People Share The Satisfying Moment They Got Payback

Being slighted by someone with bad intentions or who flat out don’t know better can really wear you down. Especially if it’s not a one-off incident. When it happens day after day, week after week, year after year you know you have to do something about it. Even if there’s been conflict management or mediation. Sometimes that’s even worse because you are left to your own devices to solve a problem that no one else cares to. Resentment builds, and you’re only human.

After you’ve pulled all the stops, what else have you got left to do? Why get crafty of course! So your neighbor decides to ignore you after you’ve thoughtfully knocked on their door and politely told them to please keep the volume down. Your colleague won’t stop making tacky comments about your body in the workplace. Your boss is not-so-subtly trying to get you fired behind your back. As long as you’re not hurting anyone, and you’re just trying to get a slice of that justice pie, what’s wrong with giving your perpetrator a little taste of their own medicine? Everyone needs to learn a lesson once in a while. Read on for some fine tales of payback.

14. “Take Down My Darn Signs?” You Say? Ya Darn-Tootin’ I WILL!

“I owned a sign company. I received a phone call from someone at a local mall.

He was opening a restaurant in the food court, the catch was that he wanted to be open in two weeks for Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year. I met with him and mall management at the same time so that we could discuss ideas and get approval at the same time to speed up production. Got everything okayed from his big, overhead backlit menu sign, smaller signs on both walls, and signs for both registers. All in all, it was going to be a pretty large order. I typically get a 50% deposit but the customer said something about international money transfers and the mall management jumped right in to explain that payments were taking a couple of weeks to process but everything they’d charged him had been paid.

Because I had been doing a lot of work in the mall and I was trying to help them get this guy open I agreed to do it without the deposit. I did layouts, he approved them, I showed him samples, he approved them. I got everything finished and installed the Tuesday before he needed them….that’s when things went downhill fast.
He immediately started complaining that the material was wrong (even though he’d seen samples) and it wasn’t what he wanted. Then he complained that the graphics were wrong (even though he’d approved them). He complained that the prices were wrong even though they all matched the menu he provided.

Wednesday afternoon I called him again and his wife answered. She cheerfully told me that I could take down my darn signs, they weren’t paying for them, they had ordered signs cheaper from someone else but they couldn’t get them ready in time and as soon as they other signs were ready mine were going in the trash.
So…realizing that I’d screwed myself by doing the job without a deposit I hung everything on her little side comment that I could ‘take down my darn signs.’ Thursday I had a delightful Thanksgiving lunch with my family. We watched football, we laughed, we enjoyed the day.

I took my wife and kids home, loaded up a ladder, and joyfully went to the mall. I’d done enough after-hours work at the mall that I knew there would be a door open somewhere and people in the large stores getting ready for the Black Friday crowds. I went in, tossed my ladder over the restaurant counter, and started taking down the signs. A couple of merchants in the mall asked me if the place was already closing, I told them the story and the next thing I know they are helping me take down the signs. In 30 minutes, the place went from looking like a fully opened, ready to rock restaurant to looking closed.

I went home and slept like a baby. When I turned on my phone at 7:30 on Black Friday I’d already had 15 missed phone calls from the restaurant owner, his wife and the mall management. I called the mall management and they weren’t happy. I told them the whole story, they still weren’t happy with me but they understood. I waited 15 minutes before the restaurant owner called screaming on the phone demanding that I return with the signs. I politely told him that I needed the full amount, plus the cost of reinstallation, plus an extra $50 for working on an off day.

He screamed at me. I hung up. He called back once more and demanded that I bring them back and he would pay me the next week. I said no, I needed cash. He screamed at me again. I hung up.
I avoided the mall because screw Black Friday but from what I hear it was comical. His entire backlit sign was nothing but lit up bulbs, he’d handwritten a menu on an old box and taped it to the front of the counter. Every restaurant in the food court was slammed all day and nobody would even take his free samples.

He closed mid-afternoon after realizing nobody was going to buy. He went through the entire shopping weekend with no signs and no business. The best part was that two weeks later when his new signs from India finally arrived, they were the wrong size.
Screw you, Mr. Restaurant owner, for ordering signs from me that you knew you weren’t going to pay for because you’d already ordered them from someone else.” pleasehustthedog

13. Steal From Your Own Brother? I’ll Trick You

“To set the stage, it was 2005 I was living on my own. Had a girlfriend, my own apartment, and a paid-off used car.

I was working as the assistant manager of a gas station. I made decent money for the time and was living comfortably, but I was far from being rich.

My younger brother, Kyle, was living with me at the time. He had serious behavioral problems (oppositional defiance disorder, ADHD, etc.) some of which were due to a shared rough upbringing (abuse of a serious nature). He had nowhere to go as the rest of my family refused to deal with him. In their defense, he did lie, cheat, and steal on a daily basis and had a drug habit. He even broke my arm deliberately once.

I was trying to do the right thing and get him on track. I got him a job and would take him to work, gave him some spending money, and allowed him to live rent-free. The rules were simple: I didn’t care if he smoked weed, but it wouldn’t be in my apartment. ***** would not cross into my apartment.
One day, I decided to surprise my girlfriend with Nine Inch Nails tickets at the Tabernacle in Atlanta for her birthday. They were her favorite band. I had this planned months in advance and ended up working a double shift the night of the concert and driving down there due to some sudden personal issues at work.

When I got back the following morning (which I had off) I stopped by my work to make sure there were no more sudden schedule changes.

My manager, Bettyjo, saw me and had a look on her face I had only seen the day she got robbed. I knew it was bad. She sat me down and explained that Kyle had tried to get a ride to a spot in town that was notorious for selling *****. Kyle admitted he was trying to sell a significant quantity of ***** to a coworker which could have cost me my job. I got up and peeled out in the parking lot headed for home which was literally 40 seconds away.

He broke the rules. He knew it was the only way to get immediately removed. It was even in writing because I made him sign a letter stating the rules. So I ejected him from the apartment that day despite his protests.
Fast forward four months. He would call me occasionally and update me on how he was doing. He said he got a new job making a ton of money. I congratulated him. I was saving money since kicking him out. I didn’t pay attention to my balance as I keep a running tally in my head. My girlfriend decided we should go to the beach for the weekend as I had a rare weekend off.

I went to withdraw $300 so we could have a blast. ‘Insufficient funds’ I thought there has to be an error so I tried again. Same error. Went home and checked my bank statement. I was over $9,500 shy of where I should have been. I checked my statements, there were huge cash withdrawals every day up to the maximum allowed limit day after day after day. $900 at AT&T (an astronomical sum at that time), hundreds of dollars at liquor stores, clothes, dozens of transactions I never made, etc. I printed my statements and went directly to the large regional branch.

I was told it was definitely identity theft, and that it’s unusual because it was in the north of my town. I was told to get anything back I had to turn the investigation over to the bank so I did.
A few days later I got a phone call from the officer investigating. He asked to meet. He had a stack of printed photos almost a foot high as every transaction on an atm takes a picture. ‘Do you know this guy?’ I informed the detective it was Kyle. Investigator told me Kyle had the money to evade police for a long time if he desired and no stable address or job to be picked up at, so it would be a long shot of finding him.

I told my buddy, Rick from here on out, what happened. Rick was a gruff, 6’4″ Native American man who was well-muscled from a life of hard labor. Rick was a good person, but if you screwed with him or his friends he was devious and loved scorched earth tactics. You didn’t bring small problems to him. He immediately offered to help.
We became friends after I found out he was sleeping with Bettyjo, who was a little person (4’8″ in heels). He came into the store and I started laughing because the mental image was too much.

Now Kyle loved Rick despite the fact that Rick was a massive ******* to him on a regular basis.

Kyle wanted his approval desperately. We concocted a plan. He would call Kyle, get him to come over under the guise that I had a falling out with Rick over the way I treated Kyle. Naturally, Kyle ate the story hook, line, and sinker. Kyle gave Rick an address to meet, an abandoned car wash in the north of town. We loaded up his truck, the trap was set.
Rick hops out of the truck and tells Kyle to get in. I was laying down in the front seat so he couldn’t see me. He opens the door and I put him in a headlock and pull him in.

We go back to Rick’s place while my brother visibly sweats and even cries at some points. We cooked him dinner and calmly sat down, ate, and then cleaned up. The entire time Kyle had convinced himself he was about to get murdered in the woods.

We gave him a chance to explain himself. Naturally, as was his way, he lied, denied, and swore on everyone living and dead he had nothing to do with it. I grabbed a stack of photos from the investigator and silently slid them across the table. Again, he denied everything. ‘This was a setup! You’re trying to make me a felon! I did nothing wrong!’ I had enough.

I called the non-emergency number and the police came to pick him up. We said he showed up unexpectedly and started to get violent. When they searched him he had oxycontin (a felony) and he tried to assault me in front of the officer screaming about how we set him up and all of this was unjust. He ended up getting arrested on something like 350 felonies as every transaction crossed state lines (this was pleaded down to 1 or 2 felonies). Kyle ended up getting 5 years with early release in 3. I think this was because (despite his checkered past) family never pressed charges so his record was clean.

