People Talk About Their Vengeful Revenge Stories
18. Complain About The Driving Route? That'll Cost You A Grand
“I had a job some years ago where I needed to visit a different customer’s premises every day.
There were many of us doing this job across several teams and the expectation was that you drove using your own car and were paid a mileage rate (there were no company-provided cars).
All was fine until I changed from one team to another and a new manager queried my first mileage claims submitted to them.
The location of our office was on the edge of town and to reach many of our customers you could either drive on the main road to the next town which got you there quickly and safely, or you could take some narrow country lanes which were a nightmare to drive through, so everyone obviously used the main road.
But the manager had discovered the country lane route was 3/4 mile shorter, so 1.5 miles on a round trip.
That made 60p ($0.82) difference to the mileage claim for each day (a visit to a customer took a whole day).
The manager refused to authorize the claims for the main road route and insisted I resubmitted with the lower mileage as that was what the company rules said you could claim.
Fine no problem. The claim for the month was reduced by £5 ($7).
But then I told them I was no longer going to use my car to drive to customers, any customers anywhere – there was no obligation in the employment contract to do so, and being in the UK as a long term employee there was no way they could get rid of me.
The issue was that our customers were not that far away at around 15 miles, but they were mainly in remote areas or on edge of town industrial estates where there was no direct public transport.
If you did try and use public transport then a 30-minute journey turned into a two-hour journey with all the connections, and a one-day customer visit became a two-day visit, so halving productivity.
For the next month’s claim instead of paying about £8 ($11) a day in mileage, the company now had to pay for a rental car or a taxi, both of which cost around £50 ($70) a day.
My travel claims now went from around £160 ($230) a month to £1,000 ($1,400), all to save £5 ($7).
After the first month, as the manager had a team of ten all doing the same work, they initially spent an inordinate amount of time trying to allocate me customers that were on public transport routes.
But then my colleagues in the team who had also been taken to task by the manager over the same mileage issue (and other matters as well as they could be irritatingly pedantic about many things) saw what was going on and also started to refuse to use their own cars.
Eventually, after some months, senior management had to step in when they saw how their travel budget was being exhausted and decreed that people could claim for the sensible route.
Most went back to driving, but some of us remained using taxis and rental cars, as there was still no contractual obligation to use your own car.”
17. My Landlord Was Shady, So He Lost His Fancy Truck
“My ex-husband and I have always gotten along very well and we have, (at the time of this story 7 years old), a daughter. We have always lived near each other for convenience sake and have on occasion even lived in the same house after divorce. So I was thrilled when the people across the street from him sold their place and apparently it was going to be for rent!
I had known the folks across the street, nice people, and had even been in the house a time or two, so when I showed up with my other half to look the place over, I kinda knew what we would be getting.
The landlord was working on the house when we pulled up, (we had gone out to eat before this and so I know he was unaware he was talking to someone who knew the people who had lived there and been in the house.) His big ole dually was in the drive with his company name stenciled on it.
He meets us in the garage and immediately starts lying. He told me this was his family home and he was fixing it up, but there were a lot of memories there and his kids had grown up in that house. I realized he was ‘adding value.’ I kept my mouth shut because it was right across the street from my ex-husband and it was literally the bus stop for the school for my daughter.
He continued to lie and I kinda tuned him out. The place was a little worse for wear, dirty, gross carpet, and chipped paint. I made a comment on a broken light switch and he told me he was having a cleaning crew come through and clean up the place and having everything painted and the carpet redone.
The price was a little high but once again I really wanted it and it wasn’t nightmare high, just 200 over what I was expecting.
I had a small Australian shepherd, so first month’s rent, last month’s rent, and pet deposit. 1250 for each one. Ouch.
So about two weeks later it was move-in day. I should have known something was up when the key was left in a combo box on the door. We had paid through a service so he had the deposit, and we had the key… And a mess.
He had done literally nothing except replace a set of rotted outdoor steps that he probably had to for liability purposes. We dragged out the digital camera and started taking pictures. It was a 3bdrm 2bath with a partially underground room. We took over 1100 pictures.
Here are some highlights.
- Ketchup smeared on the kitchen walls and floor, nothing in there had been cleaned. The fridge was awful
- Had what smelled like hair gel rubbed into it in the dining room and outside the front bathroom door
- The fireplace literally had soot covering all of it and up to the ceiling. (The reason for all the non-working lights became apparent at the point, he kept it dim for showings.)
- Garage full of trash
- The partial underground room which we hadn’t seen because that’s where he had a big saw set up and wasn’t really a selling point for us?
Mold. All the mold.
So I called him up and basically said, ‘what in the world?’ And he replied that the deposit and keys had already exchanged hands and if I had a problem I needed to put in a maintenance request. He said, ‘I don’t remember it being that bad, sounds like you made a mess moving in.’ Ok, so now I knew exactly how trashy of a person I am dealing with.
Put in a maintenance request about the mold. Went out and bought ALL the bleach, other cleaning supplies, and a carpet cleaner. I am a military brat who lived in base housing. I know how to clean. And we got to work.
It took two days for 4 adults, my ex and a friend came over to help, to get the place passable. We even changed out the blinds.
(They were broken and dangerous.) During this, the landlord comes over to look at the mold, and I KID YOU NOT, grabs a roll of my paper towels and MY BLEACH SPRAY, and starts wiping the mold off the walls. He had just walked into the garage, grabbed some cleaning stuff I had down in the garage and I found him about halfway through his ‘cleaning’ job.
That’s all he did.
Fast forward 3 months. Time for an inspection! Ok, he tells me he will be there tomorrow at 8 am. He shows up at 6:30 pm. Demands to be let in. I let him in and he starts taking pictures of dishes in the sink, dinner was still on the table and lectures me about cleaning up when I cook. So in front of him, I pulled out my digital camera and took one of him taking a pic of dishes for dinner with dinner still on the table and a timestamp.
Jerk.
He wanted to go through the drawers in my bedroom. I laughed at him. Didn’t hear from him again till move-out time. (If you thought I was staying there longer than a year then you are crazier than I was when I rented that place.)
He sent me a move-out checklist. Professional steam cleaning and white-glove cleaning of the entire house. New pine straw for landscaping.
All rooms need to be repainted ‘wheat.’ (When we moved in the bathroom was literally TURQUOISE.)
So we got to work. Steam cleaned, white-glove clean, etc. Then took another 1000 pics.
He walks through and is annoyed. He even ran a white rag on the top of the ceiling fan. He snatched the keys out of my hand and told me to expect to hear from him in 10 days about the deposit.
Hmmm. That doesn’t sound good.
2 weeks later I get a bill. For 3750.
For more professional steam cleaning.
HVAC cleanout.
Apparently, we didn’t use the RIGHT brand of ‘wheat’ (OH YES WE DID!).
Two things I haven’t disclosed. I have a bad habit of recording bad people, and my mom is a landlord in the next state. (She is the good kind who never was able to make an income at it.
If people told her they couldn’t afford to pay her because they needed the funds to feed their children, well my mom usually PAID them… So glad she got out.) But my mom was very familiar with the laws and had looked a few things up about my landlord.
So I grabbed my little recorder and called him. He owns a real estate business, his side is rental stuff, and his wife and grown daughters bought and sold houses.
His oldest daughter picks up and transfers me to him. It gets ugly fast and he tells me that I must have let my Australian Shepherd pee in the vent grates and that the way I take care of my daughter would be very interesting to CPS. He can help me work out a payment plan but pretty soon we would be getting into collections territory.
At one point he actually says that ‘all tenants are liars.’ Nice. About 20 mins of being threatened.
I call my mom back. To be honest, I am pretty shaken up. CPS? For what? So my mom tells me to pretend like I am playing along and ask for an itemized receipt. Tell him your mom is going to cover it and tell him your mom needs it before turning over the funds.
I had one 10 mins after I asked.
On my end.
The professional steam cleaner was a friend of mine who had a business and gave me a discount.
HVAC was a scam. The company he listed belonged to his brother-in-law, was defunct, and out of another state. Since I had before/after/AND HIS NEW LISTING pictures I knew he hadn’t hired anyone to do HVAC cleaning.
The vents were painted to the wall… In all the pics.
We saved our paint receipts and I actually had pics of our painting. You can see the right brand and color clear as day.
I called his business and told his daughter that I would be taking him to court. She obviously was unaware of what a jerk her father was because when I told her, ‘no one threatens my little girl’ she didn’t know what I was talking about.
So I put her on speakerphone and played a recording of her dad threatening to have CPS come visit if I didn’t pay up and she made it most of the way through before asking me to turn it off. And then she put me on hold to get her mom, his wife. She tried to ‘reason’ with me, and I backed up the tape to the part where he talks about what happens to kids in the foster system and played it.
