People Narrate How They Staged Their Impressive Revenge
28. You Want To Copy My Exam Answers? Okay, Sure
“Last year I finished my 3rd year of Japanese, ready for my final year. The story takes place at my university during the 2nd busiest time of year, which is the end of the 1st-semester exams. We all have assignments as I’m sure a lot of people do, and it’s just a huge mess, especially in 3rd year.
Language subjects always have their exams even before the regular exam timetable, so it’s either a blessing if you are good at the subject or a disaster if you’re not, but you would expect a 3rd-year student to be reasonably competent at the subject right?
Wrong. For the sake of the story, we are going to call one individual ‘Dumbo’. Dumbo was the type of student to kick back in class, watching anime and trying to shift his useless fictional knowledge onto other people in inescapable conversations. He was also one to bully, discriminate and abuse international students trying to get an education.
For some reason, Dumbo was doing 3rd year Japanese. My reputation in class was always the one who never asks a question but aces all of the tests.
Fast forward to exam day and I’ve done my copious amount of studying and memorization for all my ‘kanji’ questions as these tend to be the hardest due to how many mistakes can be made.
For example, the kanji for Horse is 馬 and so on and so on. As I was heading into the exam, I happened to see Dumbo speaking to a few of the other international students but it wasn’t the typical normal conversation you would expect to hear.
It was full of racial slurs about their ethnicity and one of the girls was quite clearly in tears. I for one am not the person to take this, so I break it up and ask if the girl was okay and to focus on the exam which was almost 5 minutes until the start time.
We go in and take our seats and lo and behold who am I sitting next to? Sir Dumbo. For whatever reason our classroom is extremely small, it’s very hard to cram 30 students into it. Because of this, almost everyone was touching elbows and because of this makes it very easy to, you guessed it, copy off one another.
As we began, I already heard a silent mutter of ‘darn, what is all this nonsense’ in my right ear from Dumbo sitting a bee’s head away from me. It was obvious throughout the exam that he was copying off me and he didn’t even attempt to make it less blatant.
I would change the page, he would. I would rub out something that was correct, and he would. This gave me an idea, one that I’m not proud of, but I’m glad it worked. I decided to fill all of my Kanji questions, about 50 on the page which took me around 10-20 minutes because I made sure my stroke order was perfect and neat.
Then I decided to silently mutter, ‘oh dang it, I’ve done it all wrong’ and raise my hand for another exam paper. The look on Dumbo’s face was priceless as he realized that he had basically copied my whole exam and it was wrong.
So he waits 5 minutes and asks for another exam because he ‘wanted to make it neater.’
Of course, I knew this was not the reason and boy am I glad he thought so. I then proceed to fill in each and every kanji completely incorrectly.
I did this all the way with 50 different kanji making even more prolific sentences that he would without hesitation copy down.
In the end, when the teacher collected the paper I closed the front so he didn’t know which was which and handed her my first one that he thought I was going to throw out but was full of correct answers.
Notoriously he hands in the bad exam and I can’t hold back my laughter.
To make it better, he says to me after the exam, ‘thanks for the answers jerkhead’ to where I pretended to be surprised that I was so infamously robbed of my answers.
He was not in class the first few weeks this year for 4th year Japanese and I asked the teacher what had happened to him, and she simply said ‘don’t ever say his name again.'”
27. Move In Your Gross Partner? I'll Get You To Kick Her Out Without Lifting A Finger
“I had a roommate in college who started going out with this girl and consequently had her move in.
He never consulted any of the rest of us about it. If he had we might have been cool with it, or at least come up with some compromise.
Our dorms were apartment-style, and this girl only lived on the floor beneath us. We didn’t even understand why she needed to move in when she was only 20 seconds away.
Anyways, she was just always in the way, using stuff and eating food that wasn’t hers. My roommate and she would be super loud all the time (not just sleeping together, but just talking loudly and being obnoxious no matter what they were doing) and worst of all, she was like a Wookiee, and after they took showers together, the drain would be clogged and there would be 2 inches of gross Wookiee nasty water at the bottom of the tub.
I fortunately never had to deal with that because I was always up before them, but my roommate and best friend were always annoyed about it.
Finally, we tried bringing it up with our roommate but he got mad and super defensive about it. He just wouldn’t talk to us.
The next day I left a note on his door saying I had emailed the head of housing about the issue, and we were going to have a meeting to discuss it.
This was total nonsense and a trap, I never emailed anybody. I knew that my roommate would send his own email to the head of housing to try and defend himself.
Instead, all he ended up doing was ratting himself out to the head of housing who was very confused.
The next day my best friend and I come back from the dining hall and the head of housing is there, and my roommate and his girl are slowly and painstakingly having to carry all of her stuff back from his room down to her room.
We sat there watching tv (while also enjoying the entertainment from what I had wrought) but I did feel kind of bad about it because they both looked pretty bummed out and it took them a while and a lot of trips up and down the stairs to finish.
No more dirty Wookiee nasty water in the shower though so I didn’t feel THAT bad.”
26. Don't Mess With The Employee Who Knows More Than You
“Over the summer in the early 2010s, I got a job at my local computer repair place. In our rural area, it’s an hour’s drive to the nearest GeekHelper or Wally World. The one and only local computer store were run by a couple.
They did a lot; data recovery, networking, computer repair, e-waste recycling, home service, the works. I had recommended them for a long time and wanted a job over the summer, so it was only natural that I went with them.
The day I started, things didn’t feel right.
I was assigned a very different task than I had been brought in for; I was told I would take over networking and computer repair, but instead, I was taking motherboards, screens, and keyboards out of dead and damaged laptops and desktops. Not a huge deal, but annoying nonetheless.
I was mostly working with the husband, who was pleasant enough but was a MASSIVE slacker. In the back room was a hugely expensive gaming computer (think of the most expensive you can imagine for the early 2010s, plus peripherals), along with a huge and expensive sound system (the same kind of thing as the computer).
It annoyed me that his ‘work’ was to walk out and check on me every once in a while, then return to CoD or whatever it was he was playing.
Oh, and this computer also held their open SMB share with terabytes of customer data on it.
The first month was nothing special. I disassembled laptops, changed out home networking gear for people, and upgraded a few things at the office. Nothing special or different, just routine computer-shop stuff.
When things really started getting shady was when they put me on E-waste.
Now, local companies and people drop off computers in the store daily. I thought the couple would follow the ‘Guaranteed secure data destruction’ creed on the sign.
Oh, boy did they not do that.
All those computers I was stripping for parts? Turned out all the hard drives were pulled and stored, without wiping, on a shelf, for use later.
Anything they could resell, they would, regardless of the wishes of the people who brought them in. The medical company wants the computers completely scrapped? Psh put the drives on the shelf and resell the whole system. Local business wants their camera system disposed of due to sensitive information?
Yeah right, back up the footage and sell the system on eBay.
I was incensed. I had learned all about the laws pertaining to data security (HIPPA, GLBA, SOX, amongst others) at college the previous semester. It was drilled into us that these laws were not jokes for VERY good reasons, and carried VERY hefty punishments.
Then three events happened which pushed me over the edge.
First, I was taken to do e-waste at a customer’s house. Instead of taking only what the widowed lady asked us to take, the husband took EVERYTHING of value, looking to sell it all.
The widowed lady didn’t know that some of the stuff he was taking was worth thousands of dollars, and had been collected by her late husband because it was of amazing quality. I was told not to say anything by the husband, and I was annoyed because he basically robbed this lady, and she didn’t even know it.
Second, I was asked to rebuild their network, but I wasn’t given any requirements. When we finished, they were mad that I didn’t make it dead simple. I argued that since they had an SMB share containing LITERALLY all of EVERY DATA RECOVERY they had ever done, it needed to be secure.
They ignored me. Customer machines could once again access that SMB share, even over their unsecured wireless.
Last, I went to initialize a CCTV recorder and some computers without backing up the data and was yelled at because they could have had dirt on someone at a bar.
I’m serious. They wanted that footage because they wanted to get dirt on someone and instead did what the company had asked and wiped the data. Also, the computers had been taken from the local hospital and still had medical information on them. All of that data was instead copied to the SMB share and the drives tossed on a shelf, despite my warnings of ‘HIPPA’ and ‘lawsuit’.
I was fired for accidentally bringing an OSX flash drive home after it ended up in my backpack. I never worked on an OSX machine. I wasn’t allowed to. But somehow, the drive wound up in my backpack. Hmm.
It was the last straw.
I gathered together what I had and talked to a few people over the following months. My parent was hugely influential in our town and worked for a giant consulting firm, one of the couple’s main sources of income. The other parent was tight with the sports communities (sports town, so a LOT of people).
