People Comment On Their Well-Executed Revenge
18. Bully Me For My Disability? Get Both Fired And Evicted
“Okay so I’m not the type to ask for impossible things or to demand ridiculous accommodations, and don’t get me wrong I’m usually very polite to service workers, but I will straight up go full jerk-mode when I don’t get what I’m paying for, and when workers are being purposely dismissive or rude.
I do this weird sort of stern middle-aged mother witchy thing when I’m being dismissed at customer service. (Or when I have to deal with my man’s bank, which will put him on hold for like 4 hours and treat him like absolute trash until I get on the phone and suddenly they’re all, ‘yes ma’am, no ma’am, certainly ma’am, we can fix that right away ma’am.’)
But there is exactly one instance when I have gone full Karen, entirely out of necessity.
So when I was 16 I paid over $150 for an all-day pass to get into a theme park event in my city that I go to every year. $150 is a lot to me, even now, but it’s a huge deal and it’s tradition. The problem is: the park is super loud and I’m hard of hearing (auditory processing disorder and a little deaf), so I have a hard time understanding what people are saying.
The best way I can describe it is it’s sort of like trying to hear somebody talk to you while you’re underwater, if also while you were underwater there was a swarm of bees loudly buzzing around your head.
This theme park is owned by a multi-billion dollar company that pretty much runs the city, and they are widely known for being huge b*******s who just care about emptying your pockets – but the park is tradition – and everybody goes.
Seriously, don’t feel bad for them they’re terrible. My point is the media in my city is literally scrabbling for a takedown story of this company.
We were in the thick of it in the ride section where things are noisiest and I can’t make out a freaking thing. I’m walking into one of my favorite rides with my partner, which takes place in an enclosed room but you can still hear all the noise from outside, that I have gone on every year since I was like 6 years old, and the rules have changed as to where to put your bags.
This is fine if a little overkill, but I’m glad it’s safer now. There are no signs signifying the rule change so they are relying on you to understand the guy talking who doesn’t sign. That’s a big no-no for deaf/hard of hearing people, but with a little extra effort from the person trying to talk to you, you can get the gist of what’s being said just fine.
This 35-year-old man then decides to openly mock me calling me a slur for putting my bags where I’ve been putting them for the past decade.
This whole thing lasts like 15 whole minutes no exaggeration.
He’s going as far as to make other riders boo and clap at me as I desperately tried to figure out what was going on. I was confused and scared. My partner, who can hear perfectly, tries to explain to me what this man wants but even he can’t understand because the instructions are so confusing and he’s purposely being cryptic to drag this out.
The door is closed and he won’t let anybody leave until the ride was over even when I was banging on the door trying to get out.
I was literally crying at one point as people laughed at me – right up until I started signing and they realized I literally cannot understand.
Straight silence across the ride as nobody wants to get involved. Ride operator guy doesn’t care even when my partner is telling him I can’t hear him and to tell him clearly what he wants me to do so he can sign it to me.
After that 15 minutes was up finally some random citizen waves to get my attention and plays charades with me for 30 seconds before I 100% understood what was being asked of me and did it, to which this ride operator scoffs at this guy like he’s angry and starts to slow clap, while literally refusing to start the ride until everybody awkwardly slow claps with him.
At this point, everybody just wants this to be over and humors this guy while I’m still crying.
The ride started and the entire time it was dead silent except for me sobbing. It was bad. People apologized to me outside and told me they were sorry for playing along and that they wished they’d have been the one to help me. Whatever.
Anyway, I freaking ruined that guy’s life over the course of the next hour.
It was like a world war at the customer service kiosk, which was near the entrance where it was quieter.
I didn’t need an interpreter so I sent my partner away to enjoy his day since mine was already shot (it was a hard sell, he was very protective after that whole fiasco) while I committed first-degree murder.
The customer service lady tried to give me a voucher for half-price $30 ice cream and told me the guy was new and was just trying to do his job and that I should calm down.
Oh?
‘I DO NOT PAY $150 EVERY YEAR FOR A DECADE TO BE BULLIED FOR BEING LEGALLY DEAF BY SOME GUY YOU BROUGHT ON A WEEK AGO. I WANT YOUR MANAGER’S MANAGER ON THE PHONE RIGHT NOW OR SO HELP ME GOD-‘
I made like 15 calls. I threatened a class-action lawsuit. I literally called a family friend who is a lawyer right there at the customer service to show I was serious.
I (politely, I was pretty reasonable with anybody who wasn’t acting like a Class A idiot) called my local deaf and hard of hearing advocacy group. And the kicker: I called like 6 separate news channels. They were very interested in my story.
This guy’s boss came down to do damage control to tell me he was going to put the guy on suspension until the theme park moved to the next city in a couple of days.
‘Not good enough, who’s your boss?’ I was out for b***d.
Once I’d reached literally as far up as I could go (some lady had to drive in from across the city to deal with me) the ride people’s manager and the customer service people’s manager were full-blown arguing about what to do as I began practicing what I was going to tell the news people when I got home.
Apparently, they would have had to close the ride for like four hours while they got the only other guy who could operate it in from some event he was at. Maybe a wedding? I don’t know, I wasn’t listening. I didn’t care.
Then I said something along the lines of ‘It’s not my fault you hired a discriminatory egghead who likes to pick on deaf teenage girls.
I want him fired and I want this on a record somewhere. I want consequences and I want my freaking ticket comped before I talk to (highly respected state newspaper).’
They both turned to me at once and it was like two owl-bobble heads looking at me.
‘You’re a minor?’ That man’s butt was grass right then and there and I was the freaking lawnmower.
He had sown the wind and I was the whirlwind. There was no saving him. Not only did they comp my ticket, but they also gave both my partner and me VIP passes and bought me lunch from any food stand in the theme park.
Turns out the guy was actually living with the traveling theme park for the summer (sort of like a 21st-century circus but with running water?) in a park-owned trailer as they traveled across the country.
I was unaware of this, but I’ll be honest it wasn’t an unwelcome surprise.
A security guard (at my insistence) led me to the edge of the closed-off trailer area where I watched him pack his stuff into a backpack and a box, leaving what he couldn’t carry (presumably to be picked up later or thrown out) before he was led by two separate security guards out the back.
Basically evicted and fired in one solid punch.
I don’t know where he went but I highly doubt he had a place to crash in the city.
The park then (hilariously) called my 50y/o redneck-dad to ask if the punishment and compensation for me were to his satisfaction and if he would be pressing charges/ ‘speaking to anybody about the incident’ (they meant the news), and he basically just said “Yeah, that’s fine.
What direction did he go in?” What a goof.
They would not tell him. Eventually, he got me on the phone and asked if I wanted to press charges against the park or if I would want to ‘speak to anybody.’
‘No, I’m alright. I’d like a comped lunch for my partner who was with me when it happened though if that’s alright. That way we can eat together.’
My dad laughed and told them what I wanted, and that was that.
They had me sign some paperwork that basically prohibited me from talking to the news or posting about it on social media, and a customer service dude went, found my man, and led him to where I was waiting with two VIP lanyards and eating (I’d already ordered).
‘Uhhhh, what did you do?’
‘I ordered us a bloomin’ onion, a plate of deep-fried pickles, a plate of deep-fried Oreos because I know you wanted to try them. Also, we have two VIP tickets now and another $150 to spend. Oh, and two sodas!’
We are still together and go to the theme park every year… Nobody has bothered me about my hearing since.”
17. Serve Underaged People? Pay Up $50,000
“I applied for a job as a bar manager at a new resto-bar that opened up in my area (Ontario, Canada).
The ‘owner’ of this bar had some issues with her liquor license being revoked at a previous establishment, and there was some sort of stipulation (this part I’m not clear on) where she was required to:
• Not be on-site or involved in the business in any capacity for any reason (she was a Prohibited Person, and I believe she made her husband the owner on paper — but for this story, she is referred to as the ‘owner’)
• Hire a manager with 5+ years experience and a Smart Serve certificate to run and be responsible for the bar
In order to get another liquor license.
After a short interview process, I was offered the job and was told of these terms. I accepted them despite the already apparent red flags (I was a very poor student).
When the restaurant/bar opened, everything quickly fell apart.
Despite the ‘owner’ not being allowed to be on-premises, she proceeded to micromanage both the kitchen and front of house. She stopped scheduling kitchen staff and was working in the kitchen herself.
Food quality plummeted, customers became irate at how long of a wait it was, and word spread quickly in the small town. Eventually, a select few regulars became our only customers.
More hours got cut.
Waitresses and kitchen staff were let go. The owner was now drinking at the bar, and at the same time was waitressing and cooking. This was all in the matter of a month.