She told me they would get back to me. They actually did! The mom and eldest called me on speakerphone and apologized! They told me how the business was divided and how they normally don’t deal with rental stuff. I told them it was fine, but I was still taking him to court.
Time for court.
We ended up in arbitration. I showed up with two laptops, for before and after, proof of his fake HVAC stuff, a stack of literal receipts, him committing a crime by threatening to falsely call CPS, and a pretty good working knowledge of renter law in that state.
At one point the arbitrator asked me if I was a paralegal. Ha!
He had a picture of dirty dishes and stories about how I lived like a pig. I pulled up the pic of the same sink of dishes, with dinner in the foreground, time and date stamped. The arbitrator actually asked, ‘did you expect her to do the dishes before she ate her dinner?’
Even the woman taking notes for the arbitrator was grossed out when I showed them the ketchup and underground room mold pics.
Did you know you can get 3x what you ask for in a rental dispute, depending on your state? Yeah, you can. I did. The arbitrator used the word ‘appalling’ when describing the landlord’s behavior.
When I went out in the hallway afterward there was a young couple there asking the clerk if the landlord was available yet.
Apparently, they were waiting for their turn at arbitration. I asked them if their case was HVAC-related, sure enough, it was. I pulled out all the paperwork I had about it and handed it to them with my number. Actually got several calls from his other tenants. He had been running that scam a while and these kids I had handed the paper to had looked up every house on the landlord’s website and went door to door warning them.
Smart! I hadn’t thought of that.
Meanwhile… My mother was filing a complaint with everyone she could think of because he had his business listed as a suite… which turned out to be a P.O. Box. Huge no-no. Your business must be a location that can be served by the courts.
A year later I saw a truck with his logo drive past. But it wasn’t the dually, it was an older F150.
So I looked him up in the county clerk’s records.
Well first, it seems he got divorced. And cleaned out. The house, big truck, everything went to her. Then she sued him for the business. He got to keep the name, and she took everything else. I looked up the realty website using her maiden name to search, she and the eldest daughter were using her maiden name and had a whole new web page and set up.
Also, my mom got notice that her complaint was being addressed and he had his license suspended and a huge fine to get reinstated. My mom kept an eye on the records for home deeds in the area and all but two of his properties were sold at auction.
So, let’s sum up. He had to pay me 3 times what I asked for. Lost his big illegal business.
Lost his wife. Lost his house(s.) Lost his truck. Lost his license for a while.
No regrets.”
16. Won't Let The Company Out Of A 5 Year Lease? I'll Get The Building Condemned
“This is about the company I work for and a trip I took because I had to wire a building for a computer network because the building owner wouldn’t.
Our company was moving a remote site to a new building. As the IT guy for the company, I was asked to look at the new building and get network ports marked out. The landlord refused to put in any low voltage lines, and we got quotes, but they were thousands of dollars. Enter me, my car, and 4 boxes of cat 6 plena. It’s about an 8-hour drive, and I was doing about 30 drops.
Not a ton, but still, a few days work in someplace that’s already built up, and its drop ceiling with insulation on top. Messy, itchy work.
Day 1. We get there Monday morning at the start of the month. It’s actually a cool summer morning, and we’re from further south, so no one notices the AC not working for about an hour. Slowly, the building begins heating up.
It gets to 80 by noon, 85 at 3 PM. The rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows are greenhouses. It’s miserable. We’ve been told by the workers still on site that the leasing company was told there was no AC in our building 3 weeks ago. The other thing is there are STILL WORKERS ON SITE. The building isn’t completed. So much for being ready for a handover on day 1.
Day 2. We’re getting agitated. It’s 80 degrees in the AM when we first walk in. It’s sweltering. The other guy that came up with me is the facilities manager. He’s screaming at people over the phone to fix the AC. We’re all exhausted from the heat by 3 PM. I found a 4-foot hole in the ducting when I opened the ceiling tile.
The AC was blowing, but there was no cold air. We are told the compressor is broken.
Day 3. More of the same. Miserable in the morning, I’m finally getting the last lines punched in on the patch panel. The AC guys arrive about 10 AM. They finally fix the unit at 2 PM. We ask them what they did. They said ‘A lot of things.’ We again said ‘what did you do?’ The reply was ‘we can’t tell the tenants’.
RED FLAG ALERT! We contacted our realtor, she said she would look into what was done. She sends an email later that night that says ‘they changed the refrigerant from r22 to r410a.’ I tell the facilities guy ‘No way dude. That’s like putting gas in a diesel motor, they’d have to change out the entire system. They didn’t do that in 4 hours.’ They duct-taped and wd-40’d that thing back together and it will run poorly for a month or so, then give out, and we’d be stuck with a replacement.
Day 4. Still no running water to some areas, still workers on site, the AC can’t keep up with the noonday sun, and it still hits around 80 by the end of the day. AC runs continuously. We’re packing up all the stuff we moved in and moving out. I notice all the fire sprinklers look like they have moved, and the metal protection around the drop tile has fallen to the floor.
The sprinklers are no longer protruding from the tiles in some places, in others, they are quite a bit lower than they were. Yep, the AC fools STOOD ON THE FIRE SPRINKLERS to fix their lousy ductwork. We are looking for a friendly way out. We contact the landlord and say ‘You haven’t delivered a finished building, we’re moving out, the lease is broken.’ The landlord has a 36-page lease.
The landlord won’t let us out of the lease, it’s 5 years. This is NOT starting well.
We get in contact with the corporate lawyer and the realtor, they both agree we’re kind of screwed. We are desperate for any way out. I start looking at the fire system (I used to run all kinds of low voltage lines, fire, security, etc). There is no fire panel in our portion of the building.
No smoke detectors are hooked up to anything. More red flags. One of our employees that was moving the heavy gear says ‘Oh yeah, I meant to mention, I never saw any building permits anywhere’ DING DING DING. They did this buildout, including demolition, running new plumbing and power lines, and destroying the fire system — WITHOUT A CITY PERMIT. Cue the call to the city inspector’s office.
Day 5. I wasn’t here for this part, but the facilities manager told me this: ‘The city inspector pulled the permits for the building. There weren’t any. He finds multiple violations of the city code. Red tagged our area, removed the certificate of occupancy. When I told him to check the fire system as you said, he just goes ‘Oh no, no, no, I have to make a call.’ He calls the fire marshal.
Day 8. Fire marshals arrive on the scene. Find no active alarm system in our portion of the building. Red tag. Find the sprinkler riser for the ENTIRE building in our area. No water pressure. Condemned the entire building.
They wouldn’t let us out of the building because we signed a lease, even though they never delivered a building in any semblance of working order.
Called the building inspector, got them smoked, who then called the fire marshal, who condemned the entire building. They are still trying to fight us over it, but we’re pushing for them not only to refund our deposit and the rent, which they have already done, but for all the time spent moving gear in and out, and all the wiring. Our lawyer says they don’t have a leg to stand on, and he’s happy for them to pay his fees as well.”
15. Force Me To Eat At Fancy Restaurants? I'll Do Just That
“Many years ago, I got put on a work assignment for months that required me to travel to New York City and stay every Monday to Friday.
I was assisting a company manager with a project and my hotel was near his regular office in the Theater District.
If you are not familiar, the Theater District is heavily built for tourists. Restaurants are generally kind of fancy and expensive. There were really not any quick and cheap options for dining in that area. The company had a generous meal policy of up to $30-40 per meal for travel expenses.
I did use that for a bit, but the food got to feeling too indulgent and kind of ridiculous given it was an extended assignment. Also, I was working really long hours and did not want to go sit in restaurants – I just wanted to go watch tv and sleep in my room.
So after the first week or so, I instead went to a grocery store on Monday night.
I bought some basics for cereal, sandwiches, and snacks, and some frozen meals I could microwave for lunch in the office. It cost about $60. I then took a few cans of soda from my hotel fridge to make room for my weekly food purchase and returned them before checking out at the end of the week. And that was it for food costs, with an occasional meal out here or there.
I did the same for the next four weeks and submitted my expense report at the end of the month. You know where this is going…
A lady from accounting called and refused to reimburse my expenses because $60 is more than $40, the max allowance for a meal purchase. I explained that had covered 5 days of food but was told it didn’t matter.
I then spent the next month trying all the food in the neighborhood.
There really were not any cheap options. I went out to eat a few mornings, lunch whenever I found time, and dinner absolutely every day. I could have bought a few installments of groceries but the once/week shopping convenience was part of why I’d wanted them. It had also seemed wasteful for me to go out for an expensive meal every night for long-term travel, but now I’d been told that was preferred by accounting over my grocery bills!