He has been in and out of five-star luxury federal resorts ever since for such wonderful things as the manufacturing and distribution of *****, child endangerment, theft, etc. I ended up with a full refund.” joshuabeebe
12. Sneak My Laundry Detergent? I’ll Expose You With Bleach

“This happened when I was in college back in 2011. I lived in a 4-story dorm that was all guys, about 40-60 guys per floor. Each floor had one laundry room with 3 washers and 3 dryers plus cubbies to store your laundry bag/soap while you were washing. A few months into the semester I noticed my laundry detergent was disappearing faster than it should be, not a huge deal but mildly annoying.

What made it a bigger deal was that whoever was stealing my detergent would also take my clothes out of the washer and leave them on the floor so they could wash their clothes. This pushed me over the line. I would typically do a load while I went to class (Not classes!) so this made finding the perp tricky, then a golden idea hit me.
I went to Walmart and bought a new jug of laundry detergent, the same brand I always get, but I also bought extra strength bleach. I poured half the detergent from the new bottle into my old bottle and replaced it with the extra strength bleach.

That next day I did my laundry as usual but left the new and improved detergent in the cubby instead of my regular stuff, then I waited. After class, sure enough, my clothes were sitting in a pile on the floor soaking wet and the whole laundry room smelled of bleach, just what I wanted! Fast forward to the next week, every Monday night we had ‘floor meetings’ where we basically talked about rules and crap as a floor. In walks the guy, we’ll call him Bob, wearing a newly bleached hoodie and ruined jeans. Bob drops his pile of ruined clothes on the floor and starts spouting off about how ‘Someone owed him money for his ruined clothes.’ The whole floor bursts out in laughter, apparently I wasn’t the only one Bob was stealing soap from.

He didn’t get another sentence out of his mouth before our RA told him stealing detergent was still a crime so it was his own darn fault. Enjoy your bleached clothes Bob!” Pickles_Mcgee
11. Steal My Pens? I’ll Catch You Pink-Handed

“So I work in an aerospace facility that’s large enough that you’ll never meet everyone who works there. It’s the type of place where everything you could need (pens included) are provided for you. However, as free pens go, you already know they’re the sh*tty ones. I’ll just buy my own pens, thanks.

Around the time of this incident, I had just taken a promotion.

Part of the deal was that I’d be working the second shift instead of first. Okay by me. As I’m getting used to my new schedule, I started losing my pens. Not abnormal for me, but it was happening too often that I’d come into work and I swear I put my pen right here last night, but now I can’t find it. I grew suspicious of my now previous coworkers who knew where I usually stashed things and I hatched a plan.
First, I had to make sure my pen was indeed being taken rather than me losing my mind due to my new schedule.

I bought a pack of pilot g2’s (duh, best pens out there) and laid a trap.

Now I work in the machine shop and there are toolboxes everywhere. I set up and run multiple machines, but there’s a particular machine that everybody knows is kinda my home base. In that accompanying toolbox, I left a pen in the top drawer right front and center for someone to find and sure enough, it was gone the next day. I’m not crazy, and the hunt has begun.
In my line of work, we have controlled documents. Every piece and part is documented and serialized. One of our huge taboos is using any color other than black on these documents.

It was obvious what I had to do.

When I bought my last pack of g2’s to avoid having to use the craptacular provided pens, I also bought a set of colored g2’s. I took the ink cartridge from a pink pen and used a black sharpie to hide both the ink in the tube and the colored cap on the top of the cartridge. Looked a bit ugly, but I knew I wasn’t dealing with a pro here. I placed the pink (now “black”) cartridge in an unsuspecting black pen body and left it in my usual ‘hiding spot.’
The next day when I came into work, sure enough, the pen was gone.

My trap had worked.

First thing I heard in my shift pass down meeting was how some dumba*s used pink ink on a work order this morning and I’d better make sure for the millionth time that my new employees knew better than to do something that dumb.

Didn’t even have to fess up to setting a trap. Nailed that fool right to the wall and no one knows what I did*****************.******* Penjamin.” pm_me_your_servum
10. You Really Want To See Why I’ve Called In Sick To Work? Ha, You Asked For It

“I had a boss one time who was such a control freak that she demanded to know specifically why I was calling out sick (WILDLY illegal where I live) one day.

And for reference, I’m typically the guy who never gets sick, so it wasn’t an attendance issue.
I told her I think I had food poisoning (turned out to be true and actually wrote a ULPT based off this story a while back) and she kept pressing me as to explain what my symptoms were and why I couldn’t make it in all via text. I had finally had enough and was like look, I’m not physically capable of working today and you are not allowed to ask me personal questions about illness and medical history!
She threatened me with a write up if I couldn’t specifically explain/prove why I couldn’t make it into work.

This is where pro revenge comes in. I was about to send her something horrific, that she could not unsee……and she wouldn’t be able to do jack *** about it since she technically asked for it.
Being that I was living in the bathroom for more than two days (this inquiry was day one) and had aggressive diarrhea every 15-30 minutes and the worst abdominal pain I’ve ever experienced…..I lost my *** (har har) and took a pretty disturbing picture of me painting the bowl brown right before I flushed…..and sent it to her.
No joke it looked like I power washed the inside of the toilet with feces and built a turd island in the middle of the water.

It honestly looked like a poop volcano had erupted. I had no idea your bowels could contain so much!
‘This is happening every 15-30 minutes and I haven’t been able to leave the bathroom for the last 6 hours. Here is your proof, check the timestamp (also sent a screen of the timestamp). I’ll let you know as soon as I can if I’ll be in tomorrow.’

So after 3 days off I show up for my shift….sleep-deprived and sore from sleeping in my bathtub or on the floor for 2.5 days, ******* not having any of it, but I was finally through the worst.

She immediately escorts me into her office where our regional HR rep is waiting for me, and we all sit down. He has paperwork in front of him and is discussing the ‘incident’ with me and gets me to acknowledge what I did and that sending ‘unprovoked and offensive content’ to coworkers constitutes harassment and blah blah blah right before he asks me to sign a final write up (if you do something like this again, you’re fired).
Before signing I asked him, ‘did she tell you why I sent this?’ He was dumbfounded and said this isn’t really excusable and basically handed me a screenshot printout of the text messages where this wench deleted everything in the exchange (in her phone) BUT me saying ‘sorry, but I need to take a sick day today,’ and the picture.

I laughed and handed him my phone and said here is the full exchange. He asked me to leave and ‘give them a few minutes.’ About 10 minutes later he calls me in, by myself, and explained what I already knew…..that she was the harasser and that she had aggressively violated privacy laws and would be dealt with, and to call him “if anything like this ever happens again.”
I found out from one of the assistant managers that she ended up getting a final written notice and was super close to being fired, and it prevented her from getting a big promotion that she was being looked at for.

So, if you ever come across a d*ckhead boss who wants to play doctor and question your sick leave, send them diarrhea pics and they’ll either **** or give you lawsuit material.” jakk86

9. Won’t Turn The Volume Down? OK, I’ll Shut You Off

“Back in the Eighties, I lived in a flat in South-East London. The flat was located in a small tower block ten stories high with four flats per floor, one per corner as it were. The flat overlooked a local park and afforded very nice views of the area.
The neighbors were generally very amenable but everybody tended to keep to themselves, so no one had any problems with anyone.

That all changed when a new family moved into a flat down on the second floor on the same corner of the building where we lived (we lived on the eighth). They were not the most gracious of individuals, frequently leaving rubbish bags strewn around their floor’s lobby for days, rather than depositing them in the communal bins, and parking their cars in other residents’ allocated parking spots-in other words, the epitome of the appellation “chav”. Complaints to the local council invariably fell on deaf ears.
They soon developed a reputation for hosting loud drunken parties at the weekends which tended to go past midnight.

This was pretty fecking annoying for us and the other residents, but we were somewhat less affected due to the distance between our respective flats. One particular Friday evening, however, proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

At around 10:00 pm we heard the music start back up, but it now appeared that the hosts had recently purchased a new sound system because the bass was now intolerably loud. I can only surmise that a peculiarity of the building’s design, coupled with what sounded like much larger bass speakers, appeared to magnify the effect in our bedroom to the point where it made it quite impossible to sleep.

At about 11:30 pm, I trotted downstairs and knocked on their door. It was flung open by what I could only assume to have be the male resident, looking somewhat the worse for wear. I politely asked him if he’d mind turning the music down as it was very loud, rattling the furniture in my flat and making it difficult to sleep.

“*** off!”

Charming, I thought.

So I go back upstairs and call the non-emergency police number and explained the situation. They assured me that someone would be around in due course-being a Friday night, I reckoned it might take an hour or two.

So, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, we sat there waiting for the cops to rock up. Sure enough, about an hour later, I saw a patrol car pull up and a couple of London’s finest enter our building. A few moments later, the music gets turned down and the police leave.
No sooner had the car disappeared up the street than the music went back up to its previous level. We endure it for another half hour-no change, so once again I call the cops. This time it takes closer to two hours for them to turn up-yep, definitely a busy Friday night.

They finally arrive around 3 am and once again the music is reduced to a sensible level. Unfortunately, shortly after they depart, back up goes the volume to its previous furniture-shaking intensity.

