They say confronting one’s problems head-on is the best solution. However, not everyone likes to tackle issues in a straightforward manner, and instead, people choose more "passive-aggressive" options. Here, Redditors relive some of the most passive-aggressive instances of revenge they have ever encountered. As these stories show, there is definitely nothing passive about such behavior.
1. The Final Countdown
I was on the receiving end of some epic passive aggression once. I was in the "12 items or less" line at the grocery store, and as usual, I had counted my items before I got in the line. An older couple got in line behind me and clearly did not think I had done so. They spoke loudly to each other, I guess hoping to embarrass me. Little did they know their little ploy would backfire.
They said, "THAT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE TWELVE ITEMS TO YOU, DOES IT, MARGE?" This continued on, and when it was my turn, one started, "LET'S COUNT. ONE...TWO...THREE..". I started wondering if maybe I had miscounted, feeling a little panicky as I usually try not to be a jerk. Then finally, "TEN. Oh". The cashier laughed. I needed to do nothing; the backfiring of their plan was plenty.
2. Staving Off The Funk
I used to be a resident advisor in a college dorm. One of the dorm activities we hosted was on personal hygiene, and we gave out. free stuff available like deodorant, shampoo, razors, etc. One of my residents couldn't be bothered to speak with his roommate about his disgusting habits—but he knew exactly what to do to remedy the situation. He took about a dozen of those fliers and put them up all over his roommate's side of the room.
3. Speaking Of Synchronicity
My second job was in a cube farm in the IT department of a large telecom company. One of the guys used to check his voicemail with his speakerphone, with the volume set just slightly below maximum. To teach him a lesson, I took the petty route—I made eye contact with my co-workers, and one by one, we all dialed into our voicemail boxes, on speakerphone, with the volume set to maximum.
In under a minute, the air was filled with robotic recorded prompts for passwords and airing voicemails for all to hear. The dude got the message.
4. Sound The Alarms!
The neighbor in my girlfriend's apartment will let their alarm go off for a good five minutes before they even try to stop it. They don't hit snooze like a normal person; they just lay there and let it buzz over and over and over again. It was going on longer than usual, and at some point, I told myself that enough was enough. I ended up pulling out my phone and turning on the "meltdown" alarm, and I basically pressed it directly into the wall. On top of the horrendously loud noise, it was also buzzing the whole wall. They turned their alarm off within 10 seconds and haven't done it since.
5. Lay Off My Pop
My old roommate's friend used to always come over and drink my cans of Pepsi. I'm on a pretty tight budget but liked to treat myself with said cans, so you can imagine how upset this made me. One day, I decided to put a stop to his inconsiderate behavior—I hid all the cans but one, which I coated with a nail-biter. The second he realized something was wrong, he poured himself a glass of water using the only glass on the drying rack. The glass was coated in a nail-biter as well.
6. Move Your Van, Man
I live on a typical American suburban street. My neighbor just got a new job with a company-provided vehicle. He has a one-lane driveway, so he parks this huge work van in the road directly in front of my house. It is all I can see when I look out the front window. I casually mentioned to him how he could park in front of his house and not mine.
He just chuckled to himself and started talking about something else. He thought he could push me over just like that, but he was wrong. For the next week, I parked my car in front of his house to see if he enjoyed looking at my car every day. Luckily, he got the message and now parks in front of his home and not mine.
7. Snowbound
I worked as a septic tank truck driver in Sweden, where we get snow sometimes. We would place a copy of the work order in the vicinity of the facility we just emptied or just somewhere convenient, like the mailbox. It was just a sign that we had been there since the invoice, and everything would come in the mail. So at one place last winter, they'd shoveled the snow away from their driveway but hadn't shoveled a path for me to get to their tank.
Since it was only about four or five meters, I slogged through the snow, emptied the tank, and then placed the work order copy very visibly on top of the lid. The hose was laying on top of the untouched snow and not in the makeshift path I'd made by walking through the snow. And that's when I had my eureka moment. When I walked back to the truck, I made sure to pull the hose with me in such a way that it completely filled my footprints with snow. Therefore, if the customer wanted their copy of the work order, they would have to slog through the snow as well.
