People Tell All About Their Subtle Revenge
37. Woman's Cart Gets Filled Without Her Noticing
“So I was in a supermarket once, in the middle of a queue which went all the way around a corner. A woman came up and pushed in in front of me as I got to the ninety-degree bend.
She didn’t mistake it for the start of the queue, it wasn’t that kind of corner. The wall was actually a waist-high parade of baskets full of impulse-buys, like chocolates and so on, as shops are wont to display near the checkouts.
I could hear mutters and tuts from behind me but of course, I couldn’t say anything directly (cf. British) so I started picking things off the shelves every time she wasn’t looking and put them in her trolley.
I started small, like with a bag of crisps. People quickly cottoned on to what I was doing and I heard a few of the mutters change to noises of approval.
I ended up managing to put an entire umbrella in there. That got widespread laughter from the shop behind me but the woman was oblivious.
I rushed through the self-service tills as she went to a conventional human-powered checkout.
She was clearly not paying attention because I was nearly out of the shop when I heard her say, ‘where did that come from?'”
36. Ex-Husband Is Trying His Dirty Moves On Me
“For almost 20 years, I was married to a chronic two-timer who decided his current mistress was ‘the one’ and divorce had to happen.
It was something I already knew. I was sick of the lying, the games, manipulation, all of it. He was so anxious for this to happen, he said he’d pay all legal fees. It took more than a year and 40K in fees. From the day we split, he paraded his next wife all over town, took her to family functions (both mine and his), and never missed a chance to tell me and others how much happier he was with her, blah, blah, blah.
Fast forward a year and he’s now married to this woman. I had heard several times he wasn’t faithful to her either and frankly, I didn’t care. Meanwhile, I’ve changed and grown into a person he doesn’t know anymore. The new me doesn’t accept the behavior he once got away with. And I don’t negotiate. Also, I’ve never looked or felt better, I’m back in school, my life is full and I’m happier than I’ve been in years.
I started noticing that whenever we met to drop the kids off or ran into each other at school functions, more and more he was lingering and being a bit friendlier. I figured this was good. We had children and should at least be civil.
And then one day, at a celebration for one of the kids, I realized I had it all wrong. I’m in the kitchen by myself and as I’m bending over to get something out of the oven, I feel a hand on my behind and it’s his.
And I was ANNOYED. I stood up, looked at him, and calmly said, ‘The only married man I’ll do is the one I’m married to and you’re not it. Does your wife approve of you grabbing my behind? Let’s find out. She has a say in this, given her position.’ She was standing right around the corner and heard every word.
BAM! Went the front door and she was gone. This is a man who’s arrogant, entitled, and extremely image-conscious. And I no longer cared. He was FURIOUS and I simply stood there and smiled.
He quickly made his excuses and said goodbye and flew out of the house. As he’s getting into his car I said, ‘Thanks for being here! Have a wonderful evening!’ And I just kept smiling.
Yeah, there was fallout. But it was his, not mine. What a sleaze….”
35. Dense Lady Gets Taught How Chip Cards Work
“When I worked in retail there was this kid that dropped one of those Squig toys in the store. It sat there for weeks and no one claimed it… I was the screwball that claimed it.
Keep that in mind because it does play an integral role in this story.
For the uninitiated, a Squig is a little round rubber ball with two stems that flare out into suction cups. I don’t have hair so, just as a gag I’d stick it to my skull just to mess with management from time to time. As I said, I’m a screwball.
I don’t care. It’s just how I am.
So working in one of our many checkouts, there is the customer. I call them The Phonebooth.
The Phonebooth comes through your line yakking up a storm on their phone and you can literally derive every detail of the conversation just from hearing their end.
The Phonebooth was a rather attractive woman but obnoxiously talking on her phone.
There’s a line of people behind her and that iPhone is grafted to the side of her skull. I pull out the Squig and stick it to my forehead, much to the amusement of everyone behind her. Kids are pointing and there are whispers going up and down the line.
The Phonebooth is still going on and on, not paying attention to anything. I’ve got her purchases scanned through and bagged and we had just started doing the chip card thing with our machines.
She’s swiping… and swiping… and swiping… and swiping, despite the instructions clearly displayed on the screen and finally, she looks to me and the phone magically becomes ungrafted from her skull and drops to the floor. I was hoping it had cracked the screen… it would serve her right.
‘You have to stick the chip end of your card into the reader,’ I inform her but she’s still giving me that look of surprise.
‘I was exposed to some pretty hazardous chemicals,’ I said, ‘It ended up giving me the super ability to be a human doorstop. It’s a lame superpower but it’s mine and I’m kinda sensitive about it so…’
She apologizes profusely and her face is turning red. Now she won’t bother looking at me. She finally gets done and will not look at me.
She scrambles to take her purchases, violently avoiding eye contact with me, and hauls herself, almost leaving her phone behind.
When she left the entire line erupted.”
34. Demanding Customer Abuses His Coupons
“I used to work for a large office supply store, and we had a very strict policy about doing what the customer asked of us.
And it was a strict enough policy that if you had walked in and asked me to do jumping jacks, I would need a good reason to say no. We got all of the customers that Staples refused to help, and they were mostly grumpy and overly demanding.
We had one customer who would come in every few weeks and spend about $1500. It was a huge order, and I was the only cashier.
I didn’t make a commission on any sales or anything like that. The only time I earned commission was if I personally convinced someone to buy a high-end laptop or printer. I did, however, earn strikes for taking too long on orders. I got a strike every time this guy came in.
He always had about 40 coupons, none of which were valid at the time of purchase.
But he knew someone pretty high up in the company, so we had orders to honor his 3-year-old coupons. I’m not sure if you know how that system works, but if a cashier is going to honor an old coupon, they have to manually change the price of that item. It usually requires a manager’s approval, and it can be really difficult to do.
So each coupon added on about 2 minutes into the time I spent helping him, which would have been fine if he wasn’t the most impatient customer I have ever dealt with.
On orders over $300, you have to have a manager enter their employee code at two different points. On average, my manager had to come to enter her code 42 times for this one customer.
It was the most difficult thing ever, and I always hated working on the days he came in.
One of the times he came in, I had finished with everything with the exception of taking his payment. I stopped to ask if he needed anything else, and he grabbed a soda. I rang it up and asked if he had a coupon for that as well.
My manager overheard and started laughing, but this man was not amused. He threatened to have me fired right then. I rolled my eyes and said ‘Okay. I’ll just cancel this order and let my manager start it over for you.’ He didn’t call anyone and it was never brought up again, but I quit about 4 days later.
I know it wasn’t professional. I was a teenager, making minimum wage.
I was dealing with abuse from one of my managers, and this guy was incredibly rude. I’m a pretty nice person 99% of the time, but if you are actively trying to make life more difficult for other people then I have no sympathy for you.”
33. Waited For 10 Years To Get Back At Grumpy Neighbors
“12 years ago new neighbors moved in. They were young and arrogant with an air of superiority. We were middle-aged, kind, helpful, respectful towards all people.
They started to slowly but surely adopt this really bad attitude against us. Unfortunately, we share a drive between our semi-detached houses.
When they wanted something from us it was hitting the door to move the car, which as it happened was not even in their way. Fix the fence immediately when their grass was up to the knees and no one was even using the garden. They would knock and complain about our friends’ parking on the drive even though they could get a bus out of their side if they wanted to.
There were letters through our door, and threats of solicitors, etc. – all to no avail as we knew our rights and did nothing wrong.
When we wanted something from them. i.e. their drainpipe was leaking for a month on my side of the drive outside my kitchen. Drains blocked with dirty sewage running across the path for 2/3 weeks before they were deemed to get a plumber in.
Polite requests went unheeded. They just ignored us. You get the picture – one rule for them and another for us.
One day about 10 years ago, I was extremely angry at their attitude for no reason but to be awkward and I said to my husband I am going over. I was at the time in a temper but I did calm myself down because I knew in temper you get nowhere in life.
The husband came to the door, and I saw the wife on the hall stairway in the background – we do not even make eye contact now. And that does not happen to me because I have never had occasion for it to happen.
I said to him. ‘Look I am just going to say this once and once only. I do not know why you have come with such an attitude when we are really nice neighbors and cannot understand what you have against us.
But let me tell you something – one day in the future this will go against you big time. There will come a time when you want something from us. You will go on holiday and your house will be vulnerable to burglars and such. Neighbors should join together in their best interests. You will want a parcel taken in when you are out. You will want something to do with our joint ownership of the drive.
Mark my words, something will come up and you will be sorry.’
