People Get Personal About Their Stinking Revenge Stories

“So. I had this business partner. Long-time friend, like a brother to me, most trusted person in my life (aside from my wife and daughter).

Till I had the stupid idea to open a business with him.

And yes, it was definitely a stupid idea. People warned me against it, I myself was kinda aware of the risks and obvious consequences, but we’ve talked about it for so long that it would ruin the friendship if I did not include him in my plans.

So I left my job to open my own design school.

The focus would be on comic bookmaking, which I considered a specialty of mine, having even won a national award (as co-author, I admit) for one of my publications.

The deal was pretty simple. At first, I would teach writing, he would teach drawing. He never had published anything, but he had a raw talent for art and I always pushed him to practice again, which he had stopped due to a lot of insecurities.

Considering our work backgrounds (he has always worked with sales, and I was a teacher for most of the last decade) we also divided the administrative and mundane tasks: he was “director of sales”, responsible for bringing the students, close deals, and take care of the bills. I was the “teaching director”, responsible for finding associated teachers (our business model involved bringing teachers as sorta partners, in control of their own courses and paying us a fee in exchange for the place, the support, and the sales effort), the marketing and the overall quality of the teaching structure.

We reached out to a lot of fairs, cons, and art shows so we could find some potential students. In exchange, we gave free workshops and panels. It was then that things started to go south.

After a particularly successful panel about independent comic authors, we started a Q&A session and someone asked about the relevance of a comic book school in such a small market.

The question was directed at me and, being my long time dream, my planning (even my award), I started to recall my previous experiences both on teaching and on comics publishing, till the part of the story where I invited my best friend to share the dream.

He was LIVID. Suddenly he took the mic and started rambling about how I made it sound like it was all my idea (which it was, but whatever) and made very public his opinion that I never gave him enough credit.

I think I made a joke, tried to dismiss his rant as a playful prank between good friends, and acknowledged his many contributions to the venture (and I’d have done it anyway if he had just let me finish my d**n story).

I tried to talk to him later about what had happened, but he again insisted that I was always dismissing his ideas and leaving him out of things.

I apologized for making him feel this way and said it was never my intent to diminish him or his ideas.

After this, I started putting the friendship first and the business second. He would come up with these absurd, most idiotic ideas, and I would let him pursue it so he would feel included, even when I knew said idea would massively blow up in our faces.

It was that or hear him complain that “I thought only my ideas were worthy of something”.

This continued for a while and I spent most of the time on damage control, which as a consequence took me away from some of my other responsibilities. Unsurprisingly, the business suffered.

When we both left our jobs to become entrepreneurs I warned him that it would be a long and hard road.

This wasn’t my first company (not even my second, proving that I’m really stubborn and don’t know when to quit), and I did not expect to turn a profit for at least the first year. I told him we would struggle on a month-to-month basis and for that reason, I had secured some funds to keep me afloat in the meantime and was counting on some freelance work here and there to make ends meet.

The fact that I lived in my own house and did not have to pay rent was an additional blessing. He actually was in a similar situation, living in a small apartment owned by his mother and having very few bills to pay. Also, he lived all by himself, while I had to support a wife and a daughter.

A little side story here: his mom had been used as a scapegoat by her own sister some years before when they opened together a factory to produce school and companies uniforms. The sister was actually the “brains” behind the operation, and my friend’s mom basically just contributed with her reputation and good credit.

Later, when the sister closed down the factory thinking (wrongly, of course) that it would excuse her from paying former employees and the many many lawsuits that came after, she actually took the precaution of first transferring all her assets to her children, not giving the courtesy of suggesting my friend’s mom should do the same. So my friend’s mom had her assets frozen, while her sister who actually managed the business kept everything she owned untouched. And by some red tape shenanigans between different states, the government had never found out about my friend’s apartment, owned by his mom but in a different city and different state.

So after a few months into the venture, my friend slash partner told me he would move back to his mom’s and put his apartment for leasing, so he would have an income source until the school could turn a profit. Solid plan. I helped with renovations, painted his whole apartment all by myself (he proved terrible at it), even paid half the costs with moving (since some of his furniture were being donated to our school).

However… At the worst timing possible, the government found out about the apartment. It didn’t really surprise me, it should have happened much earlier, and many times I had recommended that his mom transfer the title to her children before it was too late.

According to the law, the apartment cannot be seized if someone from the family uses it as their main address. Since my friend did not have a steady income now, and his sister was fresh out of university with a law degree and a job on a firm, it was decided that she would move in and take care of maintaining the property.

This only added to my friend’s many other insecurities and rejection complex and he started blaming me for losing his apartment to his sister. A few days later he actually put it into words, saying that he no longer saw us as friends. I told him the sentiment was one-sided.

Things just got worse from there. He had the habit of going to the school every single day by foot, walking a few miles between his mom’s house and our commercial spot downtown.

I did not have that option, since I live on the other side of the city, do not drive, and depend on sporadic buses to move around. And since we hadn’t classed every single day, I simply didn’t see the point in wasting the time and the money.

