Revenge is sweet, but best the kind of revenge is petty and dirty all the way through. These Redditors chose the most satisfying paybacks possible and prove that petty revenges are quick, brutal, and oh-so-satisfying.
1. The Grass Is Greener
In our first house, my wife and I had a neighbor who disliked us from the start. Apparently, the people who lived in the property before we did were his family friends—they went through a divorce and ended up selling the house to us. He was petty and mean to my wife, who doesn’t like confrontation, and he'd do annoying things to mess with her.
He'd park across our driveway before she left for work, throw pieces of wood over the fence, let his dog go all over our lawn and not pick any of it up, etc. I tried talking to him a couple of times, but he promptly told me to screw off. That was the last straw—I had to fight back. I knew he loved his lawn because he'd always brag about how it looked to everyone, so the next time it rained, I went out back and threw an entire box of oxo cubes into their backyard and let the rain melt them into the grass.
His dog absolutely destroyed his yard looking for the smell and I would make sure to comment on it every chance I got. We moved shortly after.
2. I Don’t Know Her
I’m a 20-year-old girl, and I’ve been teased all my life and have been in recovery for a multitude of things for the past year or so. I go to university in the same city I grew up in, so there's a high chance of me coming across people who I went to previous schools with who hurt or tormented me. I was well known for being bad-tempered and easy to wind up when I was younger.
What happened: I was in the pharmacy waiting to pick up my prescription when someone shouted something at me. I pretended to not hear them and they shouted again. They ended up getting frustrated and tugging on my arm. I twisted around and immediately recognized who it was—a guy around my age who had teased me for over 10 years.
So rather than get angry, I thought I would mess with him and see what happens. Him: Hi, heard you were in around here. Me: I'm sorry, but I don't know who you are, do I know you from somewhere? Immediately he deflated. It was glorious to see, and I had to stop myself from smiling. Him: It's me, [his name], from school. Come on, you know me.
Me, with a confused face, acting 100: I'm really sorry, but I don't know you. Did we go swimming together perhaps? Him: .....no, I don't think so Me: I'm really sorry but I just don't know who you are. I think you should go to the back of the line, sir. I then went on my phone and just blocked him out of everything we could possibly be connected on.
He looked lost and eventually went to the back of the line. I got my prescription, ignored him, and went to my car and drove off. I literally screamed for joy and also because I was about to break down. It was a wonderful feeling, to see him like that and to feel like he had nothing against me. To make him feel like he hadn't had a large effect on my life, even if he had.
3. That Escalated Quickly…
I worked as a server at an upscale country club and had these two gentlemen come in for lunch. One ordered and the other said, "I'll have exactly the same thing". So I confirmed that's what he wanted and he replied, "That's what I said, right?" I bring out their lunch and the second guy complains and starts getting rude with me because his lunch has onions on it.
So I say, "Sir, you said you wanted the exact same thing, but I can have the chef make you another one". So he says, "Listen to me you little freaking idiot, I know what I said and I never said I wanted onions". So I reply, "If you ever speak to me like that again, you and I are going to step outside and work this out". He whines and moans about wanting to see the manager—but karma truly is the sweetest revenge.
Unbeknownst to me, my manager has been sitting at the table right behind these guys having a meeting with another staff member. She had witnessed the whole thing. She turns around and tells the guy, "After the way you talked to my employee, I should let him deal with it however he wants. How about you both apologize and move on?"
4. Can You Spare Some Change?
Despite the big bold sign written at our store about not making change for big bills, almost everyone with $50s and $100s thinks they don't need no stinking bank and will just go to us to get that big bill broken down. Well, it keeps wiping out our tills when they raise a fuss and eventually they called corporate. Their response was to have us rescind the policy and...carry more money in the tills.
Obviously, they have never worked a till in their lives, otherwise they would know why we don't carry disgusting amounts of money in the register. But they didn't tell us we needed to have $20s and $10s. So we decide to start some malicious compliance. We go to the bank and their mouths twist into a grin when we tell them about our plan. We get dozens of $5s and $1s...and wait.
First guy walks in and smugly places down a $100. His change is $95. Here we go! I start singing the Schoolhouse Rock song. Five ten fifteen twenty twenty five...he gets nineteen $5s. He asks where the $20s are and I tell him "We are out. People keep paying with $50s and $100s and wipe out the $10s and $20s". Second guy comes in and pays for a $0.50 cookie with a $50.
When he gets nine fives he says he wanted twenties. I inform him that he could always go to a bank. This continues for four more people. Take THAT.
5. It’s A Nice Day For A White Wedding
When I was 13, so eight years ago, my dad remarried after divorcing my mom four years before. Before the divorce, his fiancée had been his mistress. My mom is completely better off without him, and ignoring the fact that I wouldn’t exist, I don’t think she should have married him in the first place. Even if I think my parents weren’t a good match, that’s no excuse to cheat on your wife.
Even worse, this new woman was horrifically vile in all sorts of ways. She constantly belittled me, made fun of the fact I needed to take pills for my mental illness—despite her being a freaking pharmacist—and was generally awful to my siblings and me. But she was a decade younger than my dad and reasonably hot, so he didn’t care at all how she treated us.
The one time he actually listened to us about her is when they were thinking of having a baby, and my brother said he’d ask our mom to sue for full custody of us if they did. So anyway, they got married. I was a bridesmaid, cause that witch had no real friends. The other two bridesmaids were her sister and my sister. My brother was the best man because she didn’t like my dad’s best friend.
He and my dad still don’t talk to this day, even though the guy was like an uncle to me as a little kid. It was a wedding, though, and everything went normally at first. But at the beginning of the reception, before the first dance, we were taking pictures in front of a chocolate fountain, looking like the happy family we never were and would never be.
I’m on the autism spectrum and have a problem maintaining eye contact. This extends to looking at a camera. So when we had to retake a photo because I wasn’t looking, she leans down and whispers something in my ear. I’m not going to repeat it, but it involved the r-word. I don’t like saying it. I snapped and decided she was going to pay for this.
No one noticed—or at least no one called me out—when I started slowly moving the chocolate fountain towards the edge of the table. When it got to the edge, it makes contact with the back of that pure white wedding dress and slowly drips down. By the time she notices, it looks like she’s pooped herself. But for all anyone else knows, this was an accident.
She has no spare dress, and that stain is not coming out. So first dance, cutting the cake, speeches, everything, this woman has what looks like a poop stain on the back of her dress. It was a small revenge, but it was so worth it. What’s supposed to be the happiest day of this stupid woman’s life, and she’s going to remember that stain every time she thinks about it.
They never did get the stain out. And nobody knew it was me. Until now, I guess. Hi family, if you’re reading this. Suzie, you’re a witch and you deserved that chocolate stain.
6. A Real Work Around
I worked for a Medical Transportation company that had a contract with Medicaid. One of their many rules was that you could not provide any assistance to the patient INSIDE of their house. One elderly lady had an old house with a very small foyer that you had to climb three steps to get to the main floor. The only other entrance was around back and up two and a half flights of rickety steps to an old deck that opened into a bedroom.
Upstairs. She's in a wheelchair. Common sense says take her in the front door, up three stairs, and she's home on the level she lives on. Medicaid says take her up the outside stairs, dump her in the bedroom upstairs and let her worry about getting down to the living room level. We ignored their policy and took her in the front door anyway.
A random inspection by a random inspector showed that we were not in compliance. He soon wished he’d never bothered us. We appealed, the inspector came out and saw the different options and decided that we had no case for appeal. Take her up the outside stairs. Nope. From then on, when the driver arrived at her house, he would get her out of the van in the sidewalk, and then get on the radio and tell the boss to shove his stupid job.
Now that he was no longer an employee, he was free to assist this lovely person into her front door and up the stairs. Once finished, they would come back to the van, tell the boss they'd reconsidered, and ask for their job back. Boss was ALWAYS understanding and took them back, but very carefully noted the 10 to 15-minute break in their employment, to show that the company remained in compliance.
Aftermath: We had contests to see who could have the most dramatic "I quit" scene. Medicaid noted our activities, but couldn't put a handle on how to stop it.
7. Snowed In
I live in New Jersey and we just had a snowstorm so I thought I could make some quick cash by shoveling driveways. So I start off and do a couple of houses and make about $80 (pretty good money for me). So I go to this house and this lady says that she will give me $50 for shoveling her driveway and sidewalk, so I start and finish about 20 minutes later.
I go up to the door and knock, but she won’t open it. I go to the back door and knock, she still doesn’t open. Then I see her looking at me through the window but she quickly turns away and pretends like nothing happened. At this point, I realize that I just got tricked into doing a ton of work and I’m not getting paid. I start to walk home all angry—until it hits me.
I remember that my friend who lived down the street has one of those machines that clear snow. Let the revenge begin. I borrow it from him and run down to her house. I turn it on and blast that snow that I shoveled and some more all on her yard. Then she rushes outside and starts yelling at me, but I return the machine to my friend’s house and go home.
8. That’s A Wrap
The year is 2006. I'm a cocktail waitress at the wrap party for a movie that would launch this actor's career. He thought it would be okay to put his hand up my skirt, so I stomped on his foot in stilettos. This was an involuntary response—but I wasn't done with him yet. I then poured a pitcher of frozen margarita on his head. This was a 100% voluntary response.
He started squealing about it hurting his eyes. Having to go back to that table would have been super bad, so I have no regrets.
9. Micro-Manage, Huge Problems
My new manager at work is one of those people that absolutely have to be in control. Even when you're exceeding every scorecard measure, keeping your head down, not putting a toe out of line, she still asks you to come to a meeting room to discuss some minor issue or another. Recently, she pulled me into a meeting to discuss me being late for work.
The protocol is to call in, say we'll be late, then submit a schedule adjustment request when we arrive. She accused me of not calling in or submitting a request, but was able to prove I did. But she didn’t leave it at that, oh no. She insisted I now needed to call her and explain why I was late. That's not the process, I told her, and she said she was making a new one.
So now I call her at 6 am on her day off to let her know if I'm gonna be late. She also had a meeting with me because my scorecard for a stat was 99/100, with a target of 50—she had to point out the 1/100 (!!) I missed. She also did the same for a handling time issue where I am hitting an average of 600 seconds with a target of 1500; she needed to tell me about a call I took too long on. Suffice to say, complaints have been raised to her manager.
Following an incident where she was asked to follow up on something for me and claimed “if it's not in writing, it didn't happen,” I've been asking for everything in writing and repeat that mantra back to her when she claims to have told me something. Last week, she asked me to see her after my call. I walked over and she wasn't there, so went back to my desk. This ended up being perfect for my revenge.
She asked me why I didn't stay around and got angry at me. I reminded her of the time she put, in writing, that I wasn't to spend more than one minute waiting for her if she asked to see me and was to go back to my desk to take calls, not wasting time. She asked me to come over again, and when I did, she wasn't there. This repeated twice more before my shift was over.
Each time I documented "Logged out at 14:14:35pm, came to your desk, you were not there, spent 45 seconds waiting, returned to desk and took another call at 14:16:38pm" in chat. She messages me to ask what time I finish. I tell her it was two minutes prior, and she says we can catch up now. I tell her that my shift is over, and ask if she'll approve overtime pay for an out-of-hours meeting.
She tells me not to be silly, and it'll just take 10 minutes. I refuse, and say if I don't get paid, we can do it tomorrow when I am being paid. She's typing, then not, then typing, then not, choosing her words. I know she's angry at being challenged, and she decided to employ one of the tactics she used when she managed a team for a company where this was standard practice.
"Okay, well, if you'd like to go home now, I can always make it a formal meeting?" A “formal meeting” where I work is code for a meeting with HR, documented on your record, for misconduct and repeated issues. She thinks she's won, but she’s really lost big time. "Not a problem. Make a formal meeting, ensure I have 24 hours’ notice, send a formal invite, and I will bring a support person with me".
I log out and leave, but not before grabbing screenshots and saving a copy of the chat logs. Next day, she's called my bluff and has a meeting scheduled. I send it to my union rep, and she comes in on the day. HR sits down with us and opens with "So we're here today to discuss some concerns. Your team leader asked you to attend an off-the-cuff catch-up three times, and for some reason you refused?"
I quickly clarify what actually happened. My manager claims otherwise, and I repeat her mantra: if it's not in writing, it didn't happen. Then I show the receipts. Her demands to put things in writing, her chat, my timestamps, my call logs, and her message to me afterward. My union rep stares at the two of them, with a small smile, and asks, "So do you maintain the position that employees should attend meetings unpaid, and that misconduct investigations are a good use of resources if they refuse?"
HR said there may have been a miscommunication, and that I could return to work. I have it put in writing that I am not accused of any misconduct, and have been cleared of any false accusations, with nothing documented on my staff file. Yesterday, my team was advised that our team leader had decided to pursue opportunities outside of the company and we were getting a new manager.
10. A Bump In The Road
This happened a few months ago as I was driving my work van, which is the biggest Mercedes sprinter you can drive without a commercial license, around Amsterdam delivering groceries. This story takes place on a single-lane road with high curbs on both sides that takes you from one neighborhood to another. The speed limit is 50 km.
Now, I've driven here so many times before that I feel comfortable doing 60-ish, just a bit faster than normal without the risk of getting caught speeding in an urban area. Suddenly I hear a loud beep behind me, and wouldn't you know it, it's a BMW! "What a surprise!" I think to myself. I was quite impressed by my ability to guess the brand of this automobile, because everything forward of the rear doors wasn't visible in my mirrors.
The tailgating and honking continues for a little while until I spot the perfect opportunity to teach this IKEA-pencil-equipped jerk a lesson: a long straight section in the road. For those of you who haven't been to the Netherlands before, our government loves two things: taxes and using those taxes to build speed bumps.
As such, we have a wide variety of speed bumps, and this straight section was equipped with my personal favorite: the bus bypass variant, a trapezoid block just wide enough that a normal car has to pass over it with at least one wheel, but a bus can pass over it unobstructed. I've had plenty of practice with these obstacles and line up for a flawless pass while accelerating to a mind-numbing 70 km.
The BMW is still glued to my rear bumper. I pass over the obstacle without the slightest inconvenience. The oblivious BMW driver, however, hits it in the worst possible way, launching himself into the ceiling of his car and grinding his oil pan as the suspension compresses on him. After that little incident, he kept a good distance.
11. The Grass Is Greener On The Other Side
My neighbor is a retired 70-something former preacher. He's also a judgmental jerk who makes weekly rounds through the neighborhood looking for any minor code violations. Things like flowers that are overhanging onto the sidewalk by an inch or two, etc. He can report it to the city to get the owners fined. He also mows his lawn twice per day during the summer and has a bed of green that would make Hank Hill proud.
I take pride in my yard, but it's 70% native plants and wildflowers with a small patch of grass in the front. I don't water the grass because pouring water on the ground seems stupid to me, but it (along with a healthy mix of other stuff) comes in pretty full and there aren't any bare spots anyway. I mow every five days, less if we're in a dry spell and it grows slower.
Anyway, when I get out there, I cut all the grass, but with a focus toward leaving a path that is as baffling as possible. Sometimes I will attempt a checkerboard and then veer off into spirals, other times I will approach with an even more abstract eye. The grass doesn't seem to mind and I enjoy the challenge of thinking of new ways to traverse the lawn.
Today, I saw my neighbor standing out front with his grandson who got sent to live with him for some reason. He was complaining to him about something, throwing his hands up in the air, clearly very exasperated...Then he gestured toward my lawn and then made a little spiral gesture while contorting his face in disgust.
I don't know exactly what he said, but I imagine he was lecturing him about how if he didn't get his life together he'd end up like me, the neighbor with the weird lawn. Small victories, you know?
12. The Monster Mash
This happened to my mother's previous coworker. She worked at a burger joint restaurant and, on a busy night, this one table ordered mashed potatoes. The server tells them that mashed potatoes aren't on the menu, but that they do have baked potatoes. The customer keeps on insisting that they want mashed potatoes, but eventually, they seem to agree that a baked potato is fine.
So when the order comes out, so does the baked potato that they ordered. He puts it down on the table and the customers go "We wanted mashed potatoes!" The server has had enough at this point and goes "Mashed?! You want them mashed?!?" He raised his fist and smashed it down on the baked potato, giving the customer exactly what they asked for.
The management, however, did not find this dedication to the customer very professional and let him go.
13. Time To Face The Music
I was talking to some friends from undergrad and this story from my freshman year came up again. The second semester of my freshman year, I was taking a music theory course. The professor was very serious about her job and this class was a bit of a weed-out class for students who wanted to pursue Music Education (I was taking it for fun).
By the time the end of the semester rolled around, I got the feeling she didn't really like me much because I didn't pay attention in class but still got As on the homework/exams/playing tests (I'd played piano for a decade by this point), so she couldn't really punish me for anything since I wasn't disrupting the class, but I was just a thorn in her side through lack of participation.
Our final project was to find a poem we liked and craft a song using the poem as the lyrics. As she passes out the requirement sheet, she announced that she would be playing these for the class, so we need to put in effort so that we don't feel embarrassed by what she plays in front of everyone. She shoots a glance at me—the least involved student—as she says that. I took it as a challenge.
I found a poem called "A Minor Bird" and decided to craft my masterpiece in the key of E-flat minor. The reasoning: 6 of the 7 notes are lowered a half-step. So it's not a matter of thinking "everything I see is lowered," it's "everything but one note is lowered," which is fairly hard to keep track of while sight-reading something that utilizes both hands on the piano.
We were to hand them in at the beginning of class and she would go through the stack and play them, without practicing first. It's a freshman-level class. How hard could it be? I spent weeks working on this because I wanted to make sure it was both well-written and an absolute plonker for her to play. I had upperclassmen take a look at it to make sure everything was labeled correctly, and they told me I was the most magnificent jerk ever.
Apparently, this prof had irked most of the students in the department who had taken her class. Then the day comes. We all turn our papers in, and I'm visibly excited by everything. The prof comes in and goes full Dolores Umbridge: "I certainly hope everyone met the requirements and put care into their work. If not, we'll soon find out!" She goes to the piano and pulls the first paper off of the stack.
She makes some comments about it that aren't negative but are a bit goading, regarding the amount of effort it seemed to take to write it. She pulls mine up about 2/3 of the way, sits down to play it, and stops at the first chord. Then my moment came. She looks around, makes eye contact with me, and straight-up glares before regaining her composure and plunking through my piece.
There are several chords that make a nice crunch before she corrects herself (that darn NOT-flat note tripped her up every time), and it sounds like whoever wrote this piece did an awful job because of how it sounded. At the end, the meek international student—who has perfect pitch—raises her hand, and goes "Excuse me, Dr. ? That piece just played...it has 6 flats in the key, yes?"
Prof: "Yes, it did. I didn't quite expect that". Student: "You...didn't play all 6 flats, it didn't sound". Prof turns, glares at me, and goes, "No, no I did not". I got a 97% because she marked a chord label incorrect. I went back in and showed her that she missed the not-flat note in the chord, and that it was actually labeled correctly; got it changed to a 100%.
14. Private, Keep Out
So, I'm married to a wonderful woman. She's smart, funny, and very kind. Her mother is generally very nice and tends to have a great attitude and be very enjoyable. Sure, she’s a bit of a prude, but still generally enjoyable. However, she can be a bit of a major snoop. If my wife leaves her phone sitting around, she will just pick it up and start going through it.
