People Talk About Their Ruthless Revenge Stories
24. Try To Get Revenge On Me? I'll Get Revenge On You Instead
“I run a repair shop where I employ a bunch of local kids (ages 16+) to learn skills and make some funds while we generally sit around and talk about the world while we fix things.
We had a client come in with a busted electronic; we fixed it up for her and gave her a decent discount on the work; her final bill for parts and four hours of labor was a hundred dollars even, discounted down from two-hundred and twenty.
She didn’t like the bill. She didn’t like the work. She claimed that we’d broken something else. She claimed that the kid who did the work didn’t know what she was doing (she did, and I had supervised her) and that the kid who helped her in the front room was rude to her (he wasn’t, but she didn’t like the little pride flag pin he was wearing).
She demanded to see the manager, so I popped out, listened to her tear into my kids, validated how she was feeling, but pointed out that the work she had asked for was done, done correctly, and her bill was due on pick-up of the piece.
The last straw for her came when she pulled out a credit card and I had to inform her that we don’t accept that particular card.
She literally asked me ‘Do you know who I am?’ (which I didn’t, still don’t, don’t care), and I told her we’d take a personal check. She wrote out a check, problem solved.
I deposited the day’s checks and got a note from my bank that one had bounced. Her check, of course.
I called her the next day to inform her that her check had been returned for insufficient funds and that she’d need to come in and pay her bill, plus the extra fee for a returned check.
All of these fees, just to point this out, were clearly outlined on the service agreement she’d signed – and we’d already discounted her a hundred and twenty dollars, just to be nice. Anyway.
She rolls up into the office carrying a bag, and I knew exactly what was going on. She drops – of course – a bag of pennies on the front desk.
She’s breathing heavily – we’re on the second floor and she’d taken the stairs – and she announces triumphantly that she’s here to pay her bill. She just needs to go get the rest of our ‘hard-earned money’ (said with a sneer, of course). The kid at the front desk looks like he’s about to cry, so I stop working on the thing I’m working on and take over.
‘How many more bags do you have?’ I ask her, and she says that the nice people at the bank loaded them up in her car. She didn’t count them. I told her that was fine, we’d wait for her to bring them all up and then settle up her bill. She was expecting a bigger reaction, I think – either that or she hadn’t thought this through.
Ten thousand pennies, plus the extra twenty-five dollars, weighs a lot. And she’d just committed to carrying them through a parking lot and up a flight of stairs. One of my kids, bless his heart, offered to help her carry them. She refused.
Finally, shaking and sweaty, she deposited the last of the bags on the countertop. The pennies were loose, not in coin rolls.
She’d done some work to prove her point.
What she hadn’t counted on was that we’d need to count the pennies.
While the other kids took care of other clients and fixed things in the back, the front desk guy and I counted up the pennies. She started to realize that this was going to take a while, and tried to leave; I told her that she couldn’t leave until we’d signed off on her bill, since at this point she was in violation of her service agreement and had passed a bad check, we couldn’t just take her word for it, and I would inform our local constabulary if she left without paying.
I was kind of talking out of my behind, but she’d managed to tick me off a little. The other clients in the shop came and went, and we counted. Phone calls came in and were handled by my kids, and we counted. She sat down in a chair (folding steel, not super-comfortable), stood up again, walked around the office, and we counted. After a while, she said ‘Just forget it,’ and took out a hundred and twenty-five dollars in bills.
We signed off on her agreement and she started to leave.
Another one of my kids, bless his heart, asked her if she wanted help carrying the pennies back to her car. She looked at all of us with a face of sheer panic, mumbled ‘no, thank you, just keep them,’ and bolted.
The whole shop was silent for a moment. Then one of the kids started giggling, and nobody could stop.
People coming in thought we’d gone nuts, and I finally had to banish everybody to the back room until they could breathe again. We loaded the bags into my vehicle – we used the elevator she’d walked by a few times – took them to the bank and used the coin machine to deposit them, then wrote out a donation to our local shelter for the amount she’d dropped off.
She posted something nasty on social media about it and got ratio’d; she had, of course, posted earlier about what she was going to do and she got called out with her own post. My favorite response was something like ‘You said you were going to pay your bill in pennies, you paid your bill in pennies – what went wrong?’
Please don’t pay your bills in pennies, folks.
Especially if you’re just doing it to be a jerk.”
23. Fire Me Because I Did My Job? Hope You Don't Need These Supplies
“I love taking photos of people to the point that I have two resumes for applying for jobs and one of them is specifically for photography work.
So I was psyched when I got a job in a photo studio! It was a chain and it wasn’t like high-quality work, but it was still awesome.
I took a lot of photos of very cute babies in particular.
Well, the company had a three-strike policy. Once there were three issues with you, you were gone. They made you sign off on every single one of the reports. It didn’t matter how long after it was that you got your next strike, they never went away.
Okay. Doesn’t seem like a great business model but okay.
And being fair, I did get two strikes which were very reasonable. One day I missed work because I forgot to set an alarm. It was a super irregular schedule and it wasn’t always easy to keep track of. Mea Culpa. The next strike happened because I scheduled a photoshoot for before the beginning of a shift accidentally.
The program was supposed to only show you times that an employee would be available for doing photoshoots, and they changed our hours with very little warning, so the photoshoot that I had scheduled the week before that would have been within our hours was no longer.
I felt super bad for the mom and daughter who came in early for their photos and helped them sort everything out with a free photo redemption in apology.
I still got my second strike for that.
Now the last strike… I actually got two on the same day. Around Christmas, our store goes nuts. We have to have twice as many people working in order to keep everything in order.
During that, I was training a new employee, and helping with her photoshoots and my own and running cash and taking passport photos and teaching her the rules for them and and and-
It was a nightmare. What made it worse was that one customer submitted two complaints that day about me. See, this customer felt I was pushing her to buy photos: Literally, all this company cares about is pushing the photo packages and I was instructed relentlessly to do it more and with more energy because I didn’t make enough people feel they had to have them.
So. Great. I convinced a customer to spend money instead of just giving them free things and not getting a dollar from them. Like the company was always yelling at me to do. And I got a complaint about that. Great.
And then the other complaint was even more ludicrous – The customer felt I was being too bossy with the other photographer.
The one that I was training.
The one that didn’t know how to do the job yet so I had to tell her how to do things.
Apparently, I deserved to be fired for telling her how to do things.
I was heartbroken. It’s been a few years now so I’ve gotten over it, but I was so happy working as a photographer.
But here’s where the malicious compliance finally kicks in.
See, by my nature, I end up doing a lot of work that isn’t actually my job because I want to help. I enjoy feeling useful. But they’re firing me because they don’t want me to sell things, or train people like they had told me to do. So for the last two weeks of my job…
I stopped counting all of the money for deposits.
That was the manager’s job even though she hadn’t done it in half a year since making me do it. This meant she had to come in on days that she didn’t work just to do the deposit.
I stopped actively recruiting customers, which is what you’re supposed to do in your downtime, cold call previous customers, and prowl around the attached mall for people you can convince to get photos.
(The best tactic was always to find people with new young ones, tell them how beautiful their baby is, and offer them a free print of one of the photos after a shoot. Almost no one passes that up because then they have a wonderful photo to hold on to. I didn’t feel guilty doing it because it genuinely makes people happy.)
I stopped taking meticulous notes of every interaction that was worth following up on.
I used to make a note for the next shift about how x customer had seemed interested but was unconvinced and that a simple reminder of the offer would probably be enough to get them to buy. Or I would make a note about someone who forgot their passport photos and whether or not they had paid already.
And then on my last day, the truest malicious compliance happened. They wanted me gone.
Okay. I took my name tag and packed it away. I went into the photo studio and grabbed the kids’ toys I had brought in to help get the young ones to cooperate. (Babies don’t really understand a stranger saying smile for the camera – but if you shake a rattle at them and make silly faces, they’re very good at smiling for that.) I cleaned up all of the things I had laid out neatly for easy preparation and put them back in storage.
I cleaned up the counters to get rid of all of the notes and passport photos that weren’t claimed that day because that was what we were technically supposed to do.
Over my nine months working there, a number of issues had come up with the things we worked with. For the passport photos, we needed a paper trimmer to slice off the edges quickly and neatly.
We had one when I started and then it broke. I brought in a replacement. It got broken too. Still, we needed one, so I brought in another replacement. We also had gotten our stapler stolen. No worries, I had one at home we could use. And the keys to the storage, the extra receipt paper, the passport paper, where we keep the deposits, where we keep our paper files – they were tiny.