One night that month, it was exceptionally nice out, and we had a lot of boaters in the area.
We had a pier near the bar where boats could dock and walk into the restaurant.
A large group had walked in on this night, and they were both very clearly underage and very clearly over-intoxicated. I immediately cut them off, to which they made a very large stink about it, enough that the owner’s husband came over to ask what happened. I explained that I had cut the group off and wasn’t going to serve them, to which the ‘owner’s’ husband decided to take their drink orders and serve them anyways (obviously they were willing to serve anyone and they didn’t care about the rules).
The next day, the ‘owner’ pulled me into the office and accused me of stealing $50 out of the till the night previous. I knew this to be a lie, a lie that could be easily disproven because there is a camera located directly above the till that is synced to the time code on the POS. I was fired on the spot.
I 100% believed this was because I was refusing to serve ‘customers’ and thereby damaging their bottom line.
I was really miffed to be accused of doing something I didn’t do and more upset that she used this lie she made up as an excuse to fire me.
Because the stipulation of her having her liquor license was me working at the bar as a manager, I emailed the liquor control board when I got home and informed them of the rules being broken at the bar.
A liquor inspector came to meet me later that week and took a statement.
He then paid a surprise visit to the bar and was able to witness all of the things that I informed him of (including the ‘owner’ both being on-site and being involved in the business, serving minors, and serving intoxicated persons).
The liquor inspector slapped them with a very large fine, north of $50 000.
Their liquor license was suspended, and the ‘owner’ was too broke to pay the fine and was forced to close the restaurant.
I received death threats from her for a while after that, but the revenge was absolutely worth it.”
16. Stay Until The Kitchen Is Cleaned Without Paying Us Extra? If That's What You Really Want
“When I was 16, I worked at a fast-food chain on a small island. Things are usually very quiet here; we’d make no more than $2,800 in a day (11 am-8 pm). There’s an event on the island that brings in a huge number of people from abroad, often doubling the island’s population for a month. During the 2 week event, we were open until 11 pm with 1 hour at the end of each day allocated to cleaning and closing the store, bringing us until midnight as our finishing time on a closing shift.
During the event, there’s a LOT of drinking and a LOT of people going for takeouts, so we get absolutely swamped (we even have to ship in staff from other stores in the UK to ‘assist’ – more on them later). We’d close the doors at 11 pm, but there would still be a huge queue of customers which could easily take 30m+ to get through and then all of those customers are allowed to sit indoors until 12 am when we can kick them out, but often we didn’t want to pick a fight with intoxicated people, so we let them leave on their own accord.
As you can probably imagine, this makes cleaning the store impossible by 12 am.
The first night we were there until about 1 am; the next night it was closer to 2 am. When I asked the area manager about how we were getting paid for these extra hours, he said we don’t; we were only to be paid until 12 am as that was our shift on the rota.
I said that I don’t want to be working 2-3 hours each night (morning) for nothing to which he replied, “You stay until everything is cleaned like everybody else. If I find out you leave without properly cleaning everything, we’re going to have a problem.” I went home, talked to my parents about it, and we made a plan.
So on my next shift, it was chaos, busier than I’ve ever seen it, queue out the door and halfway up the street.
We weren’t able to start cleaning until at least 12:30. The place was a mess, and it ended up being about 3:30 before I called my mom to come pick me up. I was wired on energy drinks just to keep awake, and when I got home I couldn’t sleep at all, and I was scheduled in for a 9 am start the next (current) morning. I ‘slept’ for about 2 hours before I had to drag myself out of bed to get ready for work again and operate pressurized fryers filled with ~350 degrees Celsius (~662 degrees Fahrenheit) oil.
What could go wrong, right?
The reason I called her for a lift home was so there was a record of it happening, and I also stood near one of the cameras so there was a recording with audio on the shop CCTV. The law where I live clearly states that anybody under 18 is required to have at LEAST 8 hours away from the workplace in any 24-hour period.
That obviously didn’t happen, so they broke the law and my mom knew this. She called up the area manager to ask him what happened, and he basically repeated what he had said to me, and she mentioned to him about the law, and that by informing him of it, it’s now 100% his responsibility and he would be liable for anything that happened during my shift whether that’s property damage, injury, etc. She also said she’d be reporting it to the equivalent of a union.
(We don’t have unions here.) He was used to bullying the staff here as most were teens or young adults who were too scared to stand up to him, but he very quickly changed his attitude now that his neck was on the line. He called the local manager and told him to let me leave work for the day (with full pay) immediately, and as soon as it hit 12 am on the next closing shift, I was again ordered to go home so no more working without being paid.
Once the other staff got wind of this, they followed suit. This had another extra bonus for us all though which was probably the sweetest part of this. Remember the staff they shipped over? Well, they all got early shifts, so they could go out and enjoy the partying that went on while we were all stuck in work until 3 am. They even had the cheek to come in (because they had keys) and have a dig at us about taking so long which resulted in an argument and one of them crying.
Anyway, the cleaning that we weren’t able to do then became THEIR problem when they arrived in the morning which meant they had to either start earlier or work like crazy to get the shop open in time, or they’d face the wrath of the area manager. Screw them and screw the area manager.”
Another User Comments:
“If they want you to stay till everything is cleaned, they have to pay you for it.
If they’re trying to tell you you have to stay and do unpaid work, walk straight out and report them to the relevant authority.” Random_Guy_47
15. The Office Is Only For Staff? You Got It, Boss
“This one is going back a few years to 2014.
I was working on a construction job as a pipe welder building an LNG plant for a company that is currently building nuclear reactors for the US Navy, and the way this company had itself set up was with two distinct classes of employees.
The “craft” employees are the ones that actually do the work; everyone from a laborer to a machine operator, pipefitters, welders, as well as the leading hands, which will become important later, are all in this category.
Staff are the salaried employees, supervisors, engineers, welding inspectors, section superintendents, etc.
Our crew worked great for a few months, until our supervisor got a better offer elsewhere one day and quit leaving our leading hand to try and manage the crew of 80 on his own, and getting another supervisor anytime soon wasn’t going to happen.
We all got on really well, so we just did what we could to keep things going.
One of the jobs the supervisor would normally do is pull up all of the drawings we needed. The drawings tell us the exact shape, specification, and location of each pipe has to go, and with a crew as big as ours, we might need 50-100 drawings each day.
The thing is, the supervisor had access to the company intranet system with a company laptop and a printer, but we lowly craft employees didn’t have that. What we did have is access to the literal library of physical drawing folders in the main office and me. I had spent years in old power stations going through old physical drawings and knew how to manually search through millions of pages to get the exact drawings we needed.
So that became my job, for the first week or so without a supervisor, my leading hand would give me a list of drawings to pick out and photocopy, and I’d get that done; it would take me 2-3 hours of a morning and then I’d get onto my usual duties welding stuff until the section piping manager saw me in his office one day.
“Who are you?”
“Umm, I’m Ttoksie…”
“You’re not staff; you’re one of our welders. The office is for staff ONLY. Go back to your section.”
“You got it, boss.”
So I did, and on my way there, I told my leading hand that the office was for staff only as well. You see, my leading hand was VERY quick, and he caught on immediately, so he called up the piping section manager and confirmed that the office was off-limits to the craft employees, which included my leading hand.
We both knew we were at least 5 weeks out from getting a new supervisor, so neither of us went into the office to get drawings.
Our entire crew of 80 odd people, all of which were making $3,500+ per week before tax, did zero productive work for the next 7 weeks because “the office is for staff only.””
14. Purposely Smash My Phone Because I Won't Let You Play On It? I'll Steal Your Purse
That chick had some serious anger issues.
“One winter, I was taking the train home after a day of doing nothing at uni. Mostly, just gaming with my friends. I owned a pretty neat Allview X2 Soul Style+ for some time. The thing held on for a long time. It was pattern-locked, as I am bad with words and numbers, but good with shapes.
I was on my phone browsing Pinterest, next to an entitled mother (EM) and her entitled kid (EK) (bad move 1), when EK comes and asks (more like demands) to let him play on my phone.
Feeling clever, I locked the phone and gave it to EK (bad move 2). After about 2 minutes, EK tells EM he can’t unlock the phone. Being like any other EM, she demanded to unlock -her child’s- phone. I say no, ask for my phone back, and she proceeds to smash it to the ground, being all smug about it.
Now, it was an old phone. I wanted to replace it either way and backed up everything on an SD card and left it at home.
Mostly, I used it for the internet.
I was quiet. Just shrugged. Because I wanted revenge. So, I didn’t scream or anything. I just picked up the phone and removed the SIM card, while EM and EK moved further away.