The next month, I got a call from my NYC manager asking how I’d run through more budget every week of the month than the entire month before combined. I explained the grocery situation, and he thanked me and hung up. About 10 minutes later, that same lady from accounting called me to tell me they’d pay my still-not-reimbursed grocery bill and any going forward as long as the daily amount averaged for the week was under the aggregate meal allowance.
I happily returned to a more reasonable diet.”
14. Don't Believe We're Out Of Cheese? I'll Just Order Sushi
“My (40F) partner (40M) does most of the cooking. I do other tasks around the house, like cleaning the bathrooms and fixing stuff. We do not always eat together/the same meal, because we work different hours and we enjoy the freedom of eating what we want. So sometimes he’ll make cauliflower for one (his fav, but I’m not a fan) and I’ll make a salad.
Tonight he wanted to make mac ‘n cheese for the both of us. Then we have this text conversation:
Me: ‘Yum! We’re out of cheese–can you get some on your way home?’
Him: ‘We still have cheese in the fridge.’
Me: ‘Nope. I checked and we’re out.’
Him: ‘Are you sure?’
Please note: I was working from home, which he knew, and physically checking the fridge–I wasn’t just guessing that we were out.
Hence saying I CHECKED.
He does this all the time. He’s not a ‘mansplainer,’ but he is very insecure (I guess) and he’s 100% a ‘man-questioner.’ I dislike it because 1. Please just believe what I tell you, 2. All these questions are making me double-guess myself. I’ve straight-up told him that–like, we had that discussion MANY times.
This time, rather than assure him ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ I just stop replying.
If he thinks we have some imaginary cheese leftover in the fridge, then fine, he can use that for the mac and cheese. Meanwhile, I KNOW we’re out of cheese, and here’s where I may have been the jerk. I place an order for sushi. For one.
Partner gets home, checks the fridge–surprise, we’re out of cheese! He proposes to make noodles instead & I tell him to go ahead and cook for one because I’ll eat something else.
He makes the noodles, sits down to eat and the delivery guy shows up with my petty revenge sushi, which was delicious by the way.”
Another User Comments:
“Husband said while standing in front of the fridge and staring into the abyss, we’re out of cream.
No, we’re not, I said from the living room. Second shelf, left, halfway back.
Nope, he says, not there.
K, I said, if I come in there and find it, you are going to clean the carpets. ALLLL the carpets.
Nope, he says, not there.
Ok………. So I get up, walk to the fridge, reach exactly where I told him to, and hand him the cream he said wasn’t there.
And then he spent his entire Saturday cleaning the carpets. You would THINK that would have been enough to teach him a lesson.
Still, he insists things aren’t where I said they are. So I say, ok, if I come in there and find it, you are going to do (insert awful chore here.) I’ve gotten a lot of stuff done around the house lately.” christmasshopper0109
13. Didn't Want To Offer Me A Full Time Job? Don't Come Crying Back To Me
“I was hired as a temp for this big food distribution company of which I will remain nameless for anonymity sakes. The woman’s position I was filling in for was going on maternity leave soon. I really needed the job at the time so I took it and they promised if I did an ‘amazing job they’d hire me full time’. I was a raw materials supply distributor, basically, I ordered supplies and sent them where they needed to go for scientists to make ‘new foods’.
I have a really strong background in computer programming. After learning how to do the job in a month or so she had her baby and went on leave.
I completely automated this woman’s job in a matter of weeks using only excel and Powershell. I didn’t say a word until the end of my last few weeks where I basically did very little in the time leading up to her return.
I added in a few updates for changes in workflows and verified all the data was correct at the end of the day after it ran but that was all I really did. I asked for more work from my boss which led me to fill in on the production line, a path I did not want to take. Toward the last few weeks of my temp period, the woman returned from maternity leave.
I showed her what I had done. Her jaw had about hit the floor in awe that I had made all the hard work she was doing for years be completed by a computer program in a few minutes every day. In our next team meeting, it was brought up that I would need to get everyone ‘online’ with this program before my temp period was up.
DING DING DING! went off in my head that they are not planning on keeping me with that idiotic comment. So I obliged and got everyone ‘on board’. Unbeknownst to them, I put in a clause in the PowerShell script with a CLI XML encryption locally to the PC I was using. It grabs a specific encrypted date a few weeks out from my termination date and would just stop working after that date or once they had wiped my local folder on the PC or just simply not having the PC on.
If they had decided to keep me I could just turn it off and no one would have been the wiser. I added this snippet to every IF statement and FOR loop possible with a new variable every time (thanks to Powershell) in the code so if someone was to go through it to try and fix it, it would be a nightmare to fix if they had the audacity to with identifying and renaming every variable and clause and regenerating the clixml.
So as you can imagine I was not offered a full-time position for said company and when I had mentioned the comments when I first started for ‘doing an amazing job’ (which I believe I had fit the criteria for doing so) my boss said that with SAP coming into the production team next week my expertise would not be needed. A month or so later I got a text from my old boss saying that he needed to talk to me about that program I wrote.
It was two days after my magic shut-off date. I knew exactly what the call was about and never returned the call as I had a better job offer already lined up. I feel if I had returned the call I wouldn’t be able to stop laughing during the conversation of troubleshooting.”
Another User Comments:
“I had a similar one, albeit way less technical. I worked a night shift where my job was to update spreadsheets so access databases could import the new information and various managers would run queries in the databases to get whatever info they were looking for.
I shadowed the other night shift person who worked in a separate building. She was older, and she would literally open up the two excel files, and cell by cell copy and paste the info into the excel file the database imported from. Took her roughly 6 hours to do all of it. I questioned why we didn’t just import from the new sheet instead of copying the data into the import sheet, but they didn’t want to mess with the databases, and apparently changing the way each department did their export was set in stone as well.
I didn’t even bother asking why they were doing this in Access. The other two hours were us sitting and watching a check printer spit out all the checks they sent everywhere each day. Payroll and vendor type checks. Irrelevant to my story though.
When it was my time to be on my own there were several ways I figured I could automate it, but being lazy I just copied the new info into a new sheet on the import excel document.
The new data was always formatted the exact same way, likely from some poor shmuck copy and pasting it into excel, and the data was in such a way that I just set up vlookups to grab the new info, and then the access databases could import their new info. Every night of my 8-hour shift I spent maybe 10 minutes copying data into each excel sheet, and then 2 hours watching checks print.
The vast majority of my time was spent listening to Coast to Coast AM sipping on coffee or tea.
Our company was seriously affected by the 2008 crash and pulled about 200 of us into a big meeting. Which we all knew was not a good sign. They told us in three months they were going to lay all of us off with a severance check. They kept the previous night shift employee and let me go because she had seniority.
I could have shown her how to do it, but she was the type of person to rat a person out, so on my last day I just copy and pasted the main sheet and pasted the values erasing all the vlookups I had done making the excel document exactly like it originally was.” FaThLi
12. I Told You Not To Run It Over, Now Reap The Consequences
“Many years ago, while working in a different field I was a heavy machine operator on a mine site. Multi-skilled which made going to work interesting because I never knew from one day to the next what I would be doing.
One day though after being on a grader for a few weeks straight I thought I’d speak up about something that has been bugging me. So at the next pre-work team meeting I stood up and said that I had noticed some of (it was only two of them and I knew who but being nice I thought I’d not single them out) the truck drivers had started to think it was fun to run over the graded windrow (the spill that comes off the trailing edge of the blade) and to please stop.
Boss nods his head and says yes that shouldn’t be happening, most everyone else nods and says ok.
Problem solved? Nope…
While I’m grading a bit of road I get a call to shift a bit of spillage, I go clean it up and go back to grading to see that not only had part of it been run over and compacted into the ground but some of it spread across the road (this can be achieved by locking back wheels up and drifting/sliding the truck into/on the window).
I’m not too pleased. I get on the radio to tell the drivers to pull their heads in. I flip channels and call control to find out who the drivers were on that run, both of the suspects were there and had just gone down into the pit and were going to be the ONLY trucks on that route that afternoon as the rest were required at a different pit.
As I was talking to control one of the truck drivers went past laughing and pointing, so I thought I needed a laugh as well.
As luck would have it, there was a lot of cuttings/mud on the road edge from a rain event a couple of weeks before and so my plan started to get formed. I called the water truck and told them not to come down the pit as I was going to do a mud run (laying mud and cuttings back onto the road… Helps to widen the road, keeps the dust down short term and also adds a smoother finish to the road).