Don’t take me wrong. It was a waste. We worked our butts off to collect a bunch of contacts from possible students, and all that was expected of our “director of sales” was for him to pick up the phone and invite these people to come and visit the school.

Once everyone saw our place, our closing numbers went through the roof. But instead, day after day he would crank up the AC, plug in his computer on the classroom TV, and alternate between YouTube and Netflix until the time he considered the end of his “shift”. And then would preach about how I was not as invested in the business as him because I wasn’t there every day.

“Find me some students and you’ll see me every day,” I would say.

We actually managed to eventually start two full classes of our extended comics course, which would pay a lot more than the usual short-term classes where most of the money went to the associated teachers. All of this was still going in accord with my initial time projection. Things were beginning to turn around.

Except that my friend got a new significant other. He was always too intense in his relationships, and this time wasn’t any different. He constantly complained about not having what my wife and I have, even after we reminded him that we too had our problems and what we do have (and he envied) was the result of twenty years together, with as many lows as highs.

He had never got over his ex, whom he proposed to and never got an answer, and all his relationships after that fell into one of two categories: either he was unfaithful to them since they weren’t “marriage material”, or he pursued them too intensely (in which case they were “m.m.”) and ended up scaring them away.

We were participating in the local annual comic convention and had secured a big booth to show off the school and gather some new contacts.

We printed posters with art from some of our teachers, a small sketchbook showcasing our in-house talent, and even reprinted some of my old indie comics so we would have more merch to offer. The plan was to make our art travel and get known by many people, but the idiot put in his head that he could make enough a profit to pay our bills for the month and keep some change.

So everything that should be offered cheap to make it travel fast suddenly got new prices and our booth turned into a desert. We actually made a bit, mostly because I offered discounts and threw some freebies to potential customers, but every time I did this he would give me an earful and say that I couldn’t be trusted to manage the booth. I did my better sales when he went away to check on other booths, anyway.

Our “profit” actually paid for his night out with the soon-to-be significant other. He spent everything we got in the first day on drinks for him and an old acquaintance that was visiting from another state. He was ashamed of it the next day, but seeing how happy he was, having turned the acquaintance into something more and apparently losing a big stick that had been living on his butt, I just brushed it off and congratulated him.

I told him, “It’s your money, too, and you should be able to spend it on nice things every now and then”.

I know this tale is getting bigger and bigger and there’s no sign of revenge yet, but stick with me. All of this is important to comprehend what comes next.

So suddenly my partner had a significant other from another state. My birthday came, and we made a big dinner, as was our tradition, and he spent most of the night outside, on the street, talking to her on the phone.

When he came back he was a jerk to my daughter and some other guests, and when people started talking about politics (almost everybody in our circle tends to be liberal and left thinking) he started to distort things and jokes I had said when we were alone to make me look racist and misogynistic (a quick curiosity: I’ve been out of the closet most of my life as bisexual, and a few years after these events I actually came out as non-binary).

A few days later he told me he always had this dream of moving to another city (If you guessed the city where his girl lived, you guessed right) and pursue a career in publishing, but had never told anyone about it. Then he decided that life was too short to carry baggage around and started putting his huge comic collection for sale. He first made it sound like he was pursuing a life without attachments, but it soon became clear he was both getting rid of anything that could slow him down while also making some income to move away.

As a good friend, I tried to talk him down and make him think twice about all these sudden decisions he was making and told him repeatedly that he could regret some of them. He just ignored me. He loved those comics, but couldn’t wait to get rid of it all.

He finally came up with a good idea and proposed an event, putting his collection sale as a way of bringing people to visit the school and get to know our classes.

He forgot to tell me that he would not put any effort into the second part, so the event was a bust, at least regarding new possible clients. He actually sold a few rare TPBs and got enough funds for a quick trip to see his girl the following weekend. I offered to take charge of the next event so I could try and advertise the school while he focused on his sales, and this time he decided to not give a d**n on any front.

I sold a few of his comics to the very few people who attended the second event and when I went to check the books with him (he only appeared when we were almost closing) he said: “Keep it. Pretend it’s your commission.”

But nothing prepared for what came next. We each had a weekly class: his on drawing, mine on writing. Some of our students went to both classes, but they were taught independently.

His class started a couple of months earlier, while we tried to gather more students to mine in order to make it profitable. As a consequence, his class was scheduled to conclude earlier, but our business plan anticipated this kind of situation where we would offer students a more advanced course to keep them with us. Instead, when his class got near the end he called me:

“So, I spoke with our real estate agent, and we can move out at such date if we pay these amounts as fines.”

“Wait… What!?? We still have a few months on our lease and my class won’t finish for another three months!”

“Bad for you. Mine ends next month so I already gave ’em notice.”

He probably thought it was that easy, but it wasn’t.

We actually had to put in writing any desire to end the contract early and only then did the 30 days notice start counting. So, to avoid any more useless arguing, I complied. The Real Estate Agency usually sent bills and notifications only addressed to me, probably to shorten communications, but many times he complained and said that it looked like only my name was on the lease.