As you might imagine, by now I was royally pi*sed off. ‘Er indoors too (someone not normally prone to displays of anger) was positively foaming at the mouth, and looked like she was single-handedly going to re-enact the Battle of Austerlitz in glorious Technicolor, together with full orchestral accompaniment.
It was then that I had a Dazzling Idea: one so fiendishly cunning and yet devilishly simple-a guaranteed cast-iron, 100% pure, 24-carat stonker of an idea so brilliant that I felt certain that within a few minutes, I could stop this once and for all, and execute my plan in such a way as to make it impossible to trace back to me.

Grabbing my toolkit, I crept down the stairwell to the second floor, just to double-check the actual flat number. Having confirmed the number, I went back up to the fourth floor. In the stairwell just next to the exit door to the fourth-floor lobby was a wooden access door that concealed one of the two electrical distribution panels for the entire building. The door was only secured by dint of a simple square-key fitting, and the application of a large flat-blade screwdriver would pop the latch no problem. Thus I opened the door to reveal the distro itself. Pulling the cover open I was presented with a large panel containing twenty large 80 amp fuses, one each for the lower set of flats.

Each one was neatly labeled with the flat’s number and t’was but a moment to locate the appropriate one.
Now by one of those happy coincidences that usually only occur in the more egregious examples of the Hollywood B-movie, I just happened to have in my toolkit a dead fuse of exactly the same type and capacity. A few weeks previously I’d had to replace a similar fuse in the theatre where I worked, and I’d tossed the dead fuse in my toolbox where I’d promptly forgotten about it-until now.

Now, with all my ducks in a neat row, I pulled the fuse carrier for the miscreant’s flat out…

Instant.

Blessed. Silence.

I rapidly swapped the live fuse for the dead one and reinserted the carrier. Securing everything back up again, I casually strolled back upstairs to enjoy a few hours in the hallowed arms of Morpheus. Some weeks later, the troublesome family was moved out of their flat. It transpired that the local council had received so many noise complaints over the previous six months that they were obliged to rehouse them elsewhere.” GhostOfSorabji
8. Feel Like Skirting Around Paying Your Employees Properly? I’ll Learn The Law

“Several years back I went to work for a towing company. It’s about all I know how to do other than paint cars which were drastically affecting my health.

The pay was pretty decent, but we had to share trucks and the boss felt that he knew where we needed to sit in order to get the best calls. This is important for later.

Several months in, I realized I was not making the type of money that I should be making. So I took the opportunity while I was sitting in a parking lot one evening to start researching the laws pertaining to employees in similar positions. He was kind of an ****** and the trucks had transponders so that he could see if we had them idling with the air conditioner on a hot day, or idling with the heat on a cold day.

He was always calling complaining about something if the wheels were not turning.
During my research, I discovered that if he was requiring us to sit in a certain parking lot, street, or any location of his choosing, then we were entitled to be paid an hourly wage not just our commission. The technical term was ‘engaged to wait’ however if he allowed us to freely roam about while we waited for calls we were not entitled to hourly wages and we were therefore considered ‘waiting to be engaged.’ I never mentioned this to him, but I did start taking note of my time.

Another month or so goes by and he decided to start coming down on me for tiny little things that ordinarily wouldn’t even matter, such as I forgot a pop can in the cupholder. He actually had a screaming fit about that. At this point, I was tired of working there and had already found another job so I decided it was time to put my plan into motion.
I called him up, told him that we needed to have a conversation about my final wages and that we could meet at his convenience. Upon entering the office I laid out my argument, explained the state law, and told him I expected to be paid for the hours that I was on the clock but not freely allowed to roam looking for work or able to do things of my choosing.

He told me in no uncertain terms I would not be paid for that time, as that was agreed to upon my employment. I did not bother to argue, as I already had my next step planned, so I took my final check and I left.
The following Monday, I made a phone call to the state labor board, where I laid out my case to them. Needless to say, they were very interested in what was going on. In the end, they came to review his employment records and speak to the drivers still working. When he got the bill of what he had to pay us all, it was too much for him to afford, so he sold the trucks, his boat, and lot and went out of business.

I never got the money owed to me in full, only a fraction. But the satisfaction of knowing the law just a little bit better than he did and watching it all burn was pure bliss.”  mody-eto-suki
7. Laying Down Your Iron-Clad Fist? Winter Is Coming

“Both my children attended elementary school in the northern midwest. As you can imagine, it snowed. A lot. Even with all the snow removal infrastructure, when a particularly heavy storm came along, the town just couldn’t keep up with it, and the buses couldn’t run. For decades, the school district dealt with this by having five snow days built into the calendar.

If they had more than five snow days, the kids would go an extra day(s) at the end of the year. For years, this system worked, and no one ever complained, except the occasional child that had to attend a couple of extra days in June.
Well, all good things must eventually come to an end. The old, mild-mannered superintendent retired. A new super took his place. She was young, aggressive, and almost immediately reviled by everyone in the district. Let’s call her Sue because that’s what we ultimately did to her.

Sue came right out of corporate America. I don’t know how she got it in her head that she wanted to run a school district, but she did.

She was so inexperienced that the school board had to give her a waiver to work in our district before she could even show up for work. When the year started, Sue went on a power trip that made everyone’s heads spin.
She slashed hours for support staff. Barred children from repeating a grade without her personal approval (what?!). ‘Cracked down’ on teachers taking sick time, until the union pointed out that she was violating the CBA by doing that. Backed off a little but vowed to ‘go after’ any staff taking sick time. Stopped the weekly trip to the fitness center by the special needs class.

She was like a cartoon villain.

But what’s important to this story, she ended the decades-old snow day system. She took the days right out of the calendar and said we wouldn’t be needing them, as she was ‘cracking down’ on snow days.
Here’s how snow days work: the transportation department keeps an eye on the roads. If they are unsafe, or even if they are safe but the forecast is looking crazy for later, they tell the super they can’t safely run the buses. The super then cancels school. It’s really supposed to be the transportation department’s call.

Well, Sue decided that she is the sole arbiter of deciding cancellations, so even if transportation says it’s not safe to run the buses, she can say ‘tough ***.’ Which she did.

Often.

As you can imagine, this led to a lot of awkward and even dangerous situations. Buses not being able to access rural roads. Buses running an hour late. Buses running their entire route completely empty because no sane parent would send their kids to school in a whiteout blizzard.
For two years, we parents tolerated this dumbf*ckery, but needless to say, we were frustrated. We tried going through the proper channels. Contacting the transportation department, writing to the school board. We even wrote a collective letter to Sue personally. Who, if the rumor is true, spat on our letter and tossed it in the bin.

Though we did get a nice message on the school department website about how they are always thinking about the safety of the students, so that’s nice I guess.

Things finally boiled over the winter of that second year. A bus went off the road. Though my kids were not on it, it shook me up. There were numerous complaints on the school’s Facebook from scared and disgruntled parents. Two years of being the only district open in the county during storms were getting on everyone’s nerves.
My sister-in-law is a criminal defense attorney. I am a disability advocate with a state agency, so while I’m not an expert on the law like my SIL, I tend to know my way around.

We met for dinner and decided that, if and when the inevitable tragedy happened, we would sue. We met a couple more times to work on our game plan. You can’t sue a school district for making dumb snow day decisions, but if a kid gets hurt…

The day finally came in the late autumn of the third year of Sue. We had a big storm roll through in the early morning hours. Not cold enough to snow or freeze, thankfully, but extremely windy. Most of the county lost power, including the schools. Thousands of outages. Power lines down, trees down, roads closed.

It was a mess. All the districts in the county closed.
All of course, except ours. Sue was never one to turn down a chance at a power trip. She ordered the schools to stay open.

It was a disaster. Buses couldn’t access every road to pick up students. Buses were late. Individual schools were putting out bulletins that attendance was parent’s choice, students unable to make it to school would receive a Principal’s Excused Absence, stay home if it’s the safer choice.

Bear in mind that all the schools were running on generators. So the high schoolers (who start an hour earlier) were sitting in the gymnasium bored.

There was literally no point in having school this day.
Then, the inevitable happened. A tree fell and hit a bus. And this time, my daughter was on it. Thankfully, the driver did a good job of evacuating the children and there were only minor injuries. But injuries nonetheless all because of Sue’s absurd no cancellation policy. Some ambulances showed up. Four kids went to the hospital as a precaution. It made the news.

It was time.

The district sent forms to all of the parents of injured children: they would cover all medical costs and provide counseling for the kids in the guidance office, AND a small cash settlement, in exchange for the parents signing a release of liability (‘you can’t sue us’).

But my SIL and I had gotten to the parents first and advised them not to sign ANYTHING, as we were taking the district to big boy court. Some of the parents did take the settlement offered, which is understandable since not everyone likes drama. But some didn’t. Some told the district right where to shove that settlement. I was one of them.

SIL and I got together with a couple of the injured parents that were sick of the district’s nonsense. We got our paperwork in a row and filed a suit. We filed the suit so fast that our hands burst into flames.

The essence of the suit was that the district had failed their duty of in loco parentis by making unsafe transportation decisions, directly causing the crash and injuries.

My SIL also pulled some strings at the local newspaper and got our lawsuit a small spot on the front page. Parents came out of the woodwork to express their support. They were frustrated after years of Sue’s authoritarianism. It turned into a small media circus.

