Revenge is supposed to be sweet, but sometimes it leaves a majorly bitter taste in our mouths. After someone slights or insults us, we fantasize about all the ways we’re going to get back at them and make them pay. But as these Redditors found out, we should be careful what we wish for—because sometimes our vengeance can go way too far.
1. A Long Way Down
When I was in ninth grade, a kid ruthlessly tormented me for a few months. I had gotten sick of it and devised a plan for revenge. Every Wednesday, we would get to sit outside for "quiet reading time," and this kid would always go back inside to go to the bathroom. I had left and waited in the bathroom for him, peeking under the stall for his shoes to appear.
He came in the bathroom, peed, then played on his Gameboy for the rest of reading time. The bell rang and he walked out to the crowded stairwell, still looking down at his Gameboy. I bumped into him, and he fell face first down the stairs—and knocked out four front teeth. Everyone on the stairs assumed he fell because he was playing his Gameboy. I feel pretty bad about it.
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2. Three’s A Crowd
I had a roommate who basically let his new girlfriend just move into our house in college. She helped herself to everything in the house, but never contributed. Finally, she parked in my parking spot and that was my breaking point. I let all the air out of all of her tires, thinking she'd just air them back up and it would be an inconvenience.
Instead, she ended up buying all new tires. Whoops. Never came clean about it.
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3. Nothing Comes For Free
When I was 17 or 18, I worked with a girl I had a huge crush on. She was around 25 or so, but I really had a thing for her and she knew it. One day, she asked me if I'd like to go shopping with her, and I, of course, said I'd love to spend some time with her. I assumed I'd hang out and watch her try on clothes or something. We went to the mall and I walked around with her, she tried on a bunch of stuff.
Before she added anything to her basket, she'd ask me if she should get it and I'd reply "Sure, it looks great on you!" She probably had $500 worth of stuff. When we got to the counter and the cashier rang it all up, she started looking at me. Then a horrible realization hit me. She expected me to pay for it...17 or 18-year-old me was smart enough to know I was being used, and I shook my head.
She got angry and yelled at me in the store for embarrassing her and said if I really liked her I'd prove it by buying her stuff. I was really devastated someone I liked so much was such a bad person. I told some friends about it while drinking and being mopey, and they encouraged me to get payback. So I went over to her place and apologized for not treating her like I cared about her.
I offered to take her back out and make things right. While she went to get dressed, I pulled a credit card out of her purse. We went to the store and she grabbed a bunch of stuff, me saying yes to everything. She bought $700 worth of stuff. We went out to eat and spent another $100. When we got back to her place, she didn't thank me, but said maybe if I treated her the way she deserved to be treated the first time around, something could have happened between us.
However, since I didn't know how to treat a lady, we could never be more than friends. I pulled out her credit card and handed it to her, saying, "Here's your card back." Then I turned around and walked away.
4. Freezing Him Out
My co-worker and I had a friendly prank competition spanning two years. Close to the end of our competition he "iced" my car. Icing involves taking the hose to the parking lot every half hour and spraying a light mist over your victim’s car when it's below zero out. I finished my 11-hour shift to find my car encased in two inches of ice.
My revenge was, I thought, both more inconvenient for him and less freezing for me. I decided to take a bed sheet, drape it over his car, and only took four or five trips out with the hose the next night. So the next morning, he finds his car with a quarter inch of ice freezing a sheet to his car. When he started peeling off the sheet, he pulled his windshield wipers, arms and all, off of his ratty Jeep.
I got a very angry phone call. I felt bad, since the unwritten rule was "embarrassing or inconvenient, but no damage." I paid for repairs…and he got his revenge. He planted a dozen pieces of smoked herring throughout my car. Took me six months to find the last piece. Hidden under the carpet under the back window of my car. I can still smell it.
5. Mud Slinging
Back in middle school, a friend of mine threw a small, wadded piece of paper at me. I retaliated by throwing the only thing I could find, which was mud close to my shoes. Smacked him right in the face with it. But that’s not even the worst part. It turned out to be dog poop that was at the bottom of my shoe. I still vividly remember his angry face.
6. Sibling Rivalry
My older brother was always quite horrible to me as a child and my parents never really did much about it. He was also much bigger than me, so I couldn’t retaliate in a physical way, or else I would be swiftly tackled to the ground. One day, I had just had enough. My revenge? He had been playing a video game for a good six hours a day for about three weeks.
I started a new game and overwrote his save file. Never seen fury like it. I regretted it at the time because he was so angry, it scared me. Honestly, it made him dislike me even more, but now I praise my 13-year-old self for hitting him where it clearly hurt most. As for how our relationship is now, it’s okay. I moved away as soon as I hit 18, so I didn’t see much of the family for some years.
7. Money Matters
A girl I worked with at Subway in high school used to take money from my wallet during shifts. Once it was only like five bucks, but once it was $60. It also happened to be the night I was going to the release of the seventh Harry Potter book at Barnes & Noble. I didn't realize the money was gone until I got there, but I suspected it was her.