Man, it was freaking bills. Next, he would complain that birds never pooped over him.

I came by the school while he was with his students and left the letter of intention on his table, properly signed, and reminded him he had to sign it too and drop it at the agency. The air was heavy, and I felt that probably would be the last time we spoke face to face.

Call me naive, or stubborn, but I really hoped at that point we could get over everything and just go back to being best buddies.

His class ended and I tried to offer the students the second course. I secured a meeting room in a coworking space so I could finish my own class and host the advanced class. This way, we would have enough funds to renovate the school and pay the last bills before moving out.

By law, we were required to undo any modifications and return the property to its original state, or we had to pay the agency’s own estimated costs, which traditionally is much more expensive than renovating on your own. I quickly learned that my “friend” approached every single one of our students and asked them to pay on credit any remaining amount of their tuition fees, and because of it most wouldn’t be able to afford the advanced class.

I called my partner and asked what was made of this money since the last rent and bills weren’t paid and our business account had no balance. He took great offense and said he wouldn’t even waste his time answering it. And in fact, never did!

I was able to speed up things with my class, making double appointments with them each week, and got them to agree to some online tutoring in exchange for us finishing the schedule early.

This reduced the amount I would have to pay for the new place, but the new class was still essential if we expected to pay all taxes, fines, and fees without having to use our own dollars. So I went out and found some new students.

I asked him how we should divide the school’s assets, but he said he wanted nothing but the TV and some other equipment bought on his sister’s credit card, which he intended to sell.

I could have just loaded the moving truck with everything I wanted, but instead, I tried to be considerate and left behind half of everything. I even bought paint cans and some painting equipment so we could do renovations together. When I brought this up, he said: “Go ahead. If I feel like It, I’ll join you.” I painted one wall and said: “Screw it.

I’m done.” I finally had enough.

In our country renting requires some payment guarantee. Most of the time, this is achieved by including someone on the contract who vouches for and has enough income to be held responsible in case you don’t pay (sorry if this isn’t news to anyone, but I have no idea how similar or different renting is between here and the USA).

In our case, this person was his mother. I loved her like a second mom, and never purposedly would hurt her, but she ended up getting caught in the crossfire.

My friend and I had not talked for weeks. Suddenly he redirects one of her messages to me. “The real estate agent is asking about this month’s rent,” it said. He answered below: “OP will take care of it.” It was the last straw.

I started recording an audio message with every intention of sounding calm and stable. But a few seconds in I was already screaming and putting out every little thing that I’ve kept to myself for the last six or seven months. Every hope I had of becoming friends again was dead and buried. I asked again about the missing funds, saying how strange it was that he suddenly had enough to make recurring trips to see his woman, while our bills weren’t being paid.

I made it clear that I would not take care of anything and reminded him it was HIS MOM’S BUTT on the line, and she already had enough trouble and debt.

This wasn’t the revenge, by the way. Nor what comes next. He actually called a few weeks later and said: “Real estate agency wants to charge us an extra month.”

The imbecile had “forgotten” to deliver our letter of intentions.

He eventually did it… TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS LATER. And then he failed to move his things out within the 30 subsequent days. And never occurred to him in the meantime how many renovations I had made by myself. So he was charged the equivalent to THREE MONTHS RENT in additional fees and expected us to split the amount. For his mistake. I laughed and hung up.

The actual revenge came a lot later.

I failed to make a payment on time to the coworking space and they emailed me asking when I could fix this. Immediately I got a message from my former partner giving me a hard time for being irresponsible and for making our company look bad.

That was how I found out that he still had access to our business account, even after I changed all passwords and blocked him (he made it clear he wanted nothing to do with the company, but I still had students to attend to).

I’m no expert on these things, but after looking around a bit it became clear that his phone was still logged in to the company’s account, and even the changing of password couldn’t prevent him from receiving e-mails and notifications. So I dug a little more to find a way to disconnect it remotely from the account.

What I did find was an option to erase ALL his phone’s data in case of robbery, which I promptly activated.

I have no idea what was the end result or the size of the damage, but judging by the angry messages he left me later (from his sister’s phone) I’m guessing it was pretty big.

And THAT was my revenge.

By the way, not long after he got dumped. The girl got really scared with how fast he wanted things to go, already talking about moving in, etc. It did not help that he gave her a “commitment ring”… And It was exactly the same ring he had used to propose to his ex.

I actually kept in touch with her and we even go out to drink whenever I travel to her city. We never talk about him.

I talked to his mom and sister a few times after everything happened. They told me he maxed out all his credit cards and had to take a bunch of loans, and nobody knew how long it would take him to settle all his debt.

Some mutual friends stopped talking to me. I decided I wouldn’t touch the subject unless someone came to me and asked. Everyone who did it now is back again on good terms with me. Most stopped talking to him after hearing my side. I never asked for anybody to do this.”