And the color of them was so bland that throughout the course of the day, they would get lost easily thirty times.
I had bought a large blue fluffy keychain to attach to it with permission from the boss. Never lost the keys again, not one of us. We had also had a sign when I started there which we could pop out which said ‘I’m in a photo shoot, please be patient I’ll be with you in a moment.’ Or something along those lines.
Because there was often only one employee at a time and they had to do the photoshoots and all of the passport photo drop-ins.
Well, my boss accidentally dumped her coffee on that sign after she tripped one day. So I went out of the way to get a new one printed, bought a plastic sleeve for it, and set it up with a cardboard backing so it wouldn’t break or get ruined. It was better than the old one.
So of course, when I left, I took my sign, my keychains, my paper trimmer, my stapler, my toys, and notably, my shutter button. See the camera had a shutter button attached that would allow you to move about while snapping photos. Again, helped with little ones because they don’t understand directions so you have to be able to physically draw their attention somewhere.
This cord had gotten frayed and not replaced. It shocked me nasty enough to leave a burn, so I took it off the camera and brought my own in.
I got a call the next day asking me how dare I steal the company’s supplies. I calmly replied that I had just taken back the items that belonged to me. And that they could keep the broken paper trimmer that I had brought in. I even left them a pair of scissors I brought for a backup when the first paper cutter broke. I even brought them a box of paper clips to use since they didn’t have a stapler anymore.
The store closed down not two months later. Crazy how when you fire your hardest worker over things that you told them to do (and one missed shift, mea culpa) other employees are less than enthused about the chance of the same thing happening. And no one else worked nearly as hard to keep everything in the black as I did. (Not to say there’s anything wrong with that, I liked everyone except the manager since it was only two other employees and they did their work well and treated me nicely.
They just had a better sense of doing what they were paid for and nothing else.)
And for reference? The employee who the customer felt I was treating badly? Looked at our manager like she was insane and asked when I had done that because she knew for a fact that the only time I raised my voice at either herself or the only other employee, was because it was too loud for them to hear me otherwise.
She apologized to me and said that she was worried it was her fault because she had been a little nervous that day because she was dealing with other things, and was worried that the customer had gotten the wrong impression because of that. Said employee then went on to have her own gallery show, leaving shortly after I was fired.”
22. Won't Give Me The Engineering Rate? Enjoy Struggling With Your Customers
“I used to work in the automotive industry, and started as a co-op student and worked up to be a contract quality engineer. I spent almost 5 years there before having to find new work.
I had been there on co-op for 2 years and was given the opportunity for a contract even though I wasn’t done school. My old boss and new boss liked that I was a dedicated employee and had a great work ethic.
I had a great reputation with the engineering team and though I made some mistakes the floor staff trusted me. During my 2nd year on contract, I worked with a truck manufacturer that we made some parts for and I had been their contact person for issues and testing requests. One day this manufacturer had a part fail catastrophically. They called our head office and threatened us with a recall.
It was all hands on deck, I went out to my customer and took care of them. It was a complete cluster for about 6 weeks, but we solved the problem. My customer had high praises for me and wanted to make sure that I was going to manage their account for the future.
Fast forward to the 4 months before I leave. The company gets sold and my contract is now going to be my last with them as the new owners want to bring in their own team.
I talk to my boss, but he is in a hiring freeze until the next physical year. So I’m now in a tough spot, but I work through it. Due to me being a recent graduate and a contract the new owners don’t feel it’s necessary to train my replacement. I have a single meeting with the new executive team and explain to them all the things we quality engineers provide to our customers.
I get told the following:
‘Why would we offer such services for free! We need to make money and if this doesn’t make money, then we don’t need it.’
‘I agree that we should make money, but good customer service has given us a lot of contracts that otherwise would have been sent elsewhere.’
‘Let us decide how we manage, you just need to make sure the parts are good.’
‘Okay then.’
I take this time to decide that I am now going to work whistle to whistle and only do what is on my job description. Because I’m now just working my normal 40 there are tasks that would usually get done by me after hours that start to slip. By the time I leave all of the normal extras I do are now in complete disrepair.
I thank my boss for his support and my former boss, before packing my desk. My last day was just before Christmas too.
Over the next month, my boss calls me and asks if I would come back, after my experience with the executive team I respectfully declined. After another month I get a call from the executive team asking for me to come back.
Again I declined, but I ask why such a request.
‘Well one of our customers has become unsatisfied with our new service and we need some help to get it back on track.’
‘Oh so my customer, who I explained wanted a good level of customer service is now upset.’ (For context, they are about 50% of our total business).
‘Look will you help us or not?’
‘I will for 2 weeks at engineering rate ($120/hr).’
‘Absolutely not, you can have your old contract renewed with a $0.50/hr raise.’
‘No thank you.’ I hang up.
I reach out to an old friend a few months later and find out that they lost my customer and are now struggling to keep their other customers. I guess good customer service can be the difference.”
21. They Tried To Get Revenge On Me And It Completely Backfired
“This is a story of what I’m sure was meant to be petty revenge against me that backfired spectacularly.
I used a pet sitting company last month that after I was back from my trip tried to get me to pay another almost £50, citing that they hadn’t added the surcharge for bank holidays, and tried to guilt me into paying immediately or else they wouldn’t be able to do payroll.
The only problem with that is that they had already increased the price once before the visit for the exact same reason.
When I questioned how it was possible they broke the charges down, revealing that they were trying to charge me a higher daily cost than I had agreed to.
I responded with the original invoice I’d signed detailing the cost, told them I didn’t appreciate them trying to guilt me into overpaying, and that I considered this matter over.
I then gave them a 3-star review on Google/Trustpilot detailing this experience.
I still gave them 3 stars because after the exchange it seemed like they were just incompetent rather than malicious, and the cat sitter themselves was good
They saw the review, responded that it was completely unnecessary and that it was all a big misunderstanding and then sent me a couple of emails privately calling me rude things. I just screenshotted the emails, attached them to the review, and changed it down to 1 star.
So they decided to do what a lot of people have done to get revenge and gave my contact details out to random companies.
The only difference is they didn’t stick to mailing lists, they actually contacted companies using my details. They’ve tried to take out loans, applied for university courses, and made bookings for various things like gyms, tutors, and solicitors.
In my country, this constitutes as identity theft and given that so far they’ve contacted 33 companies over the span of a week is quite a severe case.
And while companies may not record many details of how someone signs up for a newsletter, a lot of them (particularly the solicitors) capture a lot more about requests to their site. Like an IP address, which just so happens to be the same IP that was used to view my signed invoice on the same day the crime started.
They’re now being investigated by the cyber crimes division of my local police for the identity theft, as well as identity fraud for trying to get loans opened in my name.
So folks, when you’re committing petty revenge make sure you don’t go overboard (and don’t do it during business hours on the computer you use for work).”
20. Your Crappy Flooring Company Is Now A Bathroom On Google Maps
“I just had a pretty bad experience with a flooring installer, I’m in a small town in a non-western country, who just never showed up. I’d paid my deposit, so really it was a matter of how many times did I want to call him a day asking when he was going to show up.
When he did come finally, he did nothing but complain about how hard this was going to be, etc. It was so annoying I asked him to leave his scraper tool so I could do it myself. He said he’d come to help me the following day and of course, he never did.
He came again today after the usual two messages where are you, except this time I let it be known this was the last time I was going to be so polite.
I’ve wasted several days waiting on him when he never told me he had no intention of ever coming.
So anyway, he’s taking forever but my arms are too sore from the day before so I can’t continue. He goes outside and starts complaining about me to another worker about how annoying I am always asking when he’s going to come by.
I did him a favor and cut him off and let him know I can hear him and his job is officially over, he’s free to leave and I want my funds back.
He didn’t leave and tried bargaining which is infuriating now that I think about it because who the heck does that?! Talks crap and doesn’t respect the homeowner?
So, instead of leaving a nasty review, I noticed I could edit the listing on Google Maps.
I changed their company to a public bathroom that’s open 24 hours.”
19. Be A Karen? No Broken Bird For You
“For clarity, this happened a couple of summers ago at the discount shop where employees wear red and you can always find us in the middle of nowhere or a run-down strip mall. I was the only AM on staff cause we were ALWAYS short-staffed, (Our system was updated and eventually, AMs couldn’t print off applications for our incapable GMs) and I was bouncing between setting our display of summer decor.
I’d opened the box with our cement garden birds (the really fat ones everyone has) and as was evident from the crushed cardboard our driver had crushed them during the delivery. I put them up on the shelf and threw away the demolished pieces.