I also called the trucks so they knew (for your information, all radio channels are recorded) and I started to get into it. I pulled out mud and crap from the edge of the road but halfway through I pulled out some fairly large rocks as well and they were hidden in the mud.
Now the thing with the mud run is that I always did them downhill to keep traction.
As I had done a pass and was heading back up the hill I see one of the truck drivers gleefully coming down the hill pulverizing the windrow so I stop to watch the fun… He hit the rocks, swerved a couple of times then carried on, but the look on his face when he hit the first rock and everything got thrown around the cab was worth it, eyes went big, face went white as he got a serious rocking in his seat.
He called up saying that there were rocks in the windrow and I answered by saying it wouldn’t be a problem if he kept off the windrow. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t laughing at the time.
The next day I got to hear his shift buddy (night shift driver) rip him a new one for all the mess in the cab – and how the heck did he get coffee everywhere?
Like to say they learned their lesson but nope, they carried on doing stupid things.”
11. I Accidentally Confided A Secret To A Coworker And Ended Up Getting 40k
“I worked at a chain salon in the US for minimum wage (+tips).
We got paid on a sliding scale, the more you added services the more your hourly pay. Then, for back to school, we started offering $10 haircuts. It’s dumb to offer a big discount on back to school because that’s when everyone needs a haircut but whatever.
Except, to advertise this sale we had to stand on a rickety step stool and hang a 10-foot long 3-foot wide banner off the roof of our store.
The step stool alone made it a dangerous task, but on top of it, the sidewalk was uneven. Our manager insisted we do it twice a day (open&close) ‘in case someone steals the banner’. Because certainly, someone would want to steal a banner with our logo that says ‘$10 Haircuts’.
It was annoying but I was looking forward to my next paycheck. I had a high service dollar per hour which should’ve meant a bigger hourly pay & paycheck.
Except it didn’t. That $7/haircut discount? It was coming out of our final service dollar calculations and we ended up making significantly less than usual! I’d worked there for years and this was the smallest back-to-school paycheck I’d ever seen.
I went in the next day and was annoyed. That morning, a coworker (who was a total brown-nose & gossip) and I were outside setting up the banner.
It was my turn to stand on the rickety step stool and I said I was ‘glad this will be the last time I ever do this!’ I was fully prepared to make a joke about how I was going to fall and crack my head open when the petty revenge idea came into my mind and I swiftly executed it. When she asked why, I told her not to tell anyone but I’d accepted a job at another salon with a set schedule, higher commission, and $5 more an hour.
I said I’d planned on putting in my two weeks but they needed me to start sooner so I was going to work the weekend and not come back. This would leave us understaffed for the back-to-school rush. After reiterating she could NOT tell ANYONE, especially not our boss, she agreed.
I left early that day and on my next shift, my boss pulled me into her office.
She said she’d ‘heard a rumor’ that I was leaving to work at a different salon. I told her I had a much better offer elsewhere but if she could match that I would love to stay. She had to put a call into our district leader about the raise but said I could work with a set schedule starting the following week. I was working until 9 pm some days and at 9 am the next, the unpredictable schedule made finding childcare a pain in the butt!
I was consistently ranked #2 in sales for our store and the district, so the DL approved the raise and I stayed there another five years! This means I got an additional $39,000 in pay for ‘accidentally’ telling the salon gossip my ‘secret’. I also got a 20% commission on $500-$1000 a week in product sales.
I also started printing out my service sales slip from the day before at the beginning of every shift, so that when payroll ‘readjusted’ the paychecks to include coupons I could pull up my record and dispute it.
According to payroll, there was nothing they could do about it. I stayed another five years, raising the issue sporadically until they brought back the $10/haircut sale and I quit. A few months after I left I was made aware that a different employee in another state filed a class-action lawsuit and I got a letter asking if I wanted to be a part of it.
I accepted and the lawyer loved receiving five years’ worth of documentation, emails from corporate and payroll, etc. they had to go back through all of my paychecks and compensate me for the difference. This included adding the free haircuts (reward program) and discounted haircuts as their whole amount, increasing the service dollar. .19 cents an hour here and .30 cents an hour there added up and despite the fact that the settlement was split with a lot of people I got $10k from that in addition to my adjusted pay which was around half the settlement amount.”
Another User Comments:
“I did something similar regarding using the gossiping co-worker. He wasn’t really a gossiping type. I just know where I stood in the company and the guy I ‘used’ was pretty high up and was well respected within the company.
One day I went into his office and asked if can we talk off the record. He said sure! I said I’m about to ask you for a favor, but pls don’t ask any follow-up questions.
He said sure. I asked ‘can I use you as a reference?’
He kind of hesitates and you can tell his wheels were spinning then says ‘of course!’
A couple of hours later, the president/co-owner walks into my office. Asks me to have lunch with him as he wants to discuss something. Of course, I accept. We get to the restaurant and he tells me that he heard I’m looking at other opportunities.
I play it off and say well I wasn’t really looking, but when someone knocks it would be dumb for me not to answer. He nods his head and asked me how much the difference was. I said well, it’s not all about the money and I laid out 3-4 things I wasn’t really happy about.
So he says ‘you know what, you’re right.
I can throw all the money at you, but if you’re not happy, then we’re back in the same place a few months to a year from now.’ I nod. He then says ‘Ok, let’s say we’re able to address all your concerns. Let’s get to the salary. What are you looking for?’
I gave a number, without blinking, before I even finished saying the number he says ‘done’, but I made it seem like I wasn’t done so I said plus 5% commission (no one in the company had this type of pay package) and additional 2 weeks off/yr. He sticks his hand out.
I said before we shake, I want to tell you I am still going to my final interview at the other place today as I don’t want to burn bridges, and will still mull both options, but I promised him I would not use his new offer as leverage. I just wanted to go through the motions and politely decline (though it’s a large industry, people tend to know everyone by maybe 2-3 degrees of separation).
He said he respected that and hoped that I’m in his office the next day ready to shake his hand.
Went to the final interview, and they said they wanted to move forward. I asked if I can have the night to think it over and to please send the offer letter. I was going to decline, but I wanted it just in case the President/co-owner of my current job got overruled by the other owners.
The next day, I go to the President/co-owner’s office with my hand out to shake his hand. He shook my hand and pulled me in for a man hug. And that’s how I got an over 120% raise (if you count the commission).” SomeGuyClickingStuff
10. Check My Schedule? Why, I Had No Idea I Was Supposed To Be There
“Once upon a time, I was the supervisor for the security team at a small college on the East Coast. When the Director of Security left, there were two people up to replace him, me and a senior supervisor for the company that the college contracted with. He was chosen. OK. I can live with it – I had very little experience in the field and was only a supervisor because of my military experience.
The company gave me a 15% raise to keep me there, which worked.
The new Director (ND) was a very hard-working, well-intentioned idiot. He did work hard, but he had no idea how to manage anything and was more concerned with finding projects that he could put on his resume, than with what the team could realistically accomplish. Things that didn’t get top billing on a resume didn’t get much attention.
Like, for example… scheduling. If you’ve never worked in security, it’s a nightmare. No real prerequisites, so you get a lot of random bozos who either can’t do the job or just don’t want to work. The college was a complicated site, so we got the relatively smart ones, but that wasn’t saying much.
Schedules went from being done two weeks out to one… then to several days… I’m sure you can see where this is heading.
It got to the point where I was taking screenshots of my schedule on my phone twice a day, in preparation for the inevitable s******s. I started asking him about the schedule, which naturally annoyed him to no end, and the obvious snap response was, ‘Just check your schedule on (scheduling app)!’
I tried pointing out that the schedule had been changing a lot recently, and the response got shorter and ruder.
For the sake of perspective, I called him at 8:30 at night once, because my schedule had changed (since lunchtime) to have me in at 5:00 am, and he hadn’t bothered to let me know.
Then, the Malicious Compliance Fairy waved her magic wand, and I heard the angelic chorus…
Okey-dokey. If you’re going to be a jerk about it…
On Friday I noticed that I was not scheduled for the morning shift on Saturday, which I normally covered. I knew we didn’t have anyone hired for that shift. I asked the only other person who could work weekend mornings… nope, he wasn’t scheduled. And I had JUST been yelled at for not just following the schedule.
And you’re darn right I turned my ringer off before I went to bed.
So when I rolled out of bed at 8:00 the next morning, I had 13 missed calls. Most from ND, but two from a senior supervisor, and one from middle management at the company office! So ND, being a jerk, called in higher management when he couldn’t get ahold of me. So naturally, I called back the most important people first.
‘Why, no, Company Manager, I have no idea why ND would expect me to be there… I’m very conscientious about my schedule! In fact, let me send you this time-stamped screenshot of the schedule from last night! Well, of course, being the team player that I am, I will be happy to run in to cover the shift that ND had to get up at 5:00 for!’