Through talking to other co-workers, I discovered it WAS her—she was the only common denominator between several people whose wallets had been invaded during shifts. So I stopped taking cash to work, but forgot I had like $7 one night from a friend paying me back. One guy bought us all ice cream on his break, and I went to my wallet to pay him back for mine, and saw the money was gone.
This shady girl made more an hour than I did and got more hours than I did. Well, she was working that night and I'd already confirmed it was her, I took $20 from her wallet, put it in my pocket, went out to dinner that night, and left a note in my own wallet for my next shift that read, "Thanks for dinner. Don't ever touch my wallet again." She was so much weirdly nicer to me from that point, until I left for college.
8. Spreading Like Wildfire
I had a girlfriend cheat on me, then lie about it when I confronted her and gave her the chance to come clean and work through it. Then, she stalked me after I broke up with her. We were quite young—both around 17—so it was all very melodramatic, but I did love her a lot and was hurt by what she did. At the same time, I was very done and not interested in reconciling.
She didn't get the hint. I asked her nicely many times, then not so nicely, then demanded that she screw off. She would, for a while, but then she'd show up tipsy and try and pick fights, insult me, and be sincerely hurtful. I eventually had enough, as you do. I told a couple of choice people in her school, which was different than mine, what she'd done.
I included all the gory details of her cheating—she got with her ex in his car. I thought she'd get dragged for it and that would be that. It caused a horrific domino effect. It turned out she was a witch in all other aspects of her life, too. Apparently, she was loathed at school, and people jumped on this news like starving beasts on fresh meat.
I had texts from people I didn't even know asking to confirm the news, which I ignored because I was really done with the whole situation by now. I eventually heard from other friends at that school that people had not let it drop and had even stuck posters around the school with pictures of her, announcing what she'd done, offering her um... services with her phone number, photoshopping stuff, etc.
It was brutal and she had to change schools in her final year. I did feel a bit bad. If I'd known it would go that far, I might have re-thought telling those people. At the same time, she hurt me badly, she refused to leave me alone despite months of chances, and the other students reacted so viciously because apparently she was a total jerk to everyone in the school, so...I don't know. I sure as heck didn't expect that, though.
9. Me And My Big Mouth
I think I was 15 years old. I was in class, seated next to a friend of mine. He, for no reason, began to say: "HAHA, your bald father" which I followed up with "HAHA, your bald mother." He immediately started crying and ran to the teacher. See, I honestly forgot his mom had cancer and was getting chemo at that time. Yeah, I didn’t live that one down.
10. Tripping You Up
I don’t know what it was, but a lot of the boys in my sixth-grade class thought it was hilarious to try and trip people. They’d get you eventually no matter how careful you were. Well, I was pretty good at avoiding it, but when I was in gym class this kid named Joey got me hard. I was dribbling down the court and he nailed me. I face planted.
So I thought about how to get him, and I got him at lunch. He was holding a lunch tray, so his hands weren’t as useful. He nailed a table…and lost a tooth. I got suspended for 10 days, and a strict no tripping policy got implemented, immediate suspensions if caught. It totally sucked, and afterward, my dad spanked my behind raw. Sorry, Joey.
11. Liar, Liar
Yikes. When my friends and I were young, middle school or elementary age, there was this pair of sisters in our class. They were the epitome of teacher’s pets. They helped because their mother was the assistant teacher, and whenever the teachers would leave they would snitch on everyone. Sometimes if they didn’t like you, they would make stuff up and you would get in trouble still.
My friends and I were quite annoying, so we obviously got blamed for stuff that we didn’t do. No matter what we did, no one ever believed in our innocence. So we did the logical thing of talking to every other student in the class, and they shared our opinion of how much we all didn’t like these girls. EVERYBODY was fed up with them. So we came up with an ingenious plan.
We wrote a paper stating the awful things these girls were doing and how everyone didn’t like them and so on. We then got about 90% of our classmates to sign this paper. Then we gave it to the principal. I’m not 100% sure what happened next. But I do remember the principal coming into our class after recess, and she began to ask if this paper was true and so forth, and everyone who signed it agreed.
A few days later, these girls where kicked out of school. Their mother was still the assistant teacher and she was crying about the whole thing and she was saying things about how we are horrible and how could we lie about her angels. I felt a bit bad, but I was quite happy that those girls were no longer there because they were mean and massive liars.
12. Pick On Somebody Your Own Size
At the age of 14, I was rolling up the hose in my backyard with a friend since my mother told me to. The two girls next door were playing in their backyard and came over to talk. One was 12 years old or so, while the other was around seven. The 12-year-old happened to be standing on the hose, and I asked her to move. She did not.
I pulled the hose hard enough to make her fall over. At this point, the seven-year-old screamed and ran right at me, then bit me right on the stomach. She was not letting go, and I could see blood starting to stain my shirt. I grabbed her head and tried to pull her away, but nothing. So I just full-on punched her right in her eye.
I was not proud of this, but it had to be done. What was worse was that the house was owned by a local church where I happened to go to Boy Scouts. Everyone quickly knew I had punched a seven-year-old and given her a black eye. But no one cared why.