At my stop, the train began to get crowded. I made my way to the exit, making sure I passed EM, and snatched her purse while she wasn’t looking.
The purse wasn’t on her arm, it was on the seat beside her (stupid woman).
She was still telling her kid about how much of a b******e I was, making it easy to pick it up without her noticing.
The original plan was to smack her head and then move out quickly. It might sound stupid, but I’ve done it before, and got away with it.
I am easy to miss. I had my jacket on, and many people had their hoods up, so it was easy to blend in.
Before the train left, I knocked on the window next to EM and held up her purse. The look she gave was the most satisfying thing I’ve ever seen. She tried to stop the train, but the emergency stop was either broken or non-existent (old train), and the crowd made it impossible to move around.
I moved to a place with no cameras around and searched through her purse. Got close to 400€, and a Samsung (I can’t remember what Samsung, an S-something maybe?)
I tossed the purse in a trash bin outside and went to McDonald’s and got a Happy Meal (even tho I had a full beard.)
I didn’t regret anything. She broke my stuff, I got it back, plus interest.
If someone criticizes me for it … screw you, I don’t care.
I also wore gloves, so no fingerprints.”
Another User Comments:
“Ok I don’t condone stealing but I also don’t condone smashing peoples property so…” help_i_wanna_go_home
13. Think You Can Hit And Run? I'll Make You Pay Double
“So my fiancée at the time (now wife) and I, were driving around looking for dresses for her bridesmaids to wear for the wedding.
We had been going from place to place looking for something she liked but had no luck.
We had just finished leaving David’s Bridal and were leaving the plaza. It had been raining a lot so the roads were slick. As I reached the intersection of where the plaza met the road to turn out, another car came turning in. Unfortunately, he didn’t break soon enough and skidded into the front end of the driver’s side.
Thankfully everyone was ok.
We got out of our cars and looked at the damage.
His car (of course) was completely unharmed and mine had a minor dent. He looked about 45ish and had his son in the car with him. We exchanged names and phone numbers. He let me know he was on the way to work and I told him we were just wedding shopping.
(I was 22 at the time and very naive as to what to do in case of an accident) he told me that we both seemed pretty busy and that we should just handle it ourselves since we were both busy.
We didn’t call the police (my mistake) and he told me to get the damage looked at to see what it would cost.
I took the car in 2 days later and they quoted me $1,100 for the bumper to be replaced. I texted him and he told me he will be getting scholarships in 2 months when he goes back to school and he would be able to pay me then.
I (again naively) told him that’s fine.
A week later I followed up with him about another estimate I got which was lower than the original ($900) but I got no response. I texted him again and again for the next few days and nothing. At this point, I realized he had bailed.
I came up with a plan to find him. All I had was his name, a now-useless phone number, and a general area of where he worked.
I searched for him on social media and was pretty sure I found him. I searched under his family members and saw what looked to be like his son. My soon-to-be sister-in-law was 16 and looked about the same age as his son. I decided to go full-on sleuth and go undercover.
I used her social media and changed her last name to match theirs. I then messaged the son and told him that I thought we might be cousins.
I asked him some questions about his dad (like name and his job) and told him that my mom said I have an uncle down there by that name and worked at this guitar shop.
He answered yes that was his dad’s name and told me the name of the place where his dad worked.
I was so relieved I was making progress. The next day I drove back up near the accident and found where the man worked.
I found his car and took pictures of his license plate. I then took all the info I had and went to the courthouse. I filled out paperwork and handed it to the clerk. The clerk told me they could either mail the form to his work address or if I paid $25 I could have an officer hand deliver it. Of course, I paid the $25 just to embarrass him at his place of work…
A few weeks later we were summoned to the court to see if we could work things out before going to an actual hearing.
He showed up and we sat down with a mediator. She explained everything to all of us. I told him I didn’t want to do this but he stopped responding. He replied that his phone was stolen so he had to get a new one (in my mind a phone being stolen doesn’t equal changing your phone number).
I knew he was lying. The moderator asked him to step outside. She talked to us and told us not to trust him because his story didn’t make sense.
The mediator invited him back inside and we read over the terms I listed in the court documents. He was to pay $2,400 (I charged him the original replacement cost, gas from driving back and forth, my time for doing all this work, and extra just for being a jerk).
He said he would pay, but didn’t like that I went to his job and took pictures of his car. I replied I didn’t like that he hit my car.
A few months later he paid the full amount and had to pay for our court costs as well. I sold the damaged car and took what he gave me to buy another car!
All in all, I benefited from it but next time I’ll just call the cops and save myself the headache.”
Another User Comments:
“Get yourself a dashcam. They are a silent witness that helps when it’s not clear cut for the officer.” Paladin_Aranoas
12. No Time Off To Celebrate My Anniversary? Enjoy This Review
“I had the worst job.
I mean, we’ve all had lousy jobs, but this takes the cake.
I was hired to be the shipping and receiving supervisor for a manufacturer of building supplies – basically, I work in a tar factory.
I was promised a whole bunch of things when I was hired, and there were red flags because they were offering me about 40% more than I was making before. For one, I was a salaried employee, so I wasn’t paid overtime. Also, no one had been in my position for about 3 months.
Anyway, they fly me to Nowhere, Arizona for a week to train and the lady who trains me talks trash about my plant the entire time I’m there.
I show up after training for a week and things are, in a word, grim.
They’re behind almost $2,000,000 in shipments, and there is paperwork from deliveries for the past 3 months that haven’t been received into the system or filed. It’s just stacked in a box.
It’s their busy season, but manufacturing is only producing about 30% of their daily quotas, so I’m constantly turning trucks away and trying to reschedule.
I’m working 14 hour days, six days a week, and I never see my wife or kids. And, remember, no overtime. On an hour-by-hour basis, it was a 50% pay cut.
I cancel three family camping weekends, lose touch with my friends, and my sons cry every day when they see me putting my work boots on.
Every day, the operations manager, the most mercurial jerk I’ve ever met, who is also in charge of the failing production team that is the reason why I work so late, leaves at 5:00 sharp.
I’m very frustrated, but I keep getting promises of ‘it’ll get better soon.’ So I stick it out.
After about a month and a half, my anniversary is coming up. I beg and I plead, will someone please cover the desk for the evening so I can leave at a decent hour and have dinner with my wife.
I’m assured ahead of time that I can, but the day of, they all bail and totally screw me over.
Fast forward another month, and a last-minute emergency that they create means that I have to come in on a Saturday, and a two-hour commitment becomes all day because I’m stuck on a forklift loading and unloading trucks when the rest of the forklift drivers don’t show up, ruining another weekend of family plans.
So I’ve had it. I turn in my notice.
And then the trouble begins.
They pitch a fit that I’m leaving, so they shunt me into a corner and have someone else cover my desk. I get bombarded with emails (around 250 a day) second-guessing every decision I make and demanding to know why they’re still in the dire situation they’ve been in. ‘Why hasn’t this shipped yet?’ Because you morons haven’t made it yet.
Then, the icing on the cake – they’re flying someone from another plant in to ‘assist’ as I transition out. It’s the battle-ax that trained me, who hates our location and hates me. So I just leave. I send an email and tell them I won’t be back.
I have a new job already lined up, so I’m updating all the job sites with my new information, and one of the sites asks me to write a review of my time at the employer from the underworld.
So I do. I write a brutal, scathing, incredibly honest, and documentable (I saved copies of EVERYTHING) review that makes its way up to corporate. It’s so bad that they start harassing me to remove it. I won’t. They try to pay the employees still there to write positive reviews to offset mine. So I post on my blog, which has great search engine cred, a similar review with details about the company, the names of the idiot managers, and contact info if candidates want to know more.
It’s a top page rank if you google the company, so they can’t silence it. Then they try to screw around my retirement and benefits (in the US, you get insurance for the rest of the month after you leave the employer). I’ve had three people reach out since I posted.
Remember all the documentation I saved? Yeah. I called OSHA, the EPA, and Homeland Security.
They don’t maintain their machines or forklifts, they don’t dispose of waste properly, and they don’t secure the aluminum paste according to regulations, so now they’re dealing with a half dozen agencies with acronyms.
And they still can’t find anyone to sit in my old desk.
All I wanted was to go home on my anniversary.”
11. Bully Me And Act Like You Didn't? Wait Until My Uncle Gets Involved
Uncles always got your back!
“When I was 8 years old, my dad and brothers moved across the country.
My brothers started high school while my dad started a new job.
My mom and I stayed back so she could sell our house before we moved to join them. During this time my dad asked my uncle to keep an eye on my mom and me.
While selling the house we moved in with my uncle and his family. It was in a different area, so I had to go to a different school where I didn’t know anyone.