I knew a few people in high positions in our local ambulance service, hospital system, universities, and school system. Small town, so these eight or so people were all I really needed to speak to.
Over the course of a year, their reputation plummeted. Word of mouth is incredibly powerful in such a small tourist town, and before long, everyone knew.
The hospital administration, afraid of a possible HIPPA suit, pulled in a 3rd party professional to deal with their equipment disposal and data security, where hard drives and paper records were shredded before their eyes. The big contractor stopped using their services. The various businesses and individuals the couple had previously been contacted by started defaulting to other options.
It all culminated in the couple being forced out of their storefront by the owner of the building, who found that her franchises and stores had been part of this when she found her supposedly-destroyed accounting computer for sale in their store and found her hard drive with all the accounting data on it in their back room.
At this point, so many people knew, the closing of the store wasn’t even considered a loss to the town.
I later heard that they tried running the business out of their home, but couldn’t get enough customers. I don’t know what happened after this, and I don’t really care.
I’m not proud of what I did, but if they had just been more honest, none of this would have happened.”
25. Won't Hold Up Your End Of The Deal? Meat Will Rot In Your Drywall
“My friend told me this story that occurred in Boston, circa the 1990s. Guy signs a lease and moves into an apartment.
6 months into it the landlord is not holding up his end of the deal, not taking care of the place, despite being asked multiple times. He gives them a hard time, so they plan out a long-con. After it’s all set they move in the middle of the night, without paying last month’s rent, but he keeps the deposit.
With the high student population in Boston, he quickly finds new tenants. But after a week they complain of a smell that they can’t find the source of, but he does nothing. It grows worse and worse until he eventually stops in to take a look.
It’s pretty bad by now, and they isolate it to one room, but can’t find it.
Again, he does nothing. So, they move out too without paying last month’s rent. The odor is so horrible that now it’s impossible to move anyone else in.
He hires an exterminator and they eventually find that it’s inside a wall. The original tenant was so angry that he removed a piece of drywall, packed it with packages of sirloin, replaced the drywall, and repainted over it.”
24. Old School Cowboy And Bikers Team Up
“1980ish I was living in California in a town called Muscoy on a horse ranch.
It was on a dead-end road that if you did keep going would go into a riverbed. On a horse, you could ride to Rancho Cucamonga going West or Cajon pass going North. I was in high school and had to wait for a school bus to pick me up in the morning.
Halfway through the school year, a new family moves into the duplex next to our house. I started talking to the new kid that started riding the bus to school.
I made the mistake one day of telling him that my parents were going out of town and at the same time I was going to a high school event.
Halfway through the school event, a sheriff shows up at the school to take me home because our house got broken into. The neighbors had called the sheriff when they saw activity at our house when no one was supposed to be there.
There were 4 houses across the street from our house that went from the riverbed to the stop sign heading away from our house.
The house was directly across the street and the people there were pretty quiet. They were all adults/family and had a band. The only time we knew they were there was when they practiced with their band.
The 3 houses East of them were occupied by bikers and not just any bikers but one house was occupied by the leader of the bikers at that particular area at that time.
But again they were quiet neighbors the only time I really saw any of them was about once a year at Christmas. They would come down to our house and my stepfather would give them all the booze that was leftover from his work Christmas party.
My stepfather was supervisor of maintenance for a school district and a bit player in old western movies and shows like Bonanza and or Audi Murphy films.
We had about 10 horses at any given time and another livestock. We used to make extra funds breeding, racing horses.
He had a license to raise wild birds and people were always coming and going from all walks of life.
Well, come to find out this kid and his uncle who moved into the duplex next to us also stole from the houses across the street.
When I rode my horse out in the riverbed I had to ride past the duplex where the thief lived up to the stop sign back around the bikers’ houses to get past the barriers to the riverbed.
One of the days I did this the kid thief and his uncle were standing out in the road when I was going by on my horse and let me know they were the ones who broke into our house.
They were wasted and laughing. They just thought that was hilarious.
I turned around, went home, and told my stepdad what happened. My stepdad always wore these black shiny cowboy boots which came in handy this day. He grabbed a chain about 3/8x 3 feet long and took off after those two.
Well, the bikers came out to see what the commotion was all about. I confirmed to everyone what they said to me and the chaos started because those two dummies did not realize what they had walked into.
My stepdad went after the Uncle first. Kicked him so hard he injured his toe in his cowboy boots and the bikers by this time deduced that these two also had their stuff.
So they start wailing on the other guy. Somewhere at some time, the sheriff was called and it was the same sheriff who picked me up at school originally. By the time he got there, I will admit that there were ample amounts of b***d on the two thieves’ faces.
All you could hear when the sheriff got out of his vehicle was everyone needed to be arrested because the thieves got jumped.
You have to admit the sheriff was kinda in a delicate situation if you think about it and he knew it.
It was explained to the sheriff what happened and why.
The sheriff by now knew those two had a criminal record on top of breaking into our house not to mention it must have been intimidating the whole situation.
The sheriff looked right at those two and said I do not see any fight here and I am pretty sure that because you are wasted you fell down and that is where all the blood came from and he got in his car and drove off.
I thought that was the end of it.
The next morning I got up and left to catch the bus to school. As I was walking past the duplex next door I had to stop because I could not believe what I was looking at.
The duplex that the thieves lived in was completely empty. No furniture, no curtains. Zilch, nada, nothing, AND the whole front of the duplex was riddled with bullet holes.
I lived right next door and heard nothing during the night.
Basically, bad guys came to town and made them leave.”
23. Never Mess With Your HVAC Technician
“I went to a local community college to get my HVAC certifications and the instructor was an old school, gruff, blue-collar worker type, guy. He owned his own HVAC company and would teach at night after work. The dude was working like 60-70 hours a week and had been doing this since the early 90s when an older guy I knew in the industry was taking classes from him.
Anyways onto the story, the instructor will be referred to as Joe.
His company and my school are located in Orange County California, an area with a lot of wealth. He lived out in Riverside so housing wouldn’t be as expensive so it’s a bit of a drive for him to get to his work territory.
One Sunday he received a call from a woman panicking, her AC unit in her ‘wine cellar’ has stopped working, and needs Joe to come fix it asap because wine needs to be at a consistent temperature. (I say ‘wine cellar’ because down here we don’t have basements in Southern California.) Joe explains that since it is Sunday it will be a triple charge since he doesn’t get to relax much working so many hours every week.
She agrees as her wine collection is worth 1000x the cost of fixing the AC unit.
Joe rushes 2 hours out to her house in Newport Beach and she shows him to her wine cellar, which is a massive room with rows and rows of expensive bottles of wine on racks.
He gets to work, checking everything on the AC unit. He found it wasn’t getting power and after tracking down the circuit he found that the GFI (ground-fault interrupter) had popped. You probably have one in your bathroom by your sink and has a button to reset it if it pops.
He resets the GFI and the AC unit kicks back on. The temperature hadn’t deviated too much from the setpoint and all things are looking good. Joe explains to the lady what had happened and to be careful with liquids around the outlet since if it trips it’ll take out the AC unit.
He then tells her since there was no work needed she’ll just have to pay the Trip Charge which is $450 since it’s Sunday.
The customer, who we’ll call Judy, was not happy about this. ‘All you did was push a button. I could have done this myself!
I’m not paying.’ She and Joe go back and forth about her paying and eventually, he leaves without payment. Joe isn’t normally one to roll over but he’s tired and wants to go relax on his day off. He drives home and relaxes trying to put her out of his mind.
That would be an awful revenge story if she didn’t call back a few months later, again on a weekend.
‘Help my AC isn’t working again! I tried pushing the button as you did and it’s still not working and I don’t know how to fix it.
You NEED to come out and fix it!!’ Joe reminds her that the last time she called she stiffed him and that he would not do business with her. She begged and pleaded that she’ll pay for both trips in full and this and that.
After some convincing Joe told her he would get to her as soon as possible. But since he is in Riverside it will take at least an hour maybe two to get to her. She says fine and they hang up. Instead of getting into his truck Joe cracks open a cold beer and waits.
2 hours go by and Judy calls Joe back, ‘Are you close? It’s getting warm in the room, this is an EMERGENCY!!’ Joe replies ‘I’m almost there, traffic was pretty bad but I should be there in 30 minutes.’ 30 more minutes go by and she calls back ‘ Are you close???!!!’ Joe ‘Yes I’m just around the corner give me a few more minutes.’ By this time it’s getting pretty late close to 7 PM and she calls back one more time ‘WHERE ARE YOU!!?!?!?!’ Joe responds ‘Riverside.’ That was not what Judy wanted to hear ‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE IN RIVERSIDE YOU SAID YOU’D BE HERE MY WINE IS GONNA BE RUINED!!’ And then Joe hits her with ‘You should never screw over people you rely on,’ and hung up on her.
