100k, because he wanted it in installments. I responded that legally, they were never entitled to any of it, and given their attitudes, I’d say they’ve already received an amount I deem fair so that 50k was all they were getting.
I then got a barrage of texts, calls, and emails yelling at me for going back on our ‘deal’. I blocked them.
They then took to social media, saying that I was trying to screw them out of their inheritance and rallying our extended family into harassing me over this, and it mostly worked as a lot of people messaged me. However, I got a message from this guy called ‘Chris Smith’.
Chris said he was 27, and claimed to be my half-brother. I had never met him before, but he sent me photos of him as a kid with our dad, grandparents, and me. He showed me that he also had an account with 150k in it, and a scan of a letter from our grandparents, saying this amount was meant to be shared fairly among dad’s illegitimate children.
Chris also told me we have another half-sibling, who is 18. He’d been looking for me for a while, but only found me when dad shared Joe’s post which had me tagged.
We checked with a solicitor to make sure, and as the boys are legitimate, they aren’t entitled to anything in Chris’ illegitimate kid fund, and as they are my half-siblings, they aren’t entitled to anything in my Smith-Jones kid’s fund, either.
I sent the boys a letter formally telling them to back off, stop posting about me online, and enjoy the 50k because it’s all they’re getting. The day they received the letter, Chris got a PM from dad, asking if the boys can have some of Chris’ funds. Chris also said no, and told dad we’d met. I told Mack and Joe about Chris and our other half-sibling, with Chris’ permission.
So it looks like my grandparents, knowing about Chris before they passed, set up 2 funds. One for the kids dad had with my mother, who was still his wife when they passed, and one for children born out of dad’s affairs, presumably to make sure no one tried to screw anyone else over out of hurt feelings.
I’m getting a lot of headaches, but holding firm on my decision.
The boys have realized that I won’t back down on this and it sounds like I’ve caused a schism at their house, as Joe has all the funds and no intention of sharing so Mack is now feeling twice as screwed, plus stepmom apparently did not know about the other half-siblings, or that my half-sister was born after she and dad got married, and she’s made dad move into a hotel.
It sounds like dad is looking for a long-term living arrangement outside of the family home because it looks like she is not letting him move back in. Dad is begging me to reconsider, but honestly, I’m done with all of them except Chris and my sister.”