So ND shot himself in the darn foot, and everyone knew because he called in HIS boss. And I got to sleep in, and still get a half shift of that sweet, sweet, OT.
Oh, and ND decided after 6 months that the job was too stressful, and I now hold the position. Incidentally, the first thing I do every week is make sure the schedule is done two weeks ahead.”
9. You're Not That Allergic? Well, You Should've Said So
“This happened a while back before everyone was allergic to everything and there were a dozen different menus depending on your allergies.
I was waiting tables in a 20-table Mexican restaurant and I was early on for dinner at 4 pm. Note, the food there was crazy good! The restaurant was dead and I was the only server. A 4 top walks in so I seat them. I give them a minute and I come over to take drink orders. I begin my ‘Welcome to (restaurant), my name is…’ and I am cut off.
Karens weren’t a thing then, but she was a Karen.
Karen – I have a very specific list of allergies so I’m going to have to ask a lot of questions.
Me – Not a problem! We will make sure to get you a great meal and…
Karen – I’m allergic to nuts, eggs, gluten (which had just become a thing), milk products, soy, MSG, shellfish, and any animal product (not a thing)…
Me – Okay, could you slow down, I want to write this down.
Quick background, growing up, one of my best friends had a peanut allergy. I had seen him have to use an epi-pen a couple of times and that stuff is scary. One of my good friend’s sons has celiac and it is also a pain. So I always treat allergies with the utmost importance.
She proceeds to list the allergies again making sure I knew how dangerous any of those things could be to her. Gotcha. I grab some drinks and drop them off. When I do, I am chastised for not bringing out the chips and salsa fast enough. Again, it’s around 4 pm and I’m the only one there. I apologize and go grab the chips and salsa.
I drop them off.
Karen – Why didn’t you bring the green sauce? Ugh. Everyone knows you are supposed to get it with the chips. You must be new.
Me – Which green sauce as we have several and I’ll have to check to make sure they don’t have any products you are allergic to.
Karen – I don’t know what it’s called, the green one!
Now I know which one she probably wants as it is very popular and since it is requested quite often, many servers just bring it out with the chips.
Me – Do you mean the (insert sauce name)?
Karen – Ugh, yes! Bring me that one.
I go in the back and can already tell how this table is going to go. Going to be run ragged for a couple of bucks.
It’s becoming clear that she isn’t allergic to these items, but just either doesn’t like them or likes the attention and sympathy she gets for making a big deal about how she could literally die if she ate some. Time for some malicious compliance. The sauce she wants is freaking delicious. It’s a blend of jalapenos, cilantro, tomatillos, and ranch. Uhoh! Ranch is made with mayo.
Mayo is made with eggs. Nope!
Me – I’m sorry, I talked with the chef and that sauce is made with eggs, which was on your list (which I show her I have written down.
Karen – Oh, that’s why I must have gotten so sick the last time I came here. (looks over to friends) That last server was so stupid to give it to me, didn’t I tell him I was allergic?
I could have died!
Her co-diners ask if they could have some of the green sauce. She says she can’t even be around anything she is allergic to so no green sauce for the table! She proceeds to order the veggie enchiladas and explains to her co-diners how hard it is to go out to eat with her condition. I take her order, go talk to the chef and come back.
I explain to her that the vegetables are sauteed with a bit of marinate that contains soy but I can get them grilled without it. Rice and beans? Nope, cooked in lard and chicken stock. She asks about a veggie burrito. Same move, go to the chef and come back. The burrito tortilla is a double no! Gluten and lard! Stuffed peppers? Nope, rice again.
She is starting to get defeated and her co-diners are getting visibly annoyed with her shenanigans as they ordered a good 20 min ago. There is almost nothing on the menu that fits her ‘needs’.
Karen – Well what can I have then?!
Me – I could make a salad with some oil and vinegar dressing? Maybe add some grilled corn, tomatoes, and avocados?
Karen – Ugh, just bring me the veggie burrito.
I’m not THAT allergic.
Me – Maam, you told me earlier that any of your allergies could literally kill you. I cannot, in good faith, bring you something you have told me could kill you! Do you have your epi-pen? With so many things around you that you are allergic to, I am worried about your health!
Karen – Just bring me the salad!
As I walk away I hear her mutter, ‘I’ve had it in the past and it has been fine.
I’m not THAT allergic.’ I bring out their food and everyone else has super tasty Rellenos, tacos, burritos, etc. and Karen has a super boring salad. Luckily her friends paid and left a good tip!”
8. Tell Me To Smile More? I Can't, My Grandmother Died
“My job is very strict and professional and practically requires a poker face, but my poker face often looks like a resting witch face.
Through 5 years of my job almost every other day, I get that freaking ‘you should smile more’ sentence. I would politely say that we are not doing anything funny right now, and proceed with my job, while they insist even though we are not doing anything funny, it doesn’t hurt to smile.
I just don’t reply to that, wrap up my job and greet away.
Today, was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. Another one rolls up, I feel his look on me while I was scanning his documents, and he goes ‘Did someone make you mad?’ I don’t reply, and he still insists. ‘Why are you not smiling?’ I say my usual line and he still pushes it and I snapped and said, ‘My grandmother died, do I still have to smile for you?’
I could see how he started to blush, and then he started to stutter, like ‘Oh, I didn’t know, I’m so sorry, my regrets,’ yadda, yadda.
I just shrugged him off by telling him ‘Next time, you should probably think before you tell someone to smile for you.’
Of course, my granny didn’t die. I hadn’t even met my grandmothers. But I hope he learned a lesson that not every female in the world is willing to smile at him just because he said so.
Next one who says that to me will get, ‘No, I don’t think I will smile, smiling gives wrinkles!’
Another User Comments:
“I did something similar at a gas station.
My husband (at the time) was filling the tank. I went inside to pee and wash my face and pay for the gas. I needed to wash my face because I’d been crying for the past couple of hours.
See, we were on our way to my newly widowed stepmother’s house. Dad had been dead less than twelve hours at that point and I was devastated.
On my way out of the store this old fart on his way in stopped dead in front of me, forcing me to stop. ‘Why the long face? You should be smiling!’ he says, brightly. ‘A pretty girl like you should smile all the time!’
‘My dad died. Last night,’ I managed to choke out those five words, the tears pouring down my face again when I’d only just gotten a hold of myself mere minutes before. I couldn’t say any more, I just bolted for the truck and a hug from my husband.
I wasn’t really processing it at the time, but the look on that man’s face is forever seared into my memory.
It took him a minute to register what I’d said and I don’t think he really did until I started crying again. Then, the leering grin fell from his face so fast that I swear I actually heard it shatter on the pavement and he went white as a sheet, face completely slack, as if he’d had an instant stroke.
I didn’t see any more of his face after that, just his back as I climbed into the truck.
But he was still just standing there in the middle of the parking lot when we were settled and pulling out.
It’s been ten years now and most of the sorrow of that day has faded. Now, I find myself torn between outrage at the man’s audacity and hilarity at the result of my words that day.” pokey1984
7. Can't Expense My Flight? Fine, I'll Just Drive
“I bought a house 4 years ago in a quiet neighborhood. I had wanted to get into that neighborhood for years. My best friend lives there. It was a couple of blocks from my kid’s school. It was a good neighborhood.
My neighbors across the street were forced to move at the beginning of 2020 before the eviction moratorium was in place.
They were really good neighbors. We were friendly with each other and we were sad to see them go. So when the property owner rented to a new family we were hoping we could cultivate a friendly relationship. Unfortunately, that was not the case.
About a month after they moved in the isolation started. And that’s when things went from 0-100 real quick. For the next year every night, there was a huge party.
Cars down the street music so loud you could hear it over regular house noise in every room in my house. My friend in the next cul-de-sac would text me regularly if the music he was hearing was my neighbors.
We tried to be civil. I asked politely. I even brought them booze. Eventually, they threatened me and my wife so we started calling the police.
Almost every night for 4 months. We organized with the neighbors. And they started calling the police as well.
Eventually, the others gave up and started selling their houses because the renters were just that bad. We were still upside down on our place so it wasn’t an option for us. Eventually, the police told me that I needed to stop calling and that it wasn’t their issue to deal with.
That I was a bigger nuisance than the renter’s music.
It was at that time the housing market was taking off. Houses were selling in my area for 40-50k over appraisal value. My wife and I looked at what we needed to make so we could move and listed our home for that.
In three days we had a handful of offers to choose from.