Most AC places don’t take calls on the weekends or nights so we assume she lost her collection, but can’t know for sure. Anyways point of the story is GFIs really only belong in the bathrooms and don’t screw over people you need.”
22. I Bet My Boss I'd Have His Job By The End Of The Month
“I was working for an advertising agency, a pretty big one.
Well, when I started out I had a manager who was one of the most unethical managers I’ve ever dealt with. He’d order his sales reps to do things that would increase his bonuses (which are based on margins). For example, say a client decided to buy the product XYZ and their spend was $2,000 a month he would want the agent to put up products ABC and keep the spend at $2,000 even though the client didn’t agree to that.
The fact is the clients generally wouldn’t ‘notice’ but if they did… it could cost you your job.
I was the guy that refused his demands, he would tell me to lie to the client and I would refuse. He would get mad. I wouldn’t care.
This went on for quite a while. Now there is something I don’t tell people very often… I live in a one-party consent state which means so long as I’m aware a conversation is being recorded I can record it without informing the other party.
I had just upsold my largest client making him even larger… but I didn’t sell the products my boss wanted me to sell. He demanded I switch things around… I refused. I told him I sold the client XYZ that’s what we agreed to, I’m not going to change that without the customer’s permission.
His exact words were:
‘Screw the customer, this is your largest client I need him on ABC, or I’m not going make my number.’
‘I’m sorry, but you and I both know ABC isn’t right for this client, and that’s why he didn’t buy it.’
‘You’re fired, if you can’t follow instructions you’re fired.’
After confirming he was dead serious I said ‘If you do that, I’ll have your job by the end of the month.’
I went home, I didn’t think he’d go through with it.
Sure thing, next morning I’m locked out of all our systems. I call tech support and get told I’ve been fired. So who do I call?
I call our Regional Vice President and tell him I have several recordings I think he should listen to.
Remember my boss ordering me to do unethical things wasn’t uncommon. So I meet up with my RVP and play 6 different recordings that I had saved showing my manager was pushing his agents to break the law.
To which my RVP leaned back in his chair, and let out a sigh knowing he had to fire my manager… having a sales manager that is forcing his reps to break the law is just bad business.
At which point I asked for my job back.
He agreed that I would get my job back and asked me to take the week off and call him on Monday. He told me he’d talk to payroll and make sure I got paid for this week as well.
FYI he fulfilled all of his promises to me… although I missed a payday but got back pay later so I was fine with that.
That Monday I come into our Monday morning meeting in which my RVP was there, he informed the entire team that my boss had been fired and why.
He also mentioned that if anyone wanted to apply for his job there was now an opening.
So I applied for it and after 3 rounds of the interview got my promotion! Surely, I was right, I did have my boss’s job by the end of the month.
It was glorious the first day walking into his office and sitting in his nice big comfy chair.”
21. Petty Coworker Accuses Me Of Putting A Moth In Her Salad
“There was this horrible Bostonian who worked with me for a year. She was incredibly rude but just barely smart enough to not be rude to her superiors.
So she took it out on me, the receptionist. My first week at work there, she ordered a pizza and I brought the receipt back to her office for her to sign, which was nice of me. I had accidentally given her a pen that was out of ink though, and she threw it at me.
That’s what started the whole thing. She was always dieting and failing, and I was in charge of picking up everyone’s lunches. She always ordered a diet soda so I gradually got her hooked on real soda, by mixing it half and a half for a week so that she wouldn’t notice the taste difference, then the fully leaded stuff thereafter.
She started complaining that she couldn’t seem to lose weight, that she was gaining it in fact, and that she was always tired after lunch.
One time she got a moth in her salad, which she accused me of doing, and which I probably would have done if I’d thought of it, and had a dead moth handy.
I couldn’t stop giggling, which was why she rounded on me. And then she got in big trouble for starting a fight! A few months later she was fired because she slipped up and was rude to a superior. Frabjous day.”
20. Give Me A Sales Pitch Two Days After I Gave Birth? I'll Tell Your Boss
“I was planning to deliver my first daughter at a local birth center. Unfortunately, I ended up needing to be induced so transferred to the nearby hospital.
After two days of labor, my daughter’s heart rate plummeted and I was rushed into the OR for a c-section under general anesthesia. (She was born pink and screaming without complication, fortunately.) It was very traumatic for me and I’m still processing the events 4 years later.
You can imagine what sort of state I was in 2 days postpartum. Enter Nurse Hun.
She obviously knew I was a birth center transfer, which apparently, in her mind meant that I was a total hippie or something. The following conversation ensued after a vitals check as I was sitting in bed nursing my TWO DAY OLD.
Nurse Hun: So, you’ve gotten rid of all the chemicals in your house now that you’re taking (daughter) home, right?
Me: Uhhhh… no?
NH: OH NO! You HAVE to get rid of all those products. They’re POISONOUS! You need to replace them with ALL NATURAL CLEANERS.
What if she gets into them and eats them and DIES?!
Me: Uh, I mean, she’s 2 days old. We have time to babyproof, right? I hadn’t even thought of that yet.
NH: No, you need to get rid of all those chemicals as soon as you get home!
You can’t expose a sweet little baby to all of that! Let me give you my personal cell number! You can call me and we’ll get you set up with an essential oil kit and NON-TOXIC cleaning supplies!
She hands me her card.
Me: … O… kay…
NH: And don’t worry! I’ll be here tomorrow morning to discharge you and make sure you’re set up to take (daughter) to a chemical-free home!
Fortunately, I had the best night nurse ever who I had bonded with over the past couple of nights.
I felt comfortable enough with her that I told her I did NOT want Nurse Hun to discharge me in the morning and could she please make sure I had a different nurse? She obliged and promised me that I wouldn’t see Nurse Hun again.
I ended up being discharged by the charge nurse.
As karma would have it, the director of maternity services (DMS) had a vested interest in finding out why a patient had fired a nurse, so about a week after we left the hospital, I got a voicemail from her, asking why I didn’t want Nurse Hun to handle my discharge.
I called her back and our conversation went something like this:
Me: Hi, this is OP returning your call.
DMS: Hi, OP! Thanks for calling me back! I was hoping you could shed some light for me on why you didn’t want Nurse Hun to discharge you.
Me: Absolutely! She made me very uncomfortable. I think when she found out I was a birth center transfer that meant I would be interested in a product she sells. I felt like she was more interested in selling me her product than anything else.
I didn’t think it was at all professional and I just didn’t want to deal with another sales pitch.
DMS: … Oh my.
Me: Yep.
DMS: Thank you so much for taking the time to share this with me. We take customer service very seriously and don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable in our hospital. Rest assured this WILL be addressed. Thanks again for your time!
Me: Thanks for taking care of it!
BUT WAIT! There’s MORE!
I actually had met the CEO of the hospital previously when she came into the jewelry store where I worked. My therapist agreed when I brought up reaching out to her to discuss a couple of events that had happened prior to the c-section that resulted in my being diagnosed with PTSD.
I did, and I ended up in a meeting with the chief medical officer, the DMS, and the director of nursing services at the hospital.
In the course of that meeting, Nurse Hun and our conversation came up. The CMO’s eyes bugged out of his head when he heard what happened. He immediately looked to the DMS and told her that needed to be addressed TODAY.
She looked at me and said, ‘That was YOU? We talked about that! I’ve already taken care of it.’
I assured the CMO that DMS was aware of the situation and had actually reached out to me several months ago. CMO was satisfied, but assured me that he had no tolerance for such nonsense and he would not stand for such in his hospital.”
19. I Left The Jerk Neighbors With College Students Who Love To Party
“The place we were renting is a duplex that is split down the middle here in Upstate NY. My little 2 bedroom side of the house was next to the garages and driveway. It had a small side of the yard which was 15 ft x 5 ft. We have a Chocolate Lab named Benny that uses that backyard for his bathroom etc. The trashy neighbor in my duplex who I’ll call Rick had the bigger side of the yard and a staircase that leads up to the backfield where there was a nice walking path and horse farm.
The back of our duplex was kind of built right into the side of the hill leading up to the horse farm/corn farm.
Rick was subletting one of his rooms to a Russian smoker that we’ll call Olga and she was the same age as him (60 ish).
Rick is a jerk 90% of the time and demands we never use his staircase to go up to the walking trail. He and his Russian friend also smoke in front of our living room window making our house smell like an 80’s era bowling alley.
Over the course of our renting this place, we got in numerous fights with these jerks over where they could smoke so that our side of the house didn’t stink. The landlord lives in FL and uses the property as his retirement cash cow.