Well, the district’s lawyers got to work and really quickly saw that this was going to be a mess. A discovery process pulling up dirt, the parents of the injured children testifying, the general hatred of the district… Not to mention it appeared that they would, indeed, lose.

They moved to quickly and quietly to settle this case. They basically sat down with us and said, ‘name your price.’
And while I cannot discuss the details of the settlement, let’s just say that all injured parties were made whole.

Also, the district changed their cancellation policy immediately. Now, if there was even a hint of snow or icky weather, they cancelled. A welcome change of pace.

As for Sue, she became very quiet. She used to spend all day sending aggressive emails about her ‘policies.’ Now, hardly a peep. All she did the rest of the year was fill the seat. As summer approached at the end of the year, Sue announced her resignation.

She was leaving to ‘pursue other interests.’ We think she was asked to resign.
She was replaced by a superintendent who was much nicer. He rolled back all of Sue’s power trippy policies.” tranquil-potato

6. You Want To Mess With The Dishwasher? I’ll Set You Up Perfectly

“I got a job back when I was about 19 or 20 years old (close to 7 years or so ago) at my town’s public hospital in their food service department. I stayed with the place for three years, but it has gone down as one of the worst jobs I ever had for many reasons. B*tchy nursing staff, insane hours, overworking me and coworkers, and just overall a very toxic work environment.

I went in as a socially awkward girl with no spine for conflict or standing up for myself, and came out a much stronger person because of this place, but there is a particular series of events that led to that.
Let me set it up for you.

My official title was a Food Service Aide or Aide for short. The job I was hired for was to collect dirty trays and dishes from carts on their respective floors, wash all of the dishes that came into my dish room, and put them into the dish machine to be sanitized before I let the dishes dry and store them where they needed to go.

Then, at the end of the night, I would break down the machine and clean the filters of leftover food, and drain the water tanks of dirty soap water before going home. Over time, I became well acquainted with the dish machines we had, (first one was 20+ years old and finally died on us. R.I.P. Big Bertha) and I could troubleshoot a problem with it since I like machines enough to learn as much as I can about them. My boss took notice of this, and how hard I worked in the dish room every day. So he began to have me learn about the other parts of the department so I could fill in whenever someone called in: Cooking on the grill and serving food in the cafeteria, cashiering, helping to prepare food trays for patients, learning about different diets and their orders from the doctors, restocking floors for patient snacks and drinks, and finally deliver food to patient rooms.

If that seems like a lot for one person, it was. Due to staff cutbacks, we were short a lot of manpower, so a couple of us had to learn as much as possible to keep us afloat.
Now, onto the story.

I had already been working in this small hospital for just over a year at the time, and I was determined to stay at least a few years to help make my work history look pretty good in the stance of longevity. That, and pure stubbornness I guess. In that time, my boss hired a new Supervisor for our department, who will now be called Chad.

At first, Chad seemed like a pretty nice guy. And me, being the awkward dork I am, tried to help him fit in with the others at work. I told jokes to him, got him to open up a bit to the others, and soon he was able to have a conversation rather easily. All was good! Then he passed his 3 month probation period, and was no longer being constantly watched by Boss.
Chad turned into an insufferable ******. He began to bark orders as if he owned the kitchen, demanding to know why certain things weren’t being done HIS way, and overall was slowing down production tremendously for everyone.

Not to mention, he himself was a lazy jerk. When there would normally be 2 people washing dishes, if one of them called in, it would mean whoever was there had to pick up the slack and do it all by themselves. Chad wouldn’t lift a finger to help, unless he knew Boss was going to be in the kitchen and not in his office by HR. And even then, Chad didn’t know what he was doing. And to top it all off, he made it a point to take jabs at ME in front of the others, trying to make me look stupid because I was the youngest member of the department.

It felt like I had gone back to high school, being the quiet nerdy girl who was picked on for liking things out of the norm, and being laughed at for being ‘weird.’ I like to draw, love anime, and play video games. So when the topic of, ‘What are you gonna do on your days off?’ came up, I usually said something like, ‘I’m gonna relax at home and play (insert game) after doing some chores.’ Then Chad would make a remark like, ‘Wow, you play video games? You must not have a life.’ ******.

It got to the point where I was so fed up with Chad’s *******, that I began to grow a bit of backbone.

I was fed up with constantly having anxiety working with him, and hiding in the bathroom sobbing during my shift when he was making my life a living ****. I began to make cracks back at him, and get into yelling matches with him in the kitchen (no sound escaped the doors once they were closed, so no one outside the department heard us.) He couldn’t fire me, only tell my boss and sign a write-up, which he never did because he saw it as a way of losing to me in our arguments. Any time he made jokes at me, I threw them right back, and when I knew he was doing something wrong, I would fight back and tell him how it was supposed to be done.

This went on for a few months, and then, the final straw.
As a dishwasher, you’re supposed to take temperatures in the dish machine to ensure it’s working properly. It’s supposed to reach a certain temperature when washing dishes to ensure everything is being sanitized properly. If not, there could be an outbreak in the hospital from germs or mold. All the temperatures and times were recorded on a sheet and placed in a folder in the Dietitians office by the dish room. I was making my usual rounds of taking temps when I noticed the machine was reading about twenty degrees in the red cooler than where it was supposed to be.

I shut down the machine and began to drain the water tanks. This was my way of troubleshooting if the tanks had just not been drained in a while, or if something was seriously wrong with the machine. As I was draining the water, Chad comes in and sees me doing this. He was FURIOUS and begins to rant.
Chad: ‘What are you doing?! We still have piles of dishes to wash!’
Me:’ Temps were low, gotta drain the water and see if that fixes it. I think -‘
Chad: ‘How the HECK is that going to fix it?! You’re just wasting time!’
Me, visibly annoyed: “If you’d let me finish, I’m seeing if morning shift drained the water or not.

If not, then it will only take ten minutes to fill the tanks back up.’
Chad: ‘I KNOW the tanks were drained! I drained them myself.’

I get up and look him in the eye, knowing he was lying since he always asked me to take care of the machine at closing.
Me: ‘Prove it. Show me how.’

He was about to yell again when my co-worker Dean in the diet office peers into the dish room. Chad’s face turns red, and he gives me a death glare before storming off. I continue to work on the machine, and once the tanks refilled, I initialed all of my temps and times on the sheet before returning it back to the office.

The day goes by, and after a hellish time on the floors serving patients, I was in the middle of my cleaning duties with the Cook and Dean. I get called by Chad, saying that Boss wanted to talk to us. So, after making sure the dish machine was cleaned, I walked with him to Boss’ office. There, Boss begins to tell me that Chad had given him evidence that I was slacking on my duties, and that I was not taking temperatures like I was supposed to for the dish machine. He said that thankfully, Chad took the temps, but if I wanted to keep from getting into trouble and to keep the department from getting into LEGAL trouble, I needed to step up and be a ‘team player.’ He said that I was getting a verbal warning, but if I did this again, I would receive a write-up or possible suspension.

My jaw hits the floor, and even though Chad is smiling smugly in the corner, I chose not to argue with my Boss and head back to the department, defeated and fighting back tears.
I was sure that I took the temps, and when I checked the book, I was shocked to see what I found. My temps were still in there, and times I took them, but the ******* actually photocopied the page, whited out my initials, and replaced them with his initials! He then traced over the pre-existing handwriting to make it look legit, with his initials!! He made it look like I had not taken temps all day during my shift.

I wracked my brain wondering how the **** he could have gotten away with it with no one noticing him, and then it hit me. He must have done it in the diet office when no one was around, due to dinner trays being made under the dietitian’s supervision.
I. Was. P*ssed. And I began to bide my time for an opportunity for revenge.

It came about a month later.

Now since we are a hospital in a small town, it was normal for us to get catering orders for the members of HR and Upper Management for when they had meetings upstairs. Those orders were easy because usually, they wanted chips, pre-made sandwiches, and soda for about 10-15 people.

However, we occasionally got HUGE Catering orders for district meetings, and that was when we would bust out the Catering dishes. Large white immaculate plates, silverware, glass cups, punch bowl, food serving plates, desserts, tea, and cloth napkins were usually used for these events, and even though it was A LOT more dishes for the understaffed aides, it was pretty simple. This particular order was for the CEO, his workers, HR, Doctors, Head Nurses, and the Higher-ups who owned the Hospital’s contract. The estimated amount to be served was about 150 people since many members of the board were going to show up as well.

Usually, we got the huge orders a week in advance, so the Supervisor can arrange the schedule to have more bodies on deck to help. Chad, of course, schedules only me to be the afternoon dishwasher, meaning I had to clean the dishes for the ENTIRE hospital, and the catering order.
This was my chance for revenge.

As always, Chad didn’t lift a finger to help me in the Dish Room, and the entire room was completely full of dirty dish carts from the floors. The hospital had about 95 patients that were eating, and morning shift had been running behind, so I had both breakfast AND lunch dishes to clean.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if we didn’t have to take apart the trays one by one to make sure no needles or ***** were on the trays, and clean each piece. I was stressed beyond belief because I knew that the 150 people Catering Order would be due any time now. But, I kept myself calm and tried to keep doing my job. A few hours go by, and Chad calls out to me to shut off the dish machine (it was very loud) and tells me to go and pick up the Catering order. Instead of arguing with him, I decided to do it, and asked if he was going to help me.