13. In The Deep End
When I was a kid, I was at a local river. My friend pushes me into the river, and naturally, I came up spluttering and a little red in the face, but it was all in good fun. For the rest of the day, I planned to get her back, waiting for my opportunity to push her in, until she was at the edge of the river drying off. I pushed her—and it couldn’t have gone worse.
Her flailing and the slippery nature of the rocks she was on made her slip on the spot, and instead of just splashing into the water, she landed on her back, hitting the rocks hard, and then fell into the water. She was winded, but thankfully otherwise unharmed. Our parents were furious at me, and I spent the few seconds it took to get her out just hoping I hadn't broken her back or something.
2/10 revenge. Would not do it again.
14. Hotter, Better, Faster, Stronger
I was 11, and my older brother was 16. We would fight and argue, but one time I was running up the stairs away from him and he whipped the back of my legs with a long rubber chew toy. It left a pretty big, figure-8-shaped welt on my legs. I knew he was faster and stronger than me, and I knew if I tried to attack him he'd stop me.
So, I grabbed a flathead screwdriver and held it over the stove until it was red-hot. I ran up to him and very openly went to stab him, knowing he'd stop me. He grabbed my wrist to stop my thrust (as anticipated) so I pushed the red-hot head of it into his forearm as hard as I could. Man, I was a crazy jerk as a kid. Sorry, Mike.
15. Tit For Tat
I had a big group of friends all throughout high school. Then when we were 17, one of them stole my girlfriend. To be fair, he legitimately knew we were going out, he got her drinking, and then he slept with her at a party. He also knew I'd find out. His response to all this was chilling. He said to my face that he didn't care: "Tough, mate."
It was her fault as well, of course. She'd been leading him on and was sober enough to consent, if tipsy enough to get over the social stigma of actually doing it. So from that point on, our group of friends just cut this guy out of our circle. We stopped inviting him to stuff, and if he tried to hang out, we told him to screw off.
People who had been friends with him since primary school just ignored him. Initially, I was super proud of this show of solidarity from my brothers. So, first summer back from university, we're all 19 or 20 years old. We see him in a local pub. I don't know what to do, decide to try and be cool about it, and go up to say hi. He tells me to screw off.
I guess he blames me for all his friends cutting him out of his life. I don't get the chance to explain that I in no way asked them to do that, they just did what they saw as the right thing. Two weeks later, we're in the same pub, and I see his younger sister. She's 17 years old now, and very, very attractive as it happens. I start a conversation with her about her brother, and how I feel bad about what we did.
She says that it did really hurt him, but he's got some new friends now and is still with my ex-girlfriend, despite it being a long-distance relationship. He won't talk to any of us old friends though, which I think is a genuine shame—he's known some of the guys since we were five. One drink leads to another with this girl, and I took it way too far. We end up back at her house.
Her parents are away, her brother is staying at my ex's apartment, so we have an empty house. We end up sleeping together. The next morning, her brother calls round just as I'm leaving. The look on his face as he works out what's happened. He goes from utter despair to absolutely mental in about half a second. Eventually, I just had to leave.
His sister finally managed to explain to him that it was nothing to do with "revenge" or anything, and that I was genuinely sorry for how we treated him. I don't know if she told him the whole conversation we had about how I'd feel bad as I didn't want to upset him anymore, and she convinced me to come back to hers by saying she was her own woman, could make her own decisions, and he wasn't due to be home at any time.
If he hadn't had randomly turned up, I hope he'd have never known. He still won't accept my Facebook friend request though.
16. The Final Nail In The Coffin
I had a neighbor yell at my younger brother about his weight, and I took it extra personal. Still, I didn’t know how to get him back without getting caught. Then I figured out I could place nails just under the back of his tires so when he pulled out of the driveway, he’d run over them. Turns out he was super poor and couldn’t afford the repairs.
My dad had to carpool with him to work for a month or so. I’ve never told anyone that I was the person who did it.
17. Did I Do That?
I was dating this girl, and my friend saw her around town a few times. For some reason, he humiliated her in an effort to embarrass me. I told him to stop bothering her, but he did it again. So that night, I convinced him to try getting back together with his wildly insane and manipulative ex that he hadn't spoken to in years, thinking that he would just humiliate himself by trying.
Well, they banged and got back together for a while—and that’s not the worst part. They also had a baby. Now? They're terrible single parents. Sorry, kid.
18. Look Before You Leap
When I was little, my friends kept pointing at the little girl on the box of the board game “Operation” and saying it looks like me. So I pointed at the big fat guy on the box and said, “That's your mom.” However, there was one thing that I didn't realize—she was behind me.
19. Chalk It Up To Experience
Way back in elementary school, a friend threw a piece of chalk that hit me square in the forehead. It was the most humiliating moment for younger me, as everyone who saw that started laughing their butts off, and kids are jerks. I plotted and planned my revenge to get my friend back in the exact same fashion over the next couple of days.