My wife has kind of laughed this off as a remnant of her mom being controlling when she was a kid. I'm not a fan of this because my wife and I will sometimes text about things that simply don't involve her mother and I don't feel are her business at all. So over Christmas, I saw my wife set her phone down on the kitchen counter, and I had a brilliant idea.
Her mom was still in the kitchen and I sent my wife the most racy and depraved text about all the things I was going to do to her when everyone left. Honestly, most of them are things we haven't even done, but I had to make it extra scarring. I sent this text from the bathroom. And maybe it was my imagination, but I could swear I could hear an audible gasp shortly after her phone went off.
When I went out, her mother absolutely would not look me in the eye. Then not so discreetly, she asked her daughter to come to talk to her in the other room. When my wife came back into the living room, I thought she had been crying, however, upon closer inspection, she was laughing. Her mother had questioned her about me “harassing” her and asked if I always talked down to her like that.
My wife had told her kindly that what we do is between us and us only. Probably the best gift this Christmas.
15. At A Loss For Words
I’m in a class where a group research project and presentation is a huge chunk of overall points. Everyone knows that in group projects, you always have that one slacker who doesn’t do anything that you have to compensate for. However, I got stuck with possibly the worst three people to be in a project with in the class.
I did the entire research, presentation, poster boards, etc., among many other annoying things myself. I tried talking to them and telling them they needed to put in their share of effort. Ignored. I’d send them tasks to do, ignored. I’d try to schedule meetings, they’d say they were coming and then leave me alone at the library.
This happened from the get-go. It was abundantly clear that they expected everyone else to do the work, but “everyone else” turned out to be just me. So here was one rule: We couldn’t have things 100% memorized word for word, and we couldn’t read off of anything. Basically, we had to actually know the subject we were discussing.
I was fully prepared to do most of the talking and even wrote down a small script for them and told them to know what to say during their part, at the very least. The night before, I told them we had to meet to at least go over the whole thing one time. Once again, none of them showed. At this point, I’m livid and decide they can just do it themselves.
This means they’d get up there, not know a darn thing to say other than the small info I gave them, and they couldn’t even make up anything because they did no research. Thing is, if we miss the presentation without an excuse, we fail the project. If you have an excuse, you have to have documentation. That’s when I came up with the perfect solution. I commute and live an hour away, so I decide that I’ll conveniently have a flat tire right before class.
I went out and actually bought a tire so I could have the receipt to prove it. I emailed the professor, who said I could present by myself during his office hours. Turns out, they COMPLETELY tanked, and not only probably failed the project but since they’re bad students, the professor might even make them fail the entire class.
16. Smells Like Teen Spirit
Back in 2013, I was a senior at a high school I had just transferred to. I had moved earlier in the year because my parents got divorced, and I made the deliberate choice to leave my old high school and move in with my dad, attending a new high school. I won't go into much detail about the why, but it was my decision to leave my mom, my old school, and my hometown in the Bay Area, and move into a small apartment with my dad.
This comes up later. Normally, switching schools isn't a huge deal, but it was sort of an abrupt move; I wasn't able to take any of the AP classes I normally would have taken because they all had mandatory summer projects that I wouldn't have been able to do in a week. But that wasn't the worst part. A week into the school year, we were told about this stupid senior project they wanted us to do.
In a nutshell, there was some acronym like IMPACT or something, and each letter represented a value of the school. They wanted us to write about how IMPACT had influenced us in our time at the school. We were then told that, should we not do the senior project, we wouldn't be able to walk for graduation. I heard this and thought it was stupid for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I had only just gotten there, so their dumb acronym didn't mean anything to me.
I brought this concern up to the lady telling us about the project, and her response was that I just "figure something out, or don't walk". Well okay, then, here we go. I brought it up with my dad, asked if he cared whether or not I walked for a high school graduation. He did not. So I just figured that I wouldn't do the project. End of story, right? Wrong.
You see, a few months into this senior project, they did a checkup on every senior. We just lined up in our homeroom to talk to some lady from the principal's office and told her how close we were to being done. When I walked up, I told her that I wasn't doing it. She was confused. "You're not going to do it? You have to. It's non-negotiable".
"No it's not. I don't have to do it". "But you won't walk if you don't do it". "Yeah". Then we just sort of stared at each other, and she wrote my name down and shooed me away. I correctly assumed that this would not be the last interaction I had regarding this non-issue. Several weeks later, my suspicions were confirmed. I was pulled out of class and brought into the main office.
They ushered me into the vice-principal's personal office, where she made a bit of a show of pulling out some papers. She told me that the meeting was regarding a misunderstanding I may have had regarding the senior project. She was apparently told that I didn't know what to do for the assignment, and I chose to boycott the whole thing as a result.
I quickly corrected her and explained that I very clearly understood what they wanted me to do, but that I thought it was stupid and wasn't going to do it. I also explained that I understood the penalty, and was fine with it. She, like the first lady, seemed confused by this course of action and just let me leave, since there wasn't really much of a conversation to be had.
A few more weeks later, I get pulled out of yet another class for this same thing. Again, I'm brought up to the vice-principal for a one-on-one. When I get there, she looks like the cat that ate the canary, and I knew I was in trouble. She begins, "So, I know you were in here a while ago, and you said you didn't want to do your senior project..."
"No," I interrupted, "I said I wasn't doing the project". “Well," she continued, "we had a chat with your mother over the phone earlier this week. She told us that she really wants you to walk on your graduation". I was quiet for a moment. "Um... I live with my dad". "Right, but your mom said she'd like to attend the ceremony and see you walk". "I don't think you get it," I stated, "I live with my dad for a reason".
If ever there were an expression that perfectly exemplified the dial-up tone, that's the face she made. After she collected herself, I was released and headed back to class. By this point, I was mostly just not doing the project because it was dumb. But them calling a family member to strong-arm me was crossing a line. On top of that, they tried to strong-arm me using a parent with whom I was no-contact.
I decided right then that, no matter what, I wasn't caving into them. Screw the project, screw the school, screw the weird tactics they were trying to use. Though, in my anger was also confusion. Why the heck did these people care so much about one guy not doing an optional assignment? Also, I made myself very clear, so was that the end of it right? Spoiler: It wasn't.
A few more weeks later, I got pulled into the actual principal's office. The principal, for reference, was one of those guys that tried to make a show of being overly friendly and goofy, but to the point where it came off as superficial. When I got to his office, he was his usual extroverted self, greeted me, and sat me down in front of him.
"So, I've heard about this whole senior project problem you've had going on. And I get it. Trust me, I really do—you're new here, so our motto hasn't had as much of an impression. So, after talking about it with the folks grading the projects, we think it'd be just fine if you had a modified project. Just do a project on one letter of IMPACT, and you're golden".
He gave me a big warm smile. "No". "Sorry?" He asked, still smiling. "I'm not doing it". His smile was slowly fading, "But you only have to do one letter. It's really not that much". "Yeah, I got that. I'm still not going to do it". I stated. "But you won't be able to walk on graduation day". "Yep". "So what's the issue, exactly?" "You called my mom".
His mouth was open like he was going to say something, but I guess nothing came to mind, as we sat in silence for a good twenty seconds, him trying to formulate an argument, and me just staring. I told him if that was everything he needed to talk about, I would be heading back to class. He didn't protest, so I just left. It was after this meeting that I got the real story.
Apparently, California schools will shuffle principals around every few years for some reason that probably makes sense, but I don't care enough to research. Our principal was going to be switching schools after the semester had ended, and one of his big plans was to leave that high school with 100% participation in the senior projects that would otherwise not affect any final grade...
He used the intimidation of preventing students from walking at graduation to pressure everyone into doing the dumb project. ...Almost everyone. I stuck to my intentions and refused to do it. And sure enough, after the deadline had passed, they made a big deal about how happy they were that 99.6% of students completed their senior projects, even though they were hoping for 100%.
And the absolute dumbest part about this exercise in stupid? After everything was said and done, I was called in one last time to the VP's office. She told me that despite my refusal to do the senior project, they were still going to let me walk, and gave me five tickets for friends and family. I laughed, walked out without the tickets, and didn't attend my own graduation.
Unsplash
17. ER Karen
I worked in an emergency room (ER) for six years. Every person who has worked in the ER knows that Mondays are the busiest days of the week, and also when all the crazies come out. This day was no different. I worked as a nurse in triage, where you initially get assessed in the front before going to the back. Here we determine who needs to go back first and who can wait.
It's NOT a first-come, first-serve situation as most people think. We had a few stretchers in the front for people who needed to be monitored a little closer or needed IVs, blood draws, labs. There were six stretchers, but this day was so busy that all stretchers were filled, plus five more in the hallway. This lady comes in on an ambulance but because her symptoms did not indicate an emergency she was put in stretcher triage to wait her turn.
To be fair, she was in a lot of pain. After an assessment, I recognized her symptoms as being caused by gallstones (painful but not life-serious). We put her on a stretcher, started an IV, drew labs, and hooked her up to the monitor just in case. A few minutes later, the patient’s daughter comes in the front door. One look at her and we knew she would cause problems.
She had everything from the shoes to the haircut. A classic rich Karen. When she saw that her mom was still in the front and hadn't seen a doctor yet she started screaming that she knew the CEO of the hospital and that we would all be fired if we didn't get her mom back to see a doctor RIGHT NOW! We explained that her mom has a history of gallstones and even the patient was saying that she has had this pain many times because of the gallstones.
We explained about being really busy and that there were no rooms available in the back and will get her back as soon as we could. She eventually calmed down but was still antsy. About an hour later another patient comes in and was put on the stretcher beside the mother and her daughter. This patient had worrying complaints, but on initial assessment, we could not find anything wrong.
However, as a nurse, you learn to ALWAYS trust your gut. When your gut sounds an alarm, you listen. Something about this patient was setting my alarm bells off but all his vitals were normal and I had no solid evidence to declare him an emergency. I hooked him up to the monitor and kept a very close eye on him. I let the charge nurse know of my concerns and she said to let her know as soon as something changes.
Not five minutes later, something changed. Now, at this time I should explain that this hospital was a level 1 trauma center, meaning we get all the bad cases from car crashes to shot victims. Since we had to be ready for any traumas, we had a room with three beds that was closed off from the rest of the beds because traumas usually involved a lot of people and a lot of blood.
Even on busy days like this one, those rooms were empty unless there was a trauma patient. Now, back to the second patient. I was taking the vital signs of the mother when I looked over to the second one. I noticed a worrying change in his rhythm and stopped with the woman to start assessing him to see what was going on. Well, that did not sit well with the daughter.
She actually grabbed my arm and told me to finish with her mom. I jerked my arm free and said I had to make sure the man was OK. As I turned around, his rhythm went very dangerous. I called the charge nurse to inform her of his condition, all the while unhooking him from the monitor and throwing his bed into drive. This is where the crazy ramped up.
As I started pushing him back, the daughter actually jumps in front of the stretcher and stops it. She's screaming that her mom was here first and needed to be seen before. She kept screaming that I was a liar and that she was going to get me fired. I'm usually a mild-tempered person, but knowing this guy was literally minutes from crashing, I said to the woman, "You have a choice: get out of my way or get run over".
I started pushing the stretcher forward. Now, I'm really good at pushing stretchers fast and getting the patients where they needed to go in a hurry. The daughter tried to stand firm but she saw I wasn't going to stop and jumped out of the way just as I was an inch from hitting her. Unfortunately, she did not move fast enough and I ended up running over her foot.
At this point, I didn't care and got the patient back to the trauma room, leaving the daughter screaming and lying on the floor. We spent about 30 minutes on the patient but he ended up coding. By the time I got back up front, the mother and daughter had been taken to the back to see a doctor. Still, my charge nurse warned me that they were filing a complaint against me.
A few days later, the actual CEO of the hospital came to visit me on my next shift. He was known to be a kind and fair man. Since this happened during a time before cameras were put in the ERs, he had to take what happened from word of mouth. Apparently, the daughter said I went at her several times and put her mom's life in danger by not assessing her properly and that I should be fired.
It turned out that the mother did actually have gallstones and nothing else. However, the daughter’s foot was broken due to me running over it. I calmly explained exactly what happened and that the daughter’s action might have ended up in the patient dying because of the delay she caused. When I got to the part of what I said to her and running over her foot, the CEO actually started laughing.
He then tried to cover his mouth to hide his laughter. He explained that the daughter was a friend of his sister’s and he knows exactly what kind of person she is. Not only did I not get fired that day, but he also put a personal note in my file praising my actions. On my next review, I got a large raise and a bonus thanks to the CEO's note.
18. Office Space
This happened years ago, but still makes me smile. I started working in a corporate office in a secretarial position for my first job after college. There were two older ladies who were also secretaries working in the office. One of them was just fine, but I spent most of my time sitting beside and working with Agnes. Agnes was quickly approaching retirement age and wasn’t going anywhere without a big push.
This was in the days where we just started getting computers and she was absolutely hopeless. She’d pull stuff like “I can’t answer the phone—I’m on the computer". Multi-tasking was not in this woman’s repertoire. She was also super fussy and annoying. If I ever came back from lunch five minutes late, she would exclaim loudly “Oh my god, there you are! I was wondering what had happened to you!” making sure the whole office knew I was late.
Meanwhile, she was usually late coming in in the morning and often left early for various appointments. If I made a typo in a document, she would make sure the rest of the staff knew about it, loudly. She tended to pout when things didn’t go her way, and she would “quit” her job when someone ticked her off, and then my boss’s boss would talk her into staying.
I’d heard about this tactic of hers and one day, our boss did something that annoyed her and she “quit” again. My boss’s boss was away that day, so I took my chance. I quickly advertised and planned a big retirement party for her. It was a done deal by the end of the day. People were dropping by and congratulating her, and everyone looked forward to the party.
At that point, I guess she figured it was too late to pull her usual shenanigans and she actually retired. I told my boss to not bother replacing her because it was darn easy to cover the little work she actually accomplished every day. And guess what? It was.
19. What’s Mine Is Yours
I don’t mind when my roommates borrow my stuff. We’ve all been there. All I ask is that they replace what they take. You drink my milk? Just buy me new milk. It’s as simple as that. Unfortunately, my current roommate doesn’t seem to get this. She keeps taking my stuff and when I ask her to please replace everything she takes, she’ll buy one new thing and “forget” to do it the next time despite having more money than me.
I finally snapped when I wanted to wash my clothes but only found an empty box that used to contain my washing powder. I don’t buy fancy or expensive stuff and I don’t care about brands. After using the last of my powder a week earlier, she could literally have bought the cheapest no-brand powder in the world and I would have been fine. So I just snapped.
I had told her over and over to not use my washing powder if she wasn’t going to replace it and I just had enough. I bought a new box of washing powder, some Dylon machine dye, mixed it with a bit of the washing powder, and dumped it into the old box. When the dye is dry, it looks like washing powder, especially if you’re not expecting it.
I took my new box of washing powder to my room and waited. A week later, I came home from work and saw her laundry hanging outside, all with a mysterious pink color. She stomped up to me and demanded to know what I had done. I told her I was going to dye my own clothes and someone had told me the shade would be lighter if I mixed it with powder (lie), then asked her why she had used it when it had clearly been in a box with my name on it when I had told her not to use it because she never replaced it?
I don’t think she believed me, but she finally got the message. She almost never takes my stuff now and when she does she’s quick to replace it.
20. Geography Lesson
I work for a flooring company, running installation for one of our markets. The vast majority of the crews that work for us are filled with guys (and the occasional gal) from Central America. Being in a state with blue cities and red country between, we definitely get some of the "Good Ol' Boy" mentality from some of our customers. We had an install go out months ago, and the customer specifically requested: "Don't send no dirty Mexicans to my house".
While we have some guys from Mexico, we truly have the gamut of Central America represented in our subcontractors. So we do our schedule, not sending one of the guys from Mexico. The salesman was in the installation office when the customer called, rather frustrated. Customer: I thought I told you not to send Mexicans out here.
Salesman: Yes, sir, you did. Customer: So why are there Mexicans at my door saying they're from your company? Salesman: Well sir, it looks like Gustavo is out to your house today. Gustavo is actually from Honduras. At that point, the rest of us couldn't hold in our laughter, so the salesman left the office to finish the call. Gustavo and his crew were allowed into the house to install the flooring, but we haven't made a repeat sale to the customer just yet.
Pexels
21. There Isn’t Room In This Town For The Both Of Us
So I’m at Costco, in need of dog food, and it’s ridiculously busy for a Monday. Barely any parking spots, until I spot one at the end of the lot. I make my way down the aisle and am about to turn into the parking spot when a lady RUNS OVER THE CURB and almost hits me to take the spot. Thankfully, I tapped my brakes in time or she would have taken off my bumper.
I look up and she is shaking her head and wagging her finger in a “no” motion at me. What the heck? I was like okay, I’ll just wait for her to back up since I’m obviously turning into the spot. She doesn’t. My girlfriend is with me and was so angry that the lady wasn’t budging. So I gave her my Costco card and just sat in the aisle in a face-off with this lady.
My girlfriend goes inside, gets the dog food, comes back out, and loads up the car. She then pushes the cart into the spot we were waiting for and hops in the car. The look on the woman’s face was enough to give me satisfaction for a week. She had to get out and move the cart so she could park once I reversed through the entire aisle. Worth it.
22. Gimme A Break
Back in 2015, I worked for a pretty dismal call center. It was an outsourced center that handled customer support for a lot of UK retailers. Staff turnover was real high, with the vast majority being on temporary contracts and the promise of a permanent contract being hung over people’s heads to make them suck up being treated badly.
After working there for about two years, in late February of that year I was offered a permanent contract because they wanted to put me on their team leader program. The pay was slightly better, the job security was better, the only major difference was how holidays were handled. People on temporary contracts were paid for any unused holidays at the end of the working year in April.
People on permanent contracts had to use their holidays or they would lose them. I had just over three weeks of holidays saved up, so the day I accepted I booked three weeks off in March so I wouldn't lose them in April. March rolled around and my manager told me that my holidays had been refused. I said that's fine as long as they pay me for them, and he replied that no, if you don’t use your holidays you lose them.
I said that I was trying to use my holidays and they were not letting me. He shrugged said it's the "duty of the employee to manage their holiday time wisely and I should read my contract". This was despite the fact I had only gotten that contract three weeks earlier and the holidays worked differently. Understandably annoyed, that evening I went home and read my contract from beginning to end. That’s when I discovered my manager had overlooked one crucial part of the paperwork.
The contract clearly stated I had to give a week’s notice, and that any holidays not used would be paid to any leaving employee in full on their last paycheck. The next day I came into work and announced I would be quitting unless they paid my holidays or allowed me to take the time off, and if they accepted my notice then to be sure my holiday days were included in my final paycheck.
My boss asked me if I was really going to quit over this, and I replied was he really going to lose one of his most reliable employees over this? He wouldn't budge. I assume he thought I was bluffing. So I handed in my notice, and on my leaving interview with my manager’s manager, I made sure to explain exactly why I was leaving. And yes my final paycheck did include my unused holiday days.
23. Take Your Time
I was in line at a grocery store cashing out a 12-pack of drinks. A woman walks towards me and takes her place in line, however instead of standing behind me in line, she decided to stand right beside me. The woman in front of me finishes her transaction and what do you know, the lady beside me actually pushes past me and tries to cut me.
Honestly, in my head, I was about to just let her go because she clearly was in a much bigger rush than I, and I personally didn’t mind waiting an extra two minutes. No big deal to me. However, the awesome cashier (who has cashed me out frequently) says to her “Uh, I’m sorry but she was waiting here before you". The lady scoffs and steps aside.