A few weeks into the school year and a much larger kid 2 grades above me decided I would be his target for the year. It started small, he would knock things out of my hands, or push me when we crossed paths. Then he started stealing things from me.
I put up with it because I didn’t think I had a choice at that time.
I was working up the courage to fight back as my dad told me to, but this kid was huge so my courage wasn’t building fast enough.
One day I went to the bathroom during recess and ran into him in the bathroom. I knew that out of the view of teachers this wasn’t going to be fun. As expected, he pummeled me right up until the bell rang.
Unfortunately for him, he left a lot of noticeable marks on my face.
A teacher noticed this right away and sent me to the office.
Once there, I was angry and told the principal everything. He called down the bully who denied doing anything to me, ever. The principal knew he was lying so he scheduled an appointment with both sets of parents.
That night my mom and uncle went with me and his parents went with him.
Once in there, his parents constantly denied that their kid did anything and even said I was bullying him. I was 8 and could see how ridiculous that was.
The principal had another meeting to be at, so he asked that we meet again the next night to resolve this. The bully’s father started complaining and saying that if I bully him again that he is okay with his son defending himself.
He made a point of saying that just because you lose the fight doesn’t mean you weren’t the bully – which I guess is technically true, except in this situation his son was definitely the bully.
Everyone agreed to meet the next night, and we left the school.
As we were getting into our cars, my uncle went over to the bully’s father and put his arm around him.
He walked him to where I assume he thought was out of sight. It wasn’t.
My uncle beat this guy up really badly. Then as the bully’s father was laying on the ground, my uncle leaned in and said something.
He came back and everyone remained silent for the rest of the night.
The next day my bully was not in class. That evening we all went to meet up with the principal and the bully’s father looked like those UFC post-fight photos.
The principal asked what happened, and my uncle responded by saying that the bully’s father was bullying him and he defended himself. Just because he lost the fight doesn’t mean he wasn’t the bully.
The principal took a moment, then looked at the bully’s father and said: “is that true?”
The bully’s father looked at the principal and said: “yes sir.” Then he said that his son needed to say something.
My bully stood up and began apologizing as he broke into tears. He confessed to everything and said that he will never bully anyone ever again. Then the father apologized for not believing me and the way he treated me.
My uncle looked at the principal and said: “I think we can accept that apology, is there anything else?”
The principal said “no” and let us go.
For a short time, I was stuck going to that school, the bully went the long way around me whenever he saw me.”
10. Go Ahead And Steal My Notes, They're Fake Anyway
“So, this happened in 2018 when I graduated High School. A quick overview of the Swiss school system: Normally, you go to school until ninth grade.
If you want to go to university later, you change to Grammar (High) School from eighth to twelfth grade.
I decided to study and went to High School. Also, in Switzerland, my state (canton) at least, everything under 75% is a fail. We have a really strict thing going on there.
There I quickly became friends with Chelsea (my now partner) and Alicia. Alicia is the kind of person that is funny if you don’t have her around too much.
She is always the victim, she can only talk about herself, etc. But if you spend too much time with her, you are a mess. She is also never responsible for things happening to her because she grew up in the foster care system, whatever.
So, this happened about two months before our finals.
Now, graduating means passing the finals obviously. But not only them.
The finals are half of your eventual grade. The other half is your last report card. If I had an A in my final English exam but a C on my last report card my eventual grade would be a B and so on.
Alicia really struggled with that because her last report card wasn’t that good. She had to excel in most of the subjects to graduate.
So you would think she’d write as many notes as possible and study pretty early, right? Nope. She procrastinated until two months before our finals while I and Chelsea studied our butts off. Now, I always was the girl who offered her notes in our class group chat in case someone was interested.
This gets important later.
We had a fairly long list of things we had to be able to use in maths and I wrote notes for every single topic and kept it in a folder in my locker.
Only put some of them on the group chat, just when someone was asking about a certain topic. One day, I went to my locker and they weren’t there. I was freaking out. I spent weeks writing them.
I looked for them for an entire week and had approximately three panic attacks because I thought I wouldn’t pass now and had to do all of it again.
That’s when Alicia casually told me that she took them the other day when I asked her to get a book from my locker. She actually hadn’t planned to tell me at all because ‘It’s not like you’d need them anyway, you had them long enough. If you didn’t make copies, it’s not my fault.’ The blatant entitlement was enough for me to come up with a plan.
A vicious plan.
Not only had she stolen my notes; if I hadn’t ‘bothered her so much’ with it she wouldn’t have even told me she had taken them! She was only a High School friend anyway and I knew I’d never do anything with her again once we graduated, so frankly? I didn’t care about what would happen to her.
Her entitled self-centered way was enough for me to finally burst.
I apologized for making drama (‘It’s okay, you just are like that sometimes’ – I was about to lose it) and just continued my school day. Now, Alicia kept calling me about notes, etc, even before that, especially my notes for various books. She’d chosen the same books so she didn’t have to study extra.
I started to give her a wrong analysis and started to fake notes. Obvious enough to figure out they were wrong if she’d think herself but not too obvious. If she’d read the books she’d know it’s nonsense.
I did the same with our English books. And French. She already had my maths notes to I couldn’t fake those, but I could fake German, French, English, Chemistry, Physics, and Psychology.
Now, after I invested so much time in faking notes I watched it all go down a day before graduation.
We went into a pub with our teacher (to watch a football game I don’t even remember) and she distributed our results. I passed with a 5.38 (In Switzerland, the grades are from 1-6, six is best so about… an A?).
And Alicia went pale.
3.21 (D-). She had failed all of her classes but maths and Psychology. Oops. It seems she really just read my notes. She didn’t read the books she was supposed to read, she didn’t read our textbooks.
I had to hide a grin.
My partner thinks to this day it was cruel but seriously? It was a damper for her entitlement and narcissism. From what I’ve heard she is currently trying to repeat the year and try again.
Hopefully without stealing her friend’s notes.”
9. Leave Me And Our Unborn Child? You'll Have No Car For A While
“My abusive then-spouse decided to leave me, which I didn’t mind, but his family was visiting from overseas, having a great time, partying, going on road trips, and inviting him.
They were horrified by his stories of what an American, awful, disobedient wife I was.
He was going to casinos with them, losing all our income.
I was pregnant (high risk, no less), on maternity leave from graduate school so no job, and had another infant at home.
One day he starts packing his things, tells me he can’t take it anymore, he’s leaving.
Fine, except:
I had nothing. The rent was overdue. We had impending disconnect notices from the phone and electric companies (there were no cellphones or social media back then, so pregnant and with an infant, I needed that phone, and of course, the electricity).
He had promised to make payments that payday but instead he was off to another casino
No groceries, food, diapers, etc. So. As he’s stacking his things in a corner of the living room, I tell him I’m going to the lobby to get the mail.
Instead, I moved his car. I parked it a few blocks away, went upstairs with the mail, and waited for him to leave.
He takes his suitcases, loads them all into the elevator, tells me I brought this on myself, and leaves in a huff.
A few minutes later the intercom rings: ‘Do you remember where I parked my car?’ No.
He comes upstairs, all sweating and confused. Calls his brother. ‘Do you remember where I parked my car?’ No. And even if he did, he couldn’t read English, so wouldn’t have known the street name, anyway.
Calls the police. They arrive. He talks to them privately. Then they come in to talk to me. ‘We understand there are marital issues. Did you steal his car?’ I hated being dodgy with the police. I simply stated, No. (I didn’t steal it.) I told them my side of the story and they became more sympathetic to me. No food, no diapers, pregnant, etc.
The police told me to apply for WIC assistance and lectured him. They take his report, warn him about his behavior, and leave. Okay.
So his car was what the visiting family was gonna use for their road trip. So the road trip was canceled. All packed up with no place to go.
I decided to outsmart him. ‘Honey, since now there’s no chance of you winning anything at the casino, maybe we should make the payments you promised the utilities so they won’t cut us off.’
Since he was stuck there now himself, he gave in.
Of course, he begged to use my car, but I had never given him a key, and I told him the brakes were shaky and it cost too much to repair them.
For two months this idiot had no car and had to take cabs and buses to work. And the visiting family couldn’t rent a car so they went home early.
Meanwhile, I had applied for WIC, gotten a social worker, and spoke with the idiot’s ultra-religious boss who agreed it was best to give me the idiot’s salary.
He was furious but I was protected by the religious community, and the social worker’s home visits helped.
He realized he had to start acting like a human being, so he became much more agreeable to live with, but I wanted him out of my hair.
So one day I told him, ‘OMG, honey! I was driving around looking for parking, and I think I saw your car!’
We excitedly jumped into my car and I drive him there. ‘Is that it?’