The LL we’ll call Dwayne and he’s about 70 years old. The house itself was built in 1940 or earlier and we lived on an old farm road with a pumpkin farm across the street. Just want you to have an image of the location because it’ll come into play.
The first week we were in the house unpacking and my wife asked me to plug in the vacuum and run it around the downstairs to pick up the Styrofoam from the packing materials. I notice that the plug sparks when you plug it in or unplug anything.
I call Dwayne and tell him and he says ‘Ok… call around and get a price from an electrician and let me know what it’ll cost.’ This was a red flag for me. I’m paying $1300 a month for this duplex and now this guy wants me to do all his leg work since he is out of state.
I figure whatever and find an electrician that’ll charge $200 for the house call plus the outlets he’ll end up replacing. I call Dwayne and he says ‘no, that’s too much, I’ll send one of my guys over to do it.’ This annoyed me because I just spent 20 minutes calling around getting ballpark quotes but I figure fine as long as the work gets done.
Fast forward 1 month and his electrician finally shows up one day to do the work. He replaces 12 of the 14 outlets because he didn’t think he’d find so many bad ones. I figure that’s fine since the ones he didn’t replace are up in the room we never use.
2 months go by and it’s early spring and raining a ton. One night we get a HUGE downpour that lasts for about 35 minutes. My wife says she hears water in the basement. I run down in the basement and we have 2 waterfalls coming through the windows that look into the backyard and 4 inches of water on the floor and rising.
I call Dwayne the next morning and tell him about the windows in the basement and the flooding and he says I need to find a cleaning service to clean up the mess. I tell him I can’t because I’m going to work.
He says ‘ok, do it after work then.’ I say ‘listen, I don’t own this house, you do, so find someone today that can clean this up and repair the windows, or I’m going to do it myself and take it out of the rent (which is NY state law.)’ He gets annoyed and hangs up.
Later in the evening he calls and says a cleaning service will be there in two days to clean the basement from all the mud and water. I tell him that’s fine but he might want to repair the windows since it’s still raining pretty regularly.
He says no that won’t be necessary since he’s still getting quotes about a French drain for the back of the house. The cleaning crew shows up and they clean the whole basement out. It takes them 6 hrs with power washers and scrubbing machines etc. They leave at 5 pm that day and we’re thinking ok great now we have the basement cleaned up, but the windows aren’t holding anything out since they are so old and have no sealant around the outside edges.
2 days go by and it downpours again and fills the basement back up with water and mud. I call Dwayne and he sounds defeated. He tells me that he’ll send the cleaning crew back out the same day the contractors are going to show up with the backhoe for digging the French drain around the backside of the house.
Fast forward 2 weeks and everybody shows up. The work is completed and we’re happy to have a normal basement again even though I’m annoyed that we have had a swamp down there for so long.
2 more months go by and my wife one night screams while in the kitchen.
She swears she saw a mouse in the kitchen run from under the sink to under the oven. I ask her what it looked like and she says big, grey, and had pink ears. I know right away this isn’t a field mouse but a full-grown rat.
I open the drawer below the oven and all our cupcake pans are full of little rat turds and it’s nasty. Thankfully we never bake so they weren’t a big loss. I call Dwayne and he says he has an exterminator friend that lives nearby and he’ll call him and get back to me.
Dwayne calls back the next morning and says ‘I spoke to my friend and he claims that your dog going to the bathroom in the backyard is probably attracting the rats.’ I tell him ‘rats don’t eat poop, so that makes no sense.
We’ll need to have an exterminator sent out to deal with this.’
Dwayne goes on a tirade about how we’re the worst renters and that we constantly complain about little things. I tell him ‘for $1300 a month I expect a rat-free, spark-free, living space that doesn’t flood or smell like a bowling alley.’ At this point, Dwayne says he’ll look into it and hangs up.
I’m super annoyed at this point. We’ve had nothing but problems with this place from the first week and now we’ve got rats in our kitchen. I do a little digging online and find out that you can have the health department investigate rat infestations and if they see that the landlord isn’t doing anything about it, they’ll put a lien on the house until the work is complete.
So obviously I decided to go that route. I call the health inspector and he tells me that he’ll come out in a few days and do an inspection and get back to me. Dwayne calls me back and says the rat problem is my fault because I have a dog and that I need to deal with the problem myself.
I told him no problem I just set up an appointment with the health inspector. Dwayne gets really upset and curses me out. I call my lawyer and tell him to call Dwayne and arrange for us to break the lease since I don’t want to deal with him anymore.
Fast forward two months. The health inspector had found a bunch of rats and holes in the foundation and evidence that the colony had been living in the house for ‘years and years from the looks of it.’ He contacts Dwayne and tells him about the lien if he doesn’t address it.
Dwayne calls me and says he’s sending an exterminator. Now at this point, I had put the place up on Craigslist to find new renters since Dwayne had decided to sublet our lease instead of letting us out of it. I found some college kids that were desperate for a place and they seemed like typical, rich college kids.
I tell them that the place doesn’t have A/C and they’ll need window units etc. But I also tell them that the next-door neighbor loves to smoke. I tell them that he is super chill and that they can totally use the staircase in the backyard to use the hiking trails.
One of the kids brought his mom that showed up in a new Jag and so I knew that Dwayne wasn’t going to be able to poop all over these people since I knew they’d lawyer up. I never mentioned the rat infestation or that this place was a nightmare because I knew that these kids’ rich parents would go nuclear with a lawyer if they had to deal with this stuff.
Dwayne accepted the new tenants and let us out of the lease. All it took was a few threats from my lawyer before I got my security deposit back.
Fast forward 3 months. I drive by the old place to see what’s happening. It looks like the college kids and Rick are off to a rough start.
There is a plastic divider down the driveway to separate who gets what. There are beer cans all over the front yard and Rick’s truck is parked on the side lawn. He never did that when we lived there, so I’m sure these kids were driving him crazy with parking.
Olga is nowhere to be seen since she probably jumped ship when the parties started. I don’t know what became of the rats but 2 months later I did another drive by and there was no furniture on our side of the house which tells me everybody had left and Dwayne wasn’t making anything… which made me happy since he was a stupid jerk.
I forgot to mention that after we moved out, the cleaning service called me to see about payment for the basement cleaning. Apparently, Dwayne never paid them and they couldn’t reach him. I gave them his cell number and his FL address. That felt really good to do as well.”
18. Try To Trick My Partner? Lose Your Job
“In 2013, my significant other moved to PH in order to study nursing.
He ended up going to the university in my province. We met, became friends, and started going out. By 2015, I was a recent graduate, but he failed one course which prompted him to move back to the US. It was heartbreaking, but we knew it was for the best. His mom had booked a ticket for him 3 months prior to his birthday for a cheaper flight.
The day rolled in and I told him to contact me if he gets into any sort of trouble. We said our goodbyes and kissed one last time because we wouldn’t be able to see each other in person for a really long time.
Two hours have passed and I see his text, saying that he was in a pickle.
I called him and asked what was wrong. He explained to me that a lady in immigration, whom we shall refer to as LII, wouldn’t give him back his papers because he overstayed. I asked if she took all of his documents and he responded that she did: his passport, his school documents, etc. I told him to explain he has dual citizenship so she can’t say he overstayed in the country, LII said he doesn’t know any better.
I asked him what she wanted and my b***d boiled when I heard, ‘She wants me to pay a fee of 5,000 PHP (which was around 100 USD that time) if I wanted my papers back, but I won’t be able to leave the country.’ LII wanted to swindle my partner!
This was very common (I hope it doesn’t happen anymore, but I dunno), and my partner had to be the poor victim in her scheme. I was stressing out because his flight was in 3 hours and she was making things extremely difficult.
One fun fact about my partner is that his dad used to work for that airport.
He worked there for a long time and is really good friends with the staff. They were also my partner’s godparents in his baptism. I called his mom (whom I had met months after we started going out. I love his mom to bits. She’s cool) and told her what happened. Of course, she was as livid as I was and told her husband about their son’s predicament.
His dad called one of the aforementioned buddies and requested on assisting my partner.
While this transpired, LII was still trying to persuade my partner to pay the ‘fine’ rather than facing jail time. My partner already knew about our plans on helping him, so he refused and said he was fine.
A few minutes later, the head of the immigration office came out and instructed her to bring my partner to their office. She was surprised but complied.
My partner (I swear, he is a lost pup) sat on one of their seats and just read stuff on his phone.
LII looked smug (probably thinking my partner was some sort of criminal that she probably won the jackpot or something). Suddenly, the door opened and a stream of managers, supervisors or the head of different departments in the airport entered the room and greeted my partner warmly, remarked on how grown up he was, asked if he remembers them, etc. The head honcho of immigration, aka LII’s boss, entered the room and told a story on how he would babysit my partner when he was a little boy.