But it was the lowest offer that stood out to us the most. Their offer was a good 20k under the next lowest but they sent a letter. I’m a sucker for a letter especially one with a picture of a young pregnant couple and a dog… and a patrol car?
Turns out the young man is a police officer newly appointed at the local PD.
And he takes his patrol car home. I knew at that point that this was the family to sell my house to. I moved out as the neighbors were throwing a huge party. The next day the police moved in and they haven’t had another since.
I drive by regularly on my way to my buddy’s place. They just sit quietly in their garage looking bored. I make sure I honk and wave every time.”
6. You Want The Funds Now? You'll Have To Wait Even Longer
“I work at a credit union and we use a fancy online system to validate checks. It was designed by the guy from Catch Me If You Can.
If they’re over a certain value we run them through the system and they come back either clear or with a hold recommendation, at which point we do some research on the account and decide for ourselves whether to put a hold on the check or deny it if it gives us the willies.
So this day is a pretty steady one, and I’m holding down the teller line while my colleagues take lunch.
A woman walks in with her partner, her face is (soon understandably) a bit of a mess and she looks visibly upset. So she hands me a check for $65k and asks to deposit it.
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Just as a heads up though, there’ll probably be a couple of days’ hold on it, just because of the amount.’
‘How long?’ the partner suddenly asks.
Bear in mind, that he is not on the check and he is not on the account, so it has exactly nothing to do with him.
‘I’ll do the best I can for you,’ I say very deliberately to her, directing my responses to the account holder after all. ‘But based on the amount, you’re probably looking at about 5-10 days, it’s a security feature to protect you in case the check bounces for any reason.’
She nods shyly in understanding, but he butts in with, ‘No that won’t work, I need that money this weekend.’
‘Babe, it’s fine. We were going to save it anyway,’ she says quietly.
‘No, I told you I wanted that Charger now that we have the funds for it,’ he responds.
I do my best to roll my eyes internally and just decide to busy myself running the check.
That’s when I notice what it is. This is a life insurance check… for her dad. All the pieces started to fit together now. Her dad had died, most likely very recently, and this was the check she had to remember him by.
And this Grade-A jerk wanted it for a new car.
Go go Gadget, malicious compliance.
‘Okay, I’ll make you a deal,’ I begin.
‘I think this needs to go on hold because of the amount, but being as it’s coming from a verifiable source, our system might clear it. Here’s the deal, if you don’t want to take my 5-10 days, we’ll run it through the system, take whatever it says and do that.’
‘So it might go straight in?’ God’s gift to courtship asks.
‘I’ve seen it clear bigger checks, yeah, if it thinks the source is good enough then yeah,’ I say.
This was technically true, I have seen bigger checks cleared by the system with no holds. But never an insurance check. They’re too easily forged and too often and it makes our system very paranoid.
‘Alright, that’s a deal,’ he says.
I ignore him, shoot her a knowing glance and say very carefully, ‘Is that okay with you, it is your check.’ She must have picked up on what I was putting down because she agreed very readily.
Ran the check, extended 30-day hold recommendation. I enjoy watching the color drain from Casanova’s face, catch the first smile on hers I’ve seen since she walked in, and offer him some Qui-Gon wisdom.
‘Whenever you gamble, my friend, eventually you lose. I’m really very sorry for your loss.’
‘Whatever,’ he spits out.
‘I was speaking to her…’ I clarify.
The way I see it, I just bought that poor girl 30 days to get rid of him.”
5. I Can't Quit On A Friday? We'll See About That
“This was from my last job (global financial firm with Initials Ms.). I was a contractor in the IT department there for over a year, had a lot of complaints against them (original manager forgot to file paperwork costing me a free position, overworked, culture that tried to sell more work as being a sign of praise rather than pay you to do more work, etc.)
Well it was time for me to move on, I’d scored a great state job, better pay, great benefits, still work from home, and even then the office was even closer…. all around they wouldn’t be able to compete. They were aware of this for about 2 months as they almost sank it by dragging their heels on some verifications like employment verification. I even flat out told my manager I’d be leaving at the end of the month.
Finally had my official start date, gave a bit over 2 weeks’ notice to quit on a Friday so I could start my first day on Monday. Here is where the stupidity begins.
This place has the policy to run all software updates on Sunday so every Monday is a nightmare. Everything is broken due to poor QA, all hands on deck, if you call off they are gonna fight you, etc. They like to bully people and everyone who left had some attempt to get them to stay longer….and it has sadly worked (people don’t get how little power they actually have).
So my time came, the manager calls me up and goes on and on with nonsense, telling me it’s not proper etiquette to give only 2 weeks’ notice (since when?!), that I should know it takes a minimum of 3 weeks to complete training so I should know they can’t replace me in time (you had 1 to 2 months already) and how can I do this to my coworkers, I’m a selfish and bad person…so this doesn’t get the reaction or response management wants.
Now they bring out ‘policy’. They tell me it’s against company policy to quit on a Friday… I know this is bull but they don’t really hand out policy books here, and HR is kind of… well for contractors it’s not a thing, contractors are 2nd class workers with hardly any rights after all…. still I’m leaving the company and how does this affect me?
I tell them something to the effect that I’m the one quitting and I’m still going to leave on that Friday. Seriously not sure how this was going in their mind, they doubled down that I had to work that next Monday for them. I think hoping to get their foot in the door, ruin my next job, etc.
Well this isn’t working for them now is it, they are really fuming now… so they give their ultimatum, if I won’t work that Monday then I am to sign out and not clock back in until I have changed my mind… they are looking smug, they are effectively threatening to fire me early, making me lose out on pay and stuff, they know we don’t have PTO… well I also have no care at this point, my finances are fine, my new job I need a full suit for… I guess I earned myself an unpaid vacation.
I log out, they keep looking smug, leaving me with another ‘Remember, don’t clock in until you’ve decided to be reasonable.’
The next day I don’t log in. A few hours later I get a call screaming about how I’m late and I’ve caused so many problems….I cut them off saying I’m still not coming in Monday so per our meeting, I’m not to clock in….silence…they ask if I’m serious….I ask if they were serious yesterday….they call me a pug-headed fool and tell me to just come in on Monday like they asked (thought this was a demand?).
They then wait a moment and ask if I’m going to grow up and come back in… Well, I’m bored at this point and ask if they are going to pay my new rate on Monday. I get a confused no, so I tell them they have their answer.
They called every day that last week bouncing between apologies, insults, browbeating, etc., while still always standing on the ‘you need to come in on Monday.’ This was a whole week of them, sometimes multiple days, begging me to come in even part of the day to dig them out of holes, but then doubling down that ‘if you come in that does mean you’re coming back all the way through Monday right?’
I’d already dropped off their equipment since I didn’t need any of it at this point even if I did finish my week. They even called on Monday to tell me I was fired for not showing up.
I still think they thought I was joking or playing hardball for a promo or raise. It’s the only reason I have for all that, or they really thought I’d throw my new job for them.
They had a big focus on company loyalty that a lot of people seemed to buy into so maybe they just assumed I’d be loyal. I did hear my old manager had to fill in for me as they couldn’t get anyone to do my shift and my jobs, and that now months later my manager and several others quit as everything is buckling, they promised more than they could deliver and drove off experienced people like me.”
4. I Must Help Newly Arrived Patients No Matter What? I'll Drop Everything I'm Doing
“I practice as a Licensed Optician in Canada. While opticians are technically a healthcare profession (and regulated similarly to nurses and pharmacists), many of the jobs are glorified sales positions. Prior to moving into the lab side of the industry (that is the manufacture and finishing of prescription lenses), I worked for an independent opticians practice first as a student and then when I first got my license.
It was a large-ish practice with two doctors and a team of four opticians and four regular staff. The owner (one of the opticians) was… a bit of a handful.
See, she wasn’t a particularly good optician. She knew very little about the profession or lens technologies but she was an unbelievably savvy businessperson and had kept her business afloat for over two decades. She had this cult-like following amongst the customers for a variety of reasons.
First, at least three-quarters of our patients were from the same community/culture as her sharing things like friends and language. Second, she did offer decent pricing – and on eyewear that can mean a LOT of savings. Finally, she allegedly did things with their alleged health insurance that would allegedly be questionably legal… allegedly. This opinion of my former boss created a very strange environment for the rest of the staff… it meant that a good portion of the patients wouldn’t actually interact with us (or in some cases speak to us) at all.
As one can imagine, this made for some awkwardness and it also made doing our jobs difficult. You can’t very well fit someone for eyewear if they actively refuse to speak to you.
One day we got a poor Google review that leveled a number of accusations against the practice (though NOT my boss) and among them was a comment about not being properly greeted when they walked into the practice.