As the AM I have sales floor privileges to use markdown with damage stickers to adopt these rescues to a loving gardener.
I left my flock of injured rescue cement fat birds to go get the discount stickers. And before I ever get a chance to reprice them for the markdown in stomps a rude old witch (ROW)!
ROW – ‘These birds are all broken! I was looking at the garden stuff and they are all broken! It’s ridiculous you expect me to pay (I think it was $5) when this is the best looking one and his head is broken.’ (5 small green chips she literally could have fixed with school supplies were missing on the very top of his chubby head).
She kept babbling for a little longer about how we are crooks and scammers for charging such a ridiculous price for a clearly defective product.
I waited for the iconic, ‘So WHAT are you going to DO about it?!’ And thrust the bird at me.
Me – (kind of offended she said so many mean things to a bird with a bad haircut when a summer before that I sold an alligator to a good home missing a whole front foot) ‘Well it’s not his fault this happened. Our delivery drivers are very rushed people who are not gentle.’
ROW – ‘I don’t care about whose fault it is! I want to know what YOU are going to do to fix it.’
Cue malicious compliance.
I suddenly remember how she was at one point scolding me because she doesn’t even want the bird, he will make her garden ugly, she’s only getting it cause she feels owed a discount for seeing a broken bird without a discount sticker.
Me – ‘Well I’ll make sure he gets a good home because you said you don’t want him cause he’s broken. Right, ma’am?’
ROW – (suddenly very confused and getting flustered) ‘No I want to buy him I just want to know what you are going to do to make it right with me about this bird.’
Me – ‘Right and you said he’d make your garden ugly so I should sell him to someone with an ugly garden that will think he is pretty.'”
18. Think I Did Pretty Good For A Girl? I'll Give You The Bare Minimum
“I’ve been wearing glasses since I was nine years old (nearsighted) and my eyesight deteriorated pretty steadily until my late teens. When I was 13 I went to see a new eye doctor who opened up shop in the same medical center as the dentist my mom worked for. When I was asked by the eye doctor to read the eye chart without my glasses, I told him that I couldn’t see anything other than the top two lines.
Everything else was gray blurs (which was true). He told me to just ‘try’ the third line. So, I took a breath and guessed every single letter. He turned on the lights and said I had done ‘pretty good for a girl.’
Now, I don’t know how he was expecting me to react with that comment but I have always had a tendency to give people who have made me angry the bare minimum they ask for.
If you don’t specifically tell me to do something you are not going to get the results you are wanting, and that is what happened next.
For everyone who has ever had to have eye exams for corrective lenses, I am sure you are familiar with the test where you are given the same image in front of each eye and you are supposed to tell the eye doctor when the two images merge.
Well, he told me to let him know when the images merged and then he started turning dials to make the images come closer together. I sat there, seething, watching the images come closer together before they disappeared rather than merged. I never told him when they disappeared. I mean, he specifically said to tell him when the two images became one and I am just a teenage girl so who am I to know that the images won’t magically reappear and become one image, right?
After several minutes of him clicking dials with no response from me, the doctor stopped and asked me if the images had come together yet. I, very innocently, asked him what images? The images were gone. He got very exasperated and asked me what I meant the images were gone. I told him the images had disappeared before they became one image.
I can still hear the sigh he made when I remember this event.
He reset everything and told me to tell him the minute the images disappeared. I complied and afterward when I was walking out of the eye doctor’s office with my mom and a referral to a specialist, my mom asked me what happened because the eye doctor had made some comments to her about my ‘attitude’. I told her what happened and she was not happy.
However, since he was a friend of her boss, she couldn’t complain directly to him so she decided to not take me back but instead congratulated me for how I handled the situation.”
17. Won't Give Me A Written Contract? Sure Thing
“This happened to my partner, but I’ll try to tell it as if it’s my own story for a better reading experience.
I worked at a small coffee shop as a barista, on the first day I told my boss (the owner) that I would like to sign a written contract so that it’s less likely to create conflicts about the working terms and conditions. He said ‘I’ll give you a written contract when you’ve passed probation.’ Okay, maybe he’s environmentally friendly and wanted to save a tree or something.
I asked if there would be more days off after probation, and he said ‘Yeah, one more day off per month.’
Three months gone by (which normally would mean passing probation), I asked again for the offs, and he said ‘You must have been mistaken. It was unpaid public holidays before three months, but now they are paid public holidays, so it equals to one more off per month’.
Firstly, paid public holidays after three months of employment is a law in my place, it isn’t some perk that he generously granted me, nor something that anyone in the workforce wouldn’t know. Secondly, I asked him for the number of days off, not the number of other kinds of rest days. The context of the conversation was entirely different. I mean, if he also counted Annual Leaves (PTO in my place) or sick leaves, that number could have pumped way up.
I felt like he tricked me, but I couldn’t prove that because anything he promised was only words.
The one thing that made me decide to leave the place was that in these times if a staff member gets sick, the shop should close, other staffs get tested, and get professionals to deep clean the shop. But no. My boss decided to do none of that.
A colleague got sick, we were required to operate, as usual, hiding this fact from customers that were entering and drinking our products. I was even required to clean the shop with the usual apparatus.
Here comes the malicious compliance. In my place, if you passed probation (normally after three months as aforementioned), you need 4 weeks’ notice. Within the probation period, one week is enough.
I handed in my letter, boss said I needed to stay 4 weeks (so that he could find a replacement and have me train my successor) because normally that’s how it works. I said no. ‘You promised me a signed contract after probation, you didn’t give me one. My offer wasn’t reviewed, didn’t get a raise, you didn’t even tell me I passed probation.
Thanks for not giving me that written contract, I’m gonna leave in a week.’ He tried to argue, but no legit points came out of him.
The fallout: After I told him I quit, another barista also handed in his resignation letter (he needed 4 weeks though), and also a kitchen staff. My replacement sucks so much that he has given up teaching. The coffee shop has lost all staff that can make good coffee, along with the skills that we carry.”
Bad business practices shouldn't be rewarded.
16. Think I Have The Plague? Oops, I Guess You're Contaminated Now
“Back in 2012/2013 I got diagnosed with cancers (yes, plural), and as a result of that, I had to undergo some very intense rounds of chemo. And because of one of the cancers I had in particular (leukemia), I was immunocompromised and had to stay in these sterile rooms at the hospital because I was basically unable to defend myself against any of the bacteria outside.
So for a period of over 6 months, my usual routine was to come to the hospital, get the chemo injections, then into the sterile room for a full month while the chemo is doing its thing, then 1 week (or only a few days sometimes) of ‘free time’ outside the hospital, then back in for the next round of chemo. Let me tell you that was ROUGH.
Obviously, during that time I absolutely cherished these short times that I got out of the hospital, and I tried to go outside as much as I could. And because of the weakened state that I was in, I had to walk with a crutch to support me and I had to wear a mask each time I was out of my home (to protect myself, not to protect others).
As you can imagine, at that time having a mask while being outside was completely unheard of unless you were living in Asia (which I wasn’t). So I often got a lot of looks from bystanders, but nothing more than that. That is, until the day I went out to my local shopping center.
When I arrived there I started walking around with my crutch and sat down on a bench to relax and take in the noises of a busy mall (you have no idea how much you miss noise until you’re stuck in a room for months on end with almost no one around).
As usual, some people were giving me puzzled looks but I didn’t pay attention to it. Then suddenly a young teen (maybe around 14-16) walked straight toward me and started making fun of me. He was calling me (insert slur here), telling me I most likely had the plague, that I should go die under the bridge I came from, that I’m putting everyone at risk by being here, that he’s going to call the cops on me and they’ll put me down, etc., etc. It’s not even like he was with friends and was trying to make them laugh by mocking me, he was literally alone and went on that hate-filled tirade for maybe 3-4 minutes for absolutely no reason.
Man, let me tell you that after almost dying twice that month after complications due to surgery, the number of cares that I had to give to that kid was on the negative scale. So I stood up, and he came inches away from me thinking I was going to fight him. But no. All I did was take a deep breath, pulled my mask down, and coughed twice right in front of him.
Then I put my mask back up, said ‘oops’ and sat down again.
That moron went white as a ghost, mouth agape, and after a few seconds he ran away and I never saw him again. I went home shortly after, and couldn’t stop smiling.”
15. The Waitress Was Rude, So She Lost Out On A Huge Tip
“Long ago, before my wife and kids came along, I spent my weekends drag racing. Eventually, I was competing in outlaw 10.5 and bracket classes throughout the southeast of the USA.