At this point, you can imagine LII freaking out.
My partner missed his original flight, but was able to take back his papers and documents, and go back to California because his mom booked a later flight on the same day but was pricey. A week passed and his dad told me that LII was fired immediately for extortion.
LII is no longer viable to apply for any government jobs.”
17. My Tiny Sword And Shield Are No Match To His Crutches
“When my sister and I were younger we were obsessed with the middle ages. One morning after a trip to the renaissance festival we were sparring with our newly acquired wooden swords and shields and decided it would be a great idea to wake our older brother (who was five years old than me) by hitting him with our swords.
He had recently injured himself and broken one of his legs so we figured we could get in and out quickly. We were wrong. Revenge came swiftly that day.
As we proceeded to hit him and scatter away he awoke in a fury and focused on me and chased me into the downstairs family room on his crutches and with pure rage proceeded to beat my butt with those crutches.
My tiny sword and shield didn’t stand a chance. I can remember the fear as I raised up my shield right before the first hit from the crutch. The shield was pushed to the side and the next hit completely winded me. When my parents asked me what happened and I told them the story they said I deserved it.
I definitely did lol.”
16. Mischievous Kid Ended Up Hurting His Hand
“Caused a kid in middle school to go to the hospital.
He was a bully-type kid named Timmy. He didn’t seem to want any friends, always picked on everyone, and generally just seemed to hate everyone.
During recess, about half the class was playing ‘throw the ball back and forth.’ He made it his mission to intercept the ball and then kick/throw it away from everyone, sometimes on the roof.
On one throw, the football bounced off his head during a missed intercept and I went over to get the ball and said ‘haha, you didn’t get it!’
Well, Timmy launched into an uppercut and caught me right in the nose. The recess bell rang and he ran inside.
Immediately following recess we had Art class together… where I would get my revenge on Timmy.
This week in Art we were working on clay sculptures. I started creating a sculpture of a tower, with a staircase that swirled around the base all the way up to the top.
The thing is, I put one of those 3 inch Steel T Pins inside the base tower, pointing up.
Tim was walking by my table, and as planned I said ‘Hey Tim, I bet you won’t smash my sculpture!’ He took the bait. With a crooked smile, he raised his fist into the air.
That’s when time slowed down and I immediately regretted my trap, realizing that it was probably a bad idea.
It was too late. Tim slammed his balled fist down onto the table, smashing the clay sculpture. His face INSTANTLY turned ghost white and his eyes were wide open.
It was so odd though, that he didn’t cry out in pain, but only grabbed his hand and RAN. He was out of school for a long time, I don’t remember how long, but what I do remember is that when he got back he had a cast on his hand.
But he never said anything to anyone about it. Not to me, other kids, or teachers. Nothing happened to me, and I don’t know why. Either he felt too stupid to say exactly what happened, or he figured I wouldn’t get in trouble.”
15. Complain All You Want, You'll End Up Getting Arrested
“I used to make music more or less as a part-time job. I moved into a new apartment that had downstairs neighbors.
I did absolutely everything I could to be a good neighbor, but every time I would sit down to make music, after about 10 minutes, no matter what time of the day, I would get a banging on the floor/ceiling. This was annoying, but I tried to respect their living space, not wanting noise, etc…
Until football season started. Every day a football game was on, they would scream and shout at the tv. This was my breaking point. I had enough. I went downstairs and tried to talk with the neighbors to ask them why it was fair for them to more or less shut down my work days but think it’s ok to scream at the tv when a football game is on.
Well, needless to say, the neighbors were petty, redneck idiots and tried to fight me so I had enough. I looked up the sound regulations in the neighborhood and made sure I was in the clear. Being a musician, naturally, I had some great speakers that could push some serious volume.
For the next 3 months, every single day I would leave for work, I would put on the 10 hours YouTube videos of Trolololololo, Nyan Cat, and bacon pancakes at full volume. They did everything they could to complain, but since I was keeping within the sound regulations, I was in the clear.
They tried to fight with me after this, they ended up getting arrested, and moved out shortly afterward.
All ya had to do was let me get my work done dude.”
14. Jerk Owner Screws Me Over So I Screwed Over His Business
“About five or six years ago I was relatively new to the workforce, having worked one minimum wage job at Mickey D’s. I had been there almost two years but had little experience elsewhere.
Well, this one lady always came through early every morning to order a large drink and would take a few minutes to talk to me. I mentioned to her that I was displeased with my bosses and the working conditions, and she invited me to apply for a job at a shipping company because they were always running low on employees!
That should have been my first red flag.
The second red flag went completely over my head because at this point I was 17 with no previous job experience. When I walked in for an interview, the boss, Jeph, told me it would take five minutes.
I wasn’t asked about my relevant experience, my goals within the company, or even told what position I was applying for. I assumed all interviews were different and went along with it, and started the next week with training. Everything went well for the first month.
I basically just packed boxes, took down customer information, and sorted mail into the mailboxes we managed. The real trouble started after I was given my one-month performance review.
I was deemed to be a valuable asset to Jeph’s franchise, and rightfully so. At 17 I was able to lift more and work better than the 20 and 30 something employees, and due to the work ethic my parents drilled into me, I was never slacking off while at work.
I was then informed that I would be swapping between Jeph’s two franchises, roughly 30 miles apart. (For context, the franchise I APPLIED TO WORK AT was roughly a mile from my house, so I could walk if I couldn’t get a ride.) Every other day I had to drive out to the location and somehow justify this with my slightly above minimum wage job.
($7.50 for those not in Texas.)
Overall my boss was a massive jerk. His physical appearance could best be described as ‘troll-like’ with a shirt almost bursting, the top was always undone to showcase his aging chest hair, and a face not unlike that of A&F owner Mike Jeffries.
He openly went behind his wife’s back, bragging to coworkers about it constantly. He charged people one dollar for any amount of extra tape they needed on their package, despite the fact that we got roughly two rolls for that price in bulk. He had a special price calculator installed on the computers that charged people roughly 10% more than the package would be elsewhere.
He would push employees (who he insisted didn’t work in customer service but sales) to never offer anything less than three-day shipping even though we offered standard 7+ days and even cheaper options. I watched him actively lie to customers, claiming it was the price they had to pay blah blah blah, and almost yell at them to go to another store if they didn’t like it.
But I digress.
Now here was the first obnoxious thing that my boss did to me specifically. Until this point, I was only working around 20 hours. After I graduated from working at both stores, Jeph had me sign a brand new W-2 for his second store, which was under a different company.
(He owned both.) Again, I had very little idea that this was wrong because I had never had to deal with this before. He proceeds to add another 20 or so hours to my schedule, bringing me up to 40 hours or more. But since I worked for two separate companies, I never earned a dime of overtime or benefits of any kind.
At this point, I started accruing more and more duties, as my boss and coworkers started to trust me more and more. By my fourth month of employment (out of a total of eight), I was performing managerial duties such as: opening the store, counting the registers, closing the store, ordering products such as boxes and tape, and preparing shipments for transport.
The work alone justified a raise, not to mention the hours I was being asked to work. However, when I floated this idea to my boss, he very rudely insisted that since he had a manager for each store already, I was just doing my job and couldn’t earn a cent more.
Then came the second obnoxious move. We had a large company contract drop-off stuff with us, a telecom company we will say rhymes with Hey Tea and Tea. Customers would bring in their old cable boxes, wires, remotes, and the like, and we would scan them and ship them back to Hey Tea and Tea, the company THAT LEGALLY OWNED ALL OF THIS HARDWARE.
The customers would not pay us a nickel, but the telecom company would pay almost double what it actually cost to ship the package. There is no way Jeph could look that gift horse in the mouth and decide he was still owed the stable and all the horse’s tack as well, right?
Surprise, surprise, Jeph had to take it one step further. ANY and ALL parts/cables/WiFi adapters/USB drives the customer returned to us that didn’t have a scan tag on them, Jeph would pull aside and either strip for copper or sell on eBay.
And he would force us, the employees to package his eBay sales or copper wiring into boxes and ship them for him. He even popped batteries out of remotes and recycled them somewhere to get a tax credit. None of his employees ever saw a penny of this (not that I would have accepted it).
We estimated he raked in roughly three to four thousand a month just from stealing alone. For those of you bad at math, that is the price of TWO brand new 2018 Honda Civics.
The third (and fourth) final obnoxious moves are what solidified my hatred for this boss, and my desire to strike back.
They both came in the same week, roughly the same time, and both were viscerally repulsive. My favorite coworker had recently gotten pregnant, and although the father got the heck out of dodge when he found out, she was doing very well for herself. She and I frequently closed together, and she promised she would bring the baby to sit in the back for the dull hours we had to kill from 6-10.