Fast forward a few months ago, the neighbor started saying good morning and being a bit civil. I said to my husband, I am suspicious – they want something from us. Two weeks later he came to my door – asked how my family was. Smiled. And here I stood waiting for the punch line.
It came.
Turned out they wanted to build an extension and swap the rights of the shared drive so we each owned our own half. This meant if either of us wanted to build a slightly larger extension taking in the half driveway we could. He tried to persuade us that it was beneficial to both properties, and he would be paying for all the legal fees, etc. My husband wanted to think about it but I immediately said no. I said:
‘You know it may well be of benefit to us, but in different circumstances, we would consider it, but I do not know if you remember the conversation I had with you about 10 years ago when I said one day because of your obtuse attitude for absolutely no good reason on earth you will be sorry. And now I am pleased to inform you that day has come!’
With that, I closed the door. Turned about-face. Nodded slightly and thought – justice has at last been served.”
32. Toxic Boss Lost A Job To An Abused Employee
“I got my first job when I was 15. I was really scared and nervous, but most of all excited to be starting a job.
My goal was to do my job really well; I’ve always liked helping people and this was no exception. Anyway, I soon found out my boss was not only a nightmare but a scary nightmare. She would yell at staff for minor mistakes and take credit for all of their contributions to the small supermarket chain for which we worked. She was aggressive to staff and customers and knew she could get away with it being the only small supermarket in our suburb.
One day she went as far as to snatch a phone out of my hand, scratching my entire arm in the process. She smirked and did not apologize.
Anyway, she came into work one day and declared to the staff below her that she would be looking for a new job. She said she had interviewed for one company and bragged about how well she did.
I knew she was very charming and great at making first impressions. I felt sorry for the company who had no idea what they were getting themselves into. As she delved more into her bragging, she told us about an upcoming interview that she had with a company that was in her words ‘So much better.’ She was speaking of how she’d be able to come in late and set her own rules as she had no direct supervisor.
So that’s where I come in. Little did she know my mom worked in HR in this company, and funnily enough, she was on the panel to interview her. I gave mom a little heads up, though she knew from the many times I’d come home crying and terrified, what she was dealing with. She proceeded to interview her. She said to her during the interview that she will be ‘In touch within a few weeks.’ She said there were some logistical reasons why she couldn’t be notified sooner.
So boss comes in again, bragging how well the interview went. She calls up the first company and says no to them, telling them of the better offer she (had not yet) received. My mom’s company dragged out the process for six weeks. After those six weeks, they apologized and said they found a better candidate. It was my other co-worker, one she had also abused many times.
My boss never knew my part in the process. I quit soon after and still smile to this day when I think of it.”
31. Petty Customer Shuts Up When She Realizes She's Wrong
“I used to work in the electronics section of a department store, which also included taking care of the photo area. One day I went into work, got clocked in, and not ten seconds after I had stepped out on the floor, a customer came running up to me asking if Sarah was working today. I told her I don’t know and was trying to add that I could find out, but ‘I don’t know’ was all the lady managed to process and it sent her into immediate apoplectic fits.
‘You don’t know?!’ she yelled at me. ‘How can you not know?! You work here, don’t you?!’
I calmly tried to explain to her that I had literally only gotten there a minute or two ago and that as a consequence, the only electronics employee I was absolutely certain was there at the time was myself, but she wanted none of it. ‘I’ll just go find someone who does know something!’ she said, then stormed off in a huff.
There was nobody at the electronics counter when I finally got there, but if the unduly angry lady had simply followed me over there, I could have checked the schedule to see if Sarah was on there and then called for her over the PA system. I get the feeling that still wouldn’t have been good enough for her. Oh well.
After checking the list of what needed to be done for the day, I went back to the photo area to make sure everything was going fine back there.
I did some routine checkups on the machinery and noticed that on the counter there was a red camera sitting on top of an envelope that had a name on the outside and a battery and memory card inside. I’m sure a lot of folks reading this can already guess who the camera belonged to.
Anyway, I finished up there and headed back out to electronics, and about five minutes later Melanie, the head of the photo department who had also only come in a short time before, comes up to me and says she’s got a customer that’s looking for a camera that was left with us to work on, and have I seen it?
I look over at the customer in question and we of course immediately recognize each other.
‘Oh, I already talked to him!’ she blustered. ‘He doesn’t know anything!’
Instead of saying anything myself, I simply held up an index finger and then motioned for both of them to follow me. They do, though the customer does so under protest, muttering things like ‘I can’t believe we’re following him!’ and ‘This is a complete waste of time!’ just loud enough to be sure we could both hear her.
I left the two of them on the customer side of the photo counter, which was behind a slight partition so neither could see exactly what I was doing. Melanie watched with bemusement and the customer simply glared as I picked the camera and parts up, deftly put them back together, and then handed the whole thing over the partition, a wide, perfect smile on my face.
The look on her face as she took her camera back is one that will warm the deepest, darkest parts of my heart for the rest of my life.”
30. Annoying Vegan Schoolmate Finds Out Something About Her Pudding
“I went to boarding school for high school.
During my junior year, my social circle acquired – and I do mean acquired because no one was quite sure how we ended up with her – an obnoxious brat. Highly intelligent (taking junior-level classes as a freshman), but completely lacking in social skills, this girl had a tendency to come into dinner moaning that she was failing AP Biology (or AP Chemistry, or Calculus) and that she’d only scored an 89 (or a 92, or an A-minus) on her last test. To make matters worse, she was a proselytizing vegan, and just to put the cherry on the cake, she acquired a partner and developed a habit of engaging in extended makeout sessions with him in the dining hall… at breakfast.
Let me be blunt: we hated her guts.
One night at dinner, after a round of ‘woe-is-me-I-only-have-an-A-minus-average in AP French’ she was eating chocolate pudding for dessert. The kind of chocolate pudding that wasn’t made from scratch, but a commercial product, either made from a mix or sold prepackaged in big tubs to institutional dining facilities.
I looked at her dessert. And I looked at her.
And an evil thought crossed my mind.
‘I thought you were vegan.’
‘I am!’
‘But you’re eating chocolate pudding. It’s made with gelatin as a thickener. Gelatin comes from boiling animal bones!’
She put down her spoon. A funny look crossed her face, which had taken on a curiously greenish pallor. She clapped a hand over her mouth and bolted in the direction of the restrooms.
It took everything I had to not burst out laughing. You see, the commercial chocolate pudding was dairy-free and thickened with carrageenan, which is derived from seaweed. The dietary disclaimer on the menu by the dessert table had a little (v) for ‘vegan’ next to the listing for pudding. Not my fault she didn’t do her homework.
I called it just desserts.”
29. Want To Be A Joker? Well The Joke's Now On You
“In my 20s, I moved from entirely rural life to a large city. I hadn’t finished high school, but I had worked in art departments for several newspapers and had fairly good skills. I was hired into an art department because the owner liked my last name. My surname is that of a small northern city where the owner met and married his wife. There were five of us in that art department feeding work to a large printing department.
Things were fine until we got a new art director.
He made jokes about my clothing, my hair, and my lack of style. He made anti-semitic jokes because one of us was Jewish. Her parents had both been in concentration camps and bore tattoos. The best artist was aloof, so he made brain teaser jokes about him. One guy had high anxiety, so the art director would increase the artists’ stress for the fun of it.
Later we all moved on. I worked for a publisher when the art director arrived for an interview for a responsible position. He was perfect for that job. I looked around at the multicultural makeup of my coworkers and made a decision.
I made an appointment with the owner and HR and told them about this guy. I recall holding my own hands because they were trembling during that conversation.
I was there at the end of the hall when that art director dropped by to see if they had made a decision. The company declined to hire him. He had to pass me to leave. After a moment he recognized me. I said nothing. ‘*****,’ was all he said.”
28. We Talk About Anything During Meals
“I had had a really bad day at work and was in a foul mood. I had to leave a few minutes early because my husband was out of town and I had to get my children (perhaps 8 and 11 at the time) to two different activities that were far apart.
My daughter had a half-hour lesson almost right away, but my son was going to be at ball practice for three hours and needed to eat beforehand. The solution was McDonald’s.
There was a birthday party for very young children in a separate, but not enclosed area and our only choice was to sit near it. The party was noisy in a ‘kids are having fun’ way and not in a ‘kids are being wild’ way.
I was actually starting to feel better listening to the chatter of younger children and thinking of my own children’s parties when two older women sat immediately behind us and started complaining about all the commotion. They were loud and mean. My mood went right back to sour.
Just as I was about to turn around and say, ‘If you don’t like to dine next to a children’s birthday party, don’t come to McDonald’s at 5:15,’ my daughter announced that she had finally gotten to start dissecting her lizard that day.