Like a lot of competitive ‘sports’, you find a connection with your competition. I was facing Tommy (not his real name) in the finals one weekend at a 1/8th mile track but I had a problem with a part inside the transmission and was not going to be able to run. He heard this and came to our tent, asked what part we needed, and returned a few minutes later with the spare for HIS car.
I still lost, but from then on we became close friends.
A couple of years later, the Sunday morning after another event, we decided to stop at a small local restaurant before we part ways. We pull into the lot, me with Florida plates, him with Tennessee plates, and head inside. After we ordered we noticed the locals were staring at us. A lot of whispering and finger-pointing toward our trucks in the lot.
The food was good, so we ordered some dessert… This is where it started going wrong. I was surprised to see pumpkin pie on the menu in summer so I had to have it.
When it arrived the pie was warm and served with vanilla ice cream. I’d never seen it served that way before and asked the waitress about the pie. She immediately starts a loud diatribe with: ‘All the pies are made here each day.
There’s nothing wrong with it, you just don’t know what real pie is. So why don’t you finish your pie and get out of here before you have something to really complain about.’ She promptly drops the check on the table and several locals are laughing or clapping.
I’m a big guy, but I’m not fighting a restaurant full of rejects straight from the set of Deliverance.
I reach for the bill but Tommy says ‘I’ve got it.’
He pulls out a money clip full of hundred-dollar bills, handed one to the waitress, and waited patiently for the change.
And here’s the petty revenge: Tommy is absurdly wealthy. He has a massive house, a huge workshop full of supercars… And a private jet. Yeah, that wealthy. He grew up poor, worked his butt off, and got lucky with some small business ventures.
He owns a large portion of the town he lives in and is probably one of the finest humans I know.
Every single time we’ve been out to eat, he drops a tip that would, and has, made any server cry. He takes great joy in seeing that look on someone’s face, hoping that it changes their life for the better.
We walk outside in complete disbelief, you always hear about rednecks in small towns disliking strangers, but I’d never really seen it before.
Tommy turns to me and says ‘Talk about bad timing, that entire money clip was her tip. I’ll just give it to a charity in Tennessee.’ It had to be at least a thousand dollars. I almost wished he had told her it was supposed to be for her, but then I probably would have been stabbed with a dirty fork.”
14. Testing To See If My Position Is Still Needed? I'll Pass With Flying Colors
“Not to give too much info away, I was hired at an organization as a job title of basically ‘helper’. Well for someone who is supposed to just be helping, I had a ridiculous amount of work.
Almost all of my coworkers were huge technologically illiterate boomers. So I actually sort of thrived as a very useful person. For example, one guy would spend half his day copying items and passing them into another program we use.
HE DIDN’T EVEN USE CTRL C/CTRL V. He would right click then copy then go into the files menu or something and ‘insert copied item from clipboard’. He was so proud of himself when he showed me because ‘don’t worry you won’t have to retype everything!’
I wrote a program to do this automatically but did not tell him. So I would just run it occasionally as part of my responsibilities.
Anyway, I did a lot of stuff like this, I’d estimate I saved about 15 hours of work every day, on top of the 8.5 hours I did too! But then insert sergeant fart face. (This wasn’t the military but I just like to call him that.)
We are having a team meeting when he shows up. White hair combed okayish, a scrunched face, glasses. He just sort of just showed up one day and took notes during our morning meeting.
At one point someone brought up the name of one of our customers. I said, oh is that the 300-pound guy with a big beard? Sort of as a joke because I mostly do back-end stuff. There was a guy like this I recently did some entrance stuff for. But I was wrong and my boss said no it’s blah blah some other person.. okay.
Then we talked about that person a bit.
Fast forward about a week and this SGT FF is a complete jerk to me. I don’t know why, he will ignore me during group conversations and literally sometimes scoff at me. Who actually scoffs at people??
I was having a really rough week looking for some extremely important files. People were yelling all day. I was exasperated. Too much to do and I was having anxiety attacks at home in the middle of the night.
But it was Friday so I was pulling through.
As I looked for this file I ended up deep on our file structure and the search returned a personal folder structure within one of the drives. I clicked out of curiosity and there it was ‘SGT FF’s notes’.
I opened it and there was a whole section about me. This guy basically goes from location to location getting people fired to save the CEOs funds.
And he was working on me now. I scrolled through his notes and at the very top I saw
‘OP thought a 4’10 24-year-old female patient was a 300-pound bearded man. Clearly atrocious attention to detail.’
That’s just ONE example of how completely messed up his comments were.
So, in combination with my job (which I generally liked and enjoyed helping people) knowing I wasn’t getting paid enough for my effort.
This horrible week I had. And SGT comments, I said screw this.
I set up 3 email configurations.
- To my boss letting him know I will be taking 2 weeks of vacation time. To be sent at 10 pm tonight.
- To the company letting them know I will not be present for 2 weeks so whatever work they currently need me to do they will need to do themselves.
To be sent Monday morning at 4 AM.
- For any emails that came in, I set an auto-response that said ‘I will be out for an unknown amount of time, for any routine, emergency, or even occasional items, it is imperative you reach out to SGT FF at (insert number) for assistance.’
Then? I turned off every automated task I had ever set up.
Then I swung by FF’s temporary office and said ‘I think I found a way to make your job easier!’ He didn’t even really turn his head to look at me but just raised one eyebrow.
Then I left.
I actually got multiple calls on Monday morning I didn’t answer. It didn’t last long apparently. But I stayed strong and didn’t respond to anything.
On Wednesday I had a little anxiety about it but I stayed as strong as I could. I thought about the tasks that needed a 2-day turnaround… there’s no way some of the guys were keeping up with their normal duties.
Guaranteed at least 2 people were no longer doing their normal jobs just to keep up with my automated tasks.
I got a long email to my personal account (I guess from my resume or when I interviewed) from my boss on Thursday night of the first week!
It went something like this:
‘OP, I know you’re a smart person and probably figured out what the company had us doing.
I would say it’s very important you call me but that probably isn’t going to work I see. I’ve talked with SGT FF’s boss, and he will be leaving our location. I explained our progress meetings seemed to be going in the wrong direction and that you are one of our most valuable employees here. I am sure you are probably looking at other jobs at this point, or maybe you have even started one.
I hope not. If you could please reach back to me I would like to offer you a raise. It has become very apparent how useful you are around here. I hear about it every day, believe me.’
So I came back on Monday with a 10,000 dollar raise and SGT FF out of my face. My boss apologized again in person and said he didn’t get a say in it.
I think it’s a little weird he could have a say after I left, but not before… but I sort of get it.
13. Play The Nice Principal? Time To Show Your True Colors
“Until a couple of years ago, I worked in an admin role at a school. I had been working in the same (entry-level) position for 21 years with no issues and got along well with teachers and students alike.
This school operated outside of hours so I was able to have a 9-5 job and this was just extra cash.
The Principal seemed nice enough but everyone else warned me that he was not to be trusted.
Sure enough, one day he wanted me to show his son (who was not connected to the school in any way) how to do my job ‘just in case’.
It was clear I was about to be kicked out. In addition to this, my hours were cut down so it was barely worth my while to work there. In reality, I mainly only worked there because I carpooled with my dad who worked nearby and it was nice to spend time with him.
One day I was called into the office where the big boss lady (who already didn’t like me) explained I had committed the cardinal sins of briefly visiting my own website during work hours (true, I probably did, but then again I did 30-60 minutes of unpaid overtime every day) and for not reading my work e-mails when I was not at work.
As if that wasn’t heinous enough, she rang my personal business phone when I walked into the office, and because she could hear it ring, that was apparently proof that I was conducting business activities during work hours, even though it was my only phone and I didn’t answer it.
Anyway, I was immediately terminated, and after I walked out of the room I said goodbye to the few people that worked with me; they seemed more shocked than me.
I couldn’t say goodbye to the teachers because they were in class, which was obviously intentional. I couldn’t say goodbye to the Principal because he was hiding. I was not too upset because I figured I could probably make more from my home business than I could working at the school (this turned out to be true) but it was a slap in the face after so many years.
Anyway, when someone gets terminated their e-mail account is shut down, but since this school operated outside of normal hours, mine was still working on the next business day. I found the most recent e-mail from the Principal which listed all of the staff e-mail addresses in the CC line.
I sent them all an e-mail saying it had been a pleasure working with them all over the years and, since I had nothing to lose, ended my e-mail by predicting I would be replaced by someone related to the Principal. After hitting Send, my e-mail account was shut down within 20 minutes.