As a rule, if you weren’t with someone and the door opened you offered a cheery ‘hello!’ My boss flew into this rage blasting her usual punching bag (for some reason) over this, and then turned on the rest of us. A new policy was instituted:
‘NO MATTER WHAT, YOU MUST GREET NEW ARRIVALS.’
Later that week I was fitting a patient with contact lenses, a type of paid appointment that has a maximum time limit of 90 minutes.
They were a regular patient of our clinic, an existing contact lens patient, but were being fitted with a more ‘fiddly’ type of lens called a multifocal (hence the hour and a half of ‘chair time’). The door to the practice opened and I failed to greet the new arrival, though other staff did say hello. The new arrival, while waiting for their optometrist appointment began to browse for new glasses without the help of any of us.
At this moment, my boss stalked out of her office and snatched the file and pen out of my hands.
Boss: ‘Go and help X.’
Me: ‘But I have a patient.’
Boss: ‘No, you’re going to help X.’
Me (to patient): ‘Umm Y, I’m really sorry… I’ll… I’ll be back.’
I left Patient Y simply sitting there while I approached Patient X who very firmly told me (after I had greeted them) that they would not talk to me, only to my Boss.
I shrugged and returned to my patient angry and embarrassed. I decided to make my point…
In the weeks following every time anyone walked into the store I stopped what I was doing and went to greet them. Unpacking orders? That can wait, someone’s walked in. Cutting lenses on a rush job? That can wait, someone’s walked in. Fitting a patient with glasses or dispensing purchased eyewear… these things can wait!
Someone’s walked in. I was always extremely polite about it, and I always pretended (at least to the patients I would step away from) that it was a bit overwhelming but like a good soldier I was going to do my job! Nine out of ten times the patients would shoo me away because they would only deal with my boss and that was fine with me, I would be back doing my previous task in no time.
Finally, a patient bought into my act and said something to my boss. I was worried it would be a complaint – something to the effect of ‘your staff member walked away from helping me when…’ – but it wasn’t. This patient told my boss that it seemed like all of the opticians were juggling too many people and that I sounded more stressed than normal. Then came the magic words: ‘An optician shouldn’t have to stop what he is doing to run over to say hello to someone just to be told to go away while helping me.’
The following Monday, change was in the air… we had a new rule: Say hello to new arrivals and help them… if you can. I left not too long after all this went down (moving to a better job) but the industry is small enough that I know all of that alleged stuff… well… let’s just say someone’s hands were allegedly red.”
3. This Guy Scammed Me While I Was Unemployed And I Haven't Stopped Getting Revenge On Him
“First and foremost: this didn’t happen in the US. Some events might be pursuable up there but down here, it was mostly no man’s land regarding the kind of scams I fell for. For the sake of this story, here in no man’s land, we use the top-level domain NML.
My wife is a nurse. Back then, in the early 2000s, she worked in an ICU of a relatively exclusive – and therefore expensive – hospital. Specifically, she had to care for patients that had undergone cardiac surgery.
At the same time, I was working for a small company that was going out of business. The owners were retiring, we hadn’t secured any important contracts lately, and in my country, you have to pay for employees’ severance (unless you file for bankruptcy) so they decided to shut down while they still had enough to pay our severances.
One day my wife calls me and tells me about this gentleman in his late 50s that had been on the verge of passing away, and after that close call, he was so grateful and stuff. We’ll call him Benny Lowy. This gentleman happened to work in electronic imports, which gave him access to incredibly convenient deals. Long story short, he was so grateful he could sell us an LCD TV, a store demo unit that had been used just once and we’d need to pay like 1/4 of its retail price, as long as we kept it quiet because he was risking his relationship with the brand.
It caught me off-guard. I said yes and she paid.
Anyway, the only TV in the house had been a wedding present and weighed over 100lb. We were eager to replace it. I was naïve, I know. But I thought, being her patient she knew all personal data from this guy, so it seemed unlikely he would target her for a scam. His father was a known businessman.
Now retired and approaching his 80s, Mr. Lowy Sr. was well respected in his community and wouldn’t have let his son wreak havoc. Also, my wife had acquaintances in common with Benny’s brother, a known doctor at another hospital.
Christmas was approaching, she asked Benny – who had been already discharged and back home – for advice regarding the present she wanted to give me.
A phone. He hooked her up with the best she could think of. Now, I can’t remember the exact model but it was a Sony Ericsson flagship and it wasn’t yet offered by local carriers. He had access to it because of his status as a local representative for said brand. She went with it. Paid.
I’ve said my employer was shutting down, so just for the sake of it, she asked Benny if he knew of someone needing an IT guy.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll meet your husband at this place tomorrow, etc.’
And there I was, in a gas station, uptown, he pulled over in a luxury car. Mr. Lowy was a normal-looking guy, used a cane, and had noticeable knee or hip pain. We sat down in the gas station coffee shop, and he told me about a mid-management position, reporting to him, in a mining company I had barely heard about.
He coached me on what I should say in the upcoming job interview, we spoke about salary. I was dazzled. Wait, mining? Didn’t you say he was into imports? He was that kind of guy you can’t pause to question because he’d already thrown something extra to the mix and this position had a better paycheck than the one I was being laid off.
In the next few days, we had a few phone calls, stuff looked promising, and I had been already laid off.
We agreed he’d pick me up on Dec 24th and he’d introduce me to senior managers as the recommended helpdesk junior manager. I woke up extra early and put on my best suit. Waited in the front yard. Hours went by. I had planned to be back before noon to arrange stuff for that night’s dinner because my parents were coming over.
After calling him repeatedly, he told me he had been assaulted and robbed. ‘They took my cane and broke it on my knee,’ he wailed. Poor guy.
I told him to forget about my interview for the time being. ‘No, no, I promised you, I’ll make it up to you…’ Of course, since he had been injured, he wasn’t able to deliver the items my wife bought from him. That night my mother asked me about the new job. I could not bring myself to tell her about the delay. I told her it was going fine.
That night I googled him. Nothing showed up except for some awards in the imports and customs associations of whatever.
He called me to reschedule our interview. Dec 31st. Again, picture me in my best suit outside my house on a summer morning. Of course, he didn’t show up. When I finally reach him, he tells me that, when his car had been stolen last week, they took his wallet too, which these guys eventually dropped during another robbery, so now he had been detained as a suspect for that.
He hadn’t been able to pick up the imported electronics at the customs office so they had them moved to another custody unit where it would take a couple of weeks to retrieve. That night, we went to my parents’ for new years eve, and my mother asked me about the new job.
‘It’s all fine,’ I said.
I google him again, this time with variations regarding his name or the supposed company he was setting me into.
Not much showed up. Nothing shady.
The next call was like a week later. He told me that, because he was being involved in a police investigation, this mining company had fired him. But this was actually good because now I was going to be interviewed to take his position, as IT manager. This meant doubling my former paycheck and securing a position that would be a leap forward in my career, so I don’t ask many questions, I was just grateful.
All those delays, in the end, would pay off.
This situation, as you have already figured out, went on and on for weeks. My interview never happened. The electronics never arrived. We had lost our funds, our time, our Christmas, our hopes, and I was still unemployed and hadn’t been applying for job offers since I had this one allegedly secured. I texted him, somewhere in between.
I texted him: ‘Why are you doing this to us?’
He texted back: ‘If I wanted to, you have nothing on me. But if you stick with me, you’ll be rewarded tenfold.’
Time went by. Eventually, my wife overhears from a coworker about this patient, in another hospital she was working at (some nurses do work part-time at other hospitals). She had fallen for it too, but her husband was a detective, so a few hours later we were filling him in on the details of the scam we fell for.
Asking around, he found a third nurse scammed by this guy.
Soon enough, he was detained (this time for real) and admitted to having been scamming people due to an (impromptu invented) mild dementia. This detective talks him into an off-court deal in which he gave us back every cent (but not my time nor hopes) in exchange for us not pursuing any legal action.
This was a decent deal, because we, having failed to make a written agreement on any of these purchases, had at most a weak claim to our funds. BTW, the funds with which he paid us, he had to borrow from his father and some from his brother, the doctor. Remember this didn’t happen in the US? This agreement is actually completely legal down here.
So I made a blog.
I couldn’t go for any further legal action, but there wasn’t a nondisclosure agreement whatsoever. And I thought: ‘what could prevent other people from falling into this scammer’s lies?’
Well, perhaps some google results? So I created a blog, on WordPress. Think something like BennyLowyTheScammer.wordpress.com. It was a single post in the third person telling my story.
In the following days, that post’s comments had a dozen stories much like mine. I made them into posts. A few of them got their comments too, telling other people’s stories. In a few weeks, looking for Benny Lowy’s name on google led to this blog.