With a huge smile on my face, I make sure to have a nice and lengthy “How’s your day?” “Yeah thank god it’s Friday!” “Did you do anything fun on Halloween!?” chat with the cashier. She knew, I knew. The lady knew. The whole time I felt the lady in a rush’s eyes burning a hole in the back of my head, and I was just loving every minute of it.
24. The Meat Of The Matter
I own and operate a BBQ and grill restaurant. We run a special promotion for the Euro Cup where we have a promotion for 1kg of skewers (pork or chicken) for 6.50€. This happened on a Saturday night. A group came to watch the match between Belgium and Portugal. One of them is a guy known to almost all of the restaurant owners in town.
Let's call him John. John has a tendency to complain about the food in order to get freebies (either something extra or the whole order). They place their orders and about 20 minutes later they're served. A few minutes later my head server, Mary, comes inside furious. Mary: Give me the scales! Me, slightly confused (I was sweating over the grill, since we had a lot of orders): What for?
Mary: Just give me the scales! I give her the electronic scales, she grabs an empty plate and heads outside. I follow her, because I know that something is up. She goes to the group that includes John, puts the scales on the table, and proclaims "Let's weigh them!" You see, John had ordered the promotion and then said that his order was missing almost half of it and demanded four more skewers "to make it correct" (his words).
Now, in almost any other place he would be probably right. Most of them buy their skewers already made and they weigh between 100 to 120 grams, which means that a kilo is usually 10 skewers. But we prepare our skewers in house and they are much bigger, between 180 to 220 grams (which is written on the menu), so our kilo is usually six of them.
So, basically, John was demanding almost another kilo of meat for free. John, smugly: Yeah, let's weigh them and then you can bring what you still owe me! Mary grabs the skewers and a fork and starts removing pieces of meat and placing them on the scales. Initially, John has a very smug smile. But he starts to frown when three skewers are emptied and the scales shows more than half a kilo of meat.
Finally, with the second piece from the fifth skewer, the scales show just above a kilo. Mary, holding the remaining skewers and smiling smugly: It seems you were right about the order not being correct. We put more. I'll take those (waving the skewers in her hand) back to the kitchen. Enjoy your food! Mary returned smiling to the kitchen and put the skewers aside, while John ate his kilo of meat sullenly and the rest of his group laughed at him.
25. Sibling Rivalry
So a few weeks ago my brother, sister, and myself (all in our early-to-mid 20s) took a little siblings vacation to California for a week. It was the first time we’ve ever done anything like this. A few nights into the trip, we went to a basketball game in Sacramento, after a day where we had been drinking on and off.
As we took our seats, I took my jacket off and placed it on my seat. Knowing I have a penchant for being somewhat forgetful, I asked my sister if she could remind me about it as we left, to which she looked absolutely disgusted and remarked, “I’m not your mother". Well sheesh, we were having a very nice trip to this point and I had no clue that kind of reaction was coming.
But whatever, I figured she was cranky or something and let it go. Wellllll, wouldn’t you know a few nights later we had gone out to eat, and she was the first one to stand up and walk away from the table, leaving her purse on her seat. I did what any responsible older brother would do and quickly snatched it up and hid it inside of my jacket.
After we had walked about 7-8 blocks away from the restaurant, I made some remark about how weird someone else’s purse looked and she immediately realized what she had forgotten, and began running back towards the restaurant. I filled my brother in and we took a nice casual walk back to the restaurant where my sister was freaking out because her purse wasn’t there.
I simply held up her purse, looked her straight in the eyes and said, “I’m not your mother". It was gloriously cathartic.
26. Appreciate What You Have
When I was doing my articles at a small advocate firm, I was the go-to person for everything at the office (setting up computers, buying stationery, paying bills, going to court, seeing clients, etc.). After being admitted as an attorney I continued doing all this because the secretary only did about 20% of what a secretary would usually do and refused to do anything else.
My boss does some shady business (doesn't pay taxes, etc.) so he couldn't just fire her for fear of her ratting him out. He also never disciplined her. We are not in the US. Since we worked from my boss's mother's house, the secretary also spent about 50% of her day just chatting to his mother and they became fast friends. Guess who was always the evil one that everyone ganged up on? Yours truly.
I was made out to be incompetent at my job and I used to cry a lot and almost became an alcoholic from work stress. One day, the secretary got really upset with me after I asked her to buy stationery since we didn't even have staples. After a heated argument, she told me that I'm not the office manager and should stop lording it about as if I was.
Bear in mind I was her senior both as an attorney and in number of years I worked at the firm. My boss did nothing and rather got upset with me and so did his mother. I decided there and then that I am done doing both secretary work and my attorney work because I was working roughly 50-60 hours per week (standard is 40) trying to get everything done without receiving overpay.
She knew this and my boss knew this but no one cared that I was basically working myself into an early grave. Introducing: my perfect revenge. If everyone agrees that I am not the office manager, then I will stop managing the flow of the office and only do my attorney work. I stopped paying the bills, buying the stationery, reminding my boss of important meetings, etc.
Within two weeks, the electricity was cut off for 10 days because it wasn't paid and my boss's elderly mother and the rest of his family had no electricity. We could also not work for those 10 days. Once the electricity went on, the phone lines were cut because of non-payment. We could again not work. The post piled up, because there was no stationery.
We couldn't do service of court documents because our service providers cut us off. It went on for weeks. I simply worked around the issues and sorted my life out (one example: when the Wi-Fi was off I used my cellphone to hotspot my laptop without telling anyone). In the end, my boss and his mother begged me to do what I used to do, but I refused.
Since I was focusing more on my actual work, my fees increased and my pay increased as well. Shortly thereafter, I moved away from that office to our secondary office and worked alongside lovely colleagues who all did what they got paid to do. I have been at this new office (same firm, just a different location) for the last two years, and it’s so much better.
27. Hit And Run
I was trying to find a parking spot at my university. The lot was notoriously crowded but my campus didn't have a lot of options. While searching, I saw a Corvette taking up FOUR prime spots near the front of the lot. After about 10 minutes of waiting and looking for a spot, one opened up towards the back of the lot finally.
Furious at the nerve of the Corvette driver being so inconsiderate, I then wrote a note saying, "Sorry I hit your car, you probably won't even notice the damage," and left it on their windshield. When I got out of class and was headed back to my car, I saw a very stereotypical college-aged Corvette owner frantically searching their vehicle while yelling into their phone.
I don't know who they were talking to, but I feel bad for them having to deal with this person.
28. Service With Some Snark
My friend told me this story and it was just too good not to share: So the town we live in has lots of good old-fashioned British pubs, and one that is a pub during the week and then turns into (sort of) a club at the weekends. Since it's the only place open past 12/1 am, it tends to attract a lot of jerks. My friend was working one night with two other bar staff.
One other guy and a girl who I've been told was pretty attractive. It was about 11:55pm and a guy walks up to the bar. My friend wasn't serving anyone at the time and goes to take his order. "No thanks mate, I'll wait for her". My friend tried to explain that she was serving customers at the other end of the bar and that he would be the one to take his order.
"No. I am ONLY getting served by her! No one else!" Sure mate, no problem. My friend then waits for his colleague to finish serving her existing customer. By the time she's done it's around 11:57 pm. So my friend turns to her and says "Hey, you've only got three minutes left of your shift, so you might as well leave now, we've got it covered". So she leaves. My friend and the other guy working both refused to serve him for the rest of the night, as per his request.
29. Full Of Hot Air
This happened to me last night. I got in my car to pick up my girlfriend and my tire pressure light came on. I have a 12v air compressor in my backseat, but it’s loud and fills up sort of slowly, so I opted to drive to the local Wawa. For those who don’t have Wawa, it’s like if 7/11 got clean and went to college. Wawa’s air pumps are free to use, which usually means there are at least a few cars lined up, but when I pulled in there was only one other car.
Score. I pulled behind the guy filling his tires, and an older gentleman in a BMW pulled in behind me. After about three minutes, a woman in a brand new Lexus pulls up directly next to me and puts her window down. “I only have to fill one tire, do you mind if I go in front of you?” she asked. I said, “Actually I do, we’ve been waiting here for a little bit, sorry".
She muttered something while rolling her window up and I put up mine. About a minute later, the guy at the pump was done. He backs up, and before I can even put my car in gear, the Lexus woman pulls her car in front of mine diagonally, blocking me from pulling into the spot, and then pulls straight in after the first guy has moved.
She climbs out of her car and gives me the MOST INFURIATING little wave. At this point, my anger gives way to a ninja-like calm, and I know exactly what must be done. I pull my car forward and stop ~6 inches from her rear bumper. The air pump is in the corner of the lot, so Lexus woman has a curb in front of her, a curb to her right (where the pump is), an open spot to her left, and now my dirty car right behind her brand new one.
She is busy filling her tire and doesn’t notice that I’ve pulled right up to her car. I step out of my car, grab my air compressor from the back seat, and start setting it up to fill my tire. Mr. BMW, who has remained completely still and silent this whole time, sees what I’m doing and asks if I can fill his tires, too. I say “of course” and motion for him to park in the empty spot to Lexus lady’s left.
As soon as he pulls in, she notices what’s happening and starts yelling. I flip on my air compressor and begin filling my tire, her cries drowned out by the sound of 250psi of justice. She comes and stands in front of me, face beet red and little flecks of spittle popping out from between her teeth as she calls me all sorts of names.
I calmly say “Ma’am, I only have one tire to fill. You don’t mind, do you?” Mr. BMW is absolutely loving this, and as I finish my tire and move to fill his, she starts up again. I finish Mr. BMW’s tire and he thanks me for my help, climbs in his car, and pulls away grinning. I wrap my compressor up nicely, pick a good song, and set my climate control to a balmy 82 degrees, all while Lexus lady is trapped in front of me.
I calmly back up, give her a little wave, and drive off into the night.
30. Picking Up What You’re Putting Down
Up until fairly recently, I worked as a camp bus driver in a major industrial area. What my duties were was to pick people up from the camp (where they lived for a certain amount of time—I was two weeks in, one week out) and take them into the plant and drop them off at a variety of drop-off areas (depending on what their job was), then pick up anyone who was returning to the camp for their rest period.
Now, there were certain designated areas for the buses to pick up and drop off (you know, a bus stop) and only buses were supposed to be parked in those areas. The issue was that people would keep parking their work pickup in the bus areas and block us off. We kept asking them to not do that, they kept doing it, and eventually, it all boiled over.
A higher-up in the company started giving us heck about picking people up out of the designated areas (because people kept blocking the areas with pickups). We explained why we did it, and the higher-up promised to do something about it, but never did. The second time that higher-up gave us heck over picking people up out of our designated areas, my manager told us (the bus drivers) that the next time this happened that we should let him know via radio and then just leave.
So that's what I did. Now, we didn't just spring this on our passengers. We made sure that every single one of them knew that the next time it was blocked off, that the bus would just continue on its way and leave them behind. When I spread the news to my passengers I heard a lot of laughter and could tell that they didn't believe me. However, the next day, it happened again.
There were pickups in our areas once again and like the good little minion I was, I did as I was directed, got on the radio to my manager, let him know what was happening, and left. I understand that there were a number of interesting phone calls afterward. But we never had a problem with pickups in our areas afterward, imagine that.
31. Justice Is Served
Many moons ago, after my divorce, I saved up enough money to move from my apartment, which was a building with 12 units, and buy a house. I was really excited and told my favorite neighbor about it. That’s when I made a disturbing discovery. He told me not to even bother trying to get my security deposit back, because the landlord never returned security deposits.
I turned in my notice. The landlord didn't even bother to do a final walk-through. After 30 days, I emailed her and asked about my deposit. No response. I filed a small claims court case for the deposit. This lovely lady's strategy was to hire a lawyer and bump it up to the next higher court. Most people quit after she bumped it up to the next higher court, but I’m not most people.
I had some spare time, and have always loved a good game of strategy. I double-checked with the court to make sure I could represent myself (FYI—anyone can). I then sent a certified letter to her attorney asking for a full disclosure of the evidence being presented. A huge thank you to all those TV shows that explain what full disclosure is, by the way.
A week later, I received a call from the lawyer, asking what I wanted in order to avoid court—settlement accomplished. Ok, but here’s the really petty revenge. I let my neighbor know how to get his deposit back when he was ready to move. He let the other tenants know how to get their deposits back, too. Me: +1, Landlord -12.
32. Being A Good Samaritan
You know all those Amazon vendors that are offering gift cards and free items in exchange for 5-star reviews? What I do is accept the offer, write the review, get my gift card, then edit the review to one star and explain the situation. I started getting items in the mail like headphones or whatever with a note that offers free stuff and 10$ gift cards in exchange for writing a 5-star review on Amazon.
I’m a fairly big reviewer, and over the years I have written more than 2,000 legit reviews. To me, reviews are the most useful aspect of Amazon and nothing makes me angrier than fake reviews to promote a bad product. So I said “screw it” and I started writing the review, emailing the “scammer” with a link to my review, get my $10 gift card, then I edit the review to explicitly explain how this scammer is trying to rig the system.
There’s absolutely nothing to prevent you from doing this. Not only do you waste their time and money, but your review can help raise awareness of this.
33. Perfect Strangers
We live in an apartment block, and occasionally have new people move in and out, yesterday we encountered a new resident, a short red-haired lady. My boyfriend greeted her with a simple "Hello". He also tried to say "welcome," but she cut him off with, "Shut up, I don't know you". Okay, not the sociable type, neither are we, let’s not get friendly then!
Today when returning from grocery shopping, we found her trying to pick the lock with what looks like a piece of a paperclip, because you know, that's going to work. She's apparently been at it a while, because before we could open the door with our key, a patrol car stopped and an officer called out to her. We stopped to watch because, well, it was happening.
The officer asked her why she was breaking in. She responded that she lived here. She then turned to us and said that, "They know me". My boyfriend smiled and said, "I don't know you". We entered the building after the officer asked us to confirm, and mu boyfriend repeated, "We don't know her". Can't wait to have more contact with her...
34. An Extra Large Prank
I work in a major pizza delivery chain that has so far been unsuccessful in out-pizzaing the hut. Our store is in a college town, and everyone is bored as heck right now for obvious reasons. So we've gone from maybe one prank call a day to at least 3-5. Which isn't much but still really annoying with how much more business we've been getting, again for obvious reasons.
The worst part is how uncreative and low effort most of them are. At least 80% of them are "Can I get a boneless pizza," or "is this the Krusty Krab?” This had been going on way too long, so I took up the habit of just hanging up whenever someone starts saying something stupid. The boss wasn't too happy about this but didn't care enough to say anything…until one incident.
I hung up on someone who wanted that “boneless pizza” and he called back angry because he actually wanted to order. So I get a stern talking-to from boss man and he sends a message to the company's group chat app saying: "I know we've been getting more prank calls than usual, but please don't follow in certain people's footsteps and just hang up on them. Take the calls as seriously as possible. If they order something we can't make, calmly explain it to them and offer them something we do actually sell. We want to try to make money off of them even if they're acting dumb". So the very next call is where the fun starts.
"Thank you for calling, what can I get you?" "I'm soooooo hungry, can I get an extra-extra-extra-extra large pizza with triple every topping?" "I'm sorry ma'am, we can only go up to one extra and double each topping". "Hmmmm ok then. Can I get twenty XL's of each meat y'all have. So like 20 pepperoni, 20 sausage, etcetera". These people are obviously giggling in the background the whole time.
"Sure, give me a sec to ring it all up...Ok so that's 180 pizzas, the total will be $1,000 (don't remember the actual price but close enough) and it'll take about three hours". "Awesome thanks! We'll pay with a check when we get there—dial tone". So I place the order, and my justice comes through immediately. Not 30 seconds later I hear "What the actual heck” from the boss and he runs to the computer.
"How are they paying for this?" He asks me. "They said with a check, we do still take checks for orders over $200 right?" "They can't have been serious, was this a prank call?" "Not sure boss, you said to take all calls seriously". He just grumbles and picks up the phone and calls the customer, and all I hear is super loud laughter as he hangs up.
Meanwhile, other employees have started actually making the ridiculous order, not noticing anything weird about it. So by the time the boss finishes the call and cancels the order on the computer, there are already five XL pepperoni pizzas in the oven. So we got free dinner for everyone working that night as well as another message in the group chat app simply saying "in regards to my last message, please just use good judgment when taking orders".
35. Instant Replay
I had a neighbor that had a dog that, I kid you not, barked from bout 7 pm until 5 am NON STOP. They worked nights, I believe, and they kept it outside. I knocked numerous times, and they only said: "Dogs bark, what do you expect?" Their house was directly behind mine; we shared a divided wall. So I recorded their dog for a full day.
The minute they brought him in, and I felt like they were sleeping, I popped my phone into the dock and played it on my stereo full blast facing their yard at 9 am. They came over raving mad to my wall by about 12 noon, asking me to shut my dog up. I said "It’s your dog. I recorded him, since you miss out on what dogs do. I'm just playing the radio at normal allowable city time, and I will do this every day".
They started bringing the dog in at night after that.
36. Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys
"You're not to get involved in your mom's Facebook stuff". These were my dad's words years ago when I started a discussion with my mom over some dumb prejudiced stuff she said on Facebook. Facebook brings out the worst in my mother, who in real life used to be a lovely woman but over the years got lost in her echo chamber of stupidity.
So today there was an unsanctioned protest in my city. A protest organized on Facebook by the lowest of the low of our society. We have a group of about 100 delusionals in the country who are actually willing to get from behind their keyboards and disrupt public transport in my city any opportunity they can get in the name of “the people".
My parents (not a part of the 100 but seem to be well on their way) went to today’s protest, the protest was again not sanctioned, they were told to separate and leave, they didn't, they got detained. Ha. They didn't have any form of identification on them so they were not allowed to leave. My dad called for the first time this afternoon asking me to go to their place, pick up the IDs and then go to the station.
I asked if this was about the Facebook event, he said yes. I said "I better not get involved then," hung up, and ignored his next 17 calls. My aunt apparently went to pick them up later tonight and everyone's mad at me, saying I'm a traitor—except for my grandma, who called to say she misses me, and I haven't been able to get the grin off my face.
37. Spanglish Strikes Again
This happened to a family friend, let’s name him Sean. His parents are American but lived in South America when he was born, he was also raised there so naturally, he grew up speaking perfect Spanish, though he obviously didn’t look Hispanic. He was blond with green eyes and fair skin. Fast forward a couple of decades, he’s now in his late 20s and has moved back to the US, where he’s lived since his teens.
Both his Spanish and English are perfect at this point. He goes to a certain “Mexican” fast food place, let’s call it “e. Coli,” where employees add your ingredients down the line and you pay at the end. As soon as he starts ordering his food, two of the workers, both Hispanic, start to make fun of his hair, his skinny jeans, and essentially his entire appearance.
I remember him mentioning them specifically wondering where his balls fit in those tight jeans and concluding he probably didn’t have any, all while subtly laughing and still maintaining a professional demeanor as they fill his bowl. Sean was able to stay composed and quiet and acted completely oblivious to everything they were saying and just carried on down the line ordering.
By the time he gets to the cash register, the cashier, who was not one of the two employees, rings him out. That’s when he calmly asks the cashier to call over the two employees, which they did since there was no line at the time. When the employees come, wondering what was up, Sean says, in English: “I really appreciate the service both of you provided. Your commentary was also top-notch. Now if you could be so kind…”
And then without missing a beat he says, in perfect, zero accent Spanish: “Me pueden llamar a su jefe?” Which translates to: “Could you call over your boss?” He says their reactions were something he will never forget. The manager comped his meal and gave him 10 gift cards to the restaurant. He lived close to that specific location, he never saw those two employees again.