Sure enough, I was replaced by someone from big boss lady’s office, who was in turn replaced by the Principal’s son. So possibly my e-mail scuttled the Principal’s plan for his son to work in the same place as him, but at the very least everybody else at the school could see the ‘nice’ Principal was a jerk.
Probably unrelated but both the Principal and big boss lady left within a year.
I currently make almost 3x more by working for myself.”
12. I Can't Wear My Hearing Aids? Okay, Let's See How This Goes
“This happened a few years ago, around the time I was 17. I had just started working at a small-ish café run by a well-known family in our area.
I knew some people who had worked there before and they told me for the most part the owners were great, very chill, laid back when it was slow, and normally weren’t bad about breathing down the employees’ necks.
Their oldest daughter who also helped run everything was the one who was very peculiar, and we’ll call her Karen.
I am officially diagnosed with a hearing deficiency: Not enough to be considered deaf, but more than hard-of-hearing, so I wear hearing aids. On my first day before we opened my coworkers asked me if they could do anything else to help me out, and we eventually started talking about the hearing aids in general. While talking about everything I mentioned they had Bluetooth capabilities so I could play music through them.
Not that I WOULD, but I COULD.
Karen had been in the room at the time, and said ‘You can’t wear those, no earbud policy’ and tapped on the policies paper on the wall. I protested, explaining they’re hearing aids and not earbuds, and that I wouldn’t be using them to listen to any music while I was working. Her reasoning was I didn’t ‘NEED’ them because I wasn’t considered fully deaf, and I was doing this to get around the no earbud policy, directly quoting when I said they could play music.
I can’t wear them? Okay, let’s see how this goes. Placed them into the case in my bag and started my shift.
I couldn’t understand my trainer, couldn’t hear the customers, couldn’t hear when orders were called to be sent out. Things were going extremely slow, a couple of warmed pastries burnt since I wasn’t able to hear the timers.
Simple sentences had to be repeated multiple times with people basically yelling at me just for me to be able to piece a few words together. I guess the cherry on top was me ‘ignoring’ one of the owners when she tried speaking to me. Karen came up to me and tried addressing me about it until she finally realized what was going on after she had repeated herself 5 times.
By the end of that shift, I was allowed to wear my hearing aids, no questions asked.”
Another User Comments:
“This makes me deliciously happy, even if I’m sorry you had to deal with that woman.
Being unable to hear complaints after being told you don’t need to be able to hear is just such an… obvious blunder by Karen here, and you got to rub it in their face without even having to try lol.” Sc00padifuego
11. I Had Enough With My Landlord, So We Ended Up Saving Thousands
“So context: my fiancée and I live in the USA and had an opportunity in another state that required us to move pretty quick. Our lease required 60 days of notice before we move out plus a buy-out fee, but because of the situation, we weren’t able to give 60 days of notice.
We’re also already not really happy with our landlord because she called us 6 days before we moved into this unit (about 10 months before all this went down) and told us she would have to delay our move in by a week and move us to a completely different unit because the people in our unit decided last minute not to move out, despite being required to by the same lease we signed. Not that I want to kick these people out on their butts with no place to stay, but our landlord didn’t really apologize to us, instead just emphasized how much of a tough situation these tenants put her in by remaining in our unit.
In an emergency, we had to stay with my fiancée’s family for that week before moving in.
On top of that, she really hasn’t been the best while we’ve lived here. The only way the office will accept any kind of correspondence from residents is through their online portal (we’re not allowed to email them directly, only call, and even then we can’t place maintenance requests over the phone), and the online portal has been down a total of almost 90 days that we’ve lived there.
Not 90 days in a row, but there was a 2-month period where it was down completely and it was down sporadically throughout the rest of our stay. No alternative for the portal was ever provided.
So here’s the story. I send our landlord an email letting her know that we needed to move out soon; I think the date was 45 days from when I sent the email.
In the email, I included that we understood our financial obligation and that we intended to continue paying rent through the end of our lease since we really aren’t giving her 60 days’ notice before the move-out. I wanted to give her the courtesy of being able to rent out the unit, or at least begin to look for other renters and have them move in sooner so the unit remains occupied and they can rent it out sooner.
Our landlord shoots back insisting that we must give 60 days’ notice before moving out and that we must pay the buy-out fee to leave early (the buy-out fee was about 3 months of rent and we had 3 months left on the lease, so we would have to pay the 60 days of rent and then the buy-out fee on top of that). She stressed that we NEEDED to read the lease before bothering her because all of this information was already in there.
On top of that, she included several pages of the lease, including the page with the clause about needing to move out if another tenant has signed a lease for your unit.
Cue malicious compliance.
Maybe it was her including that clause that upset me, but I had enough at that point. I emailed her back and simply said ‘upon further review of our lease, we’ve decided to stay until the end of our lease on (Date).
As that date is more than 60 days away, I hope it is alright if you consider this our notice that we are moving out and do not plan on renewing our lease. Thank you!’
A couple of weeks later, my fiancée and I packed our bags and moved out, leaving the unit empty. My aunt and uncle live nearby, so we gave them the keys.
They went to check on the unit and run the lights and the water about once a week to make sure everything was still working. Our landlord emailed us a couple of times near the end of our lease asking if we would be out of the unit so they could bring their new tenants in to tour the unit. Unfortunately for her, we were always busy and the apartment was never clean, so she couldn’t give them a tour of our unit.
When our lease was up, I took a trip back to town to drop off the keys and do our final checkout.
Overall, we saved several thousand dollars that we would have had to pay in rent, and we cost her several thousand dollars in revenue from not renting out her empty unit for two months.
She was none the wiser.”
I didn't get that part all through your story
10. Want To Make Sure My Hands Are Washed? Okay Then
“Setup: At my work, there is one coworker who I just absolutely despise.
I won’t elaborate on exactly why I hate him, but nearly everyone at my workplace who was there for the numerous incidents that led up to this point or has heard about them from me, has unanimously agreed that my seething hatred for this person is 100% justified.
Now, this idiot (let’s call him D because he is a major Richard) is halfway decent at his job and has his nose so far up one manager’s rear end, the rest of the workplace is surprised D’s skin isn’t permanently stained. Management is also notoriously toothless when it comes to dealing with problems. (I’ll explain a bit later) So short of him destroying thousands of dollars in equipment or actually injuring someone, there is no way to get him in trouble, let alone fired.
The Incident:
So after two years of putting up with D’s nonsense, I come into the office after finishing up a task and try to grab a ticket to report the task finished. D is blocking the cabinet and when I ask for him to move he makes a condescending comment along the lines of ‘You better have washed your hands.’ Now the task I just did is dirty, to say the least, and requires PPE like latex gloves to perform with washing your hands right after being best practice.
I do my job properly, I wash my stupid hands, his attitude and comments were completely unnecessary.
As I said above, I absolutely hate this guy. I have hated him for years. I was at the point that even this simple exchange of words was enough to finally set me off. The straw that broke the camel’s back. I was DONE. WITH. HIM.
So instead of beating D within an inch of his life like I wanted to do for months, I did the smart thing and notified my supervisor that I was not feeling well enough to work safely, clocked out, and went home to cool off before I had to deal with D and his constant nonsense the next day.
Well, management was not happy about that and the first thing they did when I walked in was give me a lecture about washing my hands and how D was right to be concerned. Then they doled out the worst punishment they can give me. The threat of a write-up. Not an actual write-up, just the threat of one.
The petty: So with me fuming at both D and management for taking his side I had two options; get fired for assault, or get petty.
Because there was an issue raised about whether or not I wash my hands when required, from then on I will broadcast to everyone in my building that I am conforming to safety standards whenever I need to wash my hands.
And when I say broadcast I really mean it. All of us are equipped with portable radios for communication throughout the facility. And the speakers on these things are loud.
As in when someone says something, EVERYONE can hear it, even customers in the lobby. So for half a year now, at least twice a day, everyone is forced to listen to me loudly proclaiming that I am washing my hands whenever I finish a task.
Needless to say, this irked management, my coworkers, and best of all, really REALLY annoys D. My coworkers know why I’m doing this and either laugh it off or ignore my antics.
D complains to management who occasionally tries to tell me to stop. But when I tell them that I am only trying to uphold transparency and safety standards due to complaints about my work ethic and that any requests to stop should be delivered in writing, they clam up real quick.
If they put the request to cease in writing or write me up for my behavior, management makes this official. Corporate has a real h*****n for safety, and having management explain why they want a worker with an impeccable safety record to stop being so safe would not look good for them.
The only way to prevent me from calling out about washing is to have someone else do the task instead of me. The problem is it’s a dirty job and I’m the only one in the whole building who volunteers to do it.