He gives me a sh*t-eating grin, and tells me,
‘I have better things to do. You can do it alone.’

Perfect.

So despite me being exhausted, sweaty, and have a wet uniform from my dishwasher apron with holes in it, I made my way to the Management floor. I scope out the damage, and I realize I’m going to have to make two or more trips across the hospital to clean this up. I begin to pick up the dishes in the meeting room, take off the table cloths, and stack them on one of the two long carts. While I’m about to clean up the food serving table, I look over to see the door that led into the HR office was open slightly, and a few women were laughing and commenting on how good the pork roast was at the meeting.

I knew they were within earshot of me. It was showtime.
At this moment, I was thankful for being clumsy and having sprained my ankles so much growing up, because it was easy to do this. While I was cleaning up, I deliberately tripped on a chair that was left slightly out and went crashing onto the floor. I sprained my ankle doing this, which was what I was planning, and the glassware I was carrying fell and crashed to the floor. The two women in HR heard this and rushed over to see me laying on the floor with shattered glass all around me and a few minor cuts on my arms, and they rush over to help me up.

We’ll call them Jane and Jill.
Jill: ‘Are you okay!?’
Me: ‘I’m alright… I say on the brink of tears.’
Jane: ‘Are you sure? Here, let’s get you into a chair.’
Me: ‘Th-thank you… I’m sorry… I’m so sorry, please don’t tell my Boss…’

They help me up into a chair, and when they check me over to see I’m in tears, they began to ask me questions.

Jill: ‘Where is your help?’
Me: ‘It’s just me right now… I’m supposed to pick this up and take it back to wash them.’
Jane: ‘Seriously? All by yourself? Why didn’t you get someone to help you?’
Me: We’re short a dishwasher today… I’m trying as best as I can, but I keep falling more and more behind!’
At this point, I begin to cry uncontrollably.

All of the stress and emotions I had bottled up from the past few months from working with Chad and the department, had finally built up so much, that I let loose my repressed emotions on these two ladies. I told them about the under-staffing, the insane amount of overtime I and my co-workers were getting, how I was the only one doing dishes that day, how my Supervisor refused to help me, and how much stress I had been in. I wasn’t faking any of it, I was just waiting for the right moment to finally break down and tell the right people about all of the negative feelings I had.

Needless to say, the two were shocked at my breakdown.
Once I calmed down, they told me they wanted to see just how bad things had gotten in the dish room. If it was as bad as I said it was, they would make a case with my boss. So with their help, they helped me get back to the dish room with the carts of dirty dishes, and I held onto the cart while limping down the hall. Once we got to the staff door for my department’s dish room, I told them to wait outside while I pushed the carts in.

Confused, they comply and hug the wall, waiting to see what happened next. I slipped into the dish room with the carts like nothing happened, and Chad comes in and glares at me. At this point, the room was completely full of dishes, carts, and now two catering carts that took up a large amount of space. You could barely walk through the darn place. We then begin our normal yelling match, all while the door was left slightly open behind me.
Chad: ‘About time you came back!! What took you so long?!’
Me: ‘I was picking up an order by myself, what did you expect Chad?!’
Chad: ‘I was expecting you to do your job! Clearly you can’t, look at all of these trays!!’
Me:’ I just picked up and began to work on Lunch when you told me to get the catering! Did you do any of these while I was gone!?’ *Gesturing to the room*
Chad: ‘No, I had my OWN work to do! You’re just too slow!’
Me: ‘How the heck am I supposed to wash dishes when I’m picking up the catering order?!’
Chad: ‘Not my problem, do your job or you’ll get a write-up.’

With that, he leaves and I go back out to meet with Jane and Jill.

Their faces are filled with anger and disgust from what they just listened to, and they reassure me that this was going to stop. Now. We walk together back to the Management floor, and as I limp into Boss’ office behind them, the two ladies began to go off on him about Chad and what he had been doing. Confused, Boss had no idea what they were talking about and looked to me for an explanation. However, Jill and Jane told him to follow us, and we walked back to the department. At this point, my ankle was throbbing with intense pain, since I sprained it pretty good.

When we got to the dish room and opened the door, my boss was appalled at the amount of work that was left for me. And when he heard that there was no second or even third back up dishwasher scheduled, he almost lost it. He called for Chad, and the four of us waited in the dietitian’s office. While we waited, I told them I didn’t want him to lose his job over this, but I wanted him to know how I felt being left with so much work. I really felt this way, but a huge part of me just wanted to see him suffer.

When Chad walked in to see me and three powerful people with me, his face turns pale, but his normal sh*t-talking face is replaced with one of fake concern and confusion. Though, his act fails, as Boss began to demand why he didn’t schedule someone to help me. He told Boss he had been helping me as much as he could today, but Jane and Jill stop him and repeat what he told me before. Boss is disgusted, and he looks to Chad after discussing the situation more.

Boss: ‘This is what’s going to happen. OP hurt herself cleaning up the Catering, so she’s going home for the day and will be off for two days.’
Chad: ‘She can’t go home, we’re short-staffed!’
Boss: ‘That was your fault, not hers.

She’s not going to suffer because YOU screwed up.’
Chad: ‘B-But…’
Boss: ‘Also, I don’t care how much overtime this accrues, you are staying after.’
Chad: … What for?
Boss: ‘Tonight, you’re gonna be the dishwasher. All by yourself; you’re going to wash every single one of those dishes AND the catering order. And since its almost time for dinner to be served to patients, I guess you will be doing those too. If you leave ANYTHING for the morning crew to clean up, and if the department isn’t cleaned like its supposed to, consider yourself fired.’
Once he said that, I was sent home for the day, and the three continued to tear Chad a new one as I limped out the door.

When I got back to my car, I was smiling so much, that my cheeks were hurting all the way back to my house.

After I got back from my two-day break, I noticed that there were empty slots open on the schedule that said, ‘New Hire’ but no hours. It seemed that after the talk, HR decided to grant us new hiree slots to help with our understaffing, but the slots were still empty. I also found out something that was just icing on my beautiful revenge cake. I found out from Dean that Chad had to stay until about midnight cleaning the entire load of dishes that he let pile up on me, and the next day, he even helped the one person he scheduled for morning dishes to clean up breakfast since he scheduled himself to work the morning shift.

But the cherry on top was that when there were large catering orders, Chad had to set up and then clean up the orders from then on, since he was convinced it could all be done by one person.
So when he was cleaning a large catering order by himself in the dish room, and I walked by about to get ready to serve dinner to the patient rooms, he stops me. He then asks me if I minded staying back and to help him since there was so much of the catering order left to clean up. I smile and said simply,

‘Not my problem, do your job.'” TheOnlySez
5. Make My Worklife Miserable? K, I’ll Choose My Health Instead

“My story starts off as mundane as anybody’s: Five years into working for an enormous corporation, my group was ‘reorganized.’ This particular reorg was, like most efforts, a half-baked idea ginned up by a suit in a corner office, questionably planned, poorly executed and terribly communicated.

Nonetheless, I was sent from my old group to a brand new (to me) group managed by Jim. Jim seemed an okay fellow, with a dry sense of humor and a British accent that lulled me into thinking he was a decent guy.
Working for Jim was… okay. He was never available and when we did meet maybe once a month he’d bark off a list of things for me to do, then say he had a conflict and had to go to another call. I was floundering a little but felt I had a handle on things.
During my first annual review via phone, Jim offered up vanilla platitudes about how things were going well, while I heard him distractedly typing away at instant messages from people pinging him.

He paused when he got to my salary and hedged, a bit.

‘Ahhh… so I got you a small increase, I couldn’t get you much. To be frank, I’m not going to question how anyone arrives at their salary level, but you make way more than the other people on my team.’
It was awkward, but not the first time I’ve had such a pointed salary discussion with a male manager. It’s never been a talking point with any of the women who managed me, and I wondered if he would have made those comments to me if I were a man. I’ve managed teams over the years and noticed the women on my teams seemed to make less than their male counterparts, so I get I’m an anomaly.

But, I’m a high performer in a 25-year uninterrupted career, as I never chose to have children. I’ve worked hard for my salary and I’m proud of it. I could get hired elsewhere at this salary in my market easily given my experience, qualifications and certifications.
Shortly after our review, Jim moved on to work with my primary group of business partners, leaving me with no manager, just a 2-up manager I’d never met or spoken to.

And that’s when the *** hit the fan.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, my salary was brought up in a discussion with his new team, the fine ladies who were managers of the teams I worked within my business partner group.

As it’s been relayed to me, Jim didn’t blurt out the specific details of course, but when one of the women complained about something I’d done, Jim said he was surprised there were issues because I was the highest-paid person on his (now former) team. He poisoned the well quite nicely for me.
Going back through my emails I could pinpoint the date and time the remark was said because the tone of EVERY SINGLE ONE of those managers changed as if on a dime. If I asked a question, I was berated because ‘You’re our most senior analyst! You should know that!’ Documentation that had sufficed before was suddenly ‘all wrong.’