38. You’re Hot Then You’re Cold
I briefly worked as a manager at a Ralph’s (a NYC-area ice cream chain) and one night as I’m helping out scooping, I hear a customer getting annoyed at the window and starting to get snippy with one of the young kids who was working the window. I head over to smooth the situation as manager. The woman is mad because the hot fudge on her hot fudge sundae is hot and going to melt the ice cream.
I explain to her that hot fudge is indeed served hot, but she insists so I make her a new sundae with magic shell topping instead and let her keep the hot fudge one. That was far from the end of it. By the time I return with that, this customer is stirring her spoon through another cup of cream ice (kind of like a sherbet) she ordered, obviously about to complain about it, too.
The flavor she ordered was called “graham crunch” and she proceeded to tell me that there wasn’t any graham crunch in it. That she orders this flavor all the time and she knows that I am intentionally stiffing her. I tell her that this is just how the flavor is and I don’t name or make the ice cream, but she isn’t having it. She wants me to “fix” it.
We’ve got some crushed graham cracker topping in the back, so as she is berating me I just walk away from her and grab the entire container and come back to the window with it. At this point, we’ve got a line of people down the block because this lady has held us up, so there are lots of witnesses to what I was about to do. Without breaking eye contact with her as she continues to tell me that I’m wrong about the ice cream I scoop 6 days a week, I open the lid of the container and empty the entire thing over her cup of the offending ice cream.
Graham crackers are everywhere. Her ice cream is now definitely crunchy. She loses her mind at this and starts yelling at me that she knows the owner and will get me fired. I tell her “Yeah, Steve is a nice guy” and she responds with “I’ve known Steve a long time” to which I respond, “Well his name is John. Get out of here and don’t bother my employees for free ice cream again".
Now sufficiently embarrassed in front of the long line of customers, the lady leaves in a huff and indeed never returns as long as I worked there. The next few customers left us $20 tips in the jar to make up for her, so the kids who worked for me left with quite a bit more in their pockets than they normally would and realized that their manager had their back.
Wikimedia.Commons
39. Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls
My ex-husband and I bought our home from his parents. They had the house built in the 50s. For years, my father-in-law wanted to install a shutoff valve in the utility room to, you know, shut off the water to the whole house to do some repairs. The plumber told him it would cost a large amount of money because they could not find the shut-off from the city water main at the street, the "buffalo box,” AKA the water main shut-off valve.
Since the buffalo box was MIA, they would have to freeze the pipes to stop the water before installing the shutoff valve. It was an expensive process to freeze the pipes, so it never got done. When we bought the house, we decided to get the shut-off valve installed. We called the water department and they sent two workers to shut off the water.
When they arrived, I explained the problem. They went out to the front yard, walked around a bit, and told me there was nothing they could do for me. According to the two workers, it was my problem that they could not find the buffalo box and that I should call a plumber to dig up my front yard, sidewalk, and city easement to find MY buffalo box.
Well, I have a background in residential real estate construction and I was familiar with how water mains and buffalo boxes are installed, and I told them it was the city's issue, as they were responsible for the buffalo box, not the homeowners. According to these guys, as a woman, I did not know what I was talking about and they left.
They were incredibly rude about it, but peons like these think they can get away with being rude to an “ignorant” woman like me. They were so, so wrong. Fast forward to a year or so later. I get a call from the city manager asking why I hadn't paid my water bill for over a year. I told him that I wanted to pay my water bill, but I wanted them to first turn off my water.
He was a bit taken aback that I WANTED them to turn off the water. So, I explained what the city workers told me about locating the buffalo box and their attitude about women not understanding those type of things. I also told him that if the city could not turn off my water, I would be happy to have free water forever, because I would never pay another bill.
We had a nice long chat about the situation and he said that he would resolve my concerns. The next day, these same two guys show up at my house with some digging equipment and spend the whole day digging up the sidewalk. Their attitudes were rather somber, because the city manager told me he was going to give them a talking to about how they mishandled the situation.
I even got an apology! They found the buffalo box, under the city-owned sidewalk! They fixed the buffalo box so it would be accessible and came the next day to fix the sidewalk. They asked if I wanted the water turned off. I declined, and I told them I would have my plumber take care of it when we had him install the interior shutoff valve. And then I paid the water bill.
40. Everybody Loves A Pizza Party
About 10 years ago, during my first full-time job out of college, I had a boss who decided she hated me. I'm not completely sure why, but she would go out of her way to make my life miserable. Demoted me to an overnight shift but wouldn't give me a reason, changed my shift around on a whim without notice, and once changed my schedule for the next day after I had left without telling me, then wrote me up when I didn't show up on time.
Stuff like that. She was a monster, so I was looking for another job. Well I found one, and I went in to give her my two weeks’ notice. My timing was perfect. This happened to be in the middle of a mass exodus for the company, as I was the fifth person to quit over the course of about 3-4 weeks. Morale was very low, and whenever anyone quit she would buy pizza for everyone instead of addressing why the place was so miserable and people were leaving.
After I gave my two weeks, she said "Don't tell anyone you're leaving". So I said OK, and walked out of her office and announced to all my co-workers, "Hey, guess what everyone! You're all getting pizza!" and they instantly knew what had happened. She was very unhappy and I felt great. I served out the rest of my two weeks and she never spoke to me again.
41. Pencil Me In
When I was hired for the job where I currently work, I was hired to work on Tuesday through Saturday from 2 pm to 10 pm. This had been my schedule for months, never changing. I was verbally told that this was my set schedule, and I even clarified this because I had to arrange for childcare. For example, one week I was accidentally left off the schedule entirely and was told to just work my normal schedule.
Around Thanksgiving time, we closed down for a week. The company policy is that you have to work your last scheduled shift before the break and your first scheduled shift after in order to get your holiday pay. On the Monday following Thanksgiving (remember I’m normally off on Mondays), I got a call saying I was scheduled to work and that because I didn’t come in, I wouldn’t get my holiday pay.
This kind of ticked me off because I had been told I would work Tuesday-Saturday and thus had only arranged childcare those days, so I couldn’t even come in that day if I wanted to. The exact phrase I was told over the phone was, “It is your responsibility to check the schedule every week because we don’t have set schedules".
Fast forward to this week. While checking the schedule, I noticed that my schedule is the same as normal with the exception that I am off the schedule on Saturday. So, I decided to not look a gift horse in the mouth and just take the three-day weekend and don’t mention to my boss that she left me off. So Saturday (which I normally would work), I don’t go in since I’m not scheduled.
I got a call from work and didn’t answer, and they didn’t leave a voicemail. Then I receive a text from my boss saying that my schedule “never changes” and it will be a no call/no show on my attendance record for not coming in to work. I reply that I am not on the schedule and so I’m not required to come in, as it is my responsibility to check the schedule every week because we don’t have set schedules.
I received no further reply and am looking forward to seeing how work goes on Tuesday. I also took a picture of the schedule to make sure that I can prove I was off on the schedule in case my boss tries to write me up. By the way, I do have a new job lined up and am just waiting for my start date before I quit this one.
42. You’ve Got To Crack A Few Eggs…
So, my first job was as a server at a very popular 24-hour breakfast diner/chain. We had lots of colorful customers. One morning, I’m serving a woman sitting by herself. I ask her what I can get her, and she says she’d like an omelette. We have a list of pre-built omelettes, or you can build your own, so I ask her how she’d like her omelette. “Just a regular omelette, please” she tells me.
“Okay, so you don’t want one of the signature omelettes, what would you like inside of yours?” I ask. “Nothing, just a regular omelette". She replies with a huff. I pause for a second because this order does occur, but not often. Some people like their eggs scrambled and cooked, then rolled up. “So you’d like an omelette with nothing inside?” “YES! A plain omelette!” She snaps, now irritated that I’ve questioned her several times.
So I enter the order, a 5-egg omelette with no fillings and no toppings. A few minutes later it comes out, and she is appalled. “What is THIS?!” "Your plain omelette," I reply... “But where is the cheese, or the ham, or the onions?!” She is irate. “Ma’am, you ordered an omelette with nothing inside..". She gets cocky and says “An omelette is eggs rolled up with ham, cheese, and onions! Everything else is extra! You should know this, working at a breakfast place!”
I look at her deadpan and inform her, “Actually, ma’am, omelette is French for scrambled eggs that are fried and rolled or folded; everything else is extra". I’m busy so I walk off and help other colorful customers, meanwhile she flags down a manager to complain, who confirms what I told her and points out that in the menu there is, very specifically, a ham, cheese, and onion omelette with a large picture in the middle of the page.
He then tells her she has to re-order her meal and wait a second time. She didn’t leave a tip.
43. Lost In Translation
I am a light-skinned Latina American and I lived in Korea for a couple of years during university and grad school, as my major was Korean Interpretation and Translation. During my time in Korea, I was lucky enough to attend music shows from time to time. For the K-pop uninitiated, music shows are free to enter, provided you have at least one of three items.
They would be: A) a copy of the album of the group you’re coming to see, B) proof of purchase of the album digitally on one of the approved music vendors in Korea, or C) the official lightstick from the most recent concert. Priority entry was always given to official fan club members who had all three, then fan club members who had two of the three, and then fan club members who had one. After that came non-members in the same priority tier.
The group I had come to see hadn’t opened official fan club registration in almost a decade, so the group’s management decided to do away with the fan club priority and did it on a first-come, first-serve basis, but kept the whole three items go first, then two then one thing. I had all three and I got there early, so I got a good spot in line.
These queues often had us waiting outside for hours while the previous round of filming finished up. The thing about these music show venues is, they’re very small. They have limited capacity and allow two-three groups’ fans in to watch them film at a time, so not all people who queue for a group get in. In this particular instance, there was trouble with foreign fans causing trouble by taking pictures, not listening to instructions, etc.
So the venue staff literally went through and QUIZZED each foreigner in line on their Korean. If you couldn’t understand, you were booted. I passed with flying colors and kept my spot in line. Here’s where the revenge starts. Because of the aforementioned issues, a lot of Korean fans HATED international fans with a passion.
For this group in particular so many people were VERY ANGRY that they had to wait in line behind foreigners because they’d done away with the official fan club priority. Now here’s me, sitting alone in a queue outside on a hot summer day. A group of Korean girls sat in front of me, and a lone Korean girl talking on her phone sat behind me.
I was minding my own business, playing games on my phone after passing my Korean quiz with the staff, when I heard the girl behind me talking trash. She was chatting with a friend I suspect because she was dropping a lot of curse words, and specifically mentioned “these foreign roaches ruining things for us. I want to kill them".
She mentioned me in particular and said that she bet I’d paid the staff to keep my spot in line even though I couldn’t understand Korean. Okay so. It’s harmless trash talk, I don’t know this girl and I don’t know her friend. In the long run, it doesn’t affect me, right? But it really rubbed me the wrong way, especially because she was talking quite loudly.
So I grabbed my wallet, politely and quietly asked the Korean girls in front of me to watch my bag and hold my place in line, and went to the convenience store. I bought a round of water for everyone. It was heavy. I had about a dozen bottles of water. I get back to my spot in line, thank the girls in front of me for holding my spot, then gave them each a water.
I gave water to the group in front of them, too. Then I kept one for myself and turned around and handed one to the girl on the phone with a smile. Immediately she lit up and thanked me in English, smiling bright and taking her phone away from her ear. As I hand her the water, I say in perfect Korean and still smiling, “The next time you loudly trash talk the foreigners, make sure they can’t actually understand you".
When I tell you it went silent in the immediate area, you could hear a pin drop. Her smile melted off her face faster than an ice cream cone on Florida pavement. She turned beet red and muttered to her friend on the phone that she had to go and sheepishly apologized. I accepted, she had water, and I felt better about myself. Bonus: The girls in front of me heard the whole thing and adopted me into their group for the day. Fun was had all around.
44. A Whole Lot Of Nothing
I used to work as a 9-1-1 dispatcher, and I once took a call from a lady who was complaining about a Black man walking down the street. He was doing nothing wrong...except, as she put it, "he's Black and walking down the street". She insisted an officer be dispatched to speak with her, and we had a policy that we had to dispatch. Soooo...I sent the only Black officer on duty.
It was out of his area, but a computer message to him and the supervisor made it obvious why he was going. When he arrived, she went nuts and called again screaming that there was now a Black man knocking on her door. I said, "Yes this is the officer you requested". Ultimately I had to send the supervisor out because she refused to open the door and was throwing a huge fit on the phone.
45. Just Desserts
I've been enrolled in a cooking school for over a year and my mom has never been supportive, mostly because I dropped out of a nursing program to get into this cooking school. She's always making snide comments about how I should've been a nurse or a lawyer, or how I'll only ever be a subservient housewife with this profession.
When I do make something, she always criticizes it. Like she's Gordon Ramsay or something: "Oh, too much salt". "It's undercooked". "It looks disgusting". Even though pretty much everyone else says the opposite. She's looking for any little thing she can critique about my cooking. She keeps telling me I can't cook and need to get into a real career.
I've cooked three-course dinners for the family and they always get positive reviews, except for her. She had a party for her work friends, I made a whole tray of my specialty take on homemade meatballs. It’s a recipe I conceptualized myself, and my signature dish. Everyone kept going back and getting more, so many that they ran out.
I asked mom what she thought, and she said, "They were drinking, they couldn't taste anything". So I figured if I wanted to get her to compliment my cooking, I'd have to trick her. I cooked her a meal, one of her favorites from scratch, which was her biggest weakness that she can never resist. I dressed it up to look professional and put it in a generic To-Go Box and had my boyfriend take a video of me preparing it, start to finish.
I called her and told her that my boyfriend and I were eating at this diner (that doesn't exist), and made up a fake name for it and everything. I told her they had her favorite meal and asked if she wanted us to bring her one. Of course, she said yes. I brought the dish and told her more about the fake diner. She started eating it and complimented how good it was.
She even said how she wanted to go to the diner and get another one. After she was almost through with the meal, I asked her for her honest opinions, so we could write a review on Yelp. She went on for 10 minutes about how great it was, and then I sprung it on her. I had cooked it. Her tone changed. She put the fork down and said she was lying, that it tasted like garbage.
My boyfriend showed her the video, and she googled the restaurant and it didn't show up. She then started pointing out flaws with the meal, like how there was too much sauce and it was really spicy and burned her mouth. I asked her why she almost finished the whole thing if it was so spicy. She didn't say anything, so I just asked her if she was ready to admit it.
She said no, so we left, but I spotted her eating it from the other room. I asked her again and she laughed and finally told me yes, that I'm a good chef. So, after a year of doubting I was a good chef and holding my dreams back, she finally admitted it.
46. Bend, And Snap!
Years ago, I worked as a bartender and waiter. A group of suits came in and sat down and I went to take their order. I got a bad vibe off them from the get-go, but I didn’t know how bad it would get. After I finished the order and went to leave, this 30-something sleazy guy said loud enough for everyone to hear, “walk away slowly baby so we can watch".
I then smiled at him and started to do an over-dramatic slow-motion back away, keeping eye contact with him and smiling the whole time. I told the other waiters about it and everyone started doing these slow motion walks whenever they walked past their table. The best one was a bus boy who deliberately dropped something next to their table then did a very slow and sexy pick up like the “bend and snap” from Legally Blonde.
They left pretty quickly.
Unsplash
47. Little Light Lie
Some years ago, we had some new neighbors move in next door. Nice enough people, but we had a problem with them. The husband traveled a lot and his wife was afraid of just about everything—the dark, thunderstorms, you name it. The problem was the floodlights over their garage doors. She would leave them on all night, every night, even though you couldn't see them from inside of their house.
They were positioned such that they would shine into our bedroom at night. We were not able to block them effectively with our curtains. We asked them politely several times if they could turn them off at night since they served no effective purpose. They adamantly refused. I offered to pay for a timer that would control them.
No way they would consider it. I thought about taking the bulbs out, aiming them out with my pellet pistol, etc. The solution that I arrived at was to simply loosen them up enough that they wouldn't come on. Since they couldn't see them from inside the house, it was about five-six months before they realized that they were not working. They screwed them back in. I waited a couple of weeks and unscrewed them again.
Another few months went by. Finally, one day, my neighbor asked me if I ever had any trouble with my outdoor lights. I told him yes, as a matter of fact, I did. I said that they would loosen up occasionally and I would have to retighten them. I blamed it on vibration from the traffic on our street. He said that he had the same problem.
I told him that I finally just gave up and left them off. He eventually did the same. We were happy with the final outcome and we were able to keep pace in the neighborhood.
48. Dancing Around The Issue
This happened when I was 16 years old and just got my driver’s license. My parents had me run to the store to pick up some groceries. I stopped by my friend's house on the way back home for maybe five minutes to show him I got my license and I was out driving alone. It was a really fun moment in the life of a 16-year-old. Only, I soon regretted it.
My stepmom Mary Ann freaked out. "We did not give you permission to drive to Bill's house! We told you to go to the store and that is ALL!" I told Mary Ann and my dad that they had let me drive to Matt's house the day before, so I didn't think it was a big deal. They went all unreasonable and laid down the unbendable rule that set up my revenge.
"You are not allowed to drive anywhere we do not give explicit permission for you to drive. Period, end of sentence. Just because you were allowed to do it previously does not ever give you permission another time. Ever". Fast forward three days later. My 13-year-old stepsister has been a jerk to me all day, and I'm sick of her. She goes quiet for about 30 minutes and then comes out all sickly sweet.
"Hey Brian, it's time to take me to ballet". I have taken her to ballet three days a week since I got my license. It's basically one of my chores. But I see my opportunity. That is, to say "Screw you!" to all three of them at once. "Sorry, Tina. I'm not allowed to take you to ballet. The parents didn't tell me to take you, and I don't want to get in trouble!"
She screams, she cries, she begs, she threatens. She calls her mom and leaves a message. She calls my dad and leaves a message. Just like Steve Miller says, "Time keeps on slippin', into the future". I'm not sure I'm brave enough to hang on to the bitter end and actually go through with it. I'm shaking, but I know I've got them. No call back from the parents and the clock goes on past the start of her class.
Stepmom comes home and Tina runs to meet her. "Tina, what are you doing here? You're supposed to be at ballet!" I hear Tina tell her rendition of the story, leaving out how miserable she had been to me, and they go back and forth. Mary Ann comes pounding down the hall and yells (as God is my witness) "You just wait 'til your FATHER gets home!"
I had to stifle a laugh because I never really believed people actually said that. An hour later dad comes home and the TWO of them go running out to meet him and tell him how horrible I was. I wait in my room for the hammer to fall. About 10 minutes later my dad calls down the hall, "Brian, would you please come here and talk to us?"
"Well, Brian, you did it". "What do you mean, Dad?" "You got us all, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. OK, let's make this reasonable for everyone..." And they did. They agreed that they were over-the-top. They recognized that Tina isn't always very nice to me, and they spoke to her about that. I was allowed to have reasonable freedom if I was driving somewhere, since I had good grades and had never been in trouble.
I walked down the hall back to my room, my back to my parents, with the world's biggest grin on my face.
49. Watching The Clock
In my last job when I started, I would log in as soon as I got there, and if I had anything to finish up I would do it before I left. I didn't mind as I'm a team player. This resulted in me doing 20-30 minutes a day unpaid, but I liked the company and liked a clear desk. Fast forward two years and my father-in-law was terminally ill. We got a call from the hospital telling us we had to get there ASAP as he didn't have long left.