One fine day, weapon in hand, I find him perfectly placed at a chalk-throw away from me. I yell out his name and quickly launch the projectile as he spins around. For some reason, he had his mouth open as he looked at me and the piece of chalk flew directly into his throat. His eyes widen and he starts choking. I stood frozen in shock as he fell on his knees coughing.
Luckily, somebody grabbed him from behind and thumped his back, so he swallowed the piece. An adult walks in, and she looks at me and asks what happened. At this point I'm shaking, realizing that I narrowly killed my friend. I tell the adult it was a mint he choked on. My friend, also shaken at this point, laughs it off saying it went straight into his throat and he didn't taste it.
The adult shakes her head and says next time just hand it like a normal person and walked away. Years later when we were moving away to another country, I remind him about the incident and come clean about the whole thing. He snaps and yells, "I knew it!"
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20. Sound The Alarm
This kid in my class at school kept insulting my mother, so I said to him that if he insults her one more time that I'll get him after class. He replied with yet another insult. So after class, I waited for him outside and when he came out the classroom, I got him in a headlock. He forced his way up out of it…but it was out of the frying pan and into the fire.
He managed to crack the top of his head off a fire alarm, and gashed his head open. He was bleeding all down his face and had to go to the hospital. He was off school for two weeks after that, too. I felt terrible about it. After I watched him hit his head off the fire alarm, I didn't see any blood. I had walked off at that point, then when he walked past me two minutes later, his head was gushing and he was crying.
I felt so bad that I apologized to him while following him all the way to the nurse’s room, and I sat outside the room until the ambulance came. I didn't get in any trouble because he admitted it was his fault for goading me and I was genuinely remorseful. After that, our relationship was alright. He was happy that he got a few weeks off school, while I was glad to see him back at school.
He showed me his scar, we laughed about it. We both knew that it was an accident, and we moved on. We had mutual respect for each other after.
21. The Bad Neighbors
When I was around six or seven years old, my neighbors had tormented me on the bus on the way home. Like, they had harassed me with toy knives, which at the time I thought were real. They had also talked to me about really adult things and had basically been trying to take away my innocence even though at the time I had no idea what they were talking about.
I had had enough of it and I had told my mother, who then told their mother. Well, their mother told their father about their bad behavior, and he had beaten them quite badly. They left me alone for the remainder of my time being their neighbor, but I saw the cuts, scars, and bruises that had been left on their young bodies. After, their moods changed from bratty little kids to completely silent and somewhat oppressed.
22. Sticks And Stones
Two days ago, actually, in my soccer game, this one clumsy defender kept catching my ankles seconds after I would pass the ball away. So one play, he was clearing the ball and I just wanted to lay the kid out. As he was on his plant foot swinging, I hit him with my shoulder hard. As he was falling, he grabbed me and took me down with him.
I landed on his arm and it snapped like a twig between the wrist and the elbow. I feel awful.
23. What Are Friends For?
I still feel guilty about this one whenever I think about it. When I was a kid, I was extremely easy to scare with jump scares, and I HATED them. I would always enter fight-or-flight mode whenever something jumped out at me, and then I’d be mad as heck afterward. When my buddies caught on to this, they made it their business in life to jump out at me and scare me any chance they got.
Despite my hate of being scared, however, I was a HUGE fan of Halloween and I had a Halloween party every year either close to, or on, the big day. Naturally, this was the night when all my friends would do their worst to scare me so bad that I would bolt and run. They succeeded a few times when we were all under nine years old.
However, something shifted in me the year I turned 10, and none of us knew it until it was too late. As usual, I had my big annual Halloween party, as usual all my buddies were there, and as usual one of them wanted to try and scare the pants off me. About midway through the evening, I went down the hall to use the restroom.
While I was in there, my friend—I’ll call him Aaron—scampered down the hall after me and hid in a darkened doorway. I came out of the restroom, started down the hall, and Aaron jumped out at me and grabbed my arm. Ordinarily, something like this would have made me bolt like a little chicken, but for some reason that night, the Fight side of my Fight-or-Flight got turned off.
The moment he grabbed me, I whirled and punched him square in the face without even thinking about what I was doing. It was all pure instinct, and after impact I realized what I’d just done and freaked out. Aaron wrenched his mask off and was clutching his face and groaning—or so I thought—and I yelled for my dad, concerned I had really hurt my friend.
My dad and all my other friends came running down the hall to find out what had happened. My dad flipped on the hallway light, and what greets us? Aaron with his face covered in blood. I am instantly horrified, thinking I busted his nose, but as I’m spewing apologies to him, I begin to realize he’s not groaning, he’s laughing.
He grabs me by the hand I’d punched him with and yells “What’re you apologizing for?! That was freakin’ awesome!” and he yanked my hand up over my head like I was a boxing champ and starts telling everyone how cool it was of me to just haul off and slug him. If you haven’t guessed yet, Aaron was a pretty cool kid. He thought it was great that I’d suddenly found the courage to defend myself.