There were two particularly hostile culprits: Pat, who managed reporting on the systems we were migrating and her underling PM, Wanda.

Pat came at me quick, fangs bared, with a demand that I put together a plan to get us to the next generation of reporting which wasn’t due to be released until 2021. The 2021 plan Wanda, her PM had put together, looked like notes on a greasy cocktail napkin, so Pat decided that since I was the SME, I should do Wanda’s work for her instead.
Pat wanted a plan from today, in 2019 through to the date of release in May 2021. According to her, it had to include ALL the tasks needed for delivery right from the start, which is not how planning works.

I can’t predict the future, so my plans usually start out detailed in the near term, with increasingly wider swaths of more generalized tasks to be elaborated in detail as we get further along. This is an industry-standard approach, and was never a problem, right up until it was.

Pat started hounding me relentlessly to get this full plan done for her in 5 days, which would have been an impossible task under the best of circumstances. Nonetheless, I put together a 2000-line long plan, working evenings and over the weekend, because my arms had been in pain for several months from typing at my home office and I had to take frequent breaks from the pain.

Note: I had been made a remote employee against my will, and when I was reorg’ed I started asking for a desk back at work. Jim always dismissed my request, saying there was ‘no space,’ so I spent over $1500 on an ergonomic chair and desk for my home to make typing easier, but my arms still hurt anytime I sat at the keyboard for more than a half-hour.

I had to back-burner my more immediate, pressing work for upcoming releases in the next couple of months, because Pat told me I had to prioritize her work over everything else. I had no manager to help redirect my priorities back to my other work and when I tried to say it would have to wait until I finished my more pressing work, Pat sighed and bitterly said in front of a half-dozen people including Wanda, ‘So you’re our most SENIOR SME and you’re telling me you can’t do the work?’
Pat then decided to up the ante by insisting I run every element of the plan I was creating FOR Wanda BY Wanda, a junior level PM who not only didn’t understand the systems we were using – I had to tell her how to create her own status reports – but wrote at a third grade level.

Even the subject/verb agreement is out of Wanda’s grasp. But she had a chip on her shoulder and now she believed she could tell me what to do and how to do it. It was like a teacup poodle trying to guide a Rottweiler.
Wanda was immediately and clearly out of her element, and obviously so. As a result, every single time she was caught ****** up, she threw me right under the bus. She’d preemptively throw me under the bus too. Wanda’s only talent was deflecting blame and painting herself as the victim.

I didn’t know what to do, I was having anxiety attacks.

My heart would start racing to 145bpm on the couch at night when I started thinking about work. I was overwhelmed and my arms were killing me and then the unthinkable happened… My mom suddenly died.

When I told the team, they were not only completely unsympathetic. They were p*ssed. I had to take a week of bereavement and this, too, p*ssed them off as I was leaving the day before the deadline Pat had given me to finish Wanda’s plan for the 2021 project. Instead of packing for the funeral or connecting with my family, I spent the 3 days before my leave working late nights trying to finish the plan.

We met at 5 PM the day before I was to go on leave, where Pat and Wanda ripped into my plan and said they would work with another team member to fix all of my ‘mistakes’ in the week I was gone.
Finally free of the evil twins, I went on leave. And while on leave, my arms stopped hurting. After 6 weeks of physical therapy for my arm problems, just not typing for awhile helped immensely.

I had two days left before I had to go back to the hellhole, and I was dreading it. When the heart palpitations started up again, I knew I couldn’t go back.

At first, I decided I would just quit the day I was supposed to return. I didn’t want to even give them two weeks notice, I hated them so much. They had been so cruel about me taking bereavement leave. I wanted to *** them over, good and proper. No two weeks notice meant I’d leave them hanging for their near-term releases that I’d not been allowed to finish up my work for, as well as for the 2021 plan.
And if I burned a bridge or my reputation, so what? I’m nearing the age where people usually retire or have a major career change.

I don’t need to keep that bridge any longer. I have saved up enough, and ****** my health was more important to me than these toxic people OR my paycheck. The night I decided to quit I went to sleep relieved and not anxious, for the first time in six months. I felt the anxiety leaving me, knowing I wouldn’t have to work with those people ever again.

It felt like a solid plan.

Then the next morning I woke up with a plan even more brilliant. It checked ALL my boxes:
• I wouldn’t have to go back to work

• I wouldn’t have to give two weeks notice, so they’d still be ***ed

• I would still get paid

• AND I would be able to take care of my arms that had been in pain for so long! AND while I’m at it, manage the anxiety that had spiraled out of control because of my hostile coworkers

My new and improved plan was simple: Take medical leave.

I needed protected medical leave in the form of FMLA, which for those not in the US, provides up to 12 weeks of leave where my specific job role and salary must be protected and available to me upon my return.
And because it was medical leave, I was automatically enrolled in Short Term Disability, for which my company will pay 100% of my salary for 8 weeks and then 65% of my salary for the remaining weeks I’m out.

The best part of this plan is it messes over all the people I want to *** over AND IT’S ALL 100% LEGIT! I had been having problems keeping up at work because of all the doctor’s visits I had for my arms, physical therapy, regular therapy for my anxiety that had gotten out of control, and a psychiatrist.

My health issues were eating into my workday, causing me to have to work early mornings, nights and weekends more than ever, and no doubt p*ssing off these people who thought I was making too much money to be deserving of any time off for doctor’s appointments.
My team got a new manager after 6 weeks, coincidentally just the day before I was to come back from bereavement. I was sneakily logged onto work every day to catch his name and I stealthily dialed into the conference call where he was introduced to the team. The 2-up manager that I’ve never spoken to even said at the outset: “I think we have everyone on the bridge.

[My name] won’t be here, she’s on bereavement.”

I called up the administrators of our FMLA and Short Term Disability plans to file my claim. I got the forms and figured out which of my half-dozen doctors had to fill what out. My orthopedist signed me off for 12 weeks of absence straight away because she noted I’d been in pain since May so it would likely take a while to heal. After talking with her, my PT and my psychiatrist, I will likely do physical therapy for 6 weeks and then enroll in a program for anxiety and stress management for the remaining 6 weeks before returning.

All covered by my insurance and all FREE because I met my out of pocket maximum halfway through the year due to a hospital stay for a different medical issue.
The night before I was due back, I sat there grinning while looking at the next morning’s 8:00 AM calendar invite from Wanda. In her illiterate fashion, she had written, ‘It is IMPOTANT all crucial partners makes every effort to attend this call!!’

Like most of Wanda’s obnoxiously illiterate declarations, it was a dig at me because I’d said in my last call with her and Pat that I might not be able to log on until 9 AM on the day I returned from leave.

I opened a new window and typed out to my new manager, ‘Dear Phil, I hate that this is our first introduction to each other, but while I was attending my mother’s funeral an ongoing medical issue resurfaced and I need to take medical leave immediately.’
I went on to inform him I’d been hospitalized a couple of months back and there were other issues that were preventing me from returning to work, and he could get the details from my prior manager Jim. Not that Jim paid a darn bit of attention to the emails I sent him detailing my doctor’s visits, etc.

even as he had moved on from being my manager because I still had to let him know about all my absences until I got a new manager. As things got worse at work, I became more clear in my details about my pain with typing getting worse, hoping it might make Jim realize the situation was getting worse, but he never listened.
So here I sit on a beautiful fall Friday morning, getting paid 100% of my salary to write this. Jim wasn’t happy about my salary when I was working for him. I wonder how happy he is about my salary knowing I’m not having to work for it right now.

When I return, I won’t be on the two projects with upcoming releases. One will have already released. The other will release less than 4 weeks after I come back. So they’re f*cked on that. I wonder if they’ve figured out the test documents for November haven’t been signed off yet. I was supposed to finalize them for signoff, but Pat forced me to prioritize Wanda’s 2021 project over the November work, so the test documents are still sitting locally on my work desktop, untouched.
I will also be returning with a requirement for ‘accommodations,’ which I am now entitled to as I’ve learned I qualify for them under the ADA.

No more telling me I have to work from home or hunch over a table in the breakroom if I want to be in the office. I’m working with an occupational therapist to draft up what those accommodations will be, but a height-adjustable desk, two large monitors, and a ‘distraction-free workspace’ are the top line requirements.

Meanwhile, my treatment plans include exercise, trail walks, both regular therapy, and physical therapy, and a weekly massage as well! I’ve added in long visits to the library to read all the books I’ve been wanting to catch up on, and nice lunches a couple of times a week to the mix.

Several times throughout, the day I’ll look at my watch while walking the trails with my dog, or just relaxing, and I smile broadly thinking about Pat and Wanda and Wanda’s “IMPOTANT” project plan for 2021. Wonder what poor sod they’ve roped in to help her finish it now.

I still may just quit right after I return, or they can just fire me, I’d be indifferent about that. But at least this way I’ll have milked 12 more weeks of payout of these *******, while benefiting from all the free medical and emotional assistance my insurance plan can buy. They say living well is the best revenge, and I can’t think of a company or a group of people who deserve my pro revenge more.” thisjobisgonnakillme
4. You Don’t Want To Fix Your Brakes? Then I Have No Choice But To Call The Cops

“I’m an ASE certified mechanic.