We also had an annual store review from corporate that week, so our boss called a late-night meeting after we closed one day. Our boss started out by saying that he was proud of our pregnant coworker for working so hard even with her ‘disability.’ (Yes, even his sense of humor was slimy.) Then, in front of all fifteen employees, HE FIRED HER.
He told her that because the Christmas season was coming up – she would only slow down the store being pregnant and all – he had to let her go.
After she left, hatred seething in her eyes, he turned back to the fourteen of us who were left stunned and continued on as nothing had happened. He proceeded to tell each of us our jobs for this weekend, leaving mine for last. My job, because I used to drive a decently sized minivan, was to ferry the corporate required supplies, cash for the safe, and OUR ONE WORKING FIRE EXTINGUISHER between the two stores while he kept corporate distracted between visits.
At this point, I had taken enough crap from this guy, and I formulated my plan. I started by calling the Hey Tea and Tea fraud department and telling them everything I knew. I took pictures and emailed them directly to the rep I was talking to, who seemed a little too excited about fraud being committed. I then scheduled a visit from a Hey Tea and Tea rep at the same time corporate was supposed to show up.
My next step was to call Not FedEx and explain exactly what I just told y’all, with a few extra things thrown in that I couldn’t share for privacy reasons. They promised to send a rep as well, to the same store, at the same time.
The final step was put into action that Saturday. I dutifully loaded up my van with the supplies, cash (upwards of $4000 if I remember correctly), and fire extinguisher, and headed out. Except I did the exact OPPOSITE of what Jeph wanted. I took the stuff to the first store he owned, which was the second one to receive a visit.
After he texted the team saying they were moving on, I packed up all the crap and drove it to the other store they just left. Now I am unsure exactly what happened at the other store, but from some coworkers, I pieced together that the Not FedEx rep showed up right after I left, but didn’t stay long, and the Hey Tea and Tea rep showed up just before Jeph had arrived and had time to hide his ill-gotten gains in his office.
The one coworker who was close enough to the office during the corporate meeting said there were lots of angry words being thrown and threats being made towards Jeph and his position as a franchisee. He also lost his franchises the ability to ship for Hey Tea and Tea, at least for a period of time.
The sad epilogue to this whole story is that he is currently still in business, and still running the same scams he was before. He WAS however fined for not having proper supplies in his stores, as well as forced to use corporate’s package rates rather than his own.
So in some small way my revenge worked. He currently has a two-star review on Yelp for both of his businesses, and I hope to have a party outside his store one day when it goes belly up.”
13. Ruin My Friend's Yard? I'll Make You Run And Cry To Mommy
“A couple of buddies and I were hanging out at my friend’s house after the last day of 8th grade, just swimming and thinking about how we had the whole summer ahead of us.
My friend’s next-door neighbors had these two kids that were in 6th grade, really annoying and wild, and always trying to torment my friend somehow.
Basically, the 2 kids (they were both boys) had filled up a bunch of balloons with water and shaving cream and were chucking them into my friend’s yard, getting shaving cream all over the place.
That was annoying, but the bad part was that they also jumped the fence and were sticking hand-shovels into my friend’s yard and tearing up the ground, and then running around when we came up to them and taunting us when we told them to stop.
So I went up to my friend’s room, grabbed his airsoft gun, and walked back down with it behind my back. When they kept taunting us and running around in the yard, I pulled the airsoft shotgun out from behind my back and pointed it at them.
Their attitudes changed VERY quickly when they saw the gun, from cursing at us and running around to pleading and apologizing. It was pretty funny.
I unloaded on them until they managed to sprint back to their house, crying. It kind of sucks though because about 30 minutes later their mom came over to my friend’s house to talk to his mom, super flustered, complaining that her kids were ‘SHOT!’ As if they were shot with a real gun.
I ended up getting in trouble, and she didn’t even address that her kids totally ruined my friend’s yard.”
12. Lying Ex's Illegal Businesses Got Busted
“I broke up with this girl a while ago. We were really close, but then her lying got worse and easier to catch. We used to run in the same crowd, and both work for the same place. She started messing with another guy at work and I decided she wasn’t worth the headache.
It was the lying mostly.
Other than an argument in front of friends, I’ve kept my mouth shut and kept my face more solid than a statue. Even when her new guy has come to me asking what’s up, I’ve told him I’m going nowhere near that.
When she tried to get me fired I did enough to save my butt but didn’t give more.
But I keep hearing from people that she’s running her mouth and telling people a lot of things that aren’t true. I kept my head down and waited for her to lose interest in stuff, and hope people will either catch on to how big of a liar she is or such and such.
Friday night I hear from some dude who I’ve talked to only once about how she telling him about that argument that went down in front of people, and she tells it all wrong and made it like I grabbed her and was being violent, and I couldn’t take any more.
This goes way back. When we were tight she told people all sorts of stuff, and she used to tell me how crazy jealous her old partners were and stuff, but then I met one and he wasn’t like that at all. I told him some of the things she was saying and he said ‘She said that about all of us.
She’ll say it about you.’ No way, I said. He tells me to be careful.
So, I was careful. I got two phones, and I used one to record things. I hadn’t really done much with it but now I will. I’ve told her I got this, but she doesn’t know how much.
I made a shot across the bow to warn her not to blast me but she couldn’t help herself. Now I’m hearing it from people I don’t know. Her new partner is cool and all but he’s a chump. All those times she played it off that she wasn’t interested in him, she would say stuff like he was a nobody and why she liked me better.
She’d laugh about him when she kicked him out of her place so I could come over.
He’s about to hear all that. I made a mixtape of the best stuff and left it where he’s gonna be tomorrow. Bonus tracks are the ones where she’s talking about me and stuff I know she lied to him about.
But that ain’t all. Don’t think I forgot about her trying to get me fired. I have a family I provide for, and she didn’t care that they would’ve gotten screwed. I got her talking about doing illegal stuff at work like moving illegal substances and charging stuff to the company that was for personal. Once she even said that so many funds are wasted by the management for personal stuff, she’d just threaten to tell on them if she got called on it.
I also got the argument that she and her boy lied about. I know HR loves it when you do that. I got a meeting with HR and after I told them what it was about it got moved up to tomorrow. Asked if I have witnesses and I told them I got more than that I have proof.
I gave them a sample and they were blown away. I just sent it all over and one lady said good work. I made sure none of the stuff was recorded at work because that’s against company rules. She is also liked by the powerful people so I included her talking smack about them.
Airtight, kids.
I didn’t want to do this, because there were times I was a jerk, but I never ever talked trash about her or lied. She did. It was a step too far when her nonsense was stinking all the way to people I barely know and aren’t in the game because now it’s my reputation, and people think they know me before I can meet them.”
11. Hurt My Cat? I'll Hurt Your Car
“Living in Jacksonville, Fla, I had a neighbor I became friendly with. It was cool and all was good. Until they left their sliding glass door open and one of my cats got in and ate their bird. Having no control over this, I apologized profusely but, they weren’t having it and were angry.
I didn’t know what else I could do though. I even offered to buy them another bird.
Fast forward a few days: we were woken up in the middle of the night by awful noises. Turned out one of our cats was just yowling and writhing on the floor.
We didn’t know what to do so we rushed to a 24-hour vet. Turns out our cat had been poisoned and we had to put her down. Got back home, walked out back in our connecting yard, and on the neighbor’s back patio was an open can of cat food.
We called the cops but, there was no real way to prove it was poisoned without testing it. The neighbors denied everything and we didn’t have the funds for testing at the time. So, we did nothing.
A few months later, I got a great job in another state so we moved. But, before we left, that final morning around 4 am, I got the 4 tubes of superglue I had procured, and proceeded to fill the door locks of their brand new mustang with 2 tubes of superglue each.
No idea of the outcome but, I know there was no way they were getting in their car. Petty maybe but, they hurt my sweetest, gentlest cat so screw ’em.”
10. Loyal Friend Avenges My Family
“My parents started their own business when I was a teenager. Everything we had went into it, savings accounts were emptied, we slept there sometimes in order to work late on decorating or repairs, even my younger brothers (one of them nine) were pulling their weight.
After a few years of steady business, rent on the building started increasing to the point that our profit margin all but disappeared. We sold up and another business moved in, taking advantage of all the equipment and facilities we’d installed little by little. Being stupid kids, the last day before we left my brother and I went around and took any small things that wouldn’t be missed – extension chords, stools, doorstops – then we stuck it all on eBay (this being the early days when the idea of eBay was still novel).
We had a good laugh at the ill-gotten pocket change we made and considered that the end of it.
Except it turns out a friend of mine decided to take our bad fortune personally. A few more years pass and I hear that he’s been cursing loudly at the building every time he walks past since we sold it.