The vocalization behind us was somewhere between a gasp and choking. As an interested parent, I started asking my daughter questions about the dissection and her younger brother had several graphic questions of his own. My daughter was pleased to tell us everything she knew. Of course, the women turned their complaining away from the party and to us, but we were oblivious to the inappropriateness of our dinner topic.
(I think the kids really were.)
It was too bad that we couldn’t stay until we drove THEM away, but we had appointments to make. As we left, I smiled at them and said I hoped they would have a nice evening. And I laughed to myself every time I thought of how they had inadvertently lifted my mood. I do wonder if they ever ate at McDonald’s again.”
27. I Ate A Whole Pan Of Brownies
“A few years back, I had my first birthday party in around fifteen years. I don’t generally celebrate my birthday, but this year I did, and we had a small party – mom, my partner at the time, my brother and sister-in-law, my niece, my nephew, and my nephew’s ex, Olivia. And Olivia, who’s as handy with baking and crafts as she is sweet, made me a plate of twelve beautifully decorated birthday cupcakes for a present.
You know the kind, swirly icing and sugar roses, the kind you buy in posh bakeries for like five bucks apiece. She must have spent hours on them, and I was so touched. Nobody had ever made me cupcakes before.
So I rushed around for the whole party, cooking and making sure everyone was well looked after, and I didn’t get a chance to eat any of my cupcakes, so I put them in the kitchen to store later.
I fell into bed, exhausted, and when I woke up in the morning I immediately thought of cake.
I went downstairs. No cupcakes.
‘Mom, where are the cupcakes Olivia gave me as a present?’
She wouldn’t even look at me. She won’t when she’s feeling guilty about something. Eventually, she admitted that she sent six home with my brother and ate the other six in the night.
She didn’t even leave one. I didn’t get one cupcake. And Olivia had been very clear that they were a present, not her contribution to party food. She put them in a pretty box with a ribbon and everything.
I totally lost my temper. I rarely get angry, but when I do I go nuclear. I yelled, I threw fruit at the wall, I threatened to leave home.
After that, I refused to talk to her for most of the day. And in the evening, I made a pan of brownies – the cake she loves above all others – and sat next to her in the living room while she watched TV. And I ate the whole pan.
I had a stomachache that night and had to swim an extra mile every day for a fortnight to make up for the calories.
Totally worth it.”
26. I Voiced Out My Concern To The Right Person
“I once had to take my father, who has since passed away, to the emergency section of a hospital. There were quite a number of people waiting for attention. After two hours, nothing happened, no one was summoned ‘NEXT’. Nothing.
Two doctors on duty were joking at the front counter most of that time, seemingly unconcerned about the people waiting.
An elderly Indian couple came in, the man’s arm around his wife, clearly concerned about her. She looked really ill and stressed. The husband asked the doctors to please check her as they thought she may have had a heart attack or an impending one. The response was, ‘where do you live?’ and ‘Why did you not go to a hospital in your own area?’ They made every effort to make it difficult and unwelcome.
The whole scenario was: why are you bothering us?
I can’t with all honesty say whether they eventually did give her attention or not, because at that point I felt such repulsion and disgust by their lack of interest. The stress this elderly couple had endured to come all the way to the hospital and still be treated in that manner made it impossible for me to keep quiet and I confronted the doctors.
It’s really not my style, but it was one of those moments in life where you simply cannot shut up! They acted like little gods and I told them that. It progressed to a point where I was told to take my father and leave. I refused and said they were employed to treat patients, whereupon the one, having become aware that he had stepped out of the line of duty, said ‘OK, we’ll treat him, but you must go.’
I phoned my sister and asked her to come and take over from me. When she arrived, I left, but not before I asked her to make sure he got medical attention and not to be put off by them.
The Monday, after that weekend, I phoned the Matron and told her about it. She said they had received complaints before but she needed it in writing.
I’ll never know what actually transpired after that, but I do know that nine years after the event, there has been a massive improvement. I’d like to think my small contribution helped in some way.”
25. I Played The Jerk At His Own Game
“I work on cars at a dealer, and we had this new service writer start. Guy thought he was the real deal, knew more than everyone. Had a terrible attitude when he dealt with technicians. He’s thrown tickets at us, called us names, and yelled. If we didn’t do what he said he’d go crying to the manager, make up lies, and start a mess.
So I generally don’t start trouble, if someone asks me for help or a question I oblige. I’m considered pretty knowledgeable when it comes to cars, I don’t know everything, though enough to diagnose. I had trouble dealing with this guy, the constant superiority attitude, never getting back to me about customers, and generally trying to make me look bad.
Well, one day, I got another of his tickets, customer states their check engine light is on.
Code is a P0456, an evap leak, very small. It’s still under warranty so I go ahead and run my tests, I pressurize the system and determine the purge solenoid is bad. I write it up, fill out all forms, get the new part and replace the faulty solenoid, and run a test to make sure I fixed it. Everything comes out good, the vehicle passed and I’m feeling relief, like cool I don’t have to deal with this jerk of a service writer.
I park the car after a test drive and hand it to the guy. I’m about to walk away and he stops me. He asks me ‘what was wrong with the car’?’ I inform him it was a bad solenoid. His response to that is ‘what was wrong with it?’ I look at him like, what? Why are you asking me what’s wrong with the solenoid?
I realize he’s trying to make me look stupid, and everyone in the office is looking at us. I get mad, tired of his crap. So I respond with what I could based on my understanding of solenoids.
My response is ‘Well if you could read what I wrote, you’d see the solenoid went bad. Do you know how a solenoid works?? Don’t answer that, a solenoid is a coil of copper wire that when energized creates a magnetic field, that field will apply magnetic force onto a pintle or plunger that makes it move.
When that plunger moves it moves the seal attached to it, generally that’s how this particular solenoid works. Now it has gone bad based on the readings I got with my multimeter, I could take the solenoid apart and show you exactly where in the copper coil it has failed due to either a build-up of high resistance or a broken connection however I am not paid to disassemble these tiny parts.
Instead, I’m paid to repair the vehicle and keep the customer happy so we don’t waste their time or mine… kinda like what you’re doing now. Any questions?’ He is speechless, his mouth dropped open in disbelief. I finish by telling him to next time read what I wrote. As I turn around to leave I hear the writer next to him laugh and say ‘d**n dude, you shouldn’t mess with him especially since you’re going to need his help.’
I promptly went to the manager after this and requested that he be terminated. He didn’t get fired despite his constant bad attitude and lying to customers and technicians, or his obvious illegal habits. Instead, he quit to ‘pursue’ better avenues of employment. He did however refrain from showing me an attitude after that day. So I passively and aggressively shut down this jerk by playing him at his own game.”
24. I Secretly Threw Away Someone's Set Of Keys
“I was a server in a restaurant during lunch one day when these two ladies came in with four kids, all under the age of eight. I was not particularly busy during that shift, so I was very attentive to the ladies and children throughout their meal. However, the ladies were busy trying to chat with each other and ignored the children, and were oblivious to the fact that their unsupervised children were misbehaving as unsupervised children often do.
In fact, whenever I passed by the table to see if I needed to be of any service, the kids would notice me, ask for a bunch of random things, which I would either politely bring them if possible, or I would politely suggest they ask their mother for permission first if it was something like a milkshake which would be an additional charge.
The ladies would never even make eye contact with me after they placed their order, so I would quietly refill their drinks when needed while they kept yapping on at each other while their kids were just getting rowdier and rowdier.
The restaurant was pretty empty as there was a big thunderstorm moving in, so it wasn’t really a big deal about the kids until the moms (who never even gave me any attention when I was at their table) started sending the kids on field trips around the restaurant to find me whenever they ‘needed’ something. Those of you who have ever been servers know that if you are already taking great care of a guest, but then the guest keeps sending kids around to find you in the kitchen or wherever to get extra napkins (hmmm… I just gave them a giant stack PLUS wet naps for all the kids) or some more bread (that’s interesting… the two baskets full on their table are still fresh), you are about to get a small tip from these people.
They are obviously trying to make me feel like I haven’t been taking care of them, and now that they’ve ‘had to send the kids to hunt her down’ they will feel justified in stiffing me on the tip. So even though I know it’s coming…
As the sky starts to look even eviler outside, the group finally leaves, and of course, they leave a giant mess everywhere.
Food is matted into the carpet under the table, mashed potatoes are smooshed into the upholstery, there are (ahem) three baskets full of untouched bread with another three baskets full of breadcrumbs all over the place, and I get to work immediately on cleaning up the mess. I’m using that old server motivation of ‘Maybe they left my tip somewhere underneath all this mess, so if I clean it up really fast I’m gonna find it!’