I told my manager and left at 3:45 (core hours were 10-4). The next month my pay was docked for a whole half a day. I had already made two hours extra unpaid that week but they told me they couldn't make exceptions and the extra I did was my own decision. Allllrighty then! I knew exactly what I had to do. After that, I came in on the dot and left in the dot.
I did this for five years, I worked to the letter of my contracted hours. My manager was talking to a new starter and in my earshot she told him she hated “clockwatchers” who left on the dot as this doesn't show company loyalty. I leaned over and replied that loyalty works both ways, and being docked half a day’s pay for attending the passing of a beloved family member when I'd already done more than my weekly hours was cruel and unfeeling.
So I show the company the same level of compassion they showed me during the roughest time in my life so far. After all, rules are rules and exceptions cannot be made. The new starter started on the dot and left on the dot, as did the whole staff. I dread to think how many extra hours they lost over the whole department over the next few years.
50. We Are Never Getting Back Together
Nearly two years ago, I started work at a company as their digital marketing person. After I started, I learned why they really wanted me. It turned out that I was brought in to put out the fires left by my predecessor, the VP Marketing, who had a team of four plus himself, and spent over $1 million in one year while he brought in just five deals, two of them for under $10K.
As you can well imagine, after a performance like that, I had lots of work to do, and very little to do it with. Aside from one or two paid tools, everything else was to be done using free tools only. I’m going to do some bragging here, but I beat the previous year’s figures in all categories with 10% of the budget. When I started, I thought Bossman (Founder/CEO) had a really good management style.
He would say things like: “Your successes are yours, your mistakes are mine,” and “The enemy of good is great. I don’t expect perfection, I want you to make sure things work and get them done". In essence, I was allowed to run my own (one-man) department and outsourced freelancers, and as long as I was getting results, he left me alone.
Since I was the only person on the marketing team, I also had to learn a large number of skills and platforms that weren’t directly related to digital marketing. Not to say everything was perfect, but things were pretty good. But there was one glaring thing. One of the main things that weren’t perfect was that Bossman had serious anger management issues.
As I said before, he left me alone, but I saw him freak out at and fire other people for stupid stuff. He lost it at me too once or twice, but he’d calm down after a couple of hours and things would be back to normal. If it looks like an abusive relationship, that’s because looking back, that’s exactly what it was. As the year came to an end, I approached Boss and initiated a performance review.
I ran him through everything I had done in the past year, and he was pretty surprised at how much I had done with so little. I asked him for a raise, pointing out that I was currently making well below what other people doing my job were. He said he’d get back to me, and never did. Every time I asked him about my raise, he had another excuse. After the last excuse, I began looking for something else.
The other day we had a meeting, and it turns out that two months ago I made a mistake. It wasn’t a critical mistake, and it was rectified within a few hours of discovering the mistake. No harm or damage was caused whatsoever to the company, but Bossman flipping LOST IT. I mean slamming on tables, yelling for the whole office to hear, what have you. Then he said the magic words.
“Pack your things up and go home. Think about whether you want to keep working here". So that’s what I did, and 10 seconds later I said “No, I don’t". I started packing my stuff while he turned an even deeper shade of red and got even louder. I didn’t answer him at all, just kept on packing up my things and saying goodbye to my colleagues.
Turns out that being ignored really pushed his buttons, to the point where he started intimidate to call security to have me removed, while I was actively removing myself and my things from the office. Here’s the part where it gets beautiful. My country is very strict on employee rights. His words and behavior are considered an improper dismissal.
By law, he’s required to give me 30 days’ notice of dismissal, which he didn’t. When he realized his mistake, he convened a pre-dismissal hearing, but it was already too late. He’s opened himself up to a lawsuit, which I’m already talking with lawyers about. Because by law he has to give me those 30 days’ notice even though he already fired me, for the next 30 days I’m eligible for ALL the benefits and social rights in my salary.
But I can do NOTHING and there’s nothing he can do to me without making the incoming lawsuit 10 times worse. I’ve already got four interviews lined up for next week, paying almost double what Boss was paying me, and best of all, I’ll be interviewing for other places on his dime. The cherry on top is that because I’m the only marketing person, without me, nothing happens in the marketing department for the next month, and if he doesn’t hire someone on in time, I won’t be around to answer any questions the new person might have.
51. Have Your Cake And Eat It Too
My old college roommate didn't know how to cook or do dishes and didn't go food shopping much. This led to him eating my food, especially my leftovers as those were prepared meals. Now, I would use my leftovers to meal prep for the week and told him to stop as it was expensive as well as inconvenient. The behavior did not stop and he actually seemed to be eating more of my food out of spite.
To punish him, I baked a chocolate cake with habanero peppers and mixed the frosting with wasabi. I labeled it with my name and a bold "Do Not Eat" and waited. This guy has a very low tolerance for spicy foods, so I thought he would take one bite and quickly realize the error of his ways. About two days later, him and a couple of his friends got to drinking while I was at work and decided to dig into my food.
Somehow, they ate about a third of it before realizing it, and when they inevitably went to throw up from over drinking and eating spicy foods, the cake hit them a second time. I don't know for sure, but it couldn't have felt good coming out the backend either. When he asked me why I made this monstrosity, I told him I found a chocolate habanero recipe online that I wanted to try. He stopped eating my cooking after that.
52. Trying To Do The Impossible
So, when I was living in the city, I had a contract with my internet provider. After a year in my apartment, I decided to move in with my then-boyfriend (now-husband) on a farm. A farm on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. So I call to cancel my internet. Me: I need to cancel, I’m moving— Them: (interrupting me) your service moves with you! You signed a contract for x years and it only ends early if we are unable to provide service!
Me: you ARE unable to provide service, I’m moving to a rural area. Them: not possible! We provide service to many rural communities. What’s your new postal code? (I provide it) that’s for townname. We have service in townname. Me: but I’m not living in townname. That’s just my postal address. I’m living on a farm OUTSIDE of townname.
Them: repeats contract speech, with the additional offer of an absurd buyout fee if I want to cancel my contract early “without cause". Cue my revenge. Me: fine! You know what, I would LOVE high-speed internet instead of horrible satellite internet! When can you come? The install guy had to call me three times from the van. Twice because he was lost and a third time because he was stuck in a snow drift.
When he finally arrived, it took him about 30 seconds to determine that there is obviously no infrastructure for high-speed internet. I offered him hot coffee for his trouble coming out and he happily canceled my service free of charge and accepted my equipment return. Cost them a 3-4 hour call out when you count the drive, just to try to keep one impossible contract.
53. Two Green Thumbs Down
Now, we all like the occasional garden party with noise. However, my neighbor seems to be “an entertainer". That is, every weekend evening they like to host a party, often in the garden, and have friends and several families with kids over. This family and their guests, rather than having civilized discussions, like to shout over each other, and generally whoever shouts the loudest gets to talk for a while.
Let alone the kids who start screaming for attention. I used to let this go at first, but after a whole summer of them being louder than my TV or stereo in my own home, I had to do something about it. So now I wait until they serve up the food and everyone’s plated up…before I crank up the lawnmower and drown them out so they can no longer hear each other.
They then scuttle off inside, having to carry everything in and relay the table. Sometimes they come out after I’m done and set up and continue. It just so happens that I’ll then find a bush or tree that needs tending to with the hedge trimmer. Petty as heck, but it does make me feel better.
54. Count ‘Em Up
I was forced to do a task, and instead got my entire Chain of Command fired. I've been serving in a certain army branch for five years and I'm nearing the end of my contract. So the "give a care" is completely gone. I'm in charge of the inventory of specific pieces of equipment. Smaller pieces that are used by many people at my job.
From time to time, these pieces "disappear". Most of the time, that just means things are misplaced, but we just got out of a certain period where we had MANY hired contractors at our job who tend to take things. Now, every once and a while we conduct an inventory of these pieces of equipment for accountability reasons. When we lose things, it looks very bad on my work. More specifically, bad on my bosses.
So I prepared the inventory and was startled by the number of missing pieces. I did everything I needed to do and presented the inventory to my boss. He didn't believe we had so many pieces missing and asked for me to inventory them again. SO I did, got the same number, and put the inventory in his inbox. Few months go by and I get the same thing.
"There can't be that many! Do another one". So I'm very compliant and do it again, and again.....and again. This gets dragged on over a year, and I'm starting to notice something. My boss is about to leave soon and he is deliberately pushing this off to the next guy to cover himself. So last week, I was sleeping since I work nights and I'm woken up.
My boss tells me I have to do a specific survey with my co-workers that will get sent up to the head honcho. This survey allows the small guy to have a voice directly to the top. I tell him that I have the night watch, but he doesn't care and demands I go and do this survey. Fine. Before the survey starts, our boss tells us we need to be completely honest and all these surveys are anonymous.
Rad. I wrote down what had been happening with the inventory and directed them to where they could find the documentation of the done inventories. Fast forward to yesterday. I came to work to see quite the surprise. All my bosses are fired and now I'm reporting to new people, who are now fixing the issues with the inventory.
55. Pennies From Heaven
Four years ago, I'm working the register as a cashier. It's 10 pm and these two young men in their early 20s come up to the counter. They have three random novelty items (I don't remember they were), but it was strange and unusual to get odd items this late at night. Maybe it was for some fraternity, I don't know. It's a college town, so I get weird stuff from frats a lot.
I scan the items and tell them their total is $22.31. Grinning at each other, they reach into their jackets and slam down two-gallon zip-lock bags. When I saw what was in them, my eyes rolled back into my head. They were full of only pennies. I stare them in the eye, but they didn't even look back at me. Everyone else in line groaned and went to other registers.
These two kids knew what they were doing, but they didn't know what they were in for. I prepared for this. I knew this was going to inevitably happen. I grinned with them, because I was gonna get paid during this, while these pranksters were only here for recreation. This conversation occurs between Me, the Ringleader (the other guy was silent and awkward), and a friendly co-worker of mine.
Me: Is this $22.31? Ringleader: ... Me: Did you count it? Ringleader: Nope. Me: Are you going to? Ringleader: Nope. Me: Is it at least $22.31? Ringleader: Don't know. Me: Nice. Co-worker: Hey! You guys can use the self-checkout. It can take all of your coins at once. Me: Oh, don't worry about it— Ringleader: Nope, don't trust them, lady.
Co-worker: What? Why!? Ringleader: Doesn't count all your change right. Co-worker: I've used them before. It really works! Me: (to Co-worker) I got this. I unpacked the Ziplocs and threw all the pennies on the counter. It was a beautiful, massive mess. And I dug in. The two, still avoiding my gaze, start chuckling as if they were taking away my dignity. They whisper to each other "Dude oh my God," "Dude yeah," "Dude, hilarious". I counted each penny, one by one.
My co-worker comes up to me. Co-worker: Guess I'll help you count this. Me: Don't worry about it. (She looks at me confused. Then she puts on her “get down to busy” look.) Co-worker: I got your back. Me: *Oh...*ok. We worked up a system where we counted ten, put them in a pile, then with ten stacks of ten pennies we separated them, making $1 piles.
We made progress slowly but surely. Some customers came to the line, but we advised them to get to another line. Some of them looked at us confused, but when they saw the counter full of pennies they understood. Some decided to wait, but when they realized it wasn't going to take just a few minutes they took their leave. Another register opened so it wasn't too bad for other customers.
We get to about $12 (about 10 minutes in). Then I enacted my revenge. I "knocked" over the piles. Co-worker: Hey! Me: Oops. Sorry. (Co-worker looks at my grin. I give her a wink and tilt my head, motioning her to leave) Co-worker: You know what, I think I better let you do this. Me: Ha, alright. (Co-worker leaves. I look at the two guys. They are absolutely stunned at the fallen piles of pennies.)
Me: (To Ringleader) Yeah, I'm going to have to count all of this again. Ringleader: ....Ok. I started from zero. I count slower than ever, and made my way back up. The duo is entirely silent. I get to about $7, when suddenly I say: Me: Drats. I lost count. I better start all over again. Ringleader: Really? Me: Oh yeah man.
Ringleader: Why!? Me: I lost count, sir. I could be in trouble if my register doesn't have the right amount of cash, and I don't want to rip you off. Ringleader: ... Now it's about an hour later. My manager walks past, looks at me. I smile at him, and he looks at the counter. He walks away without a word. I eventually count all the change. Here comes the best part.
Surprisingly they had only $18! Me: Hmm, I think that this is $18. (The duo has been completely silent. They look done for the night.) Me: I'll recount it. I freaking recounted it. Me: I think this is actually $19.23. (Without a word, the Ringleader whips out a $5 bill) Me: Seriously? You had cash? Ringleader: Needed to get rid of my change.
Me. No problem. I'll just recount this again. I want to make perfectly sure that this is $19, since I counted $18 the first time. Ringleader: Are you kidding me? (I shake my head no, completely serious) He then takes out a $20 bill straight out of his pocket and throws it at me. My co-worker gives the biggest WHAT THE HECK face.
Internally, I’m disappointed, because they were smart enough to have a backup plan. And the fact that he was touching his cash in his pocket the entire time kind of messed with me. I take the cash, do the transaction, give him his change, thanked him, and wished him a good night. The two start to put their pennies back in the Ziploc bags and I didn't help them at all.
I watched them just how they watched me. Lots of pennies dropped to the floor, but they didn't care to pick them up. It looked like their souls were sucked out of them. It was past midnight and I clocked out way past when I was supposed to. A lot of my co-workers gave me a thumbs up or told me good night. Even my manager told me “good job,” the only two words he ever said to me.
Went to bed at the dorms after such a great petty penny night and crashed. Strange to say, but I'd love to count pennies again.
56. You Get What You Give
I worked in an electricity retailer call centre. It was highly unionised, but the management tracked login times to the minute. One incredibly ridiculous thing they did was if you were a minute or two late, they would literally dock your pay by that many minutes. It wasn’t really enough for us to really notice, and I’m sure they didn’t actually save any money.
I mean, if you were 15 minutes late I could understand not paying, but three minutes late? Well, eventually the union discovered what they were doing, and were completely ticked they hadn’t been consulted about this jerk move. This is where their revenge comes in. The union demanded logon and log off times for everyone in the call centre.
What management hadn’t counted on was that all of us would often need to wrap up calls and clear the call queue before the call centre could officially close. This often meant that operators would leave several minutes after their shift. On bad occasions, it could be a 15-20 minutes delay before they could clock off, but mostly it was only a few minutes. The union made management recalculate everyone’s pay for the year based on clock on and clock off time.
They also pointed out that staying past the end of shift triggered penalty rates. It turns out everyone (and I mean everyone!) had spent more time wrapping up calls at the end of the day than they were late clocking on. Each of us got paid for lost wages, at overtime rates. It cost them a fortune and they never docked the pay of anyone who was late ever again.
57. The Early Bird
My roommate enjoys nice long showers in the morning using all of the hot water. Recently, I realized that he literally jumps out of bed and runs into the bathroom when he hears my alarm. I started putting my alarm on silent for a while and this was working well enough, but I still missed my morning shower several times because of his unreasonably long showers.
So I just started moving to two alarms, with one alarm about an hour and a half before I normally get up. This has caused him, for about two weeks now, to get up really early to run the hot water out, yet he’s still out of the shower with enough time for it to be warm again for me when I jump in. Small victories are nice.
58. Out To Lunch
When going over my expense report, my company saw I tipped 20% for lunch one afternoon. Lunch was $15, the tip was $3. They told me that is too much "because I wouldn't do that with my money". Heck yeah I do. I just took the better part of an hour of my server’s time. The least I could do is leave $3. It's $3 for crying out loud, but rules are rules.
However, my company is fairly generous, allowing me $75 a day to spend on food, which I never do…and that's about to change. For lunch today instead of my usual salad or sandwich, I went for the lobster grilled cheese. And of course upgraded my regular fries to the duck fat fries. Enjoy "saving" that 5% for the rest of my travel meal expenses.
59. No “I” In Team
This story takes place in my third year of college. I was taking a class where the entire grade was determined by a semester-long final project. We were supposed to be in groups of three on the project, but the third guy in our group had more sense than me and bailed early. This left just me and Lazy Girl, hereafter known as LG.
LG didn’t do anything the entire semester. I would ask her to work on pieces of the project, but she always had an excuse for why it wasn’t done yet (or in her case started). Now, I didn’t want any confrontation with this girl, as she was my friend at the time, but I finally lost it one night towards the end of the semester.
I’d asked her to meet at my house to work on the project, but “something important came up". Fed up with this one-sided partnership, I decided to air my woes at the local bars that very night. And guess who I run into? LG and her boyfriend out drinking together! She made up some stupid excuse for me—so I made a plan to get even.
I powered through the entire assignment, except for the conclusion, which I asked LG to finish. I held out exactly zero hope that she would finish this section, so I quickly finished it myself and turned in my project with a little note to the teacher. The note detailed how I had done literally everything for the project and that despite my best efforts, I could not get LG to contribute.
I said that I was turning in my version and that our conclusions section may differ, as I’d asked her to actually do that part herself. So here’s a little tidbit about our final projects: We each had to turn one in. LG here not only didn’t do the conclusion, she didn’t turn in a project at all! She tried calling and complaining at me for not “giving her credit,” to which I went off on her for not doing anything on the entire project.
I mentioned how I even gave her the opportunity to turn in my work for a grade if she’d only do ONE thing! She hung up after that, and that was the last time we spoke.
60. You’re Fired—And Hired
In my late high school and early college years, I had a job doing telemarketing work during winter and summer breaks. While it was boiler room cold calling, we primarily were soliciting donations for agencies that had contracted us to do the work, so it felt less scuzzy. Think fire departments, etc. We kept a portion of donations for operating expenses, and everything over a certain threshold went directly to the receiving party.
Everybody wins. I enjoyed the job as the scripts were simple, I was allowed to read a book and such between calls, and a number of my friends were also employed there, so we could hang out during lunch breaks. The pay was a decent chunk above minimum wage at that time, so it was a good gig. I also had a knack for it, and at one point was 5th in "sales" across all their sites they had in operation, second in our building.
One summer, while driving to work, my car promptly kicks the bucket with no warning and I'm left stranded on the road. As you do in this situation back before cell phones for poor college students were a thing, I walk to the nearest house and ask to use the phone. I call my dad who starts driving to get me and call my work to let them know I'll be late.
My boss says fine and that he will chat with me when I get in. Father shows up with my mother in two cars, I take the extra and he begins the arduous process of "towing" my car back to the house. This involved tying a rope to the front of the car and to the back of his vehicle and crawling back home so he could fix it himself. I've been in that back car, and did not envy my father being in the back car with only 10 feet of space between him and the car my mother was driving, but I'm off to work.
I arrive to work, clock in almost an hour after the start of my shift, and am promptly told by the front receptionist that my boss would like to see me in his office. So I head on back. My boss and I have always had a good rapport. I'm a good worker, get good reviews, and he and I have some similar interests outside of work we can chat about occasionally.
When I arrive in his office, he's shuffling some papers around and has laid out a few documents facing me. As close as I can recall, this is the conversation that followed. It threw me for a loop. Boss: "Hope everything worked out with the car, glad to have you here. Couple things I need to discuss with you. First of all, as I'm sure you are aware, being more than 30 minutes late to work is considered a class C offence (3 classes, from C to A, C being the least egregious) if insufficient time is given prior to the occurrence. This is your first incident, so I'd like to talk to you about what happens next".