He was thrilled. To this day he thinks he parked it there after partying and couldn’t remember.
We’re divorced now (can I get a Hallelujah?) and the kids are grown.
They know the whole story. But he’s serving life now, so we’re all estranged from him.”
8. Can't Bring Yourself To Move Your Freaking Car? Mom Will Hatch The Perfect Plan
“Let me set the scene, the year is 2017, and my family and I live in a quiet suburban street. It’s mostly retired couples and some families with very young kids.
Normal.
Now earlier this year the house diagonal from us decided to move and sold it. About the day after everything’s packed away, five cars come peeling down the street, and pull into the driveway and out in the road. They’re a bunch of college-age kids, so we give them some slack and let them go for a day or two. Meanwhile, day in and day out different cars keep peeling down the street, some are over 30 miles over the speed limit.
This does not go over well with the neighbors, for most of the younger kids walk and ride their bikes down our street.
Everyone’s concerned they might hurt someone or someone’s dog. Before something serious can happen, some of the neighbors who’ve lived here 20+ years go over and meet the newbies. This includes my mom. They’re polite at first. They agreed to not go over 35, but more cars keep racing down the road.
Along with that, they seem to be having parties every other Tuesday with about 30 cars up the street.
Now the niceties are over, and the cops are called. Usually, they wouldn’t do this, but about 5 calls came in from a bunch of houses and the police department was fed up.
Having nothing better to do, they send one of the deputies and they wait around the corner for a few hours a day.
About 2 fines are given, and then they slow down. Except they get smart, there’s only one place the deputy can hide, so they send one car to see if they’re there. If not they speed again. The deputy gives up after about 3 days and is gone.
A few months pass, and we were at a loss of what to do. Summer is almost here so my brother and I are outside more.
We have a basketball hoop at the edge of the road, right across from the house. Our driveway is at almost a 45° angle, and all my brother’s buddies come and play, so we leave it there. There’s a problem, the cars keep parking to block the hoop. My brother’s angry since that’s all he used to do in the summer. He goes over to the house and the guys just shut the door on him.
Now my mom’s livid. She marches over there and asks them to move their cars, sweetly, and when they refuse she hatches a plan.
This summer was a hot one, and my mom decides to cook some homemade pea soup. Now she burns this batch, by ‘accident’ of course.
Instead of chucking it out, she puts it in this big plastic jar, seals the lid, and places it out on the back porch in the middle of the sun.
Weeks pass, and she occasionally opens it. There are maggots squirming around and it’s turned a deep brown-green. There’s also this clear yellow liquid that separated itself to the top. Disgusting.
Meanwhile, my brother is determined to play basketball when there’s a little opening. About twenty minutes in, the ball bounces onto one of the cars by accident. There was no mark, but the car alarm goes off so he’s trying to leave.
I run out to see one of the regulars who lived there, a woman, yelling obscenities at my brother and how he needs to pay for her car. My mother runs out after me and starts yelling at the lady to get away from my brother. There was no damage, and it was clear, but the lady kept screaming. My brother and I run inside and watch as the woman follows my mom up the driveway, waving her arms and still yelling.
My mom yells for her to get off her property or she’ll call the cops. By now our older neighbors are watching, some walking over, and the lady realizes that she better leave it or she might actually get in trouble. She runs across the street and slams the door.
Around 2 am on a Tuesday with one of their parties, my mom puts on a gas mask (my dad worked in pest control so he had one) and takes out the soup.
The stench was terrible. It was rotting meat and something indescribable. She takes the jar and goes over to the cars as quietly as possible. Onto almost every car she dumps the rotting pea soup onto the windshield and into that space where there are the windshield wipers. Before anything, I have to explain these were nice cars. Not sports, but Priuses and new cars, which doesn’t fit with their age.
The next morning, my mom’s out sitting in the garage, smoking like always. It’s around 6 am and the lady that yelled at my brother comes out first. She’s obviously tired as she gets into her car. A minute or two passes and this woman has the most disgusted-looking face. She turns on the windshield wipers and a hunk of rotting ham is sent flying.
My mom’s now in tears, and I mean tears. I wake up and head downstairs to the garage to see the woman yelling and about 20ish kids heading out to their cars. Each one’s trashed.
The cops are called, but since there’s no evidence, they can’t press charges against my mom. One by one they leave in their ruined cars. They moved out 3 weeks later.”
Another User Comments:
“It’s weird that they moved out so soon after the one incident which actually affected them. And that they went through so much effort to avoid speeding tickets, rather than just slowing down a bit.” stringfree
7. The Workplace Harassment Ends Now
“A few years ago, I was working in a job I really enjoyed with a team I really gelled well with.
There were about five of us working on the same portfolio of projects in different roles, and every single team member was just cream-of-the-crop, incredibly good at what they do.
I can’t overemphasize how satisfying it was to work with such an incredibly competent, likable group of people. In this job, instead of getting the Sunday night blues, I would get excited thinking about the work I would be doing the next day and planning how we would solve complex problems together.
The one downside (there’s always a downside) to this job was Steve.
Steve was not in the supervisory line for me or any of my team members, but he was about three levels above us and very senior. He’d been there for years and was tight with senior leadership. Steve was also a mega-creep.
He said extremely inappropriate things to young women in the office, and he apparently wasn’t averse to being handsy, though as far as anyone knew, that was as bad as it had gotten.
The women in the office all knew to steer clear of him. My first week on the job, the whisper network made sure I knew: Never be alone with Steve. Harassment is difficult to document, and no one wanted to risk their career and put a target on their back going after a big guy like Steve, so he just got away with it for years.
So for a couple of years, I followed this advice.
There were a few instances of Steve saying incredibly uncomfortable things to me in passing, but for the most part, I managed to avoid him. Then I found out that my teammate Rob had gotten on Steve’s radar. For context, Rob is non-neurotypical and has some minor tic-ish behavior. He’s also shy and easily spirals into social anxiety when put in uncomfortable situations.
So one evening at our team’s informal weekly happy hour after work, Rob lets it slip that Steve’s been giving him a hard time. The rest of us are like, ‘Whoa, wait, what?’ because Steve never interacts with staff at our level, except to creep on women, so we make Rob tell us everything.
Basically, for the last few weeks, Steve has been bullying Rob, making fun of his tics, and mimicking his way of speaking back to him.
He’s also been asking Rob how he can possibly be competent to do his job and implying he’s a pity hire. Steve even called him an idiot. It’s clear Steve is seeking out Rob for this, because, again, there’s really no reason for him to interact with our team. Rob has been having horrible anxiety over this situation and has had bad insomnia and stomach issues since Steve started targeting him.
And not that it bears repeating, but just to reiterate, Rob is a beast at his job. And a genuinely good guy.
At this point, I’m seeing red. We all were. We tell Rob to go to HR, that his neurological issues put him in a protected ADA class, that he could get Steve in big trouble. Rob panics and says he can’t do that, begs us not to tell anyone at work, and says he wishes he hadn’t said anything.
We assure him we won’t say anything if that’s what he wants, but we’re all very distressed.
I leave the bar fuming just thinking, OK, that’s it. Screw you, Steve. You’re going down.
I can’t tell anyone about what’s happening to Rob, because I promised him as much, so I start my own paper trail.
I start baiting Steve.
And I don’t mean I behave in any suggestive manner or lead him on: I just stop avoiding him, and I even initiate contact myself.
I IM him through the company’s IM system very professionally/politely asking if a big client will be staying on through the next project cycle, and the floodgates open. He starts sending me outrageously inappropriate IMs. I mostly don’t respond, but I occasionally keep him going by sending extremely literal responses to his innuendo-laden questions or pretending not to understand something suggestive he’s saying.
Sometimes when he clarifies, I’ll outright say, ‘This isn’t appropriate’ or ‘This is making me uncomfortable,’ or ‘Please don’t say things like that, Steve,’ but he steamrolls right over me.
During this time, I’ve also been seeing him more in-person around the office, and he often says gross stuff to me in person as well, a lot of it not just inappropriate, but bizarre and nonsensical (‘Is it legal to have a butt like that in that skirt?’ Lolwut?) Every time this happens, I immediately go back to my desk and write down what he said, the date and time, and the names of any witnesses.
After about a month of this, I compile my creep journal with printouts of the IM conversations and take them to my HR rep. I ask to file a harassment complaint against Steve.
As soon as the words ‘harassment’ leave my mouth, my rep instantly gets the head of HR and two other reps, and they go through my evidence with me and ask me a ton of questions.
The head of HR assures me they’ll take my complaints very seriously, and asks if I know of any women around the office who have had similar issues with Steve. I’m able to give them several names.
They send me on my way, and two weeks later, my rep formally reaches out to me and lets me know Steve has been let go.