Well, one thing I DID find was a full set of keys; house keys, car keys, gym key card, work keys, I don’t know how many keys, but probably at least a dozen things were on that fob. I stuck them in my apron pocket intending to turn them in to my manager. But by the time I got this exorcism-level mess cleaned up, I was pretty steamed about how those ladies had treated me and honestly, how they had treated their kids.
Then about 45 minutes after they had left, one of the kids comes into the restaurant, soaked by the roaring thunderstorm that is now in full force, and asks, ‘Did my mommy leave her keys here?’ and I realized at that moment that this lady must have gotten a ride to lunch with the other one, and didn’t realize about the keys until she had gotten all the way home in the thunderstorm, and then had probably emptied her purse looking for them, then freaked out about where she had seen them last, and then realized she had left them at the restaurant!
Then she needed to hitch a ride back to the restaurant in this godawful weather and had sent her poor kid into the roaring rain to collect the keys from inside.
So back to, ‘Did my mommy leave her keys here?’ I walked the kid over to the now perfectly clean table and pretended to look for the keys as I truthfully answered, ‘Well, I sure don’t see them!’
And as the kid quietly walked back outside into the storm, I silently walked back into the kitchen and dropped the keys into the most disgusting trash can I could find.”
23. I Expressed My Hatred Against Other Children
“I was on a day train traveling from Mumbai to Ahmedabad. Along with me were about 4-5 small children along with their parents.
Throughout the journey, the kids acted exactly as little kids do, screaming and shouting and basically ruining the journey. Let me insert here that the train left Mumbai at like 7 in the morning, meaning most people must have been up since around 5, and thus were mostly sleepy and we’re hoping for a quiet ride wherein they could take a little nap and then read a book or something.
I, my mother, and my grandparents were also interested in the same.
But the little troublemakers were creating an utter riot. And worse than that, even the parents were talking in loud voices. In a typical air-conditioned chair car in India, we have about 78 seats, and I assure you that all the passengers could clearly hear what these families were talking about. The children were also running around in the coach, screaming, disturbing everyone.
As we pulled into Ahmedabad station, I was thinking about saying something to these horrible people, but I knew that I most likely wouldn’t get an opportunity. But luckily for me, my grandfather asked me if I was finally ready to disembark.
I jumped at the opportunity. In my loudest, calmest voice I said, ‘I want to run off this train. Such a terrible ride, such horrible children.
Not even their own parents can control them. They are also making so much noise. Worst journey ever!’
Believe me, all the adults just went quiet. (Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the children)
Everyone in the coach was staring at me, while I was ignoring everyone and stuffing my book into my bag.
My mother held my hand and shushed me, telling me to not say anything else in fear of causing an argument, but all the while smiling as she was also irritated with them.
Immediately after, the parents grabbed their children and told them to quiet down.
Finally, as I was collecting the luggage and getting down, I could see all our other passengers smiling at me.”
22. Our Driving Skills Paid Off
“A few years ago, my mate took me out for a spin in his Lotus Elise.
We are both in our early thirties.
We’re driving along a coastal road, going through the gears but not gunning it, when we become aware of a big new model Mercedes E class aggressively up close behind flashing its lights.
We can’t think of anything we may have done wrong and wonder if perhaps the vehicle behind contains a bored executive who fancies a race in the company car.
We indicate for the aggressive Mercedes to pass before it ends up grazing us. As it roars to overtake we get a glimpse of a couple – perhaps in their late fifties or early sixties – inside, a red-faced angry man behind the wheel.
The logical conclusion is he has some issue with two younger males in a Lotus sports car. A clear case of Wee Man Syndrome.
The Mercedes, with Mr. Not-To-Be-Outdone, overtakes and cuts in close to the front of the Lotus, before roaring away up the road.
As he gets away, he slightly misjudges a bend and whacks the curb with a force that most likely resulted in minor wheel damage and/or a slow puncture. We watch his car bounce back to the road and his furious braking as he corrects himself, before roaring off again at double the pace.
To our delight, we catch up with the Mercedes a mile further down the road, stopped at a red traffic light at a junction before where the road forks in two.
My pal thinks exactly what I’m thinking, and we pull up beside the Merc, just a couple of inches in front, just enough to be noticed.
And we both make the beautiful decision deliberately to ignore Mr. Angry in his newly scuffed Mercedes, to look busy in a conversation between ourselves about something else entirely.
We chuckle as we feel Mr. Angry’s rage reach boiling point.
And when the lights change, we drive off slowly and calmly, as the Wee Man and his apparently unfortunate docile wife roar off in the other direction, back home to Angry Land.”
21. Annoying Co-Worker Didn't Get The Chance To Leave Her Job
“My junior year of college, I landed a job as a gift shop cashier at a Major Philadelphia hotel. My co-worker that trained me was a woman who had worked there for nearly 8 years. She was a miserable person.
On my first day, as she trained me, she held up register tape and said,
‘Whatever you do make sure the register never runs out of paper.
We need the guests to sign for purchases. Also, we only have 2 pens. Do not let guests walk out with them!’
I gulped as I didn’t like her tone of voice and threatening stance. I was intimidated. But I nodded my response and offered a smile. I wouldn’t let her see me sweat. We were a crew of six and I always got stuck on shift with her.
Everyone felt bad for me as her attitude was well known throughout the hotel. I could tell working with her would be trying to say the least.
During my first few weeks, I made mistakes and would need her to help me. Each time, she’d huff and make me out to be an idiot in front of the guests. Sometimes it was warranted but most of the time, she just wanted to be a jerk towards me.
I was also a full-time college student so balancing my course work and being part-time at the gift shop was a challenge.
Then, of course, it happened. The register tape ran out. There was a huge influx of guests and a line trailing out of the gift shop spilling into the lobby. I was manning the desk by myself while she was in our storage room feasting on gourmet candies she pilfered from the display shelf.
You’d think that a major hotel would make sure their employees had everything to do the job right, but no. We were instructed to run to the check-in desk in the lobby & beg a manager to open a stock room for us to get supplies. With a line spilling out the door, sometimes that would be impossible.
My co-worker was a shift manager but had no stock room privileges.
As she lifted yet another overpriced candy to her lips from her stolen stash, it dawned on me. We can’t get what we need because of her! Management didn’t want to fire her because she had been there for a long time & while her attitude was horrible she was competent. We were understaffed, so they thought, we’ll just take her closet keys.
Also because I was a new employee, I would not be granted key holding privileges for at least a while.
After some tap dancing, I managed to score some more register receipt tape. It was a hotel where a lot of conventions were held. Traveling employees needed to supply receipts for accounting purposes in case anyone is wondering.
While I was on new employee probation, I also evaluated my job.
After a few months, I did decide to leave this job as I landed a much better one on my campus. I grew to be trusted and well-liked, much to this woman’s distress.
I managed to get enough clout to have separate shifts from her and on my last day there, I saw she would be working the following day. A grinch-like smile formed on my face as I thought of a parting gift. I took every roll of register tape and hid each pen.
I laughed in the gift shop as I closed the door for the night. She would look at the schedule and know I did it. My cackle echoed as I imagined her scurrying about begging the concierge to open the supply closet door.
Oh well.
A few years later, I strolled by. For kicks, I decided to peek into the gift shop.
She was still there.
In the same position. Still very miserable. I wonder what happened to that new position she had her eye on.
Then I remembered. Must have been that tip to management about our items being consumed but not sold.
Oh well.”
20. I Lent Her My Pen
“So I was at a party.
I was the artist host for the DJs at that event, but I was dancing to some of my fav DJs cause I had no work to do for one of the days (the event was 3 days). At the end of the set of a famous DJ I really like, he came closer to take pictures with people, so I figured I’d better act as a fan (without a badge or anything) and just went to the fence and tried to talk to him and take a picture.
I was waiting for my turn when this huge rude lady arrived, pushed me in a very rude way and stood upright in front of me at the fence, and started trying to pull the DJ to take a picture with him. If she hadn’t so rudely pushed me, I probably wouldn’t even have paid attention to it.
So I ‘knocked’ on her shoulder and told her that I was before her.
She started yelling something at me. I got annoyed and said to myself ‘Okay then..’, went away from the fence (but told a friend I was there with, to wait there), took out my event badge, and went behind the fence, i.e. backstage. Then went straight to the same DJ and took a picture and chatted with the DJ before the lady did. Called my friend to come to the fence since after I took my picture with the DJ, I asked him if he could take one with my friend too.
The lady was looking at me with a killer look, soo angry. I loved it, BUT WAIT, it’s NOT over.