My dad helped get him cleaned up, though he insisted on keeping his now bloody costume on, and inspected his nose. Thankfully it wasn’t actually broken, but I still feel a wave of guilt when I remember the sight of his face covered in blood, and remember the feeling of my fist hitting him in the nose.. I’ll always be grateful to him for handling it so well, and encouraging me for standing up for myself.
However, I still feel so guilty about decking him that I can’t even imagine how I would feel if I had actually broken his nose.
24. R-E-S-P-E-C-T
My grandpa was a bit old school and gave me prison-yard advice for my first week of school. He said if anyone picks on you, just deal with them right then, don't take it. First week of Kindergarten, a Grade 1 kid was pushing me around, not letting me go back to class. I pushed him down against a fence and kicked him in the face three or four times, splitting his nose.
I ALMOST got kicked out of school until they found out my grandpa had told me to do it. Thing is, no one messed with me after, and that guy was nice to me all the way through to graduation.
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25. Like A Nightmare Come True
An old college roommate took some random household items that I had to replace to the tune of $100. Not a lot, but it was when I was a broke college student. My revenge was so disturbing. I remembered her student ID and password since I had to help her register for classes the semester prior because she was an idiot. That was all I needed.
About a month before finals that semester, I went on the account and officially withdrew her from all of her classes. She had to take another semester to graduate since all of those classes were full and waitlisted. It was really terrible in retrospect, and I'm much more mature now.
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26. A Pat On The Back
A million years ago, I worked in a large clothing store. This one girl I worked with would slap you on the back or pinch your arm or whatever as if it was a friendly gesture. It hurt. I don’t know if she was pretending to be nice, or was simply stupid, but it was very unwelcome and I told her so several times. So one day I’m heading up the escalator and there she is ahead of me.
So I walk up and as I’m going past her, I give her hardest "friendly " slap on the back I could. I may have gone a little overboard, as she almost fell forward and definitely gasped in surprise. I don’t think she ever came within reach of me again.
27. Law And Disorder
I had a lawyer a few years back who was a piece of absolute trash. He would go months between returning phone calls, and was constantly late with court filings. Like, to the point where the courts, multiple times, moved to have the case dismissed from lack of action. He also lied to me constantly about anything and everything—and then, it got worse.
After all that, he refused to be fired. Seriously, when I told him he was fired, he just ignored me and kept presenting himself as my lawyer. I had to get the courts involved to get him to stop. He then lied about me, saying “Our client has been unreachable, we are considering dropping them.” Like, what?? I TRIED TO CALL YOU 84 TIMES IN THE LAST THREE MONTHS AND YOU DIDN’T ANSWER OR RETURN A SINGLE ONE.
When I finally did fire him, he told me I had to be in court on a specific date (that didn’t work for me) at a specific time (that didn’t work for me) or else the motion to withdraw wouldn’t be accepted. So I got to the courtroom and the judge was super nice but confused as to why I was there. When I told him the story, the judge’s reply made my blood boil.
He just goes, “Yeah, this is all done electronically. Not sure why your lawyer would tell you that other than to be a jerk.” Needless to say, by the end of all this I was so angry and wrote a 10-page bar complaint about four different lawyers in their office and their unethical behavior. Well, the bar association decided this was a firm-wide encouraged pattern of behavior and threw the book at the four partners.
Disbarred for five years, restitution to clients, and only allowed to practice under supervision for a period of five years after they return. I felt a little bad, but man, I was sooooooo sick of being jerked around.
28. Easy, Rider
My brother and I were walking and my cousins were on bikes, all of us coming home from school. They kept circling us and making fun of us because we didn't have bikes. One of my cousins then spits on me. Out of reflex, I blasted her with my trumpet case and she went flying, landed on the concrete, and broke her arm. I felt awful.
It was the first and last time I ever hit a girl. My family believed every word of the story, knew this cousin was always a total witch to me, and largely believed she had it coming. I still felt awful though.
29. Drink Up
A kid on my track team would always come by and take a drink of whatever I had with me. I was sick of it, so one day I brought a soda me that had been spiked with three times the recommended dose of Ex-Lax. Sure enough, he came by and I said “You know what Tony? Why don't you just take the whole thing.” Well, we were having a home meet that day, and he was our best pole-vaulter and part of the relay team.
I thought maybe he'd feel a little off and under-perform. Nope. In the midst of our warm ups, he went missing and was absent for the entire meet.
30. Open For Business
My friends and I used to pull a lot of pranks on each other growing up, and about 10 years ago I was helping my buddy set up a new business. He was ordering business cards and the company he was going through was offering I think 500 or so free with a large order, so we decided to prank our other friend. We made business cards with his name, phone number, and home address. We put his job title as "Professional Creep."
It also had the slogan "If I'm creepin’, you ain't sleepin’." We passed these cards out all over town. He was getting really harassing phone calls for a while and couldn't figure out why. After about two years, he found one of the cards on a random fridge at a party and put two and two together. He was angry and is still getting random calls 10 years later. I feel really bad about that one...