8. Wheeling Away To Victory
I was at Costco once, and they had massage chairs at the end of the aisle, right by the crutches and folding wheelchairs, etc. Two older women were complaining about me using it, making remarks about how I was taking advantage of the equipment. Well, they chose the wrong guy to pick on. I "struggled" to get off the chair, gave a look of pain, and was wheeled off in one of the wheelchairs. I kept one of my hands shaking and went right past them. Their faces were one of the best things ever.
9. Putting An End To Her Partying Ways
During my freshman year in college, my roommate was this pretty spoiled chick who tried way too hard to be "cool". We both played on a sports team for the college and rather than take care of herself as a decent athlete would, she went out and partied all the time. She also frequently neglected her schoolwork. So one night we were hanging out in our dorm, she was getting dressed to go out for the night, and she started telling me about this English paper she's put off for weeks.
She wanted to go out so bad that she was willing to pay me to write it for her. I agreed. At that point, I was so fed up with her partying and apathy that I decided to get revenge. I wrote the paper using words she's probably never used in her 18 years of existence. She got the paperback and the teacher gave her an "F", claiming that she plagiarized the whole thing. Written on the paper several times was the phrase, "Are these your words"? Needless to say, after that, she started doing her own schoolwork.
10. Read My Lips
There were these two girls who sat behind me in one of my classes that wouldn’t shut up. No matter what my professor said, they always had to talk about it between the two of them. After doing this, it always led to a longer discussion between them. It was annoying because I was actually interested in what my professor had to say.
One day, I had enough of it. When they started talking again, I took my laptop out and made a new Word document. I made the font large enough to where they would be able to read it, and typed a few simple words "SHUT UP". I cleared my throat very loudly, and just slightly moved out of the way to where they would be able to read it. That was two weeks ago and they haven't said a word in class since.
11. The Burger-Hoarding Babbler
In college, I had the worst roommate. She would stay up all night, sleep all day long, and dramatically sigh or groan if I accidentally woke her up by being in my room during the day. She also could not shut up for five minutes at a time. She literally wandered around our room muttering to herself, mostly, "Jesus Christ"! If she wasn't doing that, she was sighing and groaning and slamming drawers shut.
She also left food that should have been refrigerated out on her desk for weeks at a time, including stacks of burgers still in their paper wrapping. It smelled. She mentioned once how she hated living in the dorms because she couldn't smoke in there. I casually brought up how my last roommate broke her contract and moved into a house mid-semester and she just loved it.
The roommate got excited and started to look into getting an apartment. But there was one important piece of information that I purposely didn't mention—it cost $1,000 plus that month's dorm fee to break the said contract. Apparently, she managed to sign up for this without noticing the fine print because, for about a week after, she had screaming matches on the phone with her mom about the money.
A week later, she was gone, and I had room to myself for the rest of the semester. It was great. I would feel bad, but living with a Tourette's-ridden burger hoarder was too much for me.
12. Bopping In The Bunk
My then-university roommate and I shared this tiny room with one double-decker bed, a cupboard, two tables, and a mirror. The mirror was opposite the bed so that I, who was sleeping on the top bunk, could actually see what my roommate was doing under. So one day, I woke up to this horrible squelching sound. In my mind, I knew what it was; I just didn't want to entertain the idea.
I glanced at the mirror, knowing that the reflection would take a little bit of my soul. Sure enough, it was my roommate, under my bunk, furiously pleasuring himself in his boxers. I have never seen anyone go at it that feverishly. It was almost beautiful, in some sick, perverse way. The problem was that he kept doing this. I kept waking up to the sound of a guy who watches Matrix Reloaded daily, frantically going at it in his boxers.
And that's not even the worst part. Sometimes, he'd let out an "Uhhh" sound that chills me to this very day. I cannot watch racy Japanese movies because of him. I didn't know what to do. Should I accept my fate and consider his morning toss as some kind of brutal alarm clock? One fateful day, I was awoken by the usual squelching sound, and I decided that I had to do SOMETHING about it.
I just cleared my throat, and he immediately stopped. It was then that he knew I knew. We never spoke again, and he moved the following semester.