Much jubilation is had around the office!
It took a couple of months for me to piece together the whole story, but basically, after my complaint, HR started following up with the names I gave them, both the witnesses to my in-person encounters with Steve and the other women he’d harassed.
They corroborated what I’d told HR, and then through them, word started spreading around the office that HR was conducting a harassment investigation against Steve.
This emboldened at least 15 different women who’d been biting their tongues about Steve for ages to come forward and tell their own Steve stories.
During all of this, IT had been asked to go through Steve’s emails and IMs, and this had not only been used to validate my printouts as legitimate, but IT had found a ton of additional incriminating stuff in Steve’s correspondences.
Somewhat frustrating: Steve received an extremely generous severance package as part of his termination. But on the bright side, word got around the industry quickly, and Steve was poison at that point.
No company would touch him with a 10-foot pole. The last time I thought to snoop on his public social media pages, he was listing himself as an ‘independent consultant’ in our industry, which I seriously doubt he’s actually doing, and based on his public page, he’s doing a couple of MLMs, so that should kill off whatever savings he has in short order.
I don’t work with Rob anymore, but I did recently attend his wedding! He’s extremely happy with his new wife (who is a sweet and lovely woman) and he’s doing really well in his career.”
6. Have Nothing Nice To Say About Your Staff? We'll Cost This Place Millions
“I was working as an Expat oil company Senior Staff Geologist (and de facto Exploration Manager, but without the increase in pay nor authority, just increased stress levels) in the Middle East for a Southern European construction company’s oil and gas concerns.
The General Manager was a complete idiot. Full of himself because he worked for one major oil company his whole benighted career as an engineer, so obviously, he knows everything about geology, geophysics, petrophysics, etc. (He didn’t and doesn’t). His ‘management style’ (if one could grace his screaming and infantile fuming as a ‘style’) could be described variously as ‘inept micromanagement’ or ‘management by objection’.
Would berate and degrade the entire staff in meetings with partners (which made everyone terribly uncomfortable to see such a lack of decorum and professionality), scream so the whole office could hear over mundane idiocies such as lack of coffee pods in the kitchen or why 6,000 meters of pipe had never materialized even though the unpaid invoice still nestled on his desk.
In a multicultural office, he would rant and rail, at top volume, about, ‘freaking self-important and entitled Expat.’ Called the firm ‘the worst freaking oil company in the Middle East’ (at least, here we agreed).
Not only a racist but a misogynist, general misanthrope, and a complete and total waste of carbon.
One day, the loggers messed over the logs, and he absolutely refused my insistence to re-log the pay zones. I was called just about every nasty name in the Oil Patch handbook, right down to the part where he told me my alma mater were a bunch of ‘freaking idiots’ for granting me my three petroleum geology degrees.
After 26 years in the Patch, I decided that no job was worth this and laid plans for a quick, early, and entirely unannounced departure.
I quietly related the fact that I was doing a ‘runner’ to some of my other Expat compatriots over drinks one Thursday evening and was greeted with the revelation that several (read: most) of the other Expats there were 1. thinking the same thing, and 2.
if I left, they were gone as well.
We carefully laid our plans.
The company ‘provided’ housing (i.e., paid a ridiculously low monthly fee so we had to live in cheap housing or sucked it up with our families and ponied up additional funds to live in decent villas), so we all gave clandestine notice to our respective landlords about our imminent departure and asked they keep quiet.
Since they were paid by check (12 per year) and were already compensated, they were both delighted that they had already been paid once and that they could rent out our abodes after we left for essentially double rent.
Cancellation of internet, water, and power were token; a quick email, print the automated response, and carry it with you if the border guards gave us any trouble when we buggered off.
Since we were all Western European, Canadian, or American, we decided to book a block of Business class tickets (as was our contractual due) to London on the same British Airways flight.
In fact, with families and all, we booked the entire Business class section.
We all had been in-country for years and years, so arranging packing and shipping (or storage) of our belongings was a snap.
We were all members of the ‘move every 18 months to follow the income’ crowd, so this was the easiest part of our master plan.
No one leaked a word of all this, but some of the locals in the company somehow sensed the change in the decorum of the company’s daily activities (when one really doesn’t give a darn, the stress levels magically evaporate down to near zero) and wondered aloud what was going on.
We confided in a few of them (these were not just colleagues, but personal friends in many cases) with the proviso that they would tell no one.
The weeks dragged on and school was about to let out for the summer (when most Expats bugger off for 1-3 months to escape the stupidly hot and humid Middle Eastern broiler season), so the usual requests for contractual time off were made (and all roundly rejected by Herr Mr. Jerkface General Manager) and life proceeded on its merry way.
Finally, Liberation Friday arrived (weekends being Friday-Saturday at this time in this country).
We contracted a local carrier and had a bus rented to pick up everyone and take us all to the airport.
Luggage tagged and schlepped off to the bowels of British Airways’ incomprehensible baggage-handling inner workings; through check-in, customs, and passport control without so much as a sideways glance. We all invaded the English Pub after hitting Duty-Free one last time, and we toasted each other on a job well done and best soon forgotten.
Sitting in Business Class waiting for takeoff (quaffing my third drink), I did a quick tally: the company was, in this one instance, losing its Sr. Staff Geologist c*m Exploration Manager, Senior Geophysicist, Sr. Petrophysicist, Sr. Geomodeller, Sr. Reservoir Engineer, Drilling Engineer, Operations Geologist, Logistics Manager, Senior Surveyor, 3 secretaries (wives of the aforementioned Senior crowd), and the HSEQ Manager.
A small company (total 50 or so total employees) could withstand the loss of 2 or maybe even 3 of their Senior-level employees, but not this mass emigration.
My good friends whom we left behind regaled us for months regarding the situation in the office come Sunday…B****y Sunday.
Once the realization of what had happened, the GM went completely ‘off the rails,’ and ‘completely berserk,’ or variations on that theme. The first glimmer of recognition of the severity of the rotund bale of jeers about to descend upon him was when all calls to various abodes were answered with ‘That number is no longer in service.
Please check blah blah blah…’
Emails went unanswered however our GSMs were still working, although we all blocked Herr Jerkface’s number, though we still allowed text messages.
Text 1: ‘Where are you? Why aren’t you at work?’ was just the beginning.
In the words of Khan Noonien Singh we ‘let him eat static.’
Text 2: ‘Where are you? If you don’t get your butts in here immediately…’ and other such impotent threats.
(‘Yes, please. I’d love another drink.’)
Rising panic ensued: Text 3: ‘This isn’t funny. Come in and we’ll act like this never happened…’
We all sat on the plane, anticipating touchdown. By the time we hit London, it was 0700 local time but 1100 back-there time.
Herr Jerkface GM called an emergency meeting of the remnants of his staff (all locals) and demanded to know what they knew about this huge display of insubordination.
‘Dunno,’ ‘Never heard a word,’ ‘Why? What happened’ and ‘Where is everybody?’ were the responses.
Herr Jerkface blows a gasket and immediately sacks everyone left in the office.
Unfortunately, all that was left were a couple of teaboys (who are always in demand) and a bunch of locals.
Due to the country’s ‘-ization’ plan, it would be easier to fly a fully loaded 747 through the hole of a bagel than it would be to dispose of a local indigenous worker.
Long story short, he couldn’t and was instantly reported to the proper ministry in charge of such matters as one of the secretaries was kin to the Minister of Employment Affairs.
Final damages: loss of 10+ senior employees.
Fines of over 5,000 riyals/day due to improper business practices (firing locals).
Loss of 2 drilling rigs due to lack of personnel and inability to provide work as per contracts; and cessation of drilling of 2 active wells (into the hole, so to speak, about US$3.5MM each) and 10 or 12 field development wells.
Loss of a 3-D seismic contract worth approximately US$3MM. Adios exploration program.
Loss of ‘A-rating,’ meaning you take a back seat to all who try and tender rigs, seismic crews, etc. Good luck sourcing oil country tubular goods, logging or completion services, and pretty much all field-related activities.
Loss of face with several ministries (no small item here, huge importance is placed on competence and perceived amiability).
Au revoir Field Development Plan acceptance or seismic contract approval.
Loss of 6 locals to the national oil company. Figured if Expats deserted this amalgamation of idiocy masquerading as an oil company, they should bail as well.
Ultimate temporary closure of the office, cessation of all field activities, payments of 150-200% on defaulted loans and contracts, and loss of several lucrative pipeline right-of-ways and transfer contracts.
They had to continue to pay the still employed locals, basically sending them a check for sitting at home playing Xbox, and loss of 25% of their acreage due to non-fulfillment of contracts with the government.