People kept telling him how weird this was but he didn’t care. When his partner at the time happened to get a job there he decided it was time to up his game. Every opportunity he got he pocketed something small, cans of cola, cookies – a lot of the time he didn’t even want them, just gave them to people on the street.
As we grew older still, his partner (who somehow still had a job there) was trusted to lock up at night, which meant if he went to pick her up he could take his shenanigans to whole new levels. Over the next six months, he delighted in taking back every little decoration or personal touch that was still left on the premises from when my family started renovating the building and gave all of them back to me whenever he could, always with a big menacing grin on his face.
This finally culminated one night at a party when he told me how he’d hooked up with his partner in the stockroom. His reasoning? ‘Well bud, felt only right returning the favor after they screwed your whole family in the butt!’
He broke up with his partner a few months after that.
I have no idea how far it would have gone if he still had access to that building, but I half expected him to show up outside my house one day laughing with half the building stashed under his coat.”
9. I Gaslighted My Sister Into Thinking She Wets The Bed
“I can’t remember why I was so angry at my sister at the time, but I was around seven years old, and she was around nine. I remember whatever it was, it went on for a while because I remember it taking weeks to come up with my plan for revenge.
She was always very underweight and unhealthy due to complications when she was born, so she was consistently anxious and uncoordinated and didn’t stop wetting the bed until she was seven. My parents were always worried about her and how she was doing. Despite her somewhat frail nature, she was still very mean to me and would often escalate things until I couldn’t get her back in any reasonable way.
If she hit me, I’d hit her back, and then she’d swing something at me. She once stabbed me in the knee for the TV remote.
So I knew I couldn’t respond lightly because she’d just get me back worse, and I couldn’t physically do anything terrible because she was frail and my parents were always watching over her like a hawk.
So for weeks, I would wait for her to fall asleep, and then pee on her, and every morning she’d wake up crying thinking she wet the bed. This went on for so long, my parents were considering therapy for her, which was a really big deal because therapy is expensive and we were really poor.
For weeks, my sister cried about this until one night, she woke up to hear me crying. My mom was yelling at me about what I had been doing, and I couldn’t even deny it. She had caught me in the act of peeing on my sister in her bed.”
8. Friend Got Rid Of The Homeowners Association
“A good friend of mine about 4 years ago inherited the house of his grandparents. He decided to live there for the time being till he decides what to do with the house.
He grew up in it, so he did not really want to sell it.
Not even a week after he moved in, he got a visit from a neighborhood committee. They said they are the 3 board members of the HOA and are here so he can sign his membership papers.
They were extremely nosy and rude, for example, one tried to get into the garage without so much as asking. When he stopped him and asked him where he wanted to go, he had the audacity to say: ‘I need to check your garage, if everything there is in order.
I have a right to do this bi-weekly, and denying me access is an offense that will cost a fine.’
He then had enough of their audacity and kicked them out of the house. While doing so, one of the board members shoved some papers into his face and told him he needed to sign this right now.
He had been living there a week already, and these papers had to be signed BEFORE moving in. Once they were gone, he took a look at the papers. They were ridiculous and gave the HOA rights that were simply unreal. They had for example a right to visit your home bi-weekly, and check things like not using the garage for storage, don’t have gasoline on containers in your garage, the same goes for gas.
You had to mow your lawn every week, snow had to be shoveled every 2 hours when it snowed (starting at 5 a.m.). You could not park more than one car on your grounds (except inside the garage), and a ton of other nonsense.
A few days later they came back and asked him why he did not sign the papers yet.
They also wanted to check the garage again. This time he would not even lead them in and told them he would never become a member of their stupid club. To them that meant war. Within a week they had sent him fines north of 1000$ (several of which were for denying them access to his home, each worth 250$).
My friend simply did not take them seriously and used their stupid letters to help fire his grill.
Then came the day when they went EXTREMELY TOO FAR. He came back, and one of the board members had broken into his garage, stood in it, and was writing things down on his notepad.
But that was not even the worst part. He had two wonderful oak trees in the front of the house. They had been planted by his great grandparents when they were newlyweds and moved into the house. The HOA WAS IN THE PROCESS OF TAKING THEM DOWN.
They had called a professional crew for this. One was already so damaged (basically all twigs were already down, it was just a stump that was left).
The other one they had just started with. He lost it. He told the tree crew to stop right now and explained to them that he was the owner, and what they did was highly illegal. They had no idea since the board member claimed these trees were in violation of the rules since supposedly too many leaves went to the neighbor’s garden.
He had told them that was no legal reason to put them down, but the board member claimed he had given his OK because the trees were in violation of the rules of the HOA. He looked it up later. They actually had a bylaw, that if a garden produces more than one 40 liter sack of leaves within 2 weeks, the garden owner needs to take down the offending trees within 2 weeks.
He told them he would overlook their trespassing if they would be witnesses in court for him. Then he called the cops on the board members for trespassing, breaking, and entering (they actually had used a bolt cutter to get into the garage. He had it always closed with a big bike lock after they had tried to get in it twice before).
The process must have been glorious. Not only did they have to repay him for the lock and the tree (which was worth a ton of money, north of 50k if I remember right), plus damages for the second tree, (he had a professional tree person look after it so all the damage healed properly, which alone cost over 1k) but these idiots actually thought the trial would have been unfair, and tried to fight it, which probably cost them an additional 10-15k in lawyers and court costs.
All in all this trial must have cost them over 120k. Then he went to yet another civil court and sued them for emotional damage. He told them how much these trees meant to him since his great grandparents had planted them, with seeds from the home country (he really laid it on as thick as he could).
Plus he felt threatened by the HOA, and can hardly sleep because he always fears they will try to get into his house. The court actually bought it and gave him 500k plus the costs for a state-of-the-art alarm system, so he can feel safe again in his own home.
So put all together he cost the HOA nearly 750k. They had to file for bankruptcy and get a person to check the books so my friend would get his funds. The best is for last. The mediator found out that these 3 jerks had been defrauding the HOA for well over 10 years, and were giving out as many fines as they possibly could so they could use it to bolster their income.
All three had to sell their houses, so they could pay out my friend. Now he is for most people one of the favorite people living there, and he constantly gets invited over for grilling and whatnot.
You see, most people never wanted the HOA in the first place, but the board member practically forced them to sign the contract, claiming it would not be optional, and if they did not sign before moving it would be a 500$ fine.
Only 6 of the over 50 members actually wanted this HOA (and people think they did get part of the action, as a reward for spying out their neighbors to find violations)”
7. I Avenged My Partner By Poaching A Manager
“A few years ago my then-partner worked for Dollar General. She was a great worker and often took on additional shifts whenever they asked and in return, they treated her like garbage.
Well, I don’t appreciate companies that treat their hard-working employees like that and began plotting my revenge on DG. There are a number of stores in our area and pretty much all are in some sort of disarray, but there was one store that always stayed clean and organized, the workers were happy, and the manager was extremely happy.
I made it a point to go to this Dollar General as often as possible, sometimes driving across town just to shop there.
After I became a regular, I started chatting with the store manager and offered her a position at my mattress store. Turns out she was one of the top-ranked managers with the company and had won numerous awards for reducing shrink and beating sales goals on a regular basis.
It took about a year to convince her to come join my company in an entirely different industry, but I promised her she would be making as much as she currently was and would only work 40 hours a week instead of the 70-80 she currently worked. What really convinced her was all the time she would have with her granddaughter.
She eventually went back to DG after about a year with me, but they had to give her a hefty raise to win her back. In the meantime, the store she had been running fell to the bottom of the company and they will probably shut it down soon.
Oh Well!”
6. Love Throwing Nasty Napkins At Me? Get A Reputation
“Sophomore year of high school I got picked on by some random girl who thought it was funny to shoot spitballs and throw wads of spit-soaked napkins at me. If you’re curious grab a napkin, crumple it up into a ball, put it in your mouth, let it sit until you feel it falling apart, and toss it to a wall and it will explode into tiny paper pieces.
She did this for a week straight because the class found it funny, until one night when I was at home watching LOTR, a pose that Gollum made reminded me a lot of her yearbook photo. I took a picture of it and did a side-by-side on Microsoft Word and printed a few copies that I put up on every wall of that classroom before our class period started.
This blew up, and from that day till graduation, she would be called Sméagol or Gollum (in Gollum imitation voices). Whenever she would walk by anyone, even on her graduation walk, people yelled this. I felt bad about it and didn’t really think of the consequences when I started all this.
I never called her by those names and tried to apologize multiple times, but she just ignored me. She looked numb and I genuinely thought she would hurt herself, but over time she stopped caring about it and would just laugh it off. She went out with a few guys through high school and I’m not sure whatever happened to her after high school but even now I still feel guilty.”