I’ve been wrenching for 22 years. This story happened way back when I was still an oil change tech and learning my way.

This customer comes in one day and wants us to look at his brakes and put some pads on the car that he brought. The shop manager had me bring the car in to look at. I pull the car in the shop and it is grinding real bad when I hit the brakes. I know its more than a pad job. So the car goes up, the tires come off and sure enough. He let his brakes go for so long there is no more brake surface on the rotors.

He had worn them down to the cooling fins in the middle of the rotor. I, of course, tell my manager.
Well, he told the customer, a crotchety old man, the situation and explains he needs new rotors. We even took him out and showed him there is really no rotor left at all. Naturally, guy gets super p*ssed. Says we are just trying to get more money out of him. We better just do what he wants or he is going somewhere else, blah, blah, blah. My manager takes it all in as cool as a cucumber. When dude was finished.

My manager did the neatest thing I had ever seen at the time.

He very calmly explained that the vehicle needed to be repaired correctly or he would red flag the car as it was unsafe to drive. Old boy looked like he was going to explode. Threatened to call the cops if we didn’t return his vehicle, we were just crooks whole nine yards. My boss said it’s cool I’ll call them for you. Called in the state highway patrol. Showed them the car in front of the customer. They looked at him and said this car is unsafe for the road.

He either fixes it correctly or has to tow it out of our shop if he wants to go somewhere else cause they will not let it on the road. The sad thing is he ended up paying to have it towed out a few days later, which I’m sure cost more than the $40 for new rotors. Idk if he got it fixed right or not.
Most wrenches out there just want your car to be safe. We run on the same roads. I didn’t know at the time, but I do now, that we do have authority to lock your car down, if it is completely unsafe for the road, until it is fixed correctly or towed somewhere else to get fixed correctly.

I love what I do cause I make the roads safer. I also work in a field where the customer is not always right. Old man learned the hard way. A few others in my career have as well.” Cowtow419420

3. You Can Design The Website Better? Not After I’m Done With It

“When I have the time and come across interesting projects or clients, I take on one-off assignments to create websites, graphics, applications, etc. for said clients. I recently had a client for whom I created a website. Their old website looked like it was created in the early 90s, but it drew a lot of traffic, so the need to update was clear.

Like always, we first agreed on the scope and design, and my client showcased his competitor’s websites for me, explaining what kind of things he absolutely wanted for his site, ‘but better,’ as he put it. I then had him sign a standard contract and pay a small upfront fee. Everything went smoothly and I got to work.
After the project finished and I sent an invoice to my client, he told me that he won’t be paying any more. During the few days that I had worked, he had watched some YouTube videos about creating websites and he had come to the realization that he, without any prior experience in web design or programming, could create an equally impressive site in pretty much the same time as I had, and so he didn’t feel like he should pay me anything extra.

I reminded him of our contract and he flat out said that I am free to take him to court, but he won’t be paying me.
Obviously I had no intention of taking him to court because it would result in more headache than it’d be worth, but I wasn’t just going to let this slide. The website was already live and teeming with visitors, but my client, although they were a newfound web design professional, hadn’t realized that I was still the only one who had access to the site’s back-end, which meant that I could make any changes to the site and he couldn’t do anything about it.

So, I remembered how he had told me about all of his competitor’s websites. I figured the appropriate response would be to write a script that replaces his company’s contact details and opening hours with those of his competitors. Every time the site would load, the script would randomly show one of the competitor’s contact details instead. I also made it so that the contact form requests would be sent to a randomly selected competitor’s email.
I chose not to inform my client of this and went on to enjoy my vacation. Within a week, I received several emails and a call about my client’s concerns that something was wrong, that he hadn’t received a new client through the site in almost a week even though the site’s visitor count is much higher than before (thanks to the new design and improved SEO that he hadn’t yet paid for).

I let him know what I had done and I told him that I would undo it, but it would take me about an hour, for which I would be charging. Since I was on vacation, I’d apply the rush fee stated on the contract for that hour. And of course, I told him that this would all be added on top of the original fee that he owed me, plus interest for late payment. Naturally, this led to insults and threats being thrown in my direction, to which I calmly responded that I will begin work once I have the money on my account and if he doesn’t want to lose any more customers to his competitors, he’d best man up quick.

He tried to call me immediately and I just declined the call. After the second attempt to call me again, I sent him directly to voice mail.
I received an express payment to my account the very next morning.” XeduR

2. Harass Me Constantly About My Body? Better Start Looking For A New Job

“About 4 years ago now, my mum died of breast cancer, and as both my grandmothers had also died of it I saw a specialist for a screening. I found out I had some cells in one of my breasts that could have turned cancerous at any given moment.

I was told I had a few options:

I could have regular screenings every 3 or 4 months until it does develop into cancer (I was told the risk of the cells becoming cancerous was very high due to family history) but it could also potentially never could turn so I’d just be getting these screenings for no reason
I could get a single mastectomy on the breast with the bad cells, but they’d need to keep an eye on the other one, so I’d still need regular checkups for the other breast

I could get a bilateral mastectomy and remove all of my breast tissue, basically eliminating the risk.

I went for a bilateral mastectomy. It was admittedly the most drastic option but after seeing what cancer did to my mum and grandmothers I didn’t want to risk it.

I was warned about scarring but told it should be fairly minor. It wasn’t and I was left with 2 huge, pink, jagged scars on either side of my chest, each about an inch long and half an inch wide, and it caused me to go into a severe depression, where it got to the stage of me not even leaving my flat because I didn’t want people to see me, throwing out my mirrors, and getting physically sick looking at myself.

I went to a therapist, who suggested a plastic surgeon. The therapist said they’d never normally do that but it was clearly something I was struggling with and I might never get over it, and the therapist could see why I struggle with it. Although I’ll admit the therapist did send me to ask about scar reduction. The plastic surgeon suggested a cream, a laser or implants. The cream didn’t work, and the laser was both expensive and risky, so I went with the implants. My natural ***** were an F cup so I went with a slightly smaller DD. Since then my mental health has improved and I feel a lot better about the way I look.

My confidence has gone up, as has my self-esteem. I know I shouldn’t put so much into my appearance but I wasn’t exaggerating about these scars. Huge, bright pink, jagged, raised, just really awful to look at and I hated seeing myself, and they are now nicely hidden away and you can barely feel them.
In the present day, I’m 28 years old and working in an office. I’m doing a lot better than I was. My coworker, Jill, found out I’d had a **** job (but not about the cancer thing), when myself and my friend from years before the mastectomy were planning a holiday and she made a joke about me going on a plane with my implants, and Jill overheard.

By the end of the day, the entire office knew I’d had a **** job, but not why, and half a dozen people confirmed Jill had told them.’ Over In the next few months, Jill made many ‘joke’ and comments about my chest to coworkers when I was in earshot, at one point saying I had “more plastic than Barbie” and calling me “fake in two ways”. I didn’t hear this one myself but a friend in the office told me that Jill had at one point referred to me as a “sack of silicone”.
IDK what her problem was exactly but at one point she mentioned the NHS so I assume Jill thought that I’d got my **** done for free on taxpayer money (I’d gotten the mastectomy on NHS but gone private for therapy and implants).

I asked her to stop more than once, but unfortunately, the places I’d talked to her were places like the lift and the women’s bathroom, where there weren’t any cameras, and Jill just kept making comments no matter how often I asked her not to. I wouldn’t say it was every single day, but I heard at least 3 comments per week for 3 months.
I hit my breaking point when Jill, a few other coworkers and I were having lunch, I referred to something as being shallow and Jill said: ‘You’d know all about being shallow’ while gesturing to my chest.

I snapped.

I said: ‘Do you know why I have these? A few years ago the doctors found potentially cancerous cells in my breast tissue, I was advised to get a mastectomy and was left with huge ugly scars on my chest. I went to see a therapist who sent me to a cosmetic surgeon, who advised me to get implants to hide the scars, and I did just so I could look at myself in the mirror without crying. So maybe next time you want to judge someone for having cosmetic surgery, you should ask them why they had it first.’ And feeling like that was a mic drop moment I picked up my food and left.

For the rest of the day, I had about 1/3 of my office come up to me and offer support, and the rest tell me that Jill was just joking around and I was being a ****. I replied that Jill was being a **** long before I was.

I then got an email from HR saying they wanted to talk to me the following day, and when I called for clarification they mentioned a ‘hostile work environment’ (Note: this is apparently an American term and holds little weight in England but it’s what was said over the phone). I knew the person who signed off the email and I’d spoken to.

Her name was Debbie, and she was Jill’s friend in HR so I was fairly confident about who had reported me.
I realized that if this was already being sent to HR, I needed as much ammunition as possible, so I went about collecting my information.

As Debbie had dealt with me so far, it was safe to assume she would be the person reviewing the complaint with me, and if that was true I was f*cked. However, I vaguely remembered a section on complaints that was in my contract when I first signed with the company. I flicked through the contract and there was a part in complaints section that said I was contractually allowed to request a change of reviewer if I felt my allocated reviewer was biased.