Last I heard, Herr GM Jerkface is thrashing around South Texas trying to sell some sort of jumped-up and shady oil deals with companies who have seen their own projects quashed by plummeting oil prices.
Funny thing is, he keeps running into people, now on the other side of the desk, who both know him, and in one or two cases, actually worked for him.
One receives a special gold-plated schadenfreude when you lean ever so slightly forward and tell him to ‘Screw off’ and ‘Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out; you might suffer brain damage.'”
5. Use My Dead Lady's Pictures? I'll Expose You And Cost You Your Job
He got him real good!
“My first wife passed away about 20 years ago and I created a memorial website for her on Geocities with a number of photos of her including some glamour photos from a chain of photo studios.
A bit of a long story, but details will become apparent.
A few years after my wife passes, I get an email out of the blue from an old friend telling me that he saw my late wife’s photos on a swingers site (I didn’t judge him for being on this particular type of site) and he sent me the link to the profile.
On this website (like many others) you could read the profile and see one or two photos, but you could not email the person unless you were a premium member.
Since I could not reach the person, I asked my friend to contact the person and demand they take the photos down. She did not reply to his request, I contacted the website’s support and told them my story.
The website administrator told me that they could not take down the photos and only a DMCA copyright claim could get the photos removed. I could not submit a copyright claim (I did not take photos), so there was no remedy to getting my late wife’s photos off this person’s profile.
Enter the Pro Revenge: I decided to join the site as a premium member, but not as myself.
I set up a profile as a couple looking for a single female to join us on vacations and on our boat. The reason for this was because that is what the offending person was looking for on their profile. Our intention was to catfish the Gold Digger (GD).
Here is how it went down: First we befriend GD online
My friend’s wife (FW) sent a message to the GD (who listed in her profile that she was in the same Province as us) and asked GD what city or town she was in, as we have an RV and a boat that we like to travel around the Province with and take mini-vacations on different lakes.
A few days later she replies and asks for photos. I sent a few photos of me and my friend’s wife on his boss’s boat from the previous summer. (yes they gave me permission to use the photos and some others from their other vacations that did not include him in the photos).
After about two weeks of back and forth messages, FW asks for any photos, to which GD sent some photos without her face (because that would give her away from not being the person in the photos on her profile).
This went on for another two days until FW asked her to do some facetime video, GD quickly replied that she had a microphone, but her web camera was broken. She had a PO box that she had people send her gifts to, so we sent her an old webcam that I had (we were getting right into exposing her).
FW agreed to come over to my place and use my photo studio and do the video/audio chat in front of my Green Screen (that I put a photo of a large house interior onto with Green Screen software).
The conversation goes like this:
FW: ‘Hey did you get that webcam we sent to your post office box?’
GW: ‘(audio only) Yes, thank you, but I am really camera shy so I did not set it up yet.’
FW: ‘Why would you be shy around us?’ (As I walk into frame behind her)
GD: ‘Oh, both of you are there?’
Me: ‘Yes, I just wanted to say hi and let you two talk, but I am still curious why you are shy around us.’
GD: ‘Well the photos on my profile are a little old and I have put on a few pounds since they were taken.’
FW: ‘I understand, it took me a long time to get back to this size after fighting with it for years. We promise we will not judge you based on your size, besides, hubby likes plus size girls.’ (we almost had our catfisher hooked)
GD: ‘Hold on, give me ten minutes and I will change and put the webcam on.’
About 15 minutes later, we get a video call from GD. She is only lit by her computer screen and not easy to make out.
FW: ‘See, that was not hard was it?’
GD: ‘No, but I really did not think you would like me as I look now.’
(but we know she never looked like those photos because they were of my late wife)
FW: ‘You look very beautiful, do you have more light?’
GD walks away from the camera and turns on some serious lighting and the camera quality was much better than the cheap old one that I had sent.
FW: ‘That is much better, let me call Martin (not my real name) over.’
Me: ‘She is stunning, just what we have been looking for (the hook is starting to catch) Again, I should let you two talk and I have some planning to do for our next vacation.’
I walk away from the camera and go to my pc that is recording the video call and capturing screenshots. I suspect that this GD is not just looking for some suckers to take her on expensive vacations, but that she also does cam model work.
After about an hour and a half of talking, FW has got lots of personal info about GD, including her real first name and that she works at a private camp for girls in the summer. She also admitted to doing cam work for extra income.
After a second video call, we told her about our upcoming vacation to Hedonism (which we found on the web as a popular swingers resort) and we would need her full name and a photocopy of her passport to make the reservations and arrange air travel.
She fell for it and we had everything we needed. With a little help from Google maps, we found the camp that she worked for and the contact information. We contacted the camp office looking for a job reference for GD and sure enough, we contacted the right camp.
When I contacted her with all our information and asked her to remove the photos of my late wife from her profile on the swingers site and any other site she might be using them on, this was her reply via PM.
GD: ‘You jerk, you catfished me!’
Me: ‘NO, I just wanted you to stop using my late wife’s photos for your single and swinger profiles.’
GD: ‘Those are my photos.’
Me: ‘No they are not, I have your real photo and you do not even look like my late wife.’
GD: ‘Even if I found them on the web, they are free to use because they are public.’
Me: ‘So by that logic, the images I have of you on cam are public too?’
GD: ‘NO, NO, NO, those are my photos and I can prove it.’
Me: ‘Do you have the original copyright on them? Since I took them from the web, I have the copyright (I know this is not how copyright works, but I am stirring the pot).’
Me: ‘Hello.’
Me: ‘Hello are you still there?’
She blocked me.
Since I had already created a fake profile and paid the annual yearly fee, I decided not to let it go to waste. I changed the profile to include her images and links to the private video chats, along with her personal information, and named the girl’s summer camp that she worked at.
A few months later, I got a message from the administrator of the site that two of the photos had been removed due to a copyright claim by “Blank Blank Camp for girls” because of a copyrighted logo on a shirt she wore during a private video call that I screenshot.
I figured by this, they knew who she was and that she had been exposed.
When I called the camp office again for a job reference, they said they could not discuss this person, as she is no longer associated with the camp.”
4. Let Your Trashy Tenant Do Whatever He Wants, No Matter How Illegal? We'll Do Something About It
“This was many years ago, when I was around five (23 years ago), so it’s more about my father instead.
My house was on a lower-class side of town, mostly of more poor folks and retirees who had lived there before it went downhill. Our back yard butted right up against an alleyway that was a constant source of problems. As an example, we had a 15-foot diameter trampoline stolen from our backyard.
This thing had been rusted together so I can only figure they popped it up on its side and rolled it away like a big tire.
Anyways, back to the story.
The house across the alley from us was a duplex kind of a thing, and the landlord would rent to literally anyone. One guy he rented to was a fairly prolific dealer who ran his gig literally out of his kitchen window.
Cars would pull up through the alley, into the yard/parking, hands would move back and forth, then the car would drive away. This guy legit had a drive-through.
It didn’t take long for my parents to find all kinds of undesirable trash migrating its way into our yard; needles, burned spoons, broken pipes, and who knows what else. My parents were worried about my dumb five-year-old butt getting into something or stabbing myself with something that could decidedly harm me.
My mother was a nurse before being disabled in a severe car accident and had been infected with hepatitis C while working at the hospital due to a needle that had been missed, so she was super worried about this for me as well as a handful of other kids in the neighborhood.
Conversations with the landlord, including gathering evidence, made no difference. He didn’t live there, why did he care.
Eventually, my parents tried to call the cops. The local PD was… not helpful. They said they couldn’t investigate or even send out a car on someone’s word. This wasn’t our first problem with the local cops either after having our cars and other things broken into or stolen.
They told my parents to write down license plate numbers, and if any matches a known felon or someone with a warrant, they would investigate.
So my mother sat at the window for a full day and wrote down every plate she could see, hiding carefully the whole time. She ended the day with over 100 plates, that’s how busy this guy was. We faxed (remember, the 90s) the numbers along with a letter explaining what the numbers were for and who we had spoken with to the PD. Nothing happened. After several weeks they called back and were told there were no matches of any kind.
After another week of the problem simply getting worse, my father decides to take matters into his own hands. One night with no moon, he sneaks into the driveway and throws roofing nails he had bought the previous day all over into their area. Hundreds of them.
We watched for weeks as seemingly every tweaker in town would stop and almost immediately have to fix flats.
Evidently, either business dwindled so much, or the renter figured out someone was messing with them (both?) that they finally moved.
The landlord spent over two weeks having cleaning crews and the like over, throwing out huge mounds of garbage, and repair crews to fix the damage that I later found out was caused by the renter. It seems they trashed and stripped the place before disappearing some night without us noticing.