Then she really wanted an autograph and was looking for someone with a marker or a pen and asked out loud ‘Who has a pen?’ I happened to have one and I gave it to her. She looked shocked when I gave it to her and guilty when she returned it.”
19. I Couldn't Hold My Tongue Anymore
“During one of my industrial internships, I had a colleague (let’s call him X). X was what one would typically call, a fawner. A suck-up. And a jerk of the highest order.
X was a contractor. I was an engineer. X felt threatened. So X went out of his way to make me feel uncomfortable. X would be condescending (it didn’t help that everyone at that company was senior to me).
So, after 1.5 months of tolerating crap, I was this close to unleashing the underworld on X. All I desired was a suitable opportunity…
And that opportunity came to me one fine Wednesday afternoon.
I was printing some documents on A2 sheets and needed to cut off the white blank edges of the papers. So I take my sheets and go to the guillotine (or a paper cutter, in simpler terms).
X saunters round to where I am working and then casually asks me:
X: ‘Do you know how to use a guillotine? Have you used one before?’
Me (trying to be nice): ‘Yes.
But could you please show me once nevertheless?’
X (smirks and passes a rather nasty look to my colleagues): ‘Well it’s easy. You put your fingers through the end and pull the blade…’
Me (in a flash of brilliance): ‘That’s REALLY nice, but I’d rather use your acrimonious tongue than my hands to do the trial run.’
All the while, steadfastly meeting his gaze, while maintaining a sincere, effusive smile.
The whole office burst into laughter, amidst shouts and jabs of ‘HE GOT YOU!’, ‘THAT WAS STUNNING’, ‘OMG! WHAT JUST HAPPENED?’ etc.
X took off early that afternoon and took the remaining two days off. Thankfully, he behaved professionally during the remaining time of my internship.”
18. I Talk Back At School Brats
“First story: In 7th grade, we were sewing stuffed animals. This one annoying loud obnoxious girl that no one really likes was being very rude to other people and talking back to the teacher. Now our teacher we had was one of my favorite teachers of all time and I didn’t really like that this girl was being so rude.
I was finishing up sewing my stuffed animal when the girl comes up to me and says, ‘your stuffed animal is ugly, I could do soooooo much better.’
I’m normally quiet unless around my friends but something came over me and on instinct, I said, ‘Well so are you, but I’m not complaining.’ And I heard a gasp and the room went silent (It wasn’t a big room) and I just kept sewing but I was kinda nervous on the inside.
The girl then said, ‘What did you just say to me?’ Followed up with, ‘Did you just call me UGLY?’
I said, ‘Yeah, I’m sure your mirror does every morning as well.’ And she opened her mouth to talk but THANKFULLY the bell rang I just fast-walked out the door.
Second story: I run cross country, and I come into class after running a Saturday meet.
I’m not that fast of a runner, and that weekend was the first time I had ever run a meet (2 miles) in under 14:30. So I walked into school happily and this girl that sat next to me asked me ‘How’d you do?’ And I said ‘good.’ She then said, ‘what place did you get?’ I then replied ’42nd.’ She then snickered and said, ‘you suck.’ Now I was almost shocked to hear this coming from her because I doubt she could run 1 mile in 14:30.
But anyway I followed up with ‘How many pages did you read over the weekend?’
Her: ‘What?’
Me: ‘How many pages did you read over the weekend?’
Her: ‘Why?’
Me: ‘Just wondering.’
Her: ‘326.’
Me: ‘You suck.’
Her ‘What? I bet I read more than you? How many did you read?’
Me: ‘0.’
Her: ‘Don’t tell me I suck when you didn’t even top me.’
Me: ‘What goes around comes around.’
Her: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Me: ‘I don’t know whether or not you have the memory of a goldfish, because you did the exact same thing less than 3 minutes ago.’
17. My Silence Made The Clerk Do His Job
“In 1997 I had been living in Switzerland for several months when I needed to take a plane trip. In those two months, I had been subjected to some of the worst customer services I had ever seen.
I just didn’t get Swiss people at all and I was getting frustrated. (spoiler alert: I get along fine with most Swiss now, but there is technique involved).
Anyway, I had reserved the ticket online, specifying that I would pay for it in cash. When I got to the SwissAir (remember them?) counter, I handed over my credit card. The clerk told me no, I had to pay in cash.
I tried to argue but to no avail. That’s when I snapped (and/or became truly Swiss, you decide).
‘So I need to go down that corridor, down two floors, walk 300 meters to the train station, take 1200 francs out of the Credit Suisse ATM, bring it back here, and stand in line again?’
‘Yes’.
‘Okay,’ I said. And just stood there. No expression on my face.
Just stood there. With people piling up behind me. Stood there.
Her face squinched up. She started typing. Thirty seconds later I had my boarding pass. I floated onto the plane.
Here’s the thing about Switzerland. If a Swiss person takes responsibility for something, it’s going to happen. Period. As a consequence, some people work very hard to avoid taking responsibility in the first place.
Arguing, getting mad, yelling strengthen this avoidance. As does any show of weakness or pleading. Silence gives that sense of responsibility time to work.”
16. It Felt Victorious Only For A Couple Of Days
“I’m a college student. I don’t have a car and instead, use a combination of a bicycle and public transportation. My route to school involves riding my bicycle to the nearest light rail station, locking up the bike at one of the racks there, and taking the train to school.
This station’s not necessarily in a fantastic part of town, and even if it was, I wouldn’t be particularly excited about leaving my main mode of transportation there unprotected for most of a day, several days a week.
Thankfully, the public transportation people rent out bike lockers at many of the train stations, and I quickly decided that I wanted one. So about a month before the semester started, I called the company and got an answering machine.
Okay, no problem, I’ll leave a message. Did that, never got a call back. Called again two days later, left another message. Didn’t get a call back. So I quickly fell into a pattern of calling every couple of days, not even having my stuff out to pay for a locker because I knew the guy wouldn’t pick up.
School starts, I still don’t have a locker.
So I just lock up my bike at the bike rack every day and pray, basically. About half the semester goes by with no problems, and by now I’m only calling every week or so. Then one day I come to my bike and someone’s mucked with the brakes. Nothing so damaged I couldn’t ride it home to fix it, but it’s pretty clear that someone started to try and take the back wheel and either got interrupted or lost interest. I redouble my efforts and return to calling the guy every couple of days.
(For those of you who are curious, I had also called the company’s mainline several times in case the number on the site was out of date. They redirected me to the same number every time.)
Eventually, my mom was done with this whole situation and files a formal complaint to the company. The next day, I get a call from them, asking politely if I’m the person who called the other day about a bike locker, carefully avoiding acknowledging that I’ve called dozens and dozens of times now.
I respond yes, and get a bunch of stuff sorted out, let the guy gather all the necessary paperwork, and then sweetly tell him that unfortunately, I’m really busy at the moment and just can’t set up a time to meet right now, and I’ll call him back.
This was very satisfying to me for a couple of days, but then it quickly became clear that all I had done was start the whole cycle over again, and it was another four months before I finally got to the locker, during which time my seat got stolen in a torrential rainstorm.”
15. I Messed With My Bullies' Lockers
“I was in 8th grade. In the Physical Education locker room, there were two guys assigned to the locker next to me who egged each other on to abuse me verbally and physically.
After a few weeks of this, I had an idea. I casually looked over the shoulder of one of them while he was unlocking his locker. (We used combination padlocks.) I got their combination and memorized it.
The next day I dressed for PE really slowly, so I was the last one in that aisle of lockers to leave. With no one around I dialed their combination on their lock, and it opened.
Now, I had no intention of actually harming their stuff, so I relocked it and respun the combination, this time with the last number off by one. Then I went out to PE.
When it was time to go in I sprinted for the locker room, and sure enough I was the first one in the aisle. As casually as possible I turned their dial one number and pulled the lock open.
When they arrived they did not even notice until after they showered. But then they started beating each other for having left the lock open.
I ignored them while enjoying the fact that they were spending more time harassing each other than me.
I continued this for several weeks. I could only do it on days I got to our locker aisle first, but that was at least half the time.
Every time they got angrier and angrier with each other, and over time they completely forgot to harass me.
Eventually, they were completely silent, which was fine with me. At that point, I stopped, and they remained completely silent (but glaring at each other) for the rest of the school year.
My only regret is that I did not have a similar opportunity to deal with my other tormentors.”
14. We Took Off For Them To Enjoy The Smell
“Down in the Pike Place Market area of Seattle, there are several nice coffee shops. One Saturday afternoon in the smoking era, my buddy and I went into a nice espresso shop up on the second level. This was a smaller shop so there was no designated non-smoking area – the dumb idiots could light up wherever they pleased.
It was about 2:00 PM so the place was all but empty.