31. A Woman Scorned
During a rough patch with my (now ex-) fiancé, he admitted to me that he had been cheating on me and was involved with someone else. At the time he was the general manager of a company that was being sold, but none of the employees knew, as the company needed to be up and operating throughout the sale. After that, everyone would be out of a job, including him—but, he was getting some big $$$ for his efforts.
So, when he came clean about the cheating, I went out drinking with a friend. I came home that night and called everyone's voicemail and left a message with the details of what was happening to their jobs and the company. It was a complete mutiny the next day, and I can’t say I didn’t feel a little bad.
32. Making Enemies
Once at a party, the guy working the grill at the snack bar across the street from us, who I don't know all that well but often joked around with, stood in the center of the room and announced that he got a new job. I immediately quipped from the back of the room, "You flipping burgers at BK now?" The whole room exploded with laughter.
I felt like a jerk immediately. I didn't expect that reaction, since it wasn't even that funny. It was bad enough that I interrupted his moment, but I just expected him to laugh and shoot a joke back my way as usual. I still cringe when I think about it and how his face dropped after waiting around uncomfortably for the whole thing to die down.
He was a cool guy. I apologized and everything afterward. But we never joked anymore, and he started avoiding me not too long after. I still feel bad about that.
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33. Putting My Foot Down
The girl sitting behind me in class kept kicking the bottom of my chair. I gave her the glares and told her to stop, but she kept going. I started rocking forward on my chair’s front legs to stop her. She then decided to stretch her legs out and stop me from putting my chair flat. So I did what anyone would do. I flung my chair back down so hard that it went right into her shin.
She screamed so loud, and needed a moon boot in the end.
34. Coming Apart At The Seams
I was a swimmer and water polo player in high school. For those that aren’t familiar with water polo, it’s a pretty rough sport, and “suit grabbing” is pretty common if you play hole set (center), as it allows you to control the other players’ hips, which is enormous in positioning. This one guy was going way too far and actually reaching down my suit and grabbing my nuts/
I got angry and yanked his suit so hard that it ripped at the seams on the side (it was a little Speedo). It fell off of him and he had to get out of the pool naked in front of all the parents, coaches, referees, and athletes, with only his hands to cover himself.
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35. The Mother Of All Insults
The husband of a friend of mine was teasing me incessantly at a game night. I had finally had enough and snapped at him, “You must not have had a very good mother.” Well, it turns out that he was adopted.
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36. Friendly Fire
I removed the batteries from a friend's AC remote a joke once and forgot about it. I then got a phone call from my friend a few days later asking me if I did it. I finally fessed up, and it turned out her mom had called the aircon company demanding they come out and fix the air conditioner since it wasn't turning on, until they asked her to check the batteries...which weren't there...
37. You’re Not The Boss Of Me
I got in an argument in middle school over a game with a friend of mine, which led to insults and eventually him saying all sorts of things about my mom. A classic middle school move taken to the extreme, really. I wasn't really saying anything about his family because it never really bothered me when people talked about mine. But I had a scathing comeback.
Eventually, I just looked at him and went "Dude, your mom works for my mom." I felt so preppy and insufferable. I should add she did, in fact, work for my mom's workshop.
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38. Search And Rescue
When I was about six years old, I had a friend over. They found my box of toy cars and decided to start throwing them at me. Of course, I did the reasonable thing, and instead of asking him to stop or telling my parents, I called 9-1-1. I hung up immediately because I was scared of talking to the responders. Of course, this caused an officer to show up 10 minutes later.
I tried to hide in a kitchen cupboard when he arrived, but he found me pretty much instantly. It was okay and he was cool about it but I really freaked myself out. Around a month, later my kindergarten class did a meet and greet with the local sheriffs, and of course, the guy who came to my house was there and I tried to hide in the classroom.
39. Same Way That They Come
I found out my live-in girlfriend was cheating with a married guy who was also in our circle of acquaintances and was well known for fooling around as often as he could. She got mad, lied about it, but couldn't cover all her tracks. So I put her stuff on the front porch and said I was throwing away anything she hadn't removed by the next morning.
She knocked on the door and asked for help. I told her all she needed to do was give her key back and get out of my life. She had the audacity to look me in the eye and say, "After all this, that's all you have to say to me?" I thought for a moment. Then I said the only thing that ever actually impacted her: "I'm sure he'll treat you just as well as he treated his wife."
I saw her hurt look and instantly felt like a jerk. Their child was born less than eight months later, proving I was right all along. Zero regrets after that.
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40. Off Limits
I had a roommate who stole food. So, my two other roommates and I made brownies with chocolate Ex-Lax. I very clearly told her NOT to eat them, saying they were for something at school. Do NOT eat them. Four of them disappeared the night she and our other roommate had a midterm. According to the other roommate, she was white as a sheet, barely made it through the exam, and didn’t come back for the second half of class.
I might have picked another night had I known she had a midterm, and maybe not used the whole box of Ex-Lax.
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41. A Parting Gift
When my ex-husband left me for another woman, I rubbed his pillowcases on my butt before he picked up his stuff, and he got a terrible case of pink eye that lasted for two weeks and required antibiotics. I felt a small twinge of guilt.