The moral here? Not really one exactly, except for maybe the landlord. Be more selective about who you let live in your house maybe?
Edit, I should clarify the ‘driveway’ was dirt, gravel, and tufts of grass, so these nails were not obvious and difficult to see let alone pick up.
My father specifically bought brown colored ones.”
3. Be A Rude Customer? I'll Play Dumb
“I once had a rude passenger traveling with her baby on board.
When one of the crew went to her to brief her (the airlines I work for make it mandatory for crews to brief parents traveling with an infant below 2 years old) on how to use an infant seatbelt and what to do in an emergency, with a flick of the wrist she dismissed her.
‘No need to brief me. I know the drill,’ without so much as looking at the stewardess.
When it was time to take off, she didn’t strap her son in using the infant seatbelt we provided. When we insisted, she dismissed us again saying her baby is allergic to metal (the only piece of metal on the seatbelt was only the buckle and it would be right on her son’s belly covered with clothing).
All the while my brain keeps going, ‘This woman is a piece of work.’
When we roll out our cart for meal service, she snapped her fingers at crewmembers demanding she is served first.
Now, this is understandable since we always serve kids, elders, and mothers with infants first. But you don’t have to do it by snapping your fingers at us. You could have just stopped our cart and asked nicely.
When we rolled out our food sales cart, she stopped us to buy some snacks but refused to take off her headphones while talking to us. Her sitting at the window seat means she’s farther away from me and her words were not as clear as the passenger sitting on the aisle seat talking to me. I look at her dumbfounded that after a few times of asking her what would she like to buy, she keeps muttering under her breath all the while not really bothered to make eye contact with me or take off her headphones.
So I pass all kinds of snacks that we had, one by one until she gets frustrated. She keeps saying, ‘No not this one! I want xyzcbhsjdkwhateveritis!’
I passed another packet of snacks knowing full well that wasn’t what she wants. ‘No I want xcbsggeyetheotherone!’d
I took out a packet of peanuts that she most definitely doesn’t want. ‘No! That one, I need xctshdchstheonenexttoit!’
This went on for a few minutes, while the passengers sitting nearby watch in amusement. Not even once do I mutter anything rude to her, just pretending I can’t fully comprehend whatever she’s saying.
If only she had taken off her headphones and talked to me like I’m a normal person instead of her slave, I probably wouldn’t have played dumb.
In the end, she got so frustrated she just said, ‘Yeah ok give me whatever you have then!’ handing me an rm100 note ($25 USD) to pay for something that cost her only rm7 ($0.25USD).
I asked if she has smaller notes and again I was dismissed like my fellow crewmembers. So I went around the cabin asking everyone if they have smaller change for me to return her the balance. I went from row 5 to row 30. Everyone just keeps shaking their head saying nope sorry don’t have small change.
Again, she got frustrated waiting for her change, she pressed the call button and handed me the exact payment of rm7 in small notes and demanded to get her rm100 note back.
And oh, towards the end of the flight, during descent, her kid started acting up and cried as loud as ever. She struggled to get him to calm down while the rest of the passengers looked at her in disgust.”
2. Micromanaging Karen Wants To Know Every Single Task I'm Doing, So I Mention EVERYTHING
“I worked for my local Humane Society as the Facility Manager.
It was a great place to work, good-hearted people, dogs and cats to pet, and I ended up meeting my future wife there. As with any job, the people in charge always made selfish or bad choices. The director, unfortunately, cared more about his reputation and image than the animals. He’d spend more than what we were making, to make the place look nice. We were on the verge of going under.
I loved that place, I put my b***d, sweat, and tears, heck even my own dollars out of my wallet to keep it together, even free overtime. It wasn’t enough; we got bought out by a rival shelter.
Our new director was the queen of all Karens. Her reputation preceded her. She had even proudly boasted that in a year she had received 500 out of 750 complaints from county animal services about her from other employees.
Because, “if people didn’t hate you, you weren’t doing your job right.”
I’m smarter than the average bear, and I know how to play the game. She caught on quickly when I started mentioning labor laws when it came to unethical calls she was making. She decided she’d find a way to get rid of me. She wanted to determine my importance there and felt I was overpaid and unnecessary.
I could see her plot, and she decided to try and make my life miserable, so I’d quit. She started micromanaging me and only me. To the point where she wanted me to tell her everything that I was doing before I did it. Lucky for me, I spent 8 years in the military and was used to it. I decided to play her game and follow it to the letter.
I would constantly interrupt meetings, phone calls, and entire conversations all day, every day, letting her know exactly what I was doing, ONE task at a time. If she assigned me a task, I would play dumb and ask her to explain it to me or I would tell her I didn’t understand it and to please word it differently. This lasted 2 weeks. She then told me to do it via email, as my frequent daily interruptions were “unprofessional” to her.
So I proceeded to give a report via email every day.
I thought I had won and didn’t have to be micromanaged anymore. She was vague on what she wanted, so I gave windows and estimates of chunks of times I was doing things. This went on for 2 weeks before she said I wasn’t showing my worth and that it looked like I was wasting time all day.
She demanded I tell her everything I do all day, every day. So I said ok and began itemizing every microscopic detail.
I mean EVERY detail. Arrived at 7:00, deactivated alarm at 7:01, turned on all lights until 7:05, unlocked doors and grounds until 7:10. This went on and on all day. I even included bathroom breaks, which made it obvious when I was urinating or the other. By itemizing and describing EVERYTHING as she asked for, I was wasting 2 hours every day, typing it all out.
Meaning I was working 6 hours but getting paid for 8.
Eventually, after 3 weeks of this, the director of the entire organization called down and told me to stop, as she was required to be on my CC list. I was told to just go back to my cliff note version and that it was unnecessary for them to know about my bowel movements.
I had won… I had proven my worth, played the game, and won… Until they found an excuse to fire me altogether in August. Now the place is falling apart, and they’re doing unethical things left and right, including murdering dogs weekly.
Sometimes for extra space, sometimes because they don’t want to deal with them, and sometimes because the director doesn’t like a dog. It’s a terrible place to be, and it’s so sad that a place that’s supposed to be such a positive environment is now a puppy mill and kill shelter.”
1. Here's Your Biscuit, Jerk
“I was working at Denny’s at the time, and I had just walked in (still carrying my purse; not even wearing an apron) when my manager started telling me to get to my section because I had a customer—he was just coming back from seating her.
I was ten minutes early, but whatever. I went and clocked in, tossed my bag in a cabinet, and was on my way to her table, still tying my apron, less than a minute later.
I started to greet her, but she interrupted to complain that she’d been sitting there for 10 minutes already and is this how we treat customers now? Since I knew for a fact she hadn’t been there more than 2, I knew this was going to be a really fun guest. Nevertheless, I apologized (because arguing with these people gets you nowhere), and started to take her order.
As I was walking away, she actually shouted at me, ‘And don’t forget my free biscuits!’
I’m sure you can guess what I found when I went into the kitchen and checked the biscuit warmer. Lots and lots of nothing, except for one stale old biscuit that had been in there long enough to get crunchy. Clearly not edible.
I asked the cook how long until more (45 minutes) and made sure to go back to her immediately to let her know that the biscuits had just run out and it would be quite a while before there were more.
She called me a liar and demanded her biscuits.
I sighed and went to help someone else.
A few minutes later I brought her her salad. Another demand for biscuits. Then I brought her food. She practically screamed at me this time as I explained, yet again, that it would be another 25 minutes at least before the biscuits were cooked.
She pointed to another table.
‘They have biscuits!’
‘No, they don’t. Because there are no biscuits. No one has biscuits.’
‘They do! I can see them! And you’re just a filthy, lazy liar!’
I’m pretty sure she said some other nastiness at my back as I walked away, but I was truly too angry to listen.
I went to the warmer, grabbed the ancient biscuit (no, no one at Denny’s ever cleans up anything, sorry), and put it on a plate.
Then I went to her table and slammed it down on the table beside her drink.
‘Here is your biscuit. It is literally the only biscuit in the gosh-darned store because we are out of biscuits and no amount of yelling will make the oven work faster. Please enjoy.’ I dropped her check at the same time and walked away, refusing to make eye contact with her for the rest of her meal as I went on serving my other customers.
After she left, my manager called me over. ‘That lady was shouting but I couldn’t understand her. What happened?’
I just shrugged and told him that she was angry there were no biscuits. Since I was their best server at the time, he just shrugged and told me to go back to work. When I went to clear her table I found the crusty old biscuit right in the center of the table, and on top of the biscuit was one single penny.
I guess she was sending a message, but for some reason, it cracked me up. I still laugh when I think back to Biscuit Woman and her Penny of Rage.”