In my country, you can review updates regarding court ongoing cases (except for felonies, that are nonpublic). Searching for his national ID (which I had known thanks to our settlement) as the sued party, I could just find an eviction action due to failure to pay his condo’s lease.
But looking for him as the suing part, I found out he had sued www.wordpress.nml (our local fictional domain) which was registered by a local guy on Godaddy.com. Following up with the case, this guy had spent months trying to demonstrate to this local guy how to take down the blog I made in the .com domain. Go figure.
I was tempted then and there to set a post on this blog saying: ‘If I wanted to, you have nothing on me.’ However, I have never attempted to let him know who’s doing this.
I just log in to this blog once in a while (today was the first one in years) and keep finding, in the comments, more scammed people.
All of them are in a vulnerable moment in their life. Unemployed guys, small startups looking for an angel investor, small branch salespeople pursuing a promising commission. Those who have, in time, reached a compensation or agreement, it’s because Benny’s now ancient father had to chip in.
From what they say, his brother has gone no contact. Most of the commenters leave their email addresses and I have known of a few that have teamed with each other and succeeded in legal actions.”
2. Making Up Lies? I'll Make You Go Bankrupt
“I found this guy on Craigslist a few years ago. I like renting condos from private owners as opposed to renting apartments. Typically by renting a condo, it’s safer, you have more caring residents, you get to have a luxury apartment-style home with all the amenities, and you can negotiate the pricing, etc.
I am an excellent tenant, and anyone who I have rented from will tell you that. I paid a $1,000 deposit to move into this guy’s condo. I was on a year lease. He lives in another state, but we were in the same time zone.
On month 8 of my lease, I came home to a door that wouldn’t open. I couldn’t get the door unlocked for anything!
I had two keys on me. As much as I tried to turn them, I couldn’t. One of the keys even broke in the lock.
I waited two hours. I called, texted, and emailed my landlord, and he did not pick up! I thought maybe he had someone to change the locks for some reason. I honestly didn’t know what to think and had no one to help me.
The lady who lived across from me saw me in distress as she was going into her apartment. I had never seen her, but she asked me if I was okay, and I explained to her that I couldn’t get into the apartment. She told me that she knows of an on-call locksmith. She gives me his number. I tell her thanks and reach out to my landlord a few more times.
No response. I had no choice but to call the locksmith; plus, I really had to use the restroom!
The locksmith arrives and could not get the door unlocked with my key. He says he can replace the lock for like $100. I told him I was renting a condo and couldn’t get in touch with the owner and didn’t know when would be the next time I could get in touch with him.
After he took the lock off, he told me it was faulty.
So he replaced the lock.
I told the landlord this via email and text and voicemail and told him that I could send him copies of the keys if he wanted.
Ok, so fast forward to the end of my lease. I demand that he does a walk-through with me. He said he wouldn’t.
I told him that if he didn’t do a walk-through, I would be notifying the condo office (as he did not have permission to sublease by the association). He then had a friend serve as his ‘proxy’ to come to meet me and walk through the unit.
The place was SPOTLESS! I know how to clean. I took multiple photos and videos and showed his proxy (who is a police officer) the unit.
Actually, they are both police officers who used to work together. We both literally tested ALL the appliances, faucets, checked the blinds, carpets, hardwood… EVERYTHING!
His proxy gave me the ‘okay’ and said that everything looked great.
I give his proxy the keys and later that night left for my new city.
So, fast forward to a month later, I haven’t heard from him about my deposit.
He ignored all my emails and phone calls.
He finally gets back to me two months after I moved out and has all this ridiculous, made-up stuff about how I damaged his unit:
- Broken blinds.
- Scratches on the hardwood floor.
- He made it seem like I damaged his door by getting the lock replaced.
- He said there were scratches on the outside of his door.
- Rust here and there.
- Broken dishwasher.
- Broken sink.
- Oven was broken.
- Broken dryer.
Shake my head: just all straight-up lies! I would NEVER leave a unit in that condition! He sent me an ‘itemized’ list of all the ‘charges’ that magically came out to be $1,000. The same as my deposit!
He was always planning to keep my deposit. He wanted that deposit to either ball on it or upgrade his condo.
I hated him!
I decided I wasn’t going to go to court because I had moved to a different state and lived alone, but I thought of something… He rented to me under the table and likely didn’t claim my rent payments as earned income. I had all my wire transfers on my bank statement. I had his routing and account number and a copy of his driver’s license as we agreed to swap IDs when I signed the lease to make sure I wasn’t getting scammed. I found his out-of-state address online, gathered all my bank statements, gathered his bank account numbers, and made a report with the IRS!
About a few years later, I check up on things and that jerk lost his condo and lost everything he owned in bankruptcy! I paid for and downloaded his court records and saw proof that he lost everything including his condo and cars and had his bank accounts seized.
I’m not sure if he has gone to jail or anything, but I’m so glad he finally got his karma!
Ironically, he stole funds from me that I gave him to rent a condo, and he ends up losing that same condo to bankruptcy.
Screw him and anyone who calls him a friend! He can rot for all I care.”
Another User Comments:
“I rented a condo in Virginia that was property managed by a local Realtor, while the owner was in another state. We were relocating to Texas, so I gave notice that we were moving out, but once we loaded up the truck, we were just driving straight to Texas, so I wouldn’t be available for an exit inspection.
I hid a key for a carpet cleaner so that he could do his work once we had moved out.
I didn’t expect this, but once I got to Texas, my employer decided to have me fly back periodically, starting right away, for work. I got back into town on the last day of the lease, after the PM allegedly had done her exit inspection.
I decided I was still technically in my lease term, so I found the key that I had hidden for the carpet cleaner, and let myself back in. The carpets were immaculate. I took photos of everything, locked up, and left.
Sure enough, the PM withholds about 1/3rd of my deposit saying that I failed to clean the carpets, so she had to pay for an ’emergency cleaning.’ The invoice for the company that did it had a phone number that was out of service and they didn’t have a business license in VA.
It was abundantly clear to me that she was trying to take advantage of us, thinking that we wouldn’t have come back to see the cleaned unit after we had moved cross-country. Once I told her that I had done that, she stammered for a reason why we shouldn’t have had access to the unit, couldn’t find one, and stopped responding to us.
We sued and secured a judgment against the owner (we couldn’t sue the PM directly; the buck stops with the owner and if he wants to subrogate against her, that’s between them).
5 years later, the owner still hasn’t paid that judgment – and there are ways I could garnish it/lien it against his other rental properties, but there’s almost a point where it’s just not worth my time anymore.” Matchboxx
1. Party Every Night For A Year? Just Wait For The Police To Move In
“I bought a house 4 years ago in a quiet neighborhood. I had wanted to get into that neighborhood for years. My best friend lives there. It was a couple of blocks from my kids’ school. It was a good neighborhood. Then 2020 hit.
My neighbors across the street were forced to move at the beginning of the first wave before the eviction moratorium was in place.
They were really good neighbors. We were friendly with each other and we were sad to see them go. So when the property owner rented to a new family we were hoping we could cultivate a friendly relationship. Unfortunately, that was not the case.
About a month after they moved in the lock down started. And that’s when things went from 0-100 real quick. For the next year every night there was a huge party.
Cars down the street music so loud you could hear it over regular house noise in every room in my house. My friend in the next cul-de-sac would text me regularly if the music he was hearing was my neighbors.
We tried to be civil. I asked politely. I brought them beer and I offered some killer smoking stuff. Eventually they threatened me an my wife so we started calling the police.
Almost every night for 4 months. We organized with the neighbors. And they started calling the police as well.
Eventually the others gave up and started selling their houses because the renters were just that bad. We were still upside down on our place so it wasn’t an option for us. Eventually the police told me that I needed to stop calling and that it wasn’t their issue to deal with.
That I was a bigger nuisance than the renters music.
It was at that time the housing market was taking off. Houses were selling in my area for 40-50k over appraisal value. My wife and I looked at what we needed to make so we could move and listed our home for that.
In three days we had a handful of obscene offers to choose one.
But it was the lowest offer that stood out to us the most. Their offer was a good 20k under the next lowest but They sent a letter. I’m a sucker for a letter especially one with a picture of a young pregnant couple and a dog… and a patrol car?
Turns out the young man is a police officer newly appointed at the local PD.
And he takes his patrol car home. I knew at that point that this was the family to sell my house to, money be darned. I moved out as the neighbors were throwing a huge party. The next day the police moved in and they haven’t had another since.
I drive by regularly on my way to my buddies place. They just sit quietly in their garage looking bored. I make sure I honk and wave every time.”