My friend and I chose a small table in the center and ordered our coffees. Earlier in the day, I ate something that was beginning to build a huge volume of nasty *******, and my guts were churning.
About halfway through our espressos, a couple came in and took the table right next to ours. Then they both lit up. The swine.
We hoped the air circulation might work in our favor, but no, the effluvium encroached on, then engulfed our little table.
We decided to go elsewhere.
As I stood to don my coat, I felt a great movement in my bowels – the great, humongous fart that had been brewing all day was ready to go. Revenge shall be mine. With that, I thrust my posterior over the smokers’ table and let ‘er rip. The ******* was red-hot so I knew the smell would be awful. The titan blast echoed through the espresso shop and, I believe, rattled our cups and saucers.
My buddy and I took off leaving the smokers to enjoy a foul smell.”
13. Cut Paper Is Always Better
“The lady manager hated my guts simply because she thought I was in a church. It’s weird because I never even mentioned anything about religion. I grew up in a church, but haven’t gone to the church for years at that point, and my view on religion vs non-religion is fairly close to an agnostic than anything… so she based her view on me on assumptions from sources that I have no idea about.
But then again, even if I was part of a church, her behavior would still not be justified. It’s kind of besides the point, but just a background story to sort of give you the idea about how she draws conclusions without much thought.
I am fairly quiet and fairly easygoing and like to get work done efficiently, and I never had any trouble in other workplaces.
While she treated all her other coworkers nicely, telling them jokes, listening to their inputs, and treating them like a friend she would be incredibly curt, standoffish, and occasionally burst into long angry ridiculously condescending rants throwing in assumptions about my family and personality into the mix. Mind you, I never said anything to purposely make her feel this way (I hardly said anything at all), but it was as if she listened to everything with the intent of twisting it into something to be angry about.
At some point, we had paper to wrap some of the ceramic gift products that we sold in the store. The paper was excessively big and hard to use for the products, so another young coworker courteously cut it and folded it into a size that was easier to use. A different older coworker (the manager’s sidekick who also liked making big deals out of nothing) made a long note (thinking I was the one who did it) with the gist of it saying, ‘Don’t cut the paper.
We don’t have time to be doing that and it is not necessary.’ Mind you, this store hardly ever had customers, so we have plenty of downtimes to cut it if one wanted to…
At one point after seeing the note, I mentioned it to the manager when I was alone with her and I made a comment saying, ‘Is it okay if I cut some of the paper?
It’s a bit easier for some of us to use. If some of the other people here don’t want it that way, I can even leave some of it uncut.’ I thought my statement was pretty reasonable enough, but she instead went on an angry tirade saying that I don’t try hard enough to comply with what everybody else thinks and my view on the matter is incredibly ridiculous.
And she went on and on like a crazy ferocious fire-breathing beast. That is all I can say because I have never seen anybody get so angry over something so small.
I never mentioned it again, and a few days passed and again the other young worker who initially cut the paper did it again for us to use (probably out of boredom with nothing else to do), but this time nobody left a note or seemed to notice.
When it was my shift and I had a customer who bought ceramic items, I wrapped them with the cut paper.
The manager was there at the time and surprisingly made a nice comment by saying, ‘oh you wrap the items so neatly and quickly!’
And I told her after, ‘Yes, it’s really easy to wrap it neatly and quickly when the paper is cut.’
She didn’t say anything, but I saw her expression change before walking away.
Yes, it is an INCREDIBLY petty ordeal that didn’t even need to happen in the first place. But man, did it feel good to see her prove my point out of her own mouth after all the ridiculous yelling she did over it.
She kept her temper in check more often after that.”
12. This Is An Example Of People Blindly Copying Each Other
“I moved earlier last month. Our neighbors from the underworld kept parking on our drive amongst other annoyances. It was a rental, nice enough but too small with poor heating so we were looking to move anyway.
We had one car they had three. The drive could fit two neatly parked cars. An alien concept to these people (when using other people’s spots) so it was a major annoyance if we needed to use our own drive or had a friend over.
On move day I placed our dustbins & recycle bins on the drive to save our space, I would have heard anyone moving them.
I placed them in quite a weird arrangement and not very visible to the rest of the street just because of the angle of the house and the garden also as they were not placed close to the edge of the property. This wasn’t deliberate just thinking about the placement in retrospect.
Rubbish/Trash is collected on a Monday, this was a Thursday.
Two of these neighbors and their kids arrive home, look over at our drive all confused. Next thing the mum is placing out their bins – but on the edge of the property as if it was collection day.
I didn’t bother to acknowledge them or let them know not to bother, or even that we were moving.
The van arrives, I bring in my bins. We head off to the new property I don’t see any other neighbors have copied. We come back for our second trip. Neighbor’s bins are still there and two other neighbors (young families in this area) have copied them.
This at first took the edge of my satisfaction but then I thought they will be likely be cursing my neighbor from the underworld, not me.
I’m guessing they noticed the van but wanted to save face and then argued too long about who would go grab them.”
11. I Had The Best Shrimp In My Life
“I was at a Chinese supermarket looking to buy shrimp for my significant other. Shrimp is expensive and happened to be on sale for a great deal that week. If you’ve ever been to a Chinese supermarket, you’ll know that customer service is not the greatest thing and that some of the shoppers there are not very respectful, to say the least.
So I’m in the seafood line waiting to be serviced. When suddenly, one older Chinese woman (mid ’60s) pushes her way in front of me to examine the shrimp that is on sale. Maybe it was because I wasn’t confident in my Cantonese speaking abilities (I am an American-born Chinese) or maybe it was because I thought she was just browsing – whatever the reason, I didn’t say anything.
The next thing I knew, she was placing an order for 5 pounds of shrimp. 5 pounds of shrimp.
There was absolutely none left. I watched in anger as I saw the 5 pounds of shrimp being handed to her in separate bags. I was boiling inside from the rage.
I watched as she put the shrimp in her cart and walked away to look at produce. Then, a single devious thought popped into my head.
I went over to her cart, nabbed a bag of shrimp, and scurried deep into the supermarket with the biggest grin on my face.
Shrimp never tasted so good… and I don’t even like shrimp!”
10. Annoying Customer Leaves Bad Review On Social Media
“Worked behind the counter at a store… This girl who was VERY obnoxious and starviiiiiiiing for attention comes in.
She was not good looking according to me at all. She deliberately acts very dumb and deliberately tries to make my job harder while trying to be cute and flirty. You know some people have that it-factor where they can give you a hard time but they do it in a cute charming way and then there are the people who try and just annoy you.
Well, she annoyed me and all my coworkers as well. After being respectful and giving her whatever she needed she goes to sit down. I leave for a min and come back. I hear a small argument with one of my workers, so I pull him to the side and ask what the story is… she comes to the register and says ‘you and your workers shouldn’t talk bad about your customers’ ( all the while having an annoying smirk as if she was flirting or something Idk ).
I explain to her as the manager if there is an issue it’s my responsibility to address it and correct it if one of my staff did wrong, it had nothing to do with her.
At the end of the night, my internet-obsessed boss sent me a screenshot of comments she left on the store page and asked me to explain what happened. Her ‘review’ was that we treated her badly and had the audacity to call her a witch when she was right next to us… I didn’t have social media but I was sooooo annoyed I was about to create one and blast her.
My boss took my side and asked me to leave it alone which I did. A few days later guess who comes back in the store… You guessed it, that annoying girl with that wanna-be charming face saying ‘hi I just wanted to apologize, I was just trying to make a joke.’ My response with a strictly professional tone, ‘Cool, are you ready to order now miss or should I take the next customer … Next!!’”
9. I May Have My Name On A Hit List For Russian Mob
“I work for a boat company that ferries people to an island. I am a reservation agent for this company.
One day, a very angry man called our office and I answered the phone, unfortunately. This is the conversation:
Me: Place of employment, how can I help you?
Jerk: I have tickets for the boat…
Me: (short pause) Okay, would you like to make a reservation?
Jerk: Yes. (angrily)
Me: Okay! When do you want to go?
Jerk: Saturday
(It was Friday)
Me: Okay, let me check our availability… We are full, you won’t be able to get out there till Tuesday.
Jerk: That’s ridiculous. I have a reservation.
Me: Oh okay, if you have a reservation were you wanting to check on it instead of making another?
Jerk: Why else would I call? (sighs)
Me: What’s your reservation number?
Jerk: 4137
Me: That’s your order number for the third-party broker site we sell discounted tickets through. Do you have your reservation number from us? It’s six digits long and has a three at the beginning.
Jerk: This is ridiculous. No!
Me: Let’s find it then, what’s your last name?