I'm sweating at this point. I've never even been talked to about being out of order on anything while working here, and getting my first incident scared the heck out of me. So I'm sitting there, white-faced, and he continues. Boss: "No official writeup or anything occurs for a first incident, or even the first few Class C incident, but it is manager's discretion on the punishment depending on past behaviors".
“Now, you are a good employee and I've put into corporate a few times to give you a raise, but because you only work during your school breaks, it is denied as you aren't considered 'full time.’ So the papers I have here are your termination papers and an offer letter I'd like to extend to you to hire you back on again. So, in short, before I file these, I'd like to ask. Is it ok if I fire you?"
So we go through the process of him "firing" me, which then allowed him to extend an offer to me to rehire me at roughly a 25% increase in pay, since he could justify to corporate the bump as he was hiring someone with experience. In talking with him, he let me know it was something he occasionally did to the high school and college workers to get around corporate's policy of not allowing raises to people that didn't work 1,000+ hours in a year.
It was his own way of being maliciously compliant with a policy that didn't allow him to reward some people that he thought deserved it. He had been apparently waiting for me to do something that he could technically fire me for. The way their back-end systems worked, it wouldn't even show up as a break in service, since the firing and hiring happened on the same day, and since I never worked more than the minimum 1,000 hours each year, I didn't have any tenure or anything to be worried about losing.
The laugh he and the receptionist had when he walked me back to the front to introduce her to the new employee was enjoyable, and I've had a fun story to tell ever since.
61. All Tied Up
I knew this lovely German lady who I will call Heidi. She was married to a man who I’ll call Jerk. The jerk was a jerk for a number of reasons. He worked with my dad in IT, who said he had a hero complex where he would cause disasters at work and then try to be the hero and “save the day". We even suspect he caused a huge IT disaster at our national airport while he was working there.
He was also really creepy. He creeped on my younger sister, calling her randomly and asking to pick her up. He was the exact opposite of his wife, who was lovely and sweet and charismatic, and I have no idea how they ended up together. Unfortunately, a while after we made friends with them, Heidi got very sick. Her colon stopped working, and she almost lost her life.
Thankfully, she was in a country with stellar healthcare that saved her life, but she found out she has Crohn’s, and she had to get a colostomy bag. While she was recovering from her surgery, her husband committed a horrific betrayal. Jerk announced he wanted to divorce. His words were, and I quote, “I didn’t marry a sick woman". Ugh.
He left her high and dry, and very soon was seeing someone else. He lost all the friends he had made in our country with his awful behavior, and my family told him he was no longer welcome near us as we were there for Heidi. He finally screwed off back to home; apparently, he had got into quite a bit of debt and skipped off to avoid paying.
Good riddance, we all said. Heidi found her feet eventually. She took up photography and went to university to study it. She did very well for herself, and lived a happy life free from Jerk. After about a year, Jerk contacted Heidi, and she told us the whole incredible story. Apparently, he was trying to sweet talk her into going over to Israel, where he was from, to go through with the divorce proceedings.
According to Heidi, your marital status is on your identity card in Israel, and it’s one of the first things a girl asks to see when you go on a date. When the girls saw he was married on his card, they’d never go for a second date. So every time he’d call her asking when she was coming over, she’d put on a huge grin and give him the perfect reply.
“Ohhh, I don’t know, I’m not really in a position to fly with my condition and all. Maybe when I get better". She knew full well he wouldn’t set foot back here because his creditors were still looking for their money back. She would just relish in the knowledge that he was getting rejected by all those women he was pursuing in Israel while she chilled with us having a great time.
Heidi is doing much better now. She went back to Germany, though she still visits my family and her friends from time to time. She’s still her awesome self. I don’t know what Jerk is up to now, but I suspect after all these years he is still a jerk.
62. Did You Get What You Wanted?
My job is very mentally taxing. I also have my own mental health issues, so I try my best to balance, but I just want to help so I get caught up taking more responsibilities than I am actually able to. So a couple of weeks ago I realize my mental health is in steep decline. I was ignoring the signs to push through, but anyone with mental health issues knows that you can only ignore the signs for so long.
I try to get ahead of a mental crash and talk to my supervisor to tell them that I need three days off (W, T, F) and as I had the weekend off after the days I requested, I figured that might be enough to get a good rest and reset. I did tell my supervisor why I needed the days (burnout, mental health) and they said they understood and would get back to me.
They contact me back and say they can probably give me Wed., Thurs., but that they couldn’t give me Fri. I ask if we can do Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday instead and I could work the Friday, have my long weekend and that should still be fine. They say they will get back to me. I get a text soon after to ask me to help cover other shifts. And I obviously can’t, so I decline.
They get back to me the next day. “We can get your shifts covered for Wednesday and Thursday, but not Tuesday and you have to make up the hours". That was the last straw. I just broke. I was asking for a break because I was working too much because it was hard for me to say no. I even called them (they had me on speaker) in tears and explained even further why I need the days.
I have been going through trauma therapy and my mental health has been declining. I had told them that I had spoken to my doctor and that my doctor said I was showing signs of burnout and recommended some days off (which is true, as I had talked to him the day before). All they heard was doctor and said “we need a doctor’s note". Okay fine, good thing I have another appointment.
I had to work that day just defeated because they couldn’t find anyone to cover my shifts. I talk to my doctor and he says that he can tell I’m in distress…and he puts me on two weeks of leave immediately. They did not look pleased when I handed in my doctor’s note. That was two weeks ago, I went back to the doctor and he extended my leave for AT LEAST another month.
Oh also, when I gave them my doctor’s note with four weeks on it, one of the supervisors wouldn’t even look at me and the other just said, “Oh doctor’s note, thanks".
63. If You Can’t Dish It In…
This happened a couple of years ago. It had snowed a bunch and so I went out to clear a spot for my boyfriend at the time for when he got home from work. I spent a while digging it out, and as I was finishing up, some girl just drove up and parked in it—while I was still shoveling it! I told her that I had just dug it out intending to use it and asked her to move. Her response made my blood boil.
She just got out of her car and walked away…Turns out she lived two buildings down, so she normally wouldn't park there anyways! Our complex had a mini snowplow and the dude was plowing in the area and saw this all go down. He helped me move all the snow from the pile he just created and put it all around her car. We buried it up to the door handles on all sides.
He then dug out a new spot for me. I saw her later trying to dig out her car, and it turns out she didn't even have a shovel. So, naturally, because I'm petty, I went out and re-shoveled the sidewalk from the lot up to our building, throwing all of the extra snow on her vehicle while I did it. Then I went inside and took my shovel with me.
64. Think Fast
I own an escape room company in a town that borders a pretty touristy area and is very close to an airport. As such, we tend to get a lot of bookings from people all over the UK who are visiting the area for the weekend or international people coming to do an escape room on the way to the airport. We only take online bookings and don't take walk-ins, therefore the site is only really manned whenever we have bookings.
As such, our cancellation policy is that we only allow refunds if the cancellation is more than 24 hours before the scheduled start time. If it is less than 24 hours before the start time, we can only reschedule the booking. Now, it's worth mentioning that for the majority of cases (weekdays) we are pretty relaxed with our policy as long as it doesn't cause any big issues and try our best to accommodate a group.
Usually I am the one hosting them so there aren't any additional expenses on our part (i.e. staff wages/loss of income from other potential customers). However, the only day where this policy is really relevant is on Saturday where we are almost always entirely booked from morning to night and have staff members working for us. So any canceled slots would most likely have been filled by other customers, and we are of course still paying our staff for that time.
Although I must say, we have only ever had to enforce this policy a couple of times as we are usually able to accommodate a group in some shape or form. So I get a call earlier today from a gentleman with a thick Scottish accent who was scheduled to come in with his group in around two and a half hours from the time of the call.
The group said that they would be unable to make their booking as they were running late with some other activities or something like that, and asked to reschedule the booking for a later slot. I checked our schedule but didn't have any slots left for today in any of our rooms. He then asked for a refund as they would be returning back to Glasgow tonight and didn't know when they would be next down here.
I told him our policy and that our system only allows reschedules instead of refunds due to the time frame. I also explained that given it's a Saturday we can't refund so close to the time as staff has been arranged. Rescheduling wouldn't have worked for them as they wouldn't be in the area anytime soon. After a short pause, he asked if we had any free slots to schedule for next month.
I checked the system and offered to move the booking to the same time on 16th November, to which he said "yeah I think that works". I didn’t know what he had planned at all. I changed the time on the system and informed him he would get an email confirming the new time slot. He replied "Great, so the booking is more than 24 hours away now right?"
Me: "Yes it's booked in for four weeks’ time from today". Him: "Right so, the booking is more than 24 hours away, I won't be able to make it, can I have a refund?" I paused for a second, trying to process what had just happened in my head, and realized that he had found a loophole in the system! TECHNICALLY, his booking was more than 24 hours away so he is TECHNICALLY entitled to a refund.
I started laughing and congratulated him on beating the system as I processed his refund. Gonna have to think about that one…
65. She’s Got The Touch
I used to live on the third floor of an apartment that had its laundry in the basement. This means four flights of stairs for me, no elevator, and I have a newborn so I'm washing quite a bit. So we have cubbies in the laundry room for our soap and stuff. I've lived there a year and never had an issue leaving my soap down there.
Apparently, some new people had moved in that were using my soap. When I realized it, I left a note asking that they stop. Nothing. They kept using. Okay. Now I’m angry. So I got two bottles of soap. A blue-colored one, and a clear colored one. I marked the bottles CLEARLY that they belonged to me (so they couldn't accidentally say they thought they were theirs), and filled the blue soap with blue Rit dye.
I then filled the clear soap with unscented bleach. And waited...Didn't take long. The next morning, I hear screaming coming from the laundry room. Four floors up I heard it. I waited a while and ventured downstairs. In the laundry room, I found a bunch of wet clothes in the garbage that were bleach stained. Four days later, I saw a young man get into a car with a blue stained t-shirt.
66. See Ya Later
This happened when I was 15. My mom was (let’s be real, she probably still is) a mentally, emotionally, and physically harmful narcissist. Some highlights are when she was teaching my twin sister and me to read at the age of four or so. It was around 2 am and my sister was having trouble learning, so my mother's solution was to beat her with a sandal every time she got a flash card wrong.
Same thing happened when my mother had me transcribe an essay she had written in my handwriting when I was seven. Every time I started a letter from the wrong position (like starting a capital M from the bottom line), she would beat me with one of her shoes. This too happened later at night, so when I got too delirious from the exhaustion and pain she would drag me, by the neck, and literally throw me into a cold shower to wake me up so we could more easily continue the waking nightmare.
When I was 13, I told her I wanted to live with my dad (they were divorced) and she told me she didn’t care what I did…but only after I turned 18. I later figured out the disturbing reason for this. It was because the child support stopped at age 18. Aaaaaanywho. Fast forward to age 15. Our relationship was understandably strained. We had had guests and she liked to use guests as a way of controlling our behavior through shame.
It's easier to be an angsty teenager when your grown-up friends from church aren’t watching and judging everything you do. This made it easier for her to pretend to be a firm but loving mother, all while slipping in sideways comments like velvet daggers. Well, I decided I wasn't going to subject myself to the whole thing and spent the day outside in the woods nearby.
When I saw our guests had left, I went to go back inside. My mother, perhaps unhappy at being denied a daylong punishment routine, told me I wasn't welcome and that I should leave. My 15-year-old brain heard her words and knew that she only meant for a little while, but it also recognized that she failed to specify any timeframe at all.
So, I hiked a couple of miles to a friend’s house and asked if I could spend a couple of days there. When my friend’s dad found out that I was there and why, he was angry and said I could stay as long as I needed. I didn’t go home that evening, or the next. My mom became concerned and contacted law enforcement to report me missing. This is a big deal for several reasons.
We lived in the mountains on a national park, so it was a very real possibility that I had been hurt by a wild animal, become injured while hiking, drowned, or been kidnapped. Nobody knew of my mother's horrible tendencies or the squalor and neglect my sister and I lived in. Most importantly, the law enforcement was the local park rangers, with whom she worked daily.
They immediately contacted my dad's side of the family to see if I had turned up there or contacted them. They promptly freaked out and came to my house with lawyers on standby. The officers then hired dogs to track my scent and then everyone freaked out because the dogs tracked me to a nearby river where my trail ended because the dogs couldn't pick up any more scent.
Over the next couple of days, there were people going in and out of my house. Rangers, lawyers, my family, etc. Several noticed the overpowering scent of cleaning chemicals, but only the lawyer considered why a “clean” house would reek of chemicals. Officers started to canvas the nearby woods. My friend's dad came to me and asked if there was somewhere else I could stay.
He told me that he wouldn’t kick me out but didn’t want to have to lie to the authorities or let the dogs on his property. My friend and I figured we would just go camping for a week or so, but instead I looked up my dad's side of the family and called and they picked me up right away. Understandably, everyone had questions. When I told them what was happening, the lawyers, horrified, pounced.
A judge issued an emergency change of custody and prevented her from gaining custody until she underwent a psych eval and therapy (which my mother would never allow). The rangers, equally horrified, completely shunned my mother and she eventually lost her job. Since she was only allowed to live on the park because she worked there, she was kicked out of her house too.
My friend's father and the trackers were members of the local community and churches and they too shunned my mother. She lost her job, her house, her church, and her friends all because she told me to leave, and I did.
67. Such A Tease
I work as a bartender in a small cocktail bar for some time now, and I'm usually chill. But jerks still push my buttons in the wrong way. Before starting, I may be in the wrong for doing this, but it is what it is. A week ago, a bunch of guys came for a few drinks. They seemed like okay dudes, early 20s, but the group dynamic was kind of off.
Now, introducing the main antagonist. He was an obnoxious guy, too loud, snapping his fingers at me when ordering (don't snap fingers at bartenders kids, we're not dogs), punching his friends in the shoulders all the time. Basically, a sportier, really aggressive version of a David Spade character. Next to David Spade sat the victim of most of his "playful" teasing.
I really felt sorry for this fellow. He wasn't a drinker, and he looked like he would rather be drinking from the toilet than continue sitting next to this macho maniac. He was really uncomfortable. David continued to bug him to take a shot at least, "Come on, one with me, don’t be a wimp". Until, after a whole night of persuasion, finally my dude waved the white flag.
Ok, let’s do one shot together, then leave me be. "Two of your most messed up shots," Spade shouted, snapping his fingers at me, while I imagined snapping his neck. Oh, you'll get a messed up shot, buddy. I gave him a very “special” present. I made two shots, but while looking almost the same, they were different. David got stuff like Red Jacques booze, Tabasco, etc. Really nasty business altogether.
The other guy got mostly syrups and juices, harmless stuff. They looked almost identical, nonetheless. They took their shots and all heck broke loose. The good guy chugged his shot like a champion, not even flinching (why would he, he drank juice). But David Spade...Boy, oh boy. He looked like he'd have a brain aneurysm.
Tears pouring from eyes, coughing like his lungs want to come out, he had a face and a posture of a man who just got tormented with some sort of chili sauce. The other guy looked surprised until he caught a wink from me, but David Spade and the rest of the crew, now roaring with laughter about his misery, suspected nothing.
They got their shots on the house, poor dude was left alone, and David was a good boy for the rest of the night, defeatedly enduring small mockings from his fellows. Now, I may have used my powers in the wrong way, but this is the first and only time I messed with customers’ drinks. And I regret nothing. He was rude, aggressive even, to everyone around him. Screw you, sporty David Spade.
68. You Only Get One Shot
This didn't happen to me, but to my dad, and it's one of my favorite stories he tells. Some years ago (by which I mean two or so decades, roughly) my dad was at a several-day course to earn some additional qualifications for his job. On the final day, there was going to be a multiple-choice test to actually pass the seminar. On test day, everyone got settled into place, and the teacher announced that he would not go easy on cheaters.
You had one strike to be caught trying to copy off of someone else or use a cheat sheet, but if you were caught a second time, you would be immediately thrown out and your score made invalid. Now, this teacher was very old-school strict and treating grown working people like unruly school children, and my dad does not like that very much.
So my dad proceeds to take the test, and it goes pretty well! When he's through with the questions, there is just one left where he's not sure he's got it right. And he has a free strike, after all. So my dad...yells out into the class. Just calls out, "what's the answer to question 14?" Some complete bro elsewhere in the room yells the answer back.
My dad fills in the sheet, gets up, walks to the teacher's desk, presumably tries to not trip on the teacher's jaw as it lies on the floor, hands in his test, and leaves the room. To the teacher's credit, he approached my dad afterward with some...begrudging respect. I don't know if he changed his policy afterward, or the tone in which he conveyed it.
69. Caught In A Loop
I worked at a Subway that didn't have any authority/managers, just a couple of minimum wage base-level workers. I don't remember what this particular customer was mad about, but she was arguing with me and didn't like the answer I gave her. She asked to speak to the manager, and there not being a manager, I decided to promote myself on the spot and replied with "manager speaking, how can I help you".
This did not make her very happy because she realized she was not going to get a different answer and asked for a phone number to call. The owner has specifically told us never to give his cell number to customers, so I did even better. I gave her the store number. She gives me a grin thinking about how much trouble she's about to get me in…when the phone behind me starts to ring.
I will never forget the face she gave me as I answer the phone, look her in the eyes, and ask her how may I help you.
Shutetrstock
70. The Baker’s Revenge
This may be the pettiest thing I have ever done. So in my city, there is a pub that's attached to a donut shop that serves the best donuts in the city, which always causes a long line. Because it's attached to a pub, it doesn't close shop until 9 pm, as there is a solid flow of business rolling in. Anyway, my girlfriend and I get a serious hankering for some snacks one night so we decide to head to the donut shop, and arrive out around 8:30 pm by car.
Now, there are only three parallel parking spots a little up the street from the place, and they are all 15-minute spots, which are usually full. We see up the street that, count our lucky stars, a spot is free! My girlfriend pulls a little ahead of the car in front of the spot, turns on her indicator, and begins backing into the parking spot…when this little white Vespa driving behind us whips into the spot.
I roll down our window and call out to the driver, "Scuse me, we were just backing in". The driver, who seems to be a pretty university student, shrugs her shoulders and calls out to me, "Sorry, first come first serve!" while she and her friend share a good laugh. My girlfriend suggests we just get donuts another time, and I tell her she can drop me off here, I’ll buy the donuts since I know what she likes, and she can loop around.
She agrees, and I pop out of the car, pass the little white Vespa where the girls are still gathering their things, and head to the shop. As always, the line is super long for donuts and since this is the last batch, the donuts are slim pickings. Wouldn’t you know it, those same girls are behind me now, looking at the five or so different flavors that are left.
They’re talking about which ones are best and which ones they haven’t had yet. I hear one of them jokingly mention, "Thank god we got a parking spot," and they burst out laughing. Here’s where I got my sweet, sweet revenge. I get to the front of the line, and when they asked for my order, I request two dozen donuts, which is every last one remaining.
The girls behind me didn’t listen to what I ordered, but eyebrows of confusion started to form on their faces as they slowly saw each donut loaded into the boxes and their options dwindle. One of them (the driver) in desperation asked the baker who was loading them in, "What, you’re not even gonna save a few for us, though?" My response was perfect.
I turned around and said, "Sorry, first come first serve". She honestly looked like she just simultaneously solved a movie mystery and pooped her pants. It’s difficult to put into words but truly an expression I can never forget. Best donuts I ever tasted, and there were also enjoyed by the rest of my office the next morning.