So now I can be annoying and petty at work, no one can or will stop me, and everyone knows that D is to blame for kickstarting this petty show.”
9. Be A Jerk? Then You Don't Get The House
“This is my father’s story, told with his permission. I wanted to brag about my dad’s decision to stick it to a jerk.
My grandparents built and then lived in the same home since the early 70s. It has 5 acres and was a small-scale farm for their family growing up.
They both passed away within a month of each other several months ago.
Their kids (my parents, aunts, and uncles) didn’t need the home, and none of their kids (my siblings, cousins nor I) could afford it. It was in a trust, so all siblings needed to agree to make the price, etc. Most just wanted it to be sold quickly so they could move on with their lives.
They spent a couple of months cleaning the property and house up, repairing anything minor, then put it on the market. Comparables estimated the property over $850K, but it did need more work (roof replaced, and some cosmetic work on the foundation; wiring was updated back in the early 2000s).
There were a couple of people showing interest, but no serious offers for a couple of months.
So we dropped the price down to around $830K since there was a little work to be done.
Enter the most scuzzy realtor/buyer. He wanted it, but his wife REALLY wanted it. They had put their house (in a more urban setting with a small fraction of an acre) on the market, and were under contract and basically guaranteed the same of their house for an obscene amount of funds (according to my father; I forgot to ask how much their realtor found out it sold for).
They negotiated down to $740K, and all of the siblings, since the property was in a trust account, accepted. Sad to see it go to someone outside the family, but what do you do? Nobody could afford it or needed that much property…
He represented himself as his realtor (which would mean he gets a percentage of the final price back at the end of it all… I understand it’s not technically illegal in our state, but it’s kind of nonsense IMO…).
Then he started asking for a reduced price for many things – things like the cost of taking the outbuildings down (a horse corral, horse tack shed, greenhouse, and disconnected garage that was set up as a workshop)…he said they were all a hazard, and he shouldn’t have to pay for them coming down (they passed building codes; just didn’t look perfect cosmetically on the outside).
Just one example, of many. We just wanted to move on with our lives, but after we would accept an offer, he would then ask for more… Driving the cost lower. Eventually got it down nearly below $600K.
He had about $3K tired up in escrow to purchase it, and his deadline for closing on the house or losing that funds was approaching. But he kept asking for more.
Because he kept negotiating, he passed his deadline to get his funds back. Asked for $580K.
Then my father snapped. And I’ve never seen him snap. I’ve never seen him get petty. But I’m glad he did.
He called a nephew who has horses but wanted more property for adequate training and riding space. Couldn’t afford what it was actually worth, so he had passed on it before.
My father asked if they would qualify for the last accepted price (just over $600K). And they did!
All the sublime agreed, so they declined Realtor dude’s offer and said ‘never mind. We won’t sell to you’ (through their realtor, of course).
So the jerk loses his $3K, doesn’t get the house, and doesn’t have a home at all. He apparently really thought he would get my grandpa’s house, so his house was closed on, and he would have to move out very soon.
To say he was angry is an understatement. Our poor realtor had to be the gatekeeper, but she at least took satisfaction in pointing out to him that it was his own fault he didn’t get the house.
We have to wait until the realtor guy signs the termination paperwork (which he’s delaying since that was all he has left to try and stick ‘it’ to our family), but Grandpa’s house is staying in the family once that final date passes (less than a week left).
My parents may not have sold the house for what it was worth, but it was worth sticking it to that guy.
Screw him.”
Another User Comments:
“The lesson: know where and when to stop. While it’s a much, much more minor example, it reminds me of a time I was dealing with a door-to-door solicitor; Greenpeace, or something like that. It was actually a cause I believed in, so I was going to give them something, but they just kept asking for more, and it finally ticked me off to the point where I said something like ‘well, I was going to give you $40, but you made me mad, so now you’ve parlayed that amount into zero.’ I know that they train those folks to do that, and I know why, but they also need to learn when they’ve gone too far like this guy learned the hard way.” BetterRedDead
8. My Mom Is In A Feud With Her Neighbor, So I Got Involved
“My mom and my neighbor have been having a property dispute for a couple of years now.
Our neighbor’s property ‘overlaps’ the back corner of our property with an area of about 4ft by 10ft. Not even the full length of the back border of our property.
The neighbors before either family moved in set up a fence that gave us the ‘overlap’ of the property.
It’s been like that for nearly 20 years.
Recently, there’s been a lot of back and forth between them. It started with my mom setting up a raised bed for a garden on the property being disputed (PBD), him taking apart the garden and putting a bag of yard waste on it.
Then my mom set up a property with rocks and sticks. He responded by dumping ALL of his trash that was in his backyard on the other side of his fence on the PBD.
I know I am not easy to get along with but I tried to help. No yelling, insults, or name-calling on my part. I talked with the neighbor twice by knocking on his door and he threatened to sue me if I did so again.
There’s a lot more to the story. The dispute just escalated to the point where both parties are in the wrong.
My mom isn’t a saint. My whole family knows that. The good news is everything settled down when I convinced my mom to let him be, get a surveyor and get documentation on where the property line is. We got people from the city to come down and look at the trash he put down on the opposite side of his fence going past the PBD and forced him to clean it up.
Everything was good. Mom did not interact. We left the fence alone. We’re just waiting on the surveyor. He decided to put up a sign after two weeks of no interaction saying my mom is a Karen.
Now she is, but doing this just to troll and have me deal with the fallout ticked me off.
The best thing I could think of was putting up our own sign.
That faces us not him. It has a flurry of insults about him so my mom laughs at our sign and doesn’t get mad about his.”
Another User Comments:
“I think this is brilliant! You’re reminding your family to laugh rather than escalate and if he ever sees your mom laughing it’s got to be bugging him that she’s being so complacent about being called a Karen, so you’re getting some petty revenge on top of it!” 1trikkponi
7. Be Demanding? I Won't Correct Your Mistake
“As I walked up to my friend’s building I could see there was a small line waiting to use the Enterphone to buzz in.
At this place, you need a fob or be buzzed in to be able to take the elevator to the floor you want. I waited outside a few minutes for the crowd to clear and started to enter when this woman on a cellphone brushes past me and goes to the panel.
I can hear her conversation, she asks what the code is and then types it in.
She gets a busy signal. She tries again and a third time but still busy. She asks her friend why it wasn’t going through if she is able to talk to her now!? Her frustration is now evident.
I realize that the person she has on the phone is the person she is trying to buzz, so of course, she is getting a busy signal.
My internal debate only lasted a few seconds before settling on ‘watch and wait.’
She tried to buzz several more times, not even once glancing at me to see if I wanted to try. Eventually, someone walks out and so she walks in.
I buzz my friend and then walk to the elevators where I find the woman is waiting.
The elevator arrives and we get on.
She presses a floor button but doesn’t notice it doesn’t light up. I press my floor and we start up. As we pass the floor she wants she realizes it’s not lit and my floor is about 20 above the one she wanted. She asks, no DEMANDS, that I buzz her to the other floor but I say I’m just a visitor, too.
She’s talking, mostly to herself, about whether to get out and take the stairs or go back to Ground Floor.
So she gets off with me and tries to call her friend but it’s busy.
As I’m walking to my friend’s door I see her go into the stairwell and I’m wondering to myself again… Should I have told her that the floor doors are all locked and the only way out is by key or walking down to the ground?
My internal debate settled on ‘no.'”
6. Be Rude To Me And My Coworkers? I'll Absolutely Inconvenience You
“I used to work for an extended stay hotel. (In literally every department, we were a small hotel with a bit over 100 rooms, boss offered overtime and I wanted overtime). We’d get a lot of people staying for work, most would leave their families at home. If they brought their families it meant their job was willing to pay lots of funds for whatever service they provide their employers so we would suck up to the guest. Keep them happy, keep them at the hotel.
I was indifferent or liked almost all the guests. Even the difficult ones but this one lady still makes me grumpy years later.
She was the nanny of a husband/wife doctor team (I think) and she was awful. She’d walk the kids down the hall complaining, yell at the kids for being near her, just terrible. One morning I was covering the desk so my coworker could get breakfast and the nanny comes down asking about a swimsuit that may have been left at the pool.
I told her no one had turned it in to the front desk but I’d check with housekeeping and if I found it I’d get it to her (relevant later). She walked off mumbling just as ‘Sarah’ came back from breakfast and told me this lady is rude and complains daily over nothing.
I head over to housekeeping and start checking on the housekeepers since I was working as the supervisor for them for the day.