Jerk: Berber.
(I then search in the next two months for a Berber, I can’t find it and I try various typos.)
Me: I am sorry sir, we don’t have your reservation and I checked for the next two months. Unless you can find your reservation number then you can’t go tomorrow unless you get here at 7 o’clock for standby.
Jerk: ARE YOU KIDDING ME! IT’S MY PARTNER’S BIRTHDAY! YOU ARE THE WORST YACHT COMPANY!
Me: Well we aren’t a yacht company so-
Jerk: I DON’T GIVE A D**N WHAT YOU ARE!
HOW DARE YOU TREAT A CUSTO-
(click)
I hung up, took a deep breath, let it out, and then walked out of the office. I was gone for ten minutes just walking so I could calm down.
I eventually found the guy’s reservation. After 15 minutes of searching mind you. It was made for the wrong month, the wrong day of the month, and the name was wrong.
It was made for May and we were in June, and the name on it was Berder, not Berber. But the email was verified by him as correct and as received. He must have deleted it and forgotten to check the details.
I asked our manager if he wants me to call him. He said:
Boss: Did he swear at you?
Me: Yes
Boss: Then screw ’em!
Me: Thanks, boss.
Boss: It only gets better from here.
It got worse. From someone that screamed at me, literally screamed. You could hear the conversation from my headset 6 feet away, easily. One time a Russian woman walked in and threatened to sue the captain for driving bumpy. She is a local ‘crazy’ and comes by to glare at me. I see her once a month.
She looks for me I think, memorizes my schedule. I may have my name on a hit list for the Russian mob.”
8. They Didn't Listen To Me The First Time
“In the mid-80s a friend and I went to see Sting at an outdoor festival. Someone thought it would be a fine idea to have open seating on rows of benches.
We took the day off work and stood in line. When the gates opened at noon, we went straight to the benches and staked out the ideal center spot, about 5 rows back.
Over the next several hours we took turns saving the seats and getting up to enjoy the festival. Of course, by sunset the rows were filled, everyone shoulder to shoulder. Bags and blankets were stowed under the benches.
When Sting took the stage, the people up front stood on the benches, no one behind them could see, and soon everyone was standing on the benches.
About 10 minutes in, a guy came up behind us and asked me and the girl next to me to move over. I stated the obvious: ‘There’s no more room up here.’ The girl, apparently unconcerned about the people on the ends of the bench (who also had arrived hours earlier), squeezed over a few inches.
He set a foot on the bench and said, ‘She was nice enough to move; why can’t you?’ (Yes, ‘jerk shaming’ has been with us since ancient times.) I repeated: ‘There’s no more room up here.’
So this self-entitled moron stepped onto the bench and squeezed up against me, pushing me against my friend. If not for the crowds of people balanced on wobbly benches, I would have shoved him away, or worse.
Instead, I bent my elbow. It was down at my waist, barely protruding. He wasn’t going to push against me without that elbow in his gut.
‘Move your g*****n elbow!’ he shouted. Every time he yelled or pushed, the elbow got a little bit pointer. Eventually, he gave up and left, undoubtedly looking for an easier target.”
7. That's What You Get For Cutting
“I was coming back to France – I live in Brazil – after eight months away from my family. There was some suspect package at the airport in Paris so they made us wait for one hour before we could get to the Immigration Check.
The huge room was totally full, maybe one thousand people, all desperate to get out and start holidays, see their loved ones or eat some real croissants.
But then came this huge group of young people back from holidays who thought they were smarter than anyone else. They were clearly skipping the line, getting in front of everybody… and no one was saying anything (French people are so polite!).
At last, one lady stood in front of one of them: ‘you stay in the line! Like everybody else!’
I wanted so bad to have done the same and was hit by remorse.
When one hour after, I eventually got out from Immigration, the whole group was there, waiting for the one that was missing.
I couldn’t help a huge smile, and one of the girls smiled back at me. I told her: ‘See what you got from being a jerk?’ And went to the Luggage room.”
6. They Deprived Me Of Enjoying The Summer
“I live in Morocco and I was 22 YO at the time. It was summertime and I just wanted to go to the beach with my friends.
Now, you may find this weird but being 22 does not make you an independent adult. Unless you’re a man. Then, you could be considered as the male ALPHA in the family, even if you don’t really have an income and may be a loser.
(As you are reading this, do not think this is a general rule. It was just my case with my family. My friends were much freer than I was).
My parents wouldn’t let me go. Not because we were a conservative family and wearing a swimsuit would be a shameful thing to do. Not even because we live in a dangerous country. (we don’t, BTW.
Morocco is really safe)
My parents wouldn’t let me go because I was a female. My brother, who was much much younger, went there with their blessing. I had to spend most of my summer days in my room because I was a female and for that, I wasn’t empowered the way my brother was. I was considered weak, incapable of defending myself.
I tried to make my case but I was considered a bad daughter for speaking out. I thought it was discriminatory and a very selfish thing to do. They only cared about their well-being but not mine. And since speaking out was a dumb thing to do in my family, I just gave them the cold treatment (in a polite way of course). My father wouldn’t let my mother have a social life and we, her daughters, were her only friends.
So, I just did to her, what she did to me.
Every time she wanted to go out with me, I said no and she was forced to stay home. She started feeling very isolated and depressed from staying too much at home. After a while, they did get my point but it was too late. Since the summer days were over.”
5. That's How Seniority Works
“I worked as a railroad brakeman from 1979 to 1984. I was there long enough that my seniority level was in the middle of the pack about halfway through my tenure. I could hold down some jobs without getting bumped by higher-seniority guys, at least for a while, but some popular jobs I could never bid on and win because they would usually be won by somebody with higher seniority.
One time, for a period of a number of months, I was able to hold down a pool crew job, however, I was the youngest seniority-wise of the two brakemen on the job. Seniority convention was that the senior brakeman got to choose whether he wanted to work the head end (locomotive) or the rear end (caboose), so I usually worked the locomotive. However, if the senior brakeman was on personal, sick, or vacation leave, the junior brakeman could pick which end he would work, regardless of the seniority of the extra brakeman sent to protect the senior brakeman’s job.
One day, my crew was deadheaded by van to a midpoint station to run a train back to our home terminal. We had an extra brakeman (off the extra board) senior to me, so that meant I got to choose which end to work. Normally, a brakeman would choose the rear end because that was safer and easier work. As we were waiting around on the station platform to make the exchange with the crew that was bringing the train into town, I could tell by the talk between the extra brakeman and the conductor, that the extra brakeman thought he would be working the caboose.
He was a senior to me, and I had already been working for several years, so how he didn’t know this seniority rule is hard to explain.
I probably should have brought it up with him on the spot, and stated that I was going to work the caboose, but I didn’t. Here’s what I did instead: The train was being brought up to the station by the inbound crew, and we were going to do a running exchange, i.e., the train would not stop, only slow down enough where everybody could get safely off and on.
I saw where the extra brakeman had stationed himself to board the caboose, so I stationed myself about 50 feet down the platform closer to the direction the train was coming from. When the locomotive came by me, I let it go by and did not get on. I turned my head towards the extra brakeman, and I could see that he was totally confused by my not boarding the locomotive.
I added one more ingredient: Just before the locomotive steps got even with him, I said, ‘You’d better get on.’ He got on the locomotive, and I ended up boarding the caboose as was my right.
When we got to our home terminal about five hours later and were boarding the van to go to the yard, I overheard the extra brakeman asking the conductor about what I had done, and the conductor backed me up by stating that that was the way seniority worked on freight trains between a job’s regular brakeman and an extra brakeman.
The extra brakeman was a nice guy and didn’t raise a fuss, but I still wonder how he went through at least three years of work and never came across a situation where that seniority convention came into play.”
4. The Pranker Got Pranked
“I used to get frequent missed calls and absurd SMSs from who I believed was some girl who was teasing me and knew few things about me.
I just got married at that time and wasn’t sure how to explain this to my wife. I didn’t want her to take that seriously. For many days I got these calls and the girly voice would say ‘Darling…’ ‘Love…’, and would hang up before I could even make an attempt to recognize the voice. The calls were very short. Sometimes I ignored it.
The girl was having some fun and I couldn’t figure out the caller. I didn’t have a smartphone then otherwise I could’ve figured out the number through the TrueCaller app. So, I randomly typed the 10 digits unknown mobile number on google. The first page didn’t yield any result.
On the next page of Google, I found a name – Rajeev Borkotoki with the number. D**n.
This guy was my friend and flatmate during my college days about 6 years back then. We used to do a lot of pranks back in those days and then after college, we went in different directions in search of our careers. He stayed back in Assam and I came to Delhi. Now that the riddle is solved, it’s my turn to counter prank. So I went online, created a new email id in his name, and started posting ads on sites like eBay, Olx, Quikr, and a few other similar sites.