42. Fancy Seeing You Here
I got a co-worker fired for incompetence. My manager wouldn't do it, so I saved up three months of failures, just documenting them all. I then took this to my director—and got the woman fired. She was very unqualified for the position we held and was an absolute witch most days. She would often say things like, "If we didn't have a woman in this office, nothing would ever get done," after doing something like changing the paper towel roll in the break room.
Which, of course, was something our cleaning staff was already paid to do. She just liked to do things she was actually capable of and avoid the stuff she couldn’t do. One time she was supposed to give a presentation at a hotel conference room and made it all the way past hooking up her laptop to the projector before she realized she didn't have the file on that laptop.
Yep, it was only saved locally on her desktop in her office. You'd think we could just remote into it and grab the file? No—she is one of those idiots who turns her whole workstation off. It was super embarrassing for our company. Anyway, after all that, she was my Uber driver last week.
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43. Balls To The Wall
In grade five, I had my first girlfriend. It lasted about three weeks until it just wasn't "cool" anymore. We broke up, and for whatever reason, I felt like I needed to get the upper hand afterward. So, we are in gym class the next day and we are playing dodge ball. My poor ex-girlfriend was on the other team, and I was in the opposite corner of the other side.
I saw her and told my friends I was gonna try and hit her from across the court. So I lined her up and let it go, hitting her directly in the head and knocking her over. No big deal, you might think. But you’d be wrong. Unfortunately, she was very lightweight and there was also one of those big gymnastic things with the ladders and ropes, rings, etc. folded against the wall behind her.
As she was falling down, her head cracked on one of the structural beams of the apparatus and the force knocked her out cold. She got taken away by the ambulance but was luckily only concussed a bit. I definitely didn't intend for that outcome, but I still felt terrible since I was deliberately going after her just to seem cool.
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44. Mommy Issues
In middle school, my good friend's mom passed. We lived in a very religious town, but her family was not particularly religious. A few weeks after the funeral, my friend started acting strange towards me. She would call me names when she walked past me in the hallway at school. She'd give me the finger, and she started turning everyone against me.
I had no clue why. I still have no clue. So one day, my bestie and I are walking home after school and this friend almost hits me with her bike, starts calling me names, and swearing at me. Before I could even think I blurted out "Why don't you go join your mom in HECK!” Except, I didn’t say heck. As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Years later in high school, I had the opportunity to apologize to her and she accepted.
I really shouldn't have said that...I still feel bad more than 20 years later.
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45. Revenge Is Best Served Cold
I was on a trip for something in high school in a hotel and my suite-mate was a TOTAL JERK. On the last day of the conference, she popped off and was being particularly terrible. So I had some Icy Hot and I knew she had only one more pair of clean underwear. Well, Icy Hot dries amazingly clear on white panties. She had to walk around like a cowboy all day because her hoo-hah was feeling the burn.
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46. Playing Matchmaker
This guy outed me to my family and caused a huge controversy and fight. As revenge, I introduced him to this girl I knew at a party. But I knew something he didn’t. I knew she had herpes and, as planned, they hooked up. Later, I found out that not only did he get herpes from her, but he also knocked her up as well. A little too far on that one.
47. Hit And Ruin
Some girl hit my car in a hit and run. There was a witness to it, the authorities were able to track her down. The damage wasn’t significant; there was a small dent and a large scratch. It was all cosmetic damage. My car is over 10 years old, and had some other scratches already. So really, I was way more upset that someone hit me and drove off than I was about the actual damage.
I wouldn’t have even bothered to get it fixed if the girl hadn’t driven off. So when I was asked if I wanted to press charges, I went for it. Turns out, she had no license or insurance. She kept trying to fight the charges, but wound up getting sued by my insurance, having to pay me restitution via the court system, and pay a bunch of fines. I regretted it once I learned the truth.
She was some 18-year-old single mom. I felt super bad by the end of it. My pursuing her and pressing charges was 100% fueled by revenge, and her life got pretty messed up from it. Yeah, what she did wasn’t right, but I can emphasize with her being a scared 18-year-old who made a bad choice while caught up in the moment.
Also, I’m not justifying her behavior because she had a kid, but it does make me feel bad for her. Being a single parent is a really expensive thing, and having a bunch of fees on top of that financial burden has got to suck.
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48. Biology Lessons
In high school, I had this shrew of a biology teacher. She exploded in anger for no apparent reason, gave detention like it was nothing, and we all hated her. Part of biology was sex education, and she explained it using the “birds and bees” method. Suddenly she went on sick leave for a couple of weeks but eventually came back.
After some time we learned that she had a miscarriage. That’s when we took it way too far. As cruel children, we immediately knew this was our way of prepubescent payback. Every biology class, the whole class asked if she could explain “the birds and the bees” again. After a couple of times, she snapped, started crying, and stormed out of the classroom never to be seen again.
I eventually heard she quit teaching altogether and even was institutionalized for some time. Even 25 years later, it makes me feel bad.