71. Putting On A Show
Yesterday, I emailed my teachers and I told them I’ll be in the hospital getting an infusion for a chronic illness that I have, as well as a blood transfusion. I asked if they would mind if I had my camera off for the online class meetings. All of them said yes, except for my history teacher. She said she needs to know I’m actually in the class. I tried to explain my situation.
I said I was uncomfortable with the class seeing me in the infusion clinic with my central line (I usually wear sweaters to cover it at home, but it feels weird when I wear a sweater over it during an infusion) and all my monitors. She basically said “too bad” and that I need to show up for class. Well, I gave her exactly what she asked for. So the class starts and I log on to the meeting.
You can very clearly see the central line in my chest, the IV pole with the unit of blood, and the monitors that go on my chest. My teacher looked visibly uncomfortable the entire time and emailed me after class saying I made her uncomfortable and what I did was completely unprofessional. I reminded her that she said I had to have my camera on the whole time.
72. Perfect Timing
I was at a gas station putting air in my tire. This gas station required you to pay $1.00 but came with a pressure gauge. The gas station across the street had free air but no gauge. As I’m filling my tires, a lady pulls up beside me and starts asking questions like how much it was to use, how much time, etc. I answered her questions as best I could but really was more focused on filling my tires since there was a time limit.
My car has annoying warning lights that let you know if a tire is low, even the spare, and I hate when these sensors are lit up. The lady is still waiting there and is getting visibly annoyed. This lady yells out, “Will you hurry up! I’m in a rush!” I was confused for a second but quickly realized that she just wanted to use my time without paying.
I did what any gentleman would do and proceeded to move slower. I pulled out of the spot and into a gas pump. She almost hit my car swooping into where my car was. She jumps out and as she puts the air pump to her tire, it shuts off. I guess I was smiling way too big because as she jumped into her car and sped off she yells, “screw you” at me.
I was so pleased with how it all timed out I didn’t even care. Such a great moment.
73. On The Straight And Narrow
My brother has struggled with drug addiction for most of his life. About five years ago, it tore his family apart. His wife filed for divorce and was awarded full custody of their son. This is all right and proper, as my brother was in no condition to be a father at this time. The road to recovery has been long, but my brother has been working the program and has now been clean for several years.
He has no formal custody of his son, though he gets visitation at his ex-wife's discretion. He's been a good and stable father to his son in the last years. However, his ex has not wanted to allow for the possibility that my brother has become well. In fact, she has begun jerking him around with visitation, even planning on removing the son from his father for a period of several months so she can take a long vacation with her new family.
My brother, not willing to let this slide, immediately filed for joint custody. The court case was just a day ago, and as expected, his ex has badmouthed his former use and attempted to paint him as still an addict and a danger to their son. Again, he totally is not—him being clean for years, employed, and owning his own home now. But then it escalated.
The ex was so self-deluded and confident that he had backslid that she loudly demanded, in front of the judge, that my brother provide a letter from the local president of the drug counseling program stating that he has attended every meeting for the last several years. My brother smiled at the judge, and said, "Not only is that not a problem, your honor, but I can provide that document today".
The judge asked how this is possible, did my brother already think to bring it with him? "No, your honor, but, you see, I am the president of our local chapter". I wish I could see the look on that hateful woman’s face. It's not official yet, but yeah, he's totally getting joint custody.
Shutterstock
74. Driving Me Crazy
When I was 15, I began working, and by the time I was 17 I had enough money to buy my first car. Me being young, when my egg donor (my bio mother, who doesn’t deserve a different title) and stepdad said they were titling it in their name, for insurance and registration purposes, I didn’t question it. Six months later, they’re divorcing.
When the divorce is finalized, my egg donor informs me that MY car, that I paid for, was going to my ex-stepdad in the divorce, since it showed as joint property between them. I was furious. The car looked nice on the exterior, but burned through a quart of oil every two days, and drove horribly, but it was still my car.
So the week before my ex-stepdad was due to pick it up, I quit putting oil in it. I drove around town extra that week, and I was that smoke cloud in town of burning oil. Then I topped off my revenge. See, my friend had a goldfish die. It was a pretty big fish, 3-4 inches long. I asked for it. The morning of the car being taken, July mind you, I cut the yellow foam beneath the passenger seat.
The foam was sticky, abrasive, and resealed easily due to the stickiness. I cut the foam, and stuffed the fish remains into the padding, pushed it as far over as I could, then the foam stuck back together nicely. My ex-stepdad showed up with his girlfriend (girlfriend was the mistress, thus causing the divorce) and he made a big show of giving her MY car as a gift to her. I just smiled.
I wish I knew how well the car went over, hours later, in the hot July weather, but I can imagine.
75. Pound It Out
I worked as a cook at a chain restaurant that had a “wing night” where you could get a pound of wings at a discounted price. We didn't actually weigh the wings, but our specs said eight wings to a pound. Four drums and four flats. One night, a table comes in and everyone orders a pound of wings. A little while after the wings go out, the server comes back a little flustered and explains there has been a complaint.
Apparently, one of the guys at the table complained that it was “obvious” that he didn't get a pound, because it would be a huge coincidence if everyone's pounds led to the same number of wings on each plate. He insisted that the server go and weigh these (already discounted) wings to make sure he was "getting what he paid for". This dude wished he’d never said anything.
So we weighed it. Sure enough, it was not a pound. It was a pound and a half. We tell the server to bring it out and tell him he's getting more than a pound. She says “Heck no. He paid for a pound, he's going to ‘get what he paid for.’" She threw two of his wings in the garbage and re-weighed the food. Still over. Throws another one out. Bang on one pound of wings.
So she brings the tray back out with his five wings and calmly tells the gentleman: "Here are your wings, sir. You were right, there was more than a pound there. So we threw the other ones out. Good catch". When they ordered a second round, he didn't complain that everyone got eight wings to a “pound".
76. Looking A Gift Horse In The Mouth
This happened a couple of Christmases ago. About four months before Christmas 2018, my boyfriend at the time accidentally spilled a drink on his laptop and wrecked the thing. He couldn't afford a new one and it was his main source of entertainment, so I said he could borrow mine since I didn't use it that often. Everything was fine until Christmas that year.
He still hadn't gotten a new laptop by that point, but I assumed that was because he was saving up to get himself a decent laptop rather than a bad one he could just about afford. Anyway, he handed me my gift…and to my surprise, it was a brand new laptop. I assumed that he bought me a laptop to replace my old one and was going to take my old laptop for himself. Nope.
His gift to me was buying himself a new laptop so that he didn't have to use mine anymore. Nothing else. Just that. I was outraged. But then a petty thought crossed my mind. Little did he know that I'd fallen into a bit of money so I had decided to surprise him with a top-of-the-range gaming laptop which was easily more than double the price and quality of the one that he bought himself.
So I decided to “give” him his present. When he opened it, his eyes lit up and he looked so excited at the prospect of his new laptop. But when he started to open it, I took it back from him and told him that it was actually for me and my gift was letting him keep his new laptop without me trying to use it all of the time.
Of course, we got into a massive argument and that eventually led to us breaking up. I returned the laptop and used the money to go on a spontaneous holiday with my friend for New Year’s Eve. No regrets.
77. Putting The Children To Work
When I was in eighth grade, I was in the first year of an experimental technology school. I had a class of about 180 eighth graders (12- 14-year-olds) and about 10 teachers. So everybody shared the same math teacher. For our first semester, we used a software called Gage. It was alright for most classes, but it was absolutely atrocious when it came to math.
Nothing worked with math. We were supposed to use the lessons they had, but it just didn't work. Math symbols didn’t show up right and some questions even had the wrong answer marked. My math teacher wasn't allowed to just move to paper, and the company insisted that the problem was that our math teacher was older and just didn't understand technology.
They said that if she had a genuine issue to email them. One day I get to class, and there are seven email addresses written on the board. She told us that we were going to go through our math lesson today, and take screenshots of every mistake we found and email them to the company’s executives. One screenshot = one email. 10 emails = a packet of gummy bears.
We had a blast trying to send as many emails as we could. One kid got 10 packets of gummy bears by end of the hour class. By lunch, the principal called my teacher aside and asked for her to stop. She said “Heck no! My afternoon classes haven't had fun yet!" Long story short, our school district got all of its money back from using the software, and the company no longer exists.
78. Pay It Forward
So I am a business consultant, and usually during the week we are at a client site and get paid for travel, meals etc. The meal policy is quite flexible, and doesn't limit what we can claim, like some of the other consulting companies. So we can claim lunch, drinks, whatever. The policy, however, does lay down a GUIDANCE for a daily limit for food expenses, based on the country where you're traveling.
I capitalized the word GUIDANCE, since that is exactly how it is written in the policy—it is a guidance, not a hard limit. For the UK, where my current project is, the limit is £40 per day, which is mostly ok, but can be a bit low if you're in the centre of London for example. Now I do Intermittent Fasting, so most of the days I don't have breakfast and lunch, and just have one big meal a day.
I have no problems keeping to the £40 (usually around £20). On some days, I might go to a fancy restaurant, have a couple of scotches with a steak, and run up a $60 bill. But during the course of a five-day week, my average meals would run about £30 a day, if not less. I've never had a problem claiming these expenses in my nine years with the firm, but recently a new project manager (read, bean counter) came on board. This is where my problems began.
He sent back a couple of my expense reports for having meal expenses in excess of the £40 for a couple of days, even though the average meal expense over the week was much less than £40. I tried to reason with him, told him that anyway, it was a guidance and not a hard limit, and I was keeping the costs down on other days. He refused to budge and said I could only claim £40 a day for food.
So guess what? I started doing exactly that. Every day, I made sure I was claiming £40 or thereabouts for food. I started buying meals for the homeless people around the train station to make sure I could make up the £40. So now where I was claiming less than £150 a week for meals, I now claim £200 and get some good karma for it.
79. Peace At Last
I was waiting for my flight to board at a major east coast airport. In walks this young, slick, LOUD business kid on a conference call, shouting into his Apple earbuds. Drops his bag on the one free seat and starts pacing the floor, up and down the aisle, oblivious to dozens of folks eating lunches, working quietly, and babies sleeping.
He continues pacing and shouting, “Yup, yup, we’ll upload that into the system…blah blah jargon jargon acronyms and business,” annoying everybody around and making everyone else get out of his way. Folks start giving him the stink eye, but his shouting and pacing continue, his circuit widening until he’s walking out of sight, then circling back, still shouting into the air.
After 20 minutes of this, I’m over it. The kid stalks off in a hurried pace, abandoning his backpack for the three or so minutes it takes him to pace the terminal. So I walk up to a TSA guard and point to the bag, “Sir, there’s an unclaimed backpack on that seat!” Then I walk away. TSA starts making announcements, trying to find the owner of the bag, but business kid is too oblivious, pacing and shouting.
TSA is already removing the bag when he realizes and chases after them. Too late, he’s a suspect and he has to follow them out of the terminal for a bag check. And now it’s quiet again.
80. Can I, Or May I?
This happened in the early 90s and at the time this teacher had been teaching for 30-plus years. It was a rural area, so many of my friends' parents had also suffered through at least one year of primary school with this awful woman. I've seen a grown woman cry recounting memories of her experiences—this teacher really was really that bad.
My second-grade teacher took pride in being a mean old witch to her students. Wielding control over our tiny little bladders was something that gave her particular satisfaction. One day during cursive lessons, this kid named Joseph asked to use the bathroom. She told him he should've used the bathroom during morning recess and would have to wait until lunch.
A little while later, he started squirming in his seat and again asked to use the bathroom, this time with more urgency. At this point, our teacher starts berating the kid by telling him he is a little baby for not holding his bladder like a big boy and suggesting that he should wear diapers. Joseph gets tired of her, stands up from his seat, stares her directly in the eye, and proceeds to unleash the most epic man-sized pee he could muster.
As fate would have it, he was wearing those mesh material basketball shorts, so the pee just flowed unobstructed down his legs and pooled on the carpet beneath him. A wave of giggling quickly spread through the classroom, which was basically the second grade equivalent of a slow clap. Our teacher just stood there dumbfounded for a moment before grabbing Joseph by the arm and dragging him off to the principal's office.
As they exited the room, Joseph glanced over his shoulder with a big grin on his face. A legend was born that day and we all enjoyed our newfound bathroom privileges for the remainder of the school year. The teacher retired the following year.
81. It All Comes Out
My petty revenge story is a little gross, so I apologize in advance. I have a sensitivity/intolerance to most meats. Red meat is the worst, and beef is particularly bad. Doctors recommended I try to get my protein from alternative sources if possible, so I’ve happily been a vegetarian since I was 13 or so. When I was younger, my aunt did not believe the doctors, and thought I was just being fussy.
We come from a meat and potatoes town, so she had plenty of friends backing her up on this. This is the same aunt who convinced my parents I was faking asthma (turns out, I wasn’t...shocker), and also refused to get her own daughter glasses because she thought she just wanted them for attention. She later discovered her daughter’s eyesight was atrocious...another shocker, I know.
The whole family regularly had dinner together, taking turns hosting. When it was my aunt’s turn to host, she assured me my burger was meatless. As you probably guessed, it was not. I was starving that night and gulped down my (beef) burger first. My aunt was smiling, and I thought it was simply because I liked her cooking. Looking back, I realize her little smirk was because she thought she had caught me in a lie or achieved whatever her end game was. She would come to regret it.
Well, a few minutes passed and I got that familiar, unpleasant feeling in my stomach. It was then that I realized what she had done, and why she was smiling. When I eat meat, I almost always get sick. I just can’t hold it down. So, when it came time to kneel before the porcelain throne, I decided to stay put. I instead took aim at my aunt, who was seated beside me at the head of the table.
82. A Woman In Uniform
My first job out of school was as a language teacher in a private school, and it sounds like it's straight out of a fiction book. I was employed to teach grades six to nine. However, because I was the only teacher for that language, the owner begged me to teach grades one to five when I had any time to spare, even though I wasn't paid for the extra work.
I taught each of the classes I was employed to teach, twice a week, and the other classes once a week. Aside from that, lunch duties were added to my work, so I hardly sat all day. The school had a preschool at a different location, and all the teachers there wore uniforms. The preschool workers (all females) were the only ones required to wear uniforms.
I was the only female teacher on the grade one to nine staff. One day, the owner calls me to her office and asks me why I'm not in a uniform like the preschool staff. I tell her no one informed me about wearing uniforms in my department, and also the male teachers do not wear uniforms. She gets slightly angry and orders me to sew one with my own money.
I try to protest but I see there's no way of getting through to her, and my parents convince me to let it go and sew one. I thought it was over, but I was so wrong. When the owner sees me in the uniform, she goes off about how figure -flattering the uniform is on me and tells me I'm trying to seduce the boys. She then orders me to sew a new one or don't come back.
My uniform was not short (way below the knee), didn't show cleavage, nor was it tight. I ignore her and she fires me a week later, while I'm in the middle of a class. I just packed my stuff and left. The next day, the principal calls me to tell me the owner is asking why I didn't show up that day. Duh. You fired me. The owner calls me herself and orders me to come back to work, talking about how do I expect the kids to eat lunch.
Good luck finding a donkey like me to work for that pittance. I went back though, but not without double my pay. I then quit the next month.
83. A Taste Of Her Own Medicine
I was out to a movie with my friends last night. We come and sit down, and I realize pretty soon that this girl in the row behind us has her feet up on my friend David's seat. She's there with one of her friends. So David turns around and he says something like, "Uh, do you think you could put your feet down?" And I think they say something in response but I didn't hear it.
The feet didn't go down. A few minutes later, David says, "Hey, will you get your feet off my chair? It's extremely rude". And they still don't budge. So I tell David that he should go find an employee and get them to talk to this girl. He does exactly that, and after a couple of minutes, an employee comes and talks to this girl.
She is obviously pretty peeved but begrudgingly agrees to put her feet down. After the employee leaves, she puts her feet right back up. At this point, I'm teed off. Why is it so important to you that you have your feet up on someone's chair? You're just being a brat. So I get out of my seat, walk up two rows, sit down in the seat directly behind this girl, and stick my foot on the back of her chair and push it forward.
They both turn around and try to say something to me, but I can't really hear them since the movie had started by this point, so I just say "just watch the movie". I kept my feet up there the entire movie. It felt like I had done wall sits for two hours but I'm glad I did it.
84. Hot And Cold
My boyfriend and I were both in high school, and at the end of the relationship he told me he was "just in it for the get-down,” that he "didn't really mean any of it," and that I obviously "just wanted him for the same reasons". He then went and had a hot and heavy make-out session with my best friend and came back and told me I was "a bad kisser compared to her".
Yeah, he was a jerk. Well, flashback to a few months previous. I was angry at him because he was being really hot and cold, and so I wrote an angry poem about him. The magazine he had been trying to get into had a website and would publish poems based off of popularity on the website. He had gotten me to join a few months previous and I only had a few poems up.
I decided against posting it then because it would "be too mean". Well, after he had pulled that stuff, I decided I wanted a little revenge. So I posted the poem. And suddenly it was getting A LOT of popularity. And I get a notification from the magazine saying they want to publish it. So what was the first thing I did? Messaged him that I got published in this magazine.
He got excited for me and congratulated me, until... he read the poem. Several million people have read the poem in the magazine, and to this day, he still hasn't gotten published.
85. You’re A Big Boy Now
This happened just a couple of hours ago, this story is so fresh you can still smell it! On our community garden, we get teams of kids from the local school to come to help, and it's often the case that they turn up on a Saturday morning as well. They're almost entirely well-behaved, which is a good job as there's not a lot we can do about bad behavior beyond a stern voice.
There's this one lad who came for the first time last week. We didn’t know him but we made him very welcome. However, he only lasted half an hour before storming off in tears after his THIRD telling off for spinning round and round holding a tool and then letting it fly off at head height. This morning his mom (I assume) came with him.
I saw him point out my friend and me, but he didn't ask to join in, so after shouting hello we let them be. After about 10 minutes he started wandering and my friend shouted to him, "Don't go round behind the greenhouse mate, it's not safe round there". Well, his mom had obviously been waiting for this. She went 0 to 100 in two seconds flat, demanding to know do we OWN this garden, and if not what business is it of ours where her son goes?
We explained we just want him to be safe, and she replied that she's quite capable of taking care of that herself, thank you. Fine, on you go. Off he went, exploring behind the greenhouse, which is not safe because it's the compost heap, which is very unstable, and the muck mound, which is a giant pile of horse manure we get delivered every autumn.
By the spring the inside is all nice and rotted down, and the outside is hard, crusty...and less strong than you think. After a minute there was a crunch, a squeal...and I think we did very well to drag him out without saying "I told you so" or breaking into guffaws. He was absolutely black from chest height downwards, and although well-rotted manure doesn't smell really bad it is very thick, and sticky, and slimy.
His mom grabbed him without a word and they headed for the gate. He started bawling as soon as the surprise wore off. My friend said, "Would you like some bin bags to spread out in your car?" and to her credit she did say thanks when he handed them over. I wonder if we'll see them again next week?
86. The Whole Package
I work from home. I receive a notification on my phone that my Amazon package has been delivered. It's a couple hundred-dollar item, so I immediately go outside—but no package anywhere. I was outside as the delivery van was driving away, so there was literally no way someone snatched it in 20 seconds. The Amazon driver is two houses down.
"Excuse me. I received notification that my package was just delivered, but it's not there". Driver looking shocked, stammering over words. "Oh, uh, what's the address?" I give him my address. "Yeah, I just delivered it to you". "No, you didn't. I'm calling Amazon and y'all can sort this out". I start walking away. Driver calls out, "Oh I found your package. But it says there's an issue and I can't deliver it. It's likely a duplicate and another driver will be by later to deliver the correct one".