I get near the nanny’s room and hear her yelling at the housekeeper. The kind of yelling that happens when someone is trying to make someone who doesn’t know English magically learn English. I step in, solve the nanny’s problem, she leaves complaining, the housekeeper makes an inappropriate joke at the most perfect time and the day goes on to clean the nanny’s room.
I go in to help with the stay over because I wanted the housekeeper done and out before the nanny got back. When I went to replace the towels in the bathroom I saw the missing swimsuit hanging to dry by the tub so that mystery was solved and I didn’t have to talk to the nanny again.
Towards the end of my shift, the assistant manager asks if I’d help the front desk during the check-in/dinner rush.
I tell her yes then let her know the nanny is annoying and may be a problem. I can’t remember all the details but everyone had complained about the nanny. Even the people who don’t care about anyone or anything. The hotel’s problem was she hadn’t crossed the line to be ‘spoken to’ or warned. On paper, she was just a pain in the butt.
The final straw for me was when she came to the desk to tell me the morning girl admitted to stealing one of the children’s swimsuits and that we had to pay her cash to replace it and find a new one. Now, this woman had seen me multiple times that day but everyone who worked the front desk looked similar enough that we would constantly get mistaken for each other and would use this to our advantage.
Like when this woman told me I said I stole a swimsuit when I in fact said I would help find it and then saw it in her room. I was irritated, to say the least. I told her I would discuss it with the manager and then she asked me for a shuttle to the downtown restaurant for her and the kids.
Now, I am admittedly that annoying coworker who struggles to bend the rules for anyone or anything.
I also like knowing things and had been around the 2nd longest at the point (at least for the front desk staff) and a few months back one of the shuttle drivers wondered out loud to herself why it was okay for small children to be in the shuttle without a car seat. I emailed my immediate superior and got sent a forwarded email chain that had gone up to regional and basically, it isn’t okay.
Since I’d been in other departments and the ‘rule’ was if the kid looks young enough to need a car seat we mention it but don’t verify age and leave it to the parent and shuttle driver to make the final decision, no one had made this woman put the kids into a car seat.
Well, I informed this lady that I’d be happy to call for a shuttle as soon as she had the car seats in the lobby.
‘But no one has made me do it before’, ‘they let me on the shuttle without them all the time’, the call of the I’m-getting-my-way people.
I responded with ‘I’m so sorry, I wasn’t aware, when I talk to my manager about the swimsuit I’ll ask that she sends out a reminder to the rest of the staff that care seats are mandatory.’
She left in a huff and I called the shuttle driver who I told the situation to. I then got a call from doctor dad confirming. What I told the nanny was accurate and he said he understood it was for the children’s safety. Nanny came down and asked the shuttle driver if I was serious. And then she left.
I made sure everyone knew these kids had to have their car seats and the nanny was so frustrated and complained to my boss who completely had my back.
I don’t know if the nanny actually cooled it a bit or if I found so much joy from watching her drag the car seats to and from the shuttle that I didn’t notice her complaining as much. Either way, I felt better the rest of her stay.”
Another User Comments:
“I’m just saying, if I had a nanny and I found out she was taking my kids in cars without a car seat, she would be fired so fast her ancestors’ DNA would be scorched.
And I would probably buy a really nice dinner for the entire front desk staff for bringing it to my attention that nanny is a useless, dangerous piece of trash.” wannabejoanie
Reply:
“You would think. The dad stopped by the desk to apologize in person for the car seat situation but my manager couldn’t help herself and took him aside to tell him she was worried about the kids with the nanny.
He said she was a terrible person but ‘really great with the kids’ and they weren’t worried. Manager told me it was a weird interaction.” derby_desk
5. You Already Found Someone? No Problem, So Did I
“I don’t take many chances to be petty.
I’m a freelance musician, which means that I get called to fill in for other groups, I get called often because I play several instruments and my schedule allows me to have the time to do so.
Not gonna lie, the pay is good.
However, as much as I get called, it’s not always steady work. So I have to stretch out my dollars.
Anyway, about two Sundays ago I get a text from group A that asks if I’m available to work. I’m asleep so it takes me about an hour to wake up and reply, I say ‘Sorry I missed your text, I’m available if you still need me to help?’
He answers ‘I already found someone’ however, not going to lie, it felt kind of snarky, because well, I know the guy and he has a temper.
I text back ‘No worries’ because I like to keep it professional and that way I can keep income coming in.
So I start my day, shower, teeth, hair, etc. Cause I’m going out to eat since I’m not working, when I get a call from group A.
‘Hey OP, are you still available for today?’ in the most sheepish voice. I wanted so bad to say, nope sorry, I made plans since you said you didn’t need me anymore.
But I in turn did need the funds so I went to work.
There’s more!
Mother’s day is coming up, and we’re gonna work basically all week. I’ve committed myself to group B, and when I commit myself to a group for the day, I don’t cancel unless I’m bedridden, and I’ve kind of made a name for myself cause word gets around, and even though I’m not the best musician, sometimes all you have to do is show up, and that’s mostly what they want.
So group A knows I’m working with group B, and he literally sent me a text with a praying hands emoji, practically begging me to work with him Monday and Tuesday which are the heavy days, and blow off group B. He’s even offering me more funds, not a considerable amount, mind you, but my petty butt can’t forget the Sunday text where he blew me off and I still ended up working with him.
So I say ‘I’d love to but I’m already committed to working with group B Monday and Tuesday, but I’m available tomorrow Sunday if you need me.’ (I was never gonna blow off group B, but I just wanted my moment, not going to lie. It felt good to be petty.)
He says no thank you in what I assume was his snarky mood and the conversation ends there.
Tomorrow is Sunday, and he hasn’t found anyone yet.
So I know I’ll get that call again.”
4. Act Entitled? I Don't Owe You An Exit Interview
“I am in a record collecting group on social media from the area around my hometown. I now live on the other side of the country but am still active in the group. In the time leading up to 2020, I sparked up a conversation with an admin that led to attraction. I started making plans to come home for a visit to see her. I even had a ticket in a shopping cart the day my home state locked down.
The isolation brought us closer together. Eventually, we were texting ALL day long and video chatting regularly. When things started to open up again I started making plans to come visit
About this time my best friend passed away so I had to go home for his funeral. When I got home she started pressuring/low key threatening me to come see her (she lives about an hour away from my hometown).
When I did go meet her she was totally different and very entitled. Wouldn’t help pay for anything. She complained about the hotel I got because it wasn’t nice enough, but would not help pay to get a nicer one.
After we slept together, I dozed off because of the 3 hour time difference. When I woke up SHE WAS GONE. I called her and she came back.
Thanks? We decided to go out to eat and she was gracious enough to tell me she would pay for her own meal. Thanks again? She drove to one restaurant. She drove around the parking lot ONCE and made the decision the wait would be too long so she took me back to my car. Heck no. I went back to my hometown instead of spending the night at the hotel.
I decided on the way home that I didn’t need this in my life. I stopped talking to her that day. The last thing I said to her was ‘I don’t owe you an exit interview.’
I stopped posting in the group because of my friend’s passing and the episode with this woman. Record collecting was a hobby I shared with my best friend and couldn’t bring myself to touch my turntable for a long time.
I pushed my feelings aside about what happened as I was starting to deal with the loss of my friend.
Cue my low-key revenge. When you talk to a person for 2 years you get to know them pretty well. She was always jealous of this one woman in the group. She crap-talked her all the time and tried to ostracize her. She was also one of those people that was always online.
She sees EVERYTHING that goes on in the group. When I started posting again I started to like the other girl’s posts going back to when I stopped posting. I didn’t like them all at once. I would do one or two of them at a time because she would see it. She blocked me in less than two weeks and blocked all of my friends of mine she met.
This isn’t the best example of petty revenge, but it felt good to me.
3. Want To Have A Parking Space Battle? I'll Have Your Car Towed
“So I live in a very large apartment complex. I believe there are around 900 apartments. The majority of parking spots are first come first serve. If you work odd hours or get home late you will have to park near the mailboxes and walk to your apartment and it can be a pretty long walk (half a mile).
When you sign the lease you get the option to pay extra and get an assigned parking spot. One-bedroom apartments can have two paid spots and two-bedroom apartments can have up to 4.
When I moved in we paid for two spots as I work a split shift so half the week I am not home until midnight and half the week I get home around 0630.
There are signs in front of each spot saying if you are not paying for said spot you will be towed. The spots are also numbered if it matters
We had no issues for almost three years. Until I got a promotion and a company car. My roommate changed jobs also and they gave her a company car as her job has her drive to nearby states.