49. The Big Short
When I was about seven or eight years old, there was this girl at my school who was absolutely horrible, we'll call her Cindy. Cindy would run up to you and pull your hair out, take the toy you were playing with, eat your snack at snack time, etc. In other words, she was a real witch. One day as we were finishing up recess in the playground, she came up to me, pulled my hair, and took some of it with her. That was the last straw.
As the teacher was gathering everyone inside and wasn't looking our way, I grabbed Cindy by her pigtail and dragged her over to the playground. Now, this playground was built weird with a sort of enclosed area in the middle of three bridges that formed a triangle that you couldn't get out of. Sometimes, us bigger kids would jump in there during Hide and Seek and climb out later.
But Cindy couldn't because she was shorter. So, I picked her up and threw her down in there, and left to go back inside. It wasn't until about an hour later when the teacher realized that Cindy wasn't in class that people suspected anything was wrong. I didn't say where she was and it took them another half hour to find her.
I got in trouble and had to spend the next week in the principal’s office, but Cindy never messed with me again.
50. An Honest Mistake
This was in high school. Oh man, this poor kid I used to work with at Wendy's named Kevin. He was a juvenile delinquent, he was a few years older than me, a little bit bigger than me, had nasty tattoos on his neck, and supposedly was out from behind bars on a work release. He tried to be a tough guy and tormented me whenever we worked together.
Stuff like generally talking smack unprovoked, getting real, real close up in my face, and that stance where you puff out your chest and pull your arms back like you're gonna swing. The most irritating was when he would walk right up in my face, then flinch like he was gonna throw a punch at me, then just laugh and say some rude stuff to me.
I got along with just about everyone at work, and we did somewhat, but we just did not fit together. One day, the exchanges between us were so apparent and obviously stressed that everyone working was talking about me fighting him. I dispelled these rumors as I wanted to keep my job—but my destiny on this day said otherwise.
First was the backdoor incident. The store had a large back door with a peephole in it, and it could only be opened from the inside. There was a buzzer outside that employees would push if they wanted back in. Well, Kevin was locked outside and his patience while awaiting his re-entry had run out. Instead of tapping the buzzer, this guy was mashing it and holding it down while everyone inside went nuts.
We were all busy and I was running to the back to grab some heavy boxes. Holding these boxes, I was gonna open the back door while I walked past. I tried to push on the door but it wouldn’t open. I leaned into it but couldn't push much more because of the boxes I was holding. I was in a hurry so I yelled, "GET BACK IM GONNA KICK THE DOOR!"
He did not hear me over his loud, constant buzzing. I gave that door a swift THIS IS SPARTA kick and it opened about three inches then bounced closed again. What the heck? I kicked it again and it opened, revealing a bashed and somewhat upset Kevin. He had been trying to look in the peephole when I kicked the door. Well, I had just broken the heck out of his nose.
Like, the tip was almost touching his cheek, and it was bright red-purple, plus he had swollen eyes. He was so angry. Immediately, I started apologizing and backing away from him, but he came at me like a rabid monkey. Quickly, we were surrounded by employees and separated. I was told to go up front and manage the fries, and to not come into the back part of the store until Kevin left to the hospital.
Then the final event, less than 10 minutes later...I was working the fries, which entails grabbing a metal basket out of boiling hot oil and dumping the fresh fries into an adjacent tray. I was doing this and everyone around me was talking about how I just broke Kevin's face. On his way leaving our store for the hospital, he decided to come right up to me again and try to instigate a fight while I was dumping some fresh fries.
Kevin pulled his signature move of flinching at me like he was gonna throw a punch. I retaliated by returning my own flinch with the basket I was holding. I didn't actually hit him with an incredibly hot fry basket...but I forgot about the boiling hot oil still clinging to the basket. When I flinched at him and shook the basket, tiny flaming hot drops of grease splattered his face and neck.
I had just broken his nose on accident, then threw boiling hot oil on his face on accident. Instant fight. On the ground. I'm a wrestler, so his freshly broken and burned nose was just smashed and wiped across a dirty floor for a few seconds before the fight was broken up. He was an absolute mess. He left for the hospital, and I got sent home.
That was it. No charges. No questions from my managers after. No more being scheduled with Kevin. Not even any paperwork about two vicious assaults and fights in the same day. I felt really bad, but simultaneously kind of justified. Both incidents were honest accidents that could have easily been avoided if he weren't such a jerk.
51. Phone A Friend
I'm still mad at myself for this. When I was a preteen, my friend and I went to one of those day camps that picked us up in yellow school buses. One of the other kids on our bus was a younger boy I'll refer to as Eli. Eli was a freaking terror. He would scream and spit and hump things, make a mess, and be as annoying and insufferable as possible.
Riding the bus with him was a nightmare for everyone involved most of the time. So I came up with this idea. I found his family in the phone book, and called up pretending to be a camp counselor. I told his mom that he was misbehaving on the bus and that he would either be disciplined or kicked out of the camp if he didn't stop.
She bought it and said she would talk to him about it. I felt so smart. Until the next day, when a quiet, sullen Eli showed up with a black eye.
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Sources: Reddit,