13. Clamping Down On His Merciless Ways
When I was in middle school, we had this competition in shop class where we raced CO2 cars that we had made ourselves. The two categories for entry were speed and appearance. I spent FOREVER making mine look awesome. It was a beach scene with rolling waves, a spectacular handmade tiki hut or two, tons of little Polly Pockets glued on, a bonfire, palm trees, etc.
Basically, it was pimped out and was totally going to win. However, I was waiting for the glue to dry so I could enter the competition, and I ended up five minutes late for entry. Five minutes and my jerk of a shop teacher wouldn't let me enter his competition, even though he told me to let the glue dry. I was devastated—but not for long.
So while he was busy watching the other cars race each other in the cafeteria, I super glued all of the clamps in the shop shut. To this day, it gives me so much satisfaction to remember him throwing a fit about it, and he never found out who it was.
14. Revenge On The Resident’s Evil
The residents at the pool where I work complain about everything, making the shifts that my coworkers and I work extremely trying on our patience. It eventually got to the point where a number of residents petitioned to get one of the guards written up because she was sucking a lollipop in an "inappropriate manner" while on the stand.
As head guard of the facility, all of these complaints went to me. Eventually, I got sick of this and took action. What the residents didn’t realize up until about halfway through the summer was that the pool they use has a number of small rules that no one really acknowledges, because, honestly, it’s not worth anyone's time to enforce them.
These rules include things such as enforcing designated areas to eat and a sort of blanket ban on booze. I decided to give them a taste of their own medicine. From July 25th on, under my authority, every guard was required to reprimand all residents on every single infraction. I can honestly say that there was nothing more satisfying than having one of my guards stop a hated resident from enjoying a few drinks with whoever they were with and then looking them right in the eye and just absorbing their hatred. It was sublime.
15. Sheep Dreams Are Made Of This
When I was pretty young—about 13—my younger brother, who was 11, kept frustrating me by taking my CD player, and I was out for clever revenge. We had a CD recorded by a band from the local church called Flying Sheep. The first track on the CD was about 45 seconds of sheep noises. When he went to sleep, I snuck into his room and quietly located my CD player.
I set it to loop track one and turned the volume way down. About every five minutes, I'd sneak in again and turn the volume up a little more. I did this for about two hours until there was nothing but bleating sheep at full volume about four feet from his head. My brother slept like a log, so he slept for a whole seven more hours with sheep noises beaming directly into his brain.
He woke up pretty angry. Apparently, he had dreamt about trying to herd aggressive sheep all night long. It was sweet revenge.
16. The Bush Man Cometh
Whenever my roommate shaves, he always leaves little bits of hair in and around the sink. As other people's hair has always made me cringe, I repeatedly asked him to stop, but there would always be hair in the sink. So, I came up with a simple plan to make him stop—I waited. For three months I grew my bush hair to the most glorious length it has ever been and shaved it all off into the sink and left it. I haven't had any problems with my bathroom since then.
17. Payback Ad Nauseum
One year, I had a roommate in college named Dan. He was a balding 21-year-old who always had to argue about every darn thing we ever talked about. We actually had a lot in common—both smoked weed, the same music tastes—but it was just his personality to always get into a debate about something. This went on for a good year with him always making the most underhanded comments about me and my other roommates.
It got worse when it started happening in public with strangers and actually culminated with him basically badmouthing my roommate when he was being interviewed by the school newspaper about his work with Big Brothers, Big Sisters. It was not that I didn’t confront him to his face with all of this, but that didn’t change anything. So, I felt enough was enough—and I wanted some good old passive-aggressive payback.
I got onto Craigslist and went to three huge cities and to the "used vehicles for sale" list. On each of the three major cities' pages, I put up an identical advertisement for a very popular motorcycle, stated that I needed to sell the bike quickly because I needed the money, and put the cost so low, I was practically giving it away.
I finished all three ads by putting that roommate’s cell phone number. Within 30 minutes, his phone was ringing off the hook and did not stop all night. I had to do everything in my power not to start crying from laughter as he explained to one person after another that he did not have a Ducati for sale in Los Angeles or Chicago.