As luck would have it two spots directly next to the ones we already own came open so we purchased them.
So when you get a paid spot you have to provide proof of license registration and your plates. If anyone else parks in your spot you have to call and ok it. The maintenance staff is known to check cars randomly and the cop who lives on-site likes to tag cars for towing.
The residents have to call a dedicated number to leave the information and the apartments call the tow truck.
So we have four spots and four cars. My roommate was going out of town and decided to get her personal vehicle worked on. So when she left town it meant two of our spots sat empty. Then someone tried to steal my car so I had to take it into the shop.
So my work vehicle is a very large SUV so when we have spaces open I park parallel in two of the spots since we pay for them. I came home from work, parked my SUV (parallel), and went to bed. I woke up, walked the dog, and noticed someone had stuck a sticker saying to stop blocking two spots and there was a random car parked in the 4th spot.
I personally don’t mind if people accidentally park in our spots and I leave a note explaining the spot they’re in is reserved along with the spots numbers 7 8 and 9 and please do not park there again. Went to work and the car was gone. Came home and the same car was in spot 7. I parked next to them and once again explained that the spot is reserved and next time I will ask the apartment to tow them.
Again went to work and came home and the same car was parked parallel in spots 8 and 9.
So the way the spots are set up every 4 spots has a concrete curb with grass on it. The way he parked his rear bumper was touching the concrete curb. I parked in my spot but as close to his car as I could. I don’t use my passenger side door so I don’t need access to it.
I was off the next day and was supposed to get my daily driver out of the shop. I get up around lunch and check outside and the car is still blocked. I once again tell them not to park in my spots. I move my car over one spot so they can get out and get a ride to get my car. I go do some errands, get food, go see a movie, etc. I get home around 11 pm the car is still parked in my spot.
The letter I wrote was shredded and on the ground and on my work car was a letter telling me off as I do not deserve the spots.
So my revenge. I parked my personal car where my work car was (right next to his) and put an old trail camera on the pole near the spot. I had another 4 days until my roommate was home so for the next 3 days I didn’t move my car.
On day 3 apparently, they tried to call a tow truck to move my car. The tow truck pulled up looked at the spots and left.
On day 4 I called the apartment and had him towed.
I hope he didn’t need his car for three days.
The car hasn’t been in my spots since.”
Another User Comments:
“I called a tow one time on a tow truck parked illegally in my spot.
The tow truck driver showed up and the guy who was illegally parked said ‘no this is my spot’ and they just left. Had to call them back and ask why they didn’t check the registration, and why they believed a tow truck would park overnight in an apartment lot.” Justhavingag00dtyme
2. My Dad Was Let Off From His Job, So We Destroyed Their 5 Star Review
“My family and I are not native to the country we live in, I came to the country as an immigrant along with my parents but my siblings were born here.
My dad has been working in the transportation company for 10 years now which means all of my teenage years and a few years into my early 20s he’s been slaving away for them, coming home after 10-12 sometimes even 13h shifts, barely giving me time to spend with him and my siblings.
My dad got the crappiest routes for his job, and every other week of the month (aka 2 out of 4 weeks) he takes a route that is supposed to be taken by THREE PEOPLE AT THE VERY LEAST, but nope it all fell on his shoulders.
Lastly, I’d like to mention my dad was about 35 when he started to work with them so the math is easy to add up.
Now onto the pettiness.
My dad recently bought a new car and the one we bought it from apparently ‘failed to mention’ a few defects in the description and of course we had to send it to a workshop to check what was wrong with it, come a few days later they said x and y was wrong and needed to be bought and could be fixed at home, so we did.
Then something else came out and we sent it there again, this time it had 2 long lines scratched at the back of the car to the point of stupidity at how they didn’t ‘notice it’ and thus ‘failed to inform us.’
Fine, we went to talk to them and nothing came of it as far as I can remember. A few days after my dad and my younger brother (also in his 20s) went to talk to them about the incident, having them either pay us back what we spent or we’d raise a complaint because of the poor service they provided us (to certain degrees this is possible, which was the case here).
My dad was wearing his work attire as he only has time a few hours before his work starts at 10 am. The employer at the workshop after some time became hostile toward my dad and came up to his face, pushed him, and even hit him on the head when my dad did nothing other than rightfully express his annoyance at the poor service.
After my dad came back home from work he told us his boss (now ex-boss) had let him off of work, at first I didn’t believe it and then it clicked that he wasn’t joking.
Apparently, it was, to quote my father ‘it was because the employer got physical with me while I was wearing the work attire with its logo, and instead I could have gone there after work.’
First off, how is it my DAD’S fault for someone ELSE being physical with him? And secondly, how the heck can my dad go there AFTER WORK HOURS WHEN HE WORKS 10-12 HOUR SHIFTS BECAUSE YOU REFUSE TO SPLIT HIS ROUTES AMONG 3 PEOPLE AS YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO?!
So my brothers and I thought ‘you want to be petty and a complete dirtbag? Fine, we’ll give you pettiness.’
The first of my younger brothers went to the local newspaper and got in touch with a reporter there at the ready to write about how buddy-buddy my dad’s ex-boss and the employer at the workshop are, and my brother will be going to the workshop tomorrow and telling them ‘either you pay us back what you took from us or we’ll release the entire thing you did to us to the local newspapers.’
Not going to lie, I hope for the latter because I want at least SOME sort of justice for their absolute bull crap. My second younger brother (and the first one) got their friends, and my second younger brother got his friends on discord (mind you he’s in quite a lot of servers) to take a little online stroll to the workshop’s public online review page and gave their thoughts on the service with the fabulous 1-star review as their guest.
From what I heard from one of my brothers it took the workshop TEN YEARS to get the review to 5/5 stars, and our pettiness and anger took it down to somewhere along the lines of 2.9 stars within 5-6 hours. It may not have been much, but by God did it feel good to ruin their ten-year efforts for a 5/5 down to 2.9/5 within a few hours as they deserve, and all of this could have been avoided if they had thought with their crappy heads instead of behaving like stuck-up brats.
Be crappy towards my family, expect to be paid back with the same vibe, sometimes even tenfold. As they say, what goes around comes around.”
1. Flatten My Tires? I'll Explode Yours
“I work for a fast food place, usually running the drive-thru. One evening I had a customer complain to me about the fact that he was shorted on his Extra Cheese last time, and wants to ‘make sure he gets the cheese he paid for’.
Okay, cool, no problemo.
Because I talked to the man, I went to the kitchen/sandwich station and made sure that the person assembling the Chili put Extra Cheese on top of the already Cheese that comes with the chili. Whilst doing this, ‘Ryan’ was running the sandwich station, like a mad man. Ryan’s normally on the grill, so he seems flustered. Very flustered.
He got mad at me for being in his way, as he elbowed past, through, and around me, all of this crap and we only have one order in the queue.
Okay, calm down. So anyway, He starts yelling at me that I need to get my fat self out of the way and all I do is stand there.
I replied to him in kind: ‘Oh quit running around like a substance user. You only have two sandwiches in the queue.’
Ryan gets annoyed and leaves. Just leaves.
Later that evening one of the drive-through customers says there is someone riding around on a bike and getting in the way of the drive-through.
If I weren’t so busy I’d look into it, but I didn’t. I wish I would have.
End of the night, empty parking lot except for my and my manager’s car. I start her up, and instantly the alert for tire pressure comes on. I have two flats, both on the right side of the car. I get out and look, and sure enough, they’re flat.
If it was one flat, I’d have given Ryan the benefit of the doubt. If I didn’t see one of the stem caps lying on the ground next to the flat tire, I would have given Ryan the benefit of the doubt. All I can do is wait. Both for my son to come bring me a portable pump, and for some Petty Revenge.
Three days later I’m finally on the same shift with Ryan and I decide to outright accuse him, saying ‘Dude nice job on my tires… at least you didn’t slash them…’ Then he was all, ‘Screw you man you deserved it.’
About mid-shift, an hour before Ryan’s about to leave, I go out to my car and get the pump that my son brought and left with me from last time. I decide it’s time for payback. I hook up the machine again, then hook it up to his rear tire. I fill for one second, then BAM! His tire is literally in pieces. I really wasn’t intending on totally destroying his tire, just wanted to have them balloon up to a ridiculous size.
I guess I don’t know science. A tire for a tire.
Everyone comes out to see what happened, I’m still getting up from the fallback my fat self did when this tire exploded everywhere. I yelled out ‘Yeah, his tire looked a little low.’ Ryan was super angry. Looks like I owe somebody a tire and a ride.
But screw that guy, seriously.”