I provided Rajeev’s mobile number for buyers to contact. Now, I wanted many many buyers’ inquiries on this number with the intention that he would be frustrated by these calls, frustrated to the point of breaking his mobile phone. What I did was, I posted an ad for iPhone for immediate sale for Rs. 5000. I posted Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycle for Rs. 10,000, LED tv for Rs.
2000. A car for Rs. 20,000. There were miscellaneous such ads I posted for throw-away price. Who wouldn’t call to check this stuff when the prices were dirt cheap. So cheap that you’d buy it even if you didn’t need it.
Four days after that secret mission of mine, my mobile rang. It was Rajeev. Unlike previous calls, this time the phone kept ringing. It wasn’t a missed call.
Earlier he used to give a short buzz and when I tried to take the call, he’d disconnect. That gave him immense pleasure to make me sick. Now, he wanted me to take his call, but I didn’t. He rang again and I ignored him. This happened the entire day. I was assuming that he was fed up with incoming calls from buyers enquiring about the ‘For Sale’ items and figured out that I am the mastermind behind this.
He tried to contact me consistently for two weeks (maybe he wanted me to remove his number from those sites), but I didn’t take the calls. The calls stopped. Maybe he threw away his mobile phone out of frustration. Maybe he’s fighting with the callers. Peace and pleasure is mine.”
3. Menacing Roommate Wouldn't Budge
“I once had this guy subletting a room at my place.
I didn’t want him in my house, but my roommate assured me he was on the up and up after finding him on Craigslist and a 5-minute interview. This guy was a vagrant, a militant vegan, and had some of the poorest hygiene out of anyone I’ve ever met. Alas, he had cold hard cash in hand and we were in a tight spot regarding rent.
Initially, he seemed like a cool guy. He was a good conversationalist, had really incredible stories (although he embellished a lot), and seemed very friendly. About a week in, the problems started. My original roommate (B) was bipolar, I could calm him down in the event of a session of mania but all bets were off if he had some drink in him. The new guy (A) did something to set my roommate off.
B claimed to have found substances on the bathroom sink and immediately blamed A. The rule in the house was that any evidence of illegal stuff was cause for immediate eviction – something we should’ve gotten in writing in retrospect. So, the police showed up, to my disapproval, to sort this out. We had no grounds to kick A out based on the circumstantial evidence, we had to formally evict A through court.
B ended up leaving after a couple more arguments ensued and never came back.
So I was stuck with this strange guy in my house. He never showered, causing the whole house to reek of BO, he monopolized my TV and Netflix, and he made weird noises at night all the time. The next month, he was 2 weeks late with the rent, but according to AZ law, I still had to formally evict him which I had neither the time nor money to do.
Law be d****d. One night I had enough and told him it wasn’t working out and it would be in the best interest of both of us for him to find a new place at the end of the month. He freaked out and said not only did I have to evict him, but he also wasn’t going to pay his share of bills either.
At this point, the passive aggressiveness in me started to come out. I started hiding my TV remotes because of said monopolization and he was watching some extremely nauseating YouTube shows for hours on end of things nobody but him would be interested in. So he started watching it on his phone, still soaking up my WiFi. I changed the name to ‘PAYYOURBILLSJERK’ and the password.
He retaliated by punching holes in the wall and being more obnoxious with his weird noises. He even went so far as to accuse me of stealing $400 he set aside to move out and catch a Greyhound home.
Then, one day I came home from work to find he was gone and his key on a sticky note on the kitchen counter. Unfortunately, my laptop, Wii, bass guitar, and Ruger .45 with ammo and cleaning kit which were locked away in my room, went with him.
Again I had to deal with the police to report my weapon, and big surprise, they never found my belongings or him. Eventually, I came to the justification that it was just stuff and I was happier with him gone. He didn’t take my PS3 right next to the Wii, I ended up getting an infinitely better bass guitar through an endorsement (Brandin guitars are the best ever BTW), bought a better laptop, and replaced the firearm.
But I’ll never, ever have to put up that jerk ever again and have never had a roommate since.”
2. Judgmental Driver Messes With Me On A Bad Day
“My mother is 65 years old and still goes to work every day. Because she is on a walker, she takes a Pace car to work. While Pace drivers are not the lunatics that are Uber drivers, you still get a mixed bag of nuts showing up on your door every day.
Several times, she rode with this one religious guy. And, many times, I’ve ridden with her and this same guy.
He’s really religious and I have to listen to his god-music, blasted loud while we go wherever we are going for the hour or so that it takes to get there. One time, I was trying to engage in conversation with him and he went on and on with his hate speech because my mother has to ride with him from time to time and I didn’t want to cause her any problems.
However, he’s mean. He jostles my mother around. Tells her to hurry up when she can only walk so fast on the walker and is, generally, a jerk of the highest order. Under all the religion there’s just a bitter person.
One day, he caught me in a bad mood and my mother wasn’t moving fast enough for him to get into the car.
He was in a hurry and he was talking to her like she was some kind of dog. I guess I was glaring at him. He looked at me and said something like: ‘Don’t look so mean, God doesn’t like that.’
And I stared him deep in his eyes and said: ‘There is no God.’ A thing I would never do normally—to each his own and all that.
But his face was so beautifully reflected in the sunlight: disbelief, rage, a weird cosmic kind of indignation. He started saying things under his breath about my not going to heaven and one day I’d see and all that while hustling her into the car like he was going to catch odds by just standing near me.
That was satisfying. Very.
Also, he doesn’t pick Mum-thur up anymore.”
1. I Simply Did My Job And He Came To A Realization
“I was working for Siemens Pakistan as Manager Coordination and was deputed in Karachi Electric Supply Corporation on behalf of Siemens on Business Process Re-engineering Project. My boss, a German Doctor (Ph.D.) working for IAEA was looking after the project and I was to head the department in his absence as he had to be out of Pakistan for 3 weeks every month.
He used to give me instructions for the coming weeks and leave for three weeks, and I was responsible to execute the project making use of 9 project leaders (PL) selected by him, before my appointment, on the BPR project. The team selected by him was young and immature except for 1 PL.
Cultural differences and work ethics of Germany and Pakistan are poles apart and making my German boss and the immature team understand the intricacies of organizational behavior is way too difficult as they (the team) themselves are the reason for such an eventuality.
Now how on earth, I being a Pakistani myself, can claim to have a thorough understanding of these variations?
I have been in Canada for an extended period of 5 years, where I learned to capitalize on the diversity of different thoughts to organizational advantage. I tried to inculcate that same understanding in my team, yet I failed miserably due to the negative mindset of two such individuals in my team who kept conspiring against me and managed to instigate the same negativity among other team members.
Working in such a hostile environment was again a challenge to cope with.
One of the PL was a Graduate in HR from the US, (but he kept telling everyone that he was MBA in HRM to portray himself as highly educated) and he was assigned the project of renovating the existing Training Center building for which Rs10 million were allocated. He was to coordinate with the relevant departments to carry out the project and get everything approved either by me or my boss, as he had limited authority to exercise to accomplish project deliverables.
Common sense is unfortunately something that is not very common. Civil Engineering Rule of Thumb is that the walls are always erected on beams. The actual plan submitted by the site engineer, who happened to be a Civil Engineer was outrightly rejected by the PL without assigning any reason and he insisted the civil engineer at the site to re-plan the map according to ‘his’ wishes.
I was kept in complete darkness and the PL managed to get the re-submitted plan, signed by my boss on his return from Germany. The civil engineer did as he was told, making all the calculations according to the instructions of PL. Since I was new in the organization and he (civil engineer) was a bit skeptical in discussing the issue with me.
The project work started according to the new plan in which all the walls were erected 2 ft. away from the beams in all the rooms leaving a space of 2 ft. useless.
Whenever I asked the PL to let me know the progress at the site, his answer was it’s going perfect.
One day on my way back home, I thought I better have a look at the progress of work at the site and to my amazement, I was shocked to see what I have written above. I blew the whistle and brought the whole situation to the knowledge of my boss and he was also shocked to learn what wrong was done.
A 3-hour long meeting ensued the incident wherein, all the PLs myself, and my German boss were present. Amidst heated debate and allegations and counter-allegations meeting concluded on the remarks of my German boss, that my and his (German boss) work ethics are very much similar, and he apologized to me and disbanded the entire department sending all the PLs to their respective department. The department was a matrix set up in a functional organization.
The building was renovated according to the new plan and is still being used with 2 ft space wasted in each room and all the three floors.”