"Then why did you mark it as delivered?" "Oh, because I didn't see there was an error. The other driver will be by later". "No, I'm calling Amazon now". I walk away and called Amazon to report the incident. They say nothing is wrong with my package and it's marked as delivered. I tell them about the interaction and they say the driver should've given me the package.
Even if it's a duplicate, the driver is not supposed to withhold a package. They'll investigate and get back to me in 24 hours. Two minutes after getting off the phone with Amazon, my doorbell rings. I happened to be next to the door, so I open it within five seconds to see the same delivery driver hauling his butt down my driveway.
He jumps in his delivery van and speeds off through the neighborhood. I look down and my package is there. I call Amazon again to let them know that I just got the package and it was the same driver who hauled tail. They said they would be opening an investigation into the driver. I also told them about how fast he was driving through the neighborhood.
I felt like a Karen calling to complain, but I truly believe this driver was running a package scam. He marks a package as delivered, the customer says they never received it, the driver says "Well, someone probably took it before you looked for it".
87. Noise Complaint
I noticed my Spotify had a PS4 with a German name connected to it, which is odd because I don't have a PS4. Spotify was unable to disconnect me from it using my account, so I decided to take it into my own hands. I blasted heavy metal at full volume on their PS4 at midnight Germany time. I think they may have been in game since they let it go for a few seconds then attempted going to the next/previous songs and pausing it a few times, to no avail.
Eventually, they uninstalled Spotify and I changed my password, but darn that felt good.
88. That’s So Random
Many years ago, I worked for an outdoor activity centre/playland in the retail department. Throughout the park, there were many different shops that we manned and I absolutely loved working there despite it being hard work for little pay. One day, I had a run-in with a manager who seriously berated me in front of the entire team along with others from different departments.
I was advised by a manager from a different team to make a formal complaint, which I did. Others then came out with similar complaints and the said manager was advised to find employment elsewhere, but not sacked. Now, unbeknownst to me, I triggered the chain of events that would lead to me leaving the company.
Now before the main story there's some background information that is relevant. There were a few rules in place that were designed to prevent theft, including no more than £10 to be allowed on the shop floor. This was to be checked before your shift, and anything over this must be declared to management and left in your locker, and all staff had to agree to random locker/pocket searches.
In the two years I'd worked there, I had never been picked for a random search. There were around several hundred employees so the odds were incredibly slim. As soon as our disgraced manager left, though, I suddenly found myself picked at “random” for a search. This involved turning out my pockets, removing my shoes/socks, and then being escorted to the locker room to empty the contents out.
Nothing was found so I was sent back to the shop floor. But then the most suspicious thing happened. The following week I was again picked at "random" for a search, which again turned up nothing. Rumors were soon doing the rounds that I had upset my department’s remaining management team after instigating the action against my former manager, and they were going to force me out using any means necessary.
I realized that I needed to act, so started job hunting…and then began plotting. I started taking a backpack to work filled with £20 in pennies. Every morning I declared the amount in my locker as required, and sure enough after a couple of days I was once again selected for my weekly "random" search. I then got paid to watch a security guard and supervisor count 2,000 pennies.
As expected, I passed said search and off I went. This happened a second time with now £30 in pennies, and I decided to up my game. At the start of the following week, I patiently awaited my "random" search with glee knowing what awaited them. The day soon arrived and off I was marched to the lockers ready for their treat. I lift out my backpack and pass it to the security guard and supervisor.
They dive straight in without any gloves. Oh, how they retched as they discovered what was in there. I had several pairs of my period-soaked pants waiting in there especially for them. They were gingerly laid on the floor beside my bag as they counted my bag of pennies. The smell from the pants was unreal, they'd been festering in there for days in anticipation.
Once again the search revealed nothing and off to work I went. After that, I was not picked for another search again. I left after a couple more weeks to a new job and after keeping in touch with some people, I discovered that a new rule was introduced that tried dictating what you could and couldn't take to work with you. This soon led to a mass walkout of staff and after a year the place shut down due to unrelated matters.
89. World’s Best Coffee
One of my best friends, "Alex," was a staffer in a legislative office. His boss was head of a key Senate budget committee, so there were always people coming to solicit the senator’s support for a particular project or grant or whatever. Someone representing an arts program that was looking for a $250K grant is waiting. I'll call her "LobbyAnn".
She comes up to the reception desk and asks for a pen. The Senator keeps giveaway pens with her name on them in stock—reasonably nice ones—so Alex reaches over to the can where the pens are. LobbyAnn says something along the lines of "Well, then the Senator will know that I showed up without a pen". (So what?) She looks across the desk.
Alex has some work spread out with his own favorite pen, an expensive one with lapis inlay and engraved with his name and term of office of a campus organization. LobbyAnn reaches over, snatches it up, and drops it in her purse. Alex, who is a very polite person, is completely gobsmacked and then tells LobbyAnn that's his personal pen and it’s not up for grabs.
In a few minutes, the senator comes out to get LobbyAnn. As they're walking past Alex's desk, he stands up and says in a very clear voice, "I'm going to need my pen back". LobbyAnn stops in her tracks, as does the senator, and Alex says, calmly, "That pen is precious to me, you took it right off this desk, and I want it back".
The senator kind of gasps and says "She took your lapis pen?” and then she turns to LobbyAnn, who is frantically fishing around in her purse and stammering something about just borrowing it, and says, "Give it back". Once the pen is back in Alex's hands, the Senator says to Alex, "Come on back, I need you," and turns and walks back into her office, leaving LobbyAnn standing there as the Senator shuts the inner office door in her face.
Then the senator picks up her purse, smiles a big bright smile, and says, "Want Starbucks?" So she and Alex go out the side door and across the street. They could see the front door of the office from the Starbucks. It apparently took LobbyAnn about five minutes to realize how bad she'd messed up, and that she was not going to see the senator that day or any day.
Indeed, the project that she was going to ask for money toward was probably doomed as well. She'd lined up strong support in the House, so it might have made it through, though it was not the kind of project the senator favored. When she came slinking out, she almost certainly saw Alex and the senator sitting there drinking their drinks. Alex always ends this story with, "That was the best coffee I've ever had".
90. Mi Casa, Tu Casa
We bought a house a couple of months ago, and the sellers insisted that we pay several small fees that are customarily covered by the seller. The total was $187 and in comparison to the house price, we weren’t going to walk away over something so small. We renovated the house and there was a table/credenza thing that had been built into the entryway.
After demolition, we were planning on throwing it out. When one of the neighbors noticed we had put it outside to be thrown out, they texted the old owners to see if they wanted it, as it was something they said they had loved about the house. The old owners text me, since we were getting rid of it anyway, that surely we wouldn’t mind if they came by and picked it up instead?
I told them interestingly we had recently gotten an offer from someone else to buy it...for $187. Since it was theirs originally, I told them we’d be happy to part with it...for $188. They dropped the check off and picked it up a week later.
91. A Real Mouthful
I come from a family of six: my parents, my older sister, my older brother, my little brother, and me. Often, in order to encourage us into good behavior, our parents would buy us our favorite candy to munch on in the car. Now, I've never exactly been a giving person, and I’m not huge on sharing just for the sake of sharing.
My parents, however, were trying to raise respectful and generous kids and often forced me to share things even when I didn't want to. That's all fine and good, except that my sister manipulated this system. See, she would say she didn't want a bag of candy, then once we were on the road she'd start taking candy from all three of the brothers.
That really annoyed me. I didn't get candy often, as my mom didn't like feeding us sugary food, so when I got my own bag of Sour Patch Watermelon I wanted to eat every last one myself. Besides, my parents would always offer to buy her a bag of candy for herself, she would just refuse because she knew she could leech off the rest of us.
So after a point, I started refusing her requests for candy. But that didn't fly with my mom, because that was being selfish, so she would force me to hand over the candy. One time I even said when I purchased my bag at CVS to my sister, “I'm not going to give you any of my candy. If you want Sour Patch, buy your own right now".
"I'm fine," she responded, "I don't want a whole bag of candy". Fast-forward 20 minutes into the car ride, my father was requisitioning a candy to give to my sister, as I sat fuming. This went on for years. My whole life, really. And I hated it. I would hide my candy when I got it, I would try and keep it out of her reach, but always a parent would intervene.
Fast forward to my sister's college graduation. She is now 22, I am a senior in high school at this point, and we're up at her school at a fancy restaurant celebrating after she had graduated that morning. In attendance are all immediate and some extended family, some close friends of my sister, and her long-term boyfriend who I was meeting for the first time.
So, enough people for the following to be embarrassing to my family. Our meal ends and my mother offers to buy a nice dessert for anyone who wants it. My brothers, my dad, and I all take her up on it. I ordered a vanilla bean cheesecake with a burnt sugarbird’s nest on top. My mother repeatedly offers to buy my sister anything she wants, but my sister says she couldn't possibly eat a full dessert right now and turns it down every time.
The food arrives, and everyone is staring at mine. I'm sitting right at the head of the table in full view of everyone, so it's hard not to look, and aside from the cake slice being large and delicious looking, the burnt sugar bird’s nest is huge and ornate, hollow on the inside like an old-timey brass globe. Honestly, it was pretty impressive.
And right as the food gets placed in front of us, my sister says, "I'll just have a bite of everyone's". At this point, I'm seeing red, having flashbacks to all the times my food has been taken. Logically, the right thing to do would've been to just hand over one bite. I mean, it was her graduation, it was a huge cake, it would've been no loss. But it had become a matter of principle.
So, the moment she says this, in one fell swoop, in full view of everyone at the table, I sweep up my slice of cheesecake and stuff the entire thing into my mouth at once, shattering the sugar nest, crumbs falling everywhere, in front of my whole family and some college students close to my sister who, again, I’ve never met in my life.
My sister stares, appalled, and says, "Did you do that just so I wouldn't get any?!?" And I look at her, cheeks ballooning out like a chipmunk, face covered in cheesecake and graham, and nod. There was a fair bit of shocked silence, at that moment and in the very tense car ride home. But to this day she never asks for anything from me anymore.
92. Call On Me
A few years ago, I went to the doctor's to make an appointment. I had to go to the pharmacy next to it, so thought I'd pop in instead of calling. The receptionist tells me they can’t take walk-ins (I didn't want an appointment then anyway), and can only take bookings over the phone. So I stood at reception, got my phone out, and called the number for the phone right next to her.
I made eye contact with her the whole time as she answered the phone and booked me in.
93. A For Effort
A few years ago, I was heading to class to take a final in my music history class and I forgot a scantron. I stopped by the college bookstore, grabbed a scantron, and ran up to the counter. This is when I met "her". "Her" was a mid-50s woman with wrinkles on her face that can only come with holding a constant scowl on your face for decades.
When I pulled out my card, she pointed to a sign that said $10 minimum. Yes, $10. The scantron was about 20 cents. I can totally get a $5 minimum, but 10? Come on. Well, I didn't have any change in my pocket, but there was a take a penny, leave a penny jar. So I reached over and grabbed a couple of dimes someone was kind enough to leave.
"Her" put her hand over the jar and said you can leave change, but you can't take change. At this point, I figured I could either get really upset or play the game she wanted. I told her I understood and that there were a few more items I still needed. I proceeded to go to the furthest corners of the store and pick up about $200-worth of small items from the highest, lowest, and most inconvenient spots in the store.
I walked up to the counter with my basket, and the entire time "Her" had a wicked smile on her face like she'd won. Welp, as soon as I signed for the items, I told her "I'd like to return everything but the scantron please". She was livid! People don't usually yell at me, but she completely lost it. She ended up calling campus officers.
When the officers arrived, they informed her that what I did was completely OK. "Her" couldn't handle it, but had to refund me for everything but the scantron. The officers told me with a smirk to please not do that again. I said yes sir and headed to my final. I was about 20 minutes late for the final, but ended up making an A.
94. By Any Other Name
I was granted a name change a few months ago. Long story as to why, but simply put—I hated the “unique” spelling of my first name and wanted to ditch my surname. I didn't have much trouble updating my name in most places. Social security, driver's license, insurance, yada yada. No bumps in the road—until I got to the very last thing to update.
My credit card. I use this particular credit card a lot. I'm self-employed and use this card to rack up travel points for flights, hotels, rental cars, etc. However, if you've ever checked into a hotel or picked up a rental car, you'll know the name on the card must match the name on the ID. So I call the CC company. They told me I have to fill out a certain document and mail that in, alongside a copy of the court document.
Fair enough. Two weeks go by. Hear nothing, so call again. They say they haven't received it. I'm then informed they have a fax number that I can use to send in the documentation. So I fax in everything necessary using an app on my phone. Another two weeks go by. Still nothing. I call again. Same spiel on the other end of the phone. "Please mail or fax......" You get the deal.
I once more did what they asked. Yet another week passes. I call....again. Told the same script. I'm starting to get annoyed by this point. I have an upcoming trip planned and need the card to match my ID. So I ask to speak to a manager. They give me some bull about a manager not being currently available. Anyways. I fax in the document and court order once again.
However, this time I decided I was just going to keep hitting send after the previous one had shown as delivered. I thought I'd repeat the process a few times. Just to “make sure” they got it. After sending it 25 times the first day, I got no response. Next day I was sitting on my couch watching football. Thought I'd send the fax a few more times. By the time I realized how many times I'd hit send, I had sent it over 130 times.
The very next afternoon I got a call from a manager at the CC company. She sounded quite angry over the phone. I just played dumb. "You guys asked me to fax it in..." I got my updated card in the mail three days later.
95. The Cost Of Cheating
We dated for four years and had what I thought was a great relationship. We were both well-established professionals who both owned homes in the same neighborhood and both had daughters in the home. Her daughter was 11, and mine was 16 when we met. We had actually planned to get married, build a house, and raise the two together.
We planned the house build because she had recently been diagnosed with a neurological illness that would eventually put her in a wheelchair, and needed something disability-friendly. During the planning stages, I began doing landscape and construction projects on her home to increase the resale value. All in, I invested roughly $30K into the home, running everything through my side construction business for tax, permitting, and resale purposes.
We had a contract that "payment" would be made upon the sale of the home. I produced invoices for each and every project, but never pushed for payment because of the prior agreement. Fast forward six months, we're looking at property to develop and finalizing drawings on the home when I began feeling ill. I couldn't eat, constantly vomiting and passing blood.
I began noticing that my abdomen looked swollen, which was odd because we were both very clean eaters and were in the gym every day. So I went to the doctor and began having tests done. During this time, she began having small cognitive issues, and the stress of her current position was exacerbating her condition, so she took a $20K per anum cut in pay along with a lesser position inside the company.
After a month or so of different tests, and a biopsy, it came back that I had a golf ball-sized tumor in my stomach, and would need to begin chemotherapy. So I began chemo and radiation treatments, which made me, expectedly so, extremely ill. She was spending time helping around my place on the weekends and staying over more, to the point that both her and her daughter were at my home more than theirs.
At this point, I suggested that we go ahead and put one of our houses on the market, and move in together until the new house was built. I have great supplemental insurance as well as a long-term health plan, so using that coupled with the sale of one of our houses would push us through comfortably, and help ease the financial stress on her. This backfired on me horribly.
Shortly after this discussion, she became extremely distant. Her daughter wasn't coming down and hanging out with mine anymore, and she had excuses for not getting together. She quit driving me to treatments and stopped staying over. She then dropped the truth. A sentence that will forever be burned into my psyche: "I love you, but I can't see myself taking care of someone this sick in the long-term, and I don't think we should see each other any longer".
A. TEXT. It broke me. I won't lie. This was the first woman I had ever opened up to and planned a life with since my wife passed when my children were 1 and 3. However, I tried to be mature about it. I forced myself to understand her position and to accept what I could not change. I calmly, the next day, gathered all of her things, packed them neatly, loaded them in my truck, and took them to her house to leave on the back porch while she was at work, in order to avoid any awkward exchanges.
Walking around the back and under the porch cover, I sat down on a box, and saw her in her back living room. I wish I could unsee what came next. She was there getting it on with a man that she had introduced to me as a life-long friend. I had once had dinner and drinks with this man and his girlfriend. We had gone on vacation with them as well.
I never spoke of the incident with her, and simply sent her a text later, explaining that I would leave her things on my side porch to pick up at her convenience. I discovered eight or nine months later from his now ex-girlfriend that they had broken up due to him confessing that he had been sleeping with my partner, dating back to about the time we were finishing drawings on the new home.
Now I’m angry. Revenge time. At this point, I had finished chemo and radiation for the time being and was feeling healthier. I was going through some much-neglected paperwork when I ran across the file that contained $32,680.00 in unpaid, long overdue invoices, which were promptly sent to my attorney to begin lien proceedings on the home.
It turns out that I couldn't have done this a moment too soon because she was set to put her house on the market. Coupled with interest over the course of, what was then, 19 months overdue, the invoices were hefty. That, along with the agreement of settling them when the house was sold and attorney fees, left her with roughly $10K after the sale of the home and settling her current mortgage.
She promptly had to back out of the purchase of another home and moved in with her oldest daughter and two grandchildren. She also had to leave her job and begin receiving disability. I ran into her a little over a year ago, and she looked as if she had aged 20 years, and was in the wheelchair we had talked about. We chatted cordially but briefly and I excused myself and went on with my day.
A few days later, her younger daughter called me and spoke of my running into her mom, and could we hang out sometime. I gave a vague answer, thanked her for calling and again, went on with my day. The ex then called me a week or so later, and began apologizing for leaving me as she did. Again, cordial but short, I thanked her for calling and hung up.
She began texting, and this went on for several weeks until once she asked if I could ever see us rekindling what we had, to which I replied: "I can't see myself taking care of someone so sick in the long-term. Remember the box on your back porch? Did you think that (life-long friend) brought that over to you from my house? Good luck to you. Goodbye".
96. Sign Your Work
My ex cheated on me while I was deployed. She wound up getting engaged to the guy. Before I changed duty stations, she reached out to say goodbye. We hooked up. While she was asleep, I found his underwear drawer and left a note that said, “Cheaters cheat. By the way, I didn’t use protection". I signed it. Hard not to think fondly on that memory…
97. Sounds Wrong
My uncle is a deputy sheriff, and one time, he was at an airport speaking to my aunt over the phone in Spanish. Once he was done with his call, some nearby Karen who overheard him went up to him and started demanding to see his green card. Huge mistake. My uncle decided to mess with her and said he didn't know what a green card was.
He told her he had never even heard of it. She became more upset and kept demanding to see it. He messed with her more and then eventually went, "Well, I don't have a green card, but I have this," then brought out his wallet and showed her his badge. She immediately walked away while my uncle just kept laughing at her.
98. That’s On You
I film and edit promotional videos, then post them on my company’s YouTube channel. The day after I uploaded a particular run-of-the-mill video, my manager called me into his office because one of our directors, who hates our department and loves undermining me in particular, sent an email to my manager and a few higher-ups. That's when it got cringey.
In the email, he stated that I had messed up the promo video, because there were “all of these other disgusting videos attached to it". As proof, he included a screenshot of the end of the video, where all of the recommended videos appeared to star scantily-clad Asian women in suggestive poses. Neither he nor my manager knew how YouTube algorithms worked.
He didn’t realize that the videos were suggested because he, or someone on his account, viewed that kind of content before. I have no idea how my manager explained this to him.
Sources: Reddit, , , , , , ,