5. Don't Stop Calling? Here Are Some Angry Customers
“The cell number I have was given to me new, it was never used before.
Everything was all well and good until a few years ago when I started getting random calls and messages on my voicemail.
These calls were from my local area Home Depot (HD) stores.
I started calling them back, advising that they had the wrong number, but that didn’t stop the calls. I even stopped by a store to let them know they had listed their regional manager or a person with authority as my number, no result.
I tried to be nice, that didn’t work. Here’s what got results instead.
A few days after I’d stopped by my local HD, I got a message on my mobile while I was in class, mentioning a local store and a staffing issue.
I called the number back and told the person who called I’d take care of the issue.
A few days later, again, while I was in class, I see the same (HD) number come up on my phone. I bolt for the classroom door and excitedly answer the call in the hallway.
It’s Kathy at (a local area store). Kathy tells me she’s got a customer who says they’ve paid for their order, but she can’t find it in the system. I tell her to send the customer with their products and I’d take care of it, carefully writing down the invoice number.
I thanked Kathy, hung up, crumpled the paper with the invoice number on it as I returned to my economics class and tossed the paper into the trash.
Not even a week later, another unknown, but local, number called me while I was at work.
I hung up on the customer I was talking to and answered the phone. I was right to do so, it was a person from another local store. She sounded desperate. She said that a pallet of pavers was supposed to be delivered by noon, but it was still in the store at 11:45.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,’ I reassured her and hung up.
Over the next several weeks, I continued to get calls to approve things, which I ALWAYS did.
The final call was one from a store that was very familiar to me, an understaffed store with terrible service.
The customer service desk called to ask me to speak with a customer. I told them, ‘I’ll be in the store in 10 minutes.’ Ten minutes later, they call and I reply, ‘almost there.’ Five minutes after that, a familiar number hits my mobile display, I say, ‘Just walking in now.’
The last call I ever got from any HD store was 5 minutes after that when the store associate yelled at me to ‘come speak with the customer NOW!’ I quietly replied, ‘I would, but I don’t work for Home Depot.’ I hung up and laughed my butt off.
And yes, in hindsight, I should have gone in and told HD to call their regional manager as I had already paid for the Jacuzzi (HD sold spas then), as I would have been approving my own purchase but hindsight…”
4. Be Petty About Our Breakup? I'll Take Your Family Business Down
“My ex, who told me she didn’t love me, wasn’t ever going to be attracted to me again, or see a future with me decided that even though I paid rent for the month and was still looking for an apartment, she didn’t want me living in our apartment that only her name was on and she didn’t live in anymore, because I had started seeing someone else.
I was incredibly hurt and mad by this, so I naturally took all the cleaning supplies when I moved out and she was coming back to move her stuff out with her family.
About two months later I realized that I had been incredibly petty and had sunken to her level.
She had constantly harassed me after we broke up about me hanging out with the same people as I did when we went out, and constantly tried to imply I was at fault for everything wrong under the stars, while refusing to admit she was being a child.
At one point it got so bad she actually tried to make me feel bad for getting back in shape and getting a great job right after we broke up by telling me I had no idea how my new success made her feel.
Later that night, I was a few drinks in when it dawned on me that while I had been petty, I hadn’t been petty enough, so I filed an anonymous immigration tip on her family’s restaurant for knowingly employing illegals with fake SSNs.”
3. Corn Magically Appears
“My husband’s family is redneck. His uncle was out one night with two of his friends.
They were driving around in a pick-up truck spotting deer. All three were wearing work-type bib overalls. They were passing a jar of booze between them.
So there’s the driver, then uncle in the middle, then another friend. Driver and friend had been arguing over something stupid, I don’t know what it was about.
Anyway, a friend passes out from the booze. Driver notices, and tears off to the man’s house.
Driver gets out, asks uncle to help him move friend onto his own front lawn. Driver then proceeds to take off friend’s overalls and takes a crap into the passed-out guy’s overalls.
Driver pulls the overalls back up, tells flabbergasted uncle to get in the truck, and they leave friend laying on his own front lawn with someone else’s poop in his overalls.
The next day uncle drives by friend’s house. Uncle sees the guy outside raking leaves, so he pulls over and asks friend how he is feeling.
‘Oh, man, I had a bad night.’ ‘Really? What happened?’ Friend says ‘Well I’ll tell you one thing, that booze really cleans a man out.’ Uncle asks ‘how so?’ Friend says ‘Well I’ll be honest with you, I pooped my pants last night.’ Uncle says ‘Well that happens sometimes.’
Friend says ‘No man, it wasn’t just that. There was corn in my poop, and I haven’t eaten corn in 5 years.'”
2. I Lied To A Lying Ex
“Had a partner once that was sleeping over my place most of the week in order to shorten her commute. She also ended up owing me a fair amount for various things, that I documented on a whiteboard in my office.
She ended up sneaking behind my back with a co-worker, lying about it, then finally caving after I had evidence.
So we broke up.
Fast-forward a few months and she gets fired, has to scramble to find another job in the area and the other guy doesn’t want a relationship with her.
So she comes crawling back, which led to petty revenge #1. After a lengthy and torrid hate/grudge session of Epic Proportions said ex says she wants nothing more than a hot bath and to go to bed. At which point I hand over her purse and say ‘I never said you can stay overnight.’ The look on her face as she limped back to her car for the hour+ rush hour drive to her family’s house was absolutely priceless.
She comes by the next day to talk about things. I point to the cash value on my whiteboard and tell her she can start staying over again as soon as that amount is paid back. And I’m not treating her for anything until that happens.
So I enjoyed a few months of make-up moments, having my own place, and a friend that paid for her own tab when we went out to eat.
Which led to petty revenge #2. She eventually paid back everything she owed me and wanted to move in.
So we went out to dinner and I deliberately didn’t order anything other than a beer. She asked me what the issue was and I said, ‘Do you remember when you lied about sleeping with a COWORKER?’
Her face immediately turns beet-red. No answer.
So I ask again. Her face gets redder and she won’t even make eye contact.
I say, ‘Well I do. And you are definitely going to remember how it felt when I lied about taking you back, which is never, ever going to happen. Goodbye!’ I drop a twenty on the table to cover the beer/tip/trouble and walk back out to my car; blocking her cell phone number on the way.
Last I heard from her.”
1. Judge Me For Being An Atheist? Let Me Get My IPod
“So I had a neighbor let’s just call him Chris. Chris wasn’t the worst kid I knew, but if this were Myspace he wouldn’t be on my top 8. Now for the most part Chris and I got along well and we would always talk on the way home from school about video games and music and stuff that freshmen talk about.
Well, one day on the way home from school Chris asked me if I wanted to go to church with him and his family that weekend, to which I replied something along the lines of ‘no thanks man I don’t really believe in God.’ This must have struck a chord with Chris because after that day Chris never spoke to me or acknowledged me.
That was until Chris overheard a conversation I was having at school about smoking… Chris like the righteous young jerk he was took it upon himself to tell his very religious parents my plans, who then took it upon themselves to tell my parents.
This left me grounded for two weeks… During my time in the hole aka my bedroom, I devised a plan to put the fear of God in Chris.
My bedroom window faced Chris’s bedroom and I thought about just throwing rocks at it throughout the night, but decided that wasn’t enough, because snitches get stitches. So I ended up taking the fishing line and tying it to my wireless Bluetooth speaker. I made sure there was enough line to reach from my window to the bushes under Chris’s window.
I then downloaded a bunch of satanic chants and satanic ritual stuff onto my iPod. Every night when Chris went to bed at 9 pm I would slowly open my window and lob my Bluetooth speaker over to the bushes under Chris’s window and start playing satanic chants.
This went on every night for the two weeks I was grounded, but it didn’t stop there. I saw the toll it was taking on Chris. He would look dead tired at school, and I knew he was tired because I sat there most nights watching him turn his lights back on and look out the window, and sometimes he even got his parents to go take a peek, but to no avail.
I tasted b***d and I was going to push Chris as far as I could…
For 3 months I continued this and each day I would watch Chris turn his lights on/off 4 to 5 times a night. I would set alarms on my phone throughout the night so I could wake up and mess with him, and one final alarm so I could reel in my satanic grenade before the sun came up.
It got so bad there were nights I refused to go out with friends so I could stay home and mess with Chris.
I eventually got bored of messing with Chris, so on the last night, I put the rickroll song on the speaker long enough for him to hear it, but short enough not to wake anyone up beside Chris.
Apparently, this prank took a toll on Chris, because his grades dropped significantly that semester, and the next year his parents put him into a private catholic school. I never really spoke to him after that despite being neighbors.”
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