It was called an “impartial overseer”. I photocopied the page and highlighted that part.
Then I messaged the people who had offered their support over Facebook and said basically ‘HR has asked to see me. Do any of you remember Jill insulting me to your face and are you willing to write and sign something saying what you heard and when?’ Not everyone was willing to help as Jill is somewhat feared in the office due to her befriending HR and management but about 20 people were willing to help me.

I guessed roughly when I’d asked Jill to stop previously (the 4 asks over the last few months, some timings were easy to guess as they’d happened on my break or when I’d first arrived at work) and I wrote them all down, along with a rough time of when the lunchroom confrontation happened and a list of names of who was there for the lunchroom confrontation.

I got to work slightly early the next morning. I went round everyone who had messaged me and most of them managed to give me a printed and signed letter (some didn’t manage to write one but no big deal). This isn’t exact words as there are 16 letters, to sum up here but the gist was:

‘My name is [their name]. I work with Jill Lastname and OP. On [date] at [time] (approx), I spoke with Jill Lastname, during which she referred to OP as [quoted insult]. I felt this was inappropriate as it directly related to OP’s appearance and am willing to go on record further to establish that Jill Lastname has been discussing OP in the workplace in the same manner for 3 months now, causing me discomfort and creating what I feel is a hostile work environment.

Signed [their name].’

I wound up with about 16 letters, all from different people, and one of them was in the lunchroom for my conversation with Jill. Some even had bullet-pointed lists of everything Jill had said to them about me or other people, as it turns out Jill has issues with a lot of people’s appearances. She apparently made comments about one coworker’s weight, and something antisemitic about a different coworker’s nose, all of which were put in these letters. There are about 45 people in the office so while 16 wasn’t a majority, it’s still a decent amount. The letters weren’t hugely long, most were only a paragraph, but they had all the necessary information.

I was asked to come to HR at 10 am. I took the letters from coworkers, the photocopy of the page in my contract, and my dates and times in a little folder with me.

I got there and Debbie was the one overseeing the interview. She got up from her desk, ready to lead me into another room.

I immediately turned to the other HR worker that was currently there and said: ‘So is my meeting with you, then?’

Debbie said: ‘No, you’re with me.’

I replied that this wouldn’t sit well with me, as ‘my contract states I have a right to an impartial overseer’ and as I said this I took the contract page out of my folder.

Debbie read it (I wouldn’t let her take the paper when there was a shredder so close by) and said she could be impartial. I replied that I really didn’t mean to be a pain, but I had it on good authority that the person on the other end of this complaint is her friend, and my contract does say I’m allowed an impartial overseer.
Debbie stomped off to get Supervisor. Supervisor asks how I know she can’t be impartial and I tell him that I have it on good authority that the Jill, who was on the other end of this complaint, is a close friend of Debbie.

He asked Debbie if this was true, to which she only replied: ‘I can be impartial.’

Supervisor took a deep breath, asked the other HR rep to come with him, and the four of us all went to review the complaint. I thanked them for being so accommodating (I was worried I’d annoyed them), Debbie took out the complaint and all 3 of them went through it with me. Debbie looked homicidal the whole time the interview was happening, as she had clearly anticipated firing me (or at least recommending me being fired).
The interview went something like this. It took like over half an hour and they kept asking me the same questions but phrased different ways so this is a really drastically condensed version.

Q: ‘You said outside that you think Jill Lastname reported you. Why is this?’

A: ‘Jill has had an issue with me for about 3 months now..’

Q: ‘Why didn’t you come to us when you realized Jill had an issue?’

A: ‘I had no issue with her.’

Q: ‘What issue does Jill have with you?’

A: ‘Four years ago a specialist identified potentially cancerous cells in my breast tissue. I had surgery to remove my breast tissue, thereby removing the cells and the risk. After the surgery, I was left with large scars on my chest. I went to a therapist for low self-esteem and depression.

The therapist suggested a plastic surgeon who suggested breast implants to cover my scars. All of this is in my medical history which you have a copy of in my file and my full permission to review. Jill found out about my breast implants but didn’t know about the cancer. Jill had a problem with my breast implants, and decided to communicate this problem to our coworkers.’
Q: ‘Why do you feel this is true?’

A: ‘Here’s 16 signed statements all from different coworkers, all testifying that Jill told the entire office I’d had breast implants on the day she found out and has since made comments about these implants frequently.

They have quotes of what Jill said to them about it and rough dates and times.’

Q: ‘Rough dates and times?’

A: ‘No one knew this would be escalated to such an extent so no one really took notes as and when it happened.’

Q: ‘What event or events do you think directly led to this complaint of harassment?’

A: ‘For me, the harassment began when Jill told everyone about my breast implants without my consent, but as to the complaint placed against me, it would probably be what happened at about [time] yesterday in the lunchroom. Jill made a comment about me being shallow while gesturing to my breasts and I replied by giving her an abridged version of my relevant medical history and ending with a comment about the importance of getting the full story.

There are cameras in the lunchroom, so I’m sure you’ll be able to find that conversation. I’ll admit I could have handled the situation better, but after 3 months I felt I had to put my foot down. Here’s a list of names of people who were also present. There were 6 people at the table, including myself and Jill. One of these people is also in those letters, and has written their account of the conversation and signed it.’
Q: ‘Had you had a conversation with Jill prior to this regarding her comments about you?’

A: ‘Several, spaced out over the last 3 months.

Each time I communicated to her that I felt uncomfortable and upset with these comments she was making and would appreciate it if she were to stop.’

Q: ‘To your knowledge, was Jill made aware of your former cancer at any point in this time?’

A: ‘No. It wasn’t mentioned in the conversation with my friend she overheard and I didn’t tell her because frankly it’s none of her business and I did not feel the need to detail my medical history to a coworker in order to avoid further ****** harassment.’
The supervisor stands up and says, ‘Well I think we’re done here.’ He shakes my hand and sends me back to my desk saying that I’d hear from them after they reviewed the evidence (letters, CCTV, medical history and anything they had already) and made a decision on the case.

I got back to my desk, pulled up my CV, and prepared to start the job search again.

About an hour goes by, then the person who wrote the letter and was there for the lunchroom conversation gets called for a meeting with HR. They come back 10ish minutes later.

The other people who were also there for the lunchroom conversation get called one by one, except Jill. All of them are gone for about 10 minutes then come back, find a coworker, and say that HR wants to see them.
Then the people who wrote letters but weren’t there yesterday are also called one by one and are each gone for about 10 minutes each, some longer, some shorter.

By about 3:30 it looks like everyone who wrote a letter or was there in the lunchroom has been interviewed.

Then, finally, Jill gets called in. She’s gone for about 30 minutes and comes back fuming. She glares at me while I work, but I ignore her.

4:30ish, Jill gets called into HR again. 5 pm rolls around, everyone is either leaving or getting ready to leave, when Jill storms back into the office. She glares at me the whole time she packs up her desk. She then starts telling anyone who will listen that I got her fired before shoving her way onto the lift.

An email comes in from HR. My case is closed. [deleted]

Another User Comments:
“Paper trails are often the undoing of petty, vindictive people. I’ve seen it several times in my life (providing said papertrail usually) and it’s always satisfying. This one was exceptionally satisfying.

Bonus: you can now tell people that your breasts are so magnificent they get people fired. I mean, if you want to.” yuchigui

1. Cheat On Me Then Treat The Next Girl The Same Way? Not While I’m Around

I was with this guy for a while until he cheated on me when I went to visit my family for my birthday.

He was really nasty about it, too. I found a condom wrapper (which we weren’t using) and confronted him. But he started gaslighting me, telling me it had been there since before we were together and that I was being paranoid. I wanted to believe him but deep down inside I knew that I didn’t. One day, he brought me back my spare notebook which I was letting him use until he had enough savings to get his own. He was so stupid that he hadn’t even logged out of Facebook. I checked his messages on the day after my birthday and found out he had indeed cheated on me.

I confronted him and after initially lying to me again and calling me crazy he eventually broke down crying and begging. Needless to say that I dumped his a*s that same night. But he saw himself as the victim in this whole story and complained to all of his friends about me breaking off contact with him when he was supposedly so in love with me.
About a year later I was swiping on Tinder when I saw him on there. I had been told he was in a relationship and so I went to check his Facebook. Turns out that he not only was in a relationship but had cropped his girlfriend out of a picture he was using on Tinder.

Even though I had not talked to him in a year, I had a feeling this might one day come in handy. So I took some screenshots and left-swiped to get him out of my face.

To my surprise, about half a year later, I get a series of weird 4 am texts from him. He’s saying that he changed after our relationship and that I broke his heart so bad that now he has issues in his current relationship and that’s somehow my fault. Of course, this is a whole load of BS since he was the one who cheated but this is just the type of person he is: Nothing is ever his fault.

I was going to answer, ‘You cheated on me, you POS,’ but then I remembered the screenshots. I go to his Facebook and see that he still has a profile picture with his girlfriend. And so I did the only thing any reasonable person would do and sent her the screenshots along with the message: ‘I don’t know what he told you but I want you to know that he cheated on me.’
I later found out she dumped him, too.” Here2JudgeU

A couple of these have a lot of background, but it’s needed to build the payback. It seems like when you add a bit of time to the equation, when you slowly wait and let it stew, these stories come to a head and unfold quite triumphantly! What do you think? Tell us everything!