Eventually, the phone calls slowed down, but he was unable to use his phone for two days or so, and he would still get calls occasionally. It just never occurred to him to try and track the source down and even if he did, there were two other advertisements.
18. Karamel Karma
One particularly hot summer day, I needed something to cool down with, so I bought a Ben and Jerry's ice cream to enjoy during my break time at work. I left it in the freezer in the breakroom thinking that surely none of my coworkers would be so unkind as to take something that didn't belong to them. When I went to eat it, one of my coworkers had in fact beaten me to it, and half of the pint was gone. This completely enraged me, and out of anger, I retaliated.
So, I took it someplace private and hocked the biggest loogy I could muster and dropped it into the ice cream. It was a little melted already, so I just stirred it up so no one would realize it contained a big glob of my snotty saliva and put the half-empty pint back in the freezer for the culprit to finish off. I may or may not have rubbed my hands together and laughed maniacally like a supervillain.
After that, I just pretended nothing had happened and went back to work. Sometime later, I checked back and saw that the thieving culprit did indeed eat the rest of my mucous-laced Karamel Sutra. I'd like to think justice was served that day, but I never did find out who the culprit was. I'd feel a lot better if the guilty party had known what they had actually consumed on that fateful day.
19. Ay Chihuahua, Move!
This last Fourth of July, some friends and I went down to the pier to watch the fireworks. We were sitting down when this couple decided the perfect spot for them was standing directly in front of us. I had been drinking a bit, so it seemed like a good idea to get revenge...by barking like a dog. Not like a mean pit bull or something, but more like a high-pitched chihuahua.
They kept turning around, looking for the dog, until they realized it was me. I looked them in the eyes and started barking at an even higher pitch. I think they thought I was crazy because they just whispered to each other and left. The old man sitting next to me gave me a high five.
20. Rigoletto’s Revenge
During my freshman year of university, I was randomly assigned a roommate. I had a lymph node infection and was bedridden for four days. I was visibly very sick. This guy decided that THOSE FOUR DAYS were the days to get COD from a thrift store and invite his friends to our room to play from midnight to four. He'd always sleep from 5 AM to 1 PM.
I wasted no time getting payback. On the second day of him giving me the ol' spicy COD chain, I would blast opera from my speakers from 6:00 AM to Noon. Then, I'd allow him around 10 minutes of snooze time, and start it AGAIN.
21. Her Darkness Made My Day
I caught an international flight with two friends. It was 24 hours long and the first time I had ever been overseas. Something happened with the ticket allocation, and we were split up into two, and our friend Charlie was two rows back. I politely asked the lady sitting next to us if she would swap seats with Charlie and explained that we were traveling together and his seat was an aisle seat just like hers.
She said, "Umm, no", and promptly put her headphones in. Later in the flight, she was trying to read and noticed that her reading light was out. She asked me if she could turn mine on so that she could read. My response had her stunned: "If you were sitting in Charlie's seat your light would work. Ummmm no, I don't need to read". I watched her read in the dark for a solid five hours.
22. The Song Of Silence
I used to work in an office with two career crazy overworked mid-30s women who would not always work overtime to impress each other. I was an 18-year-old intern and they hated having me in their office. Naturally, not knowing much about the content because I was new, I had to ask them a lot of questions, which would annoy them so very much.
One day I asked some things again, and one of them told me that from that day on, we would have a song of the day to be played on the speakers at lunch. Then, she put on the Elvis remix of "A Little Less Conversation" and looked me straight in the eye. This ticked me off—and I refused to let it slide. The next day, I came in and saw they had been working all weekend again and heard that the boyfriend of one of the women had left her.
So, I announced my song of the day to be, "I Still Miss Someone" by Johnny Cash, the acoustic version. She would not look at me all day, sadly, missing my fat grin as I went home and kissed my fiancee.
23. Serving Some Java Justice
A good family friend of mine is a frequent customer at the local coffee shop. At said local coffee shop there is one handicapped parking space located out front and several non-delegated spots. The family friend noticed another customer would constantly use the handicapped spot to go in and order his coffee, despite not being handicapped.
The manager on staff reminded him to move his car every day because they have several customers who need to use the spot on a daily basis. One day, the man pulled into the spot, went inside, ordered his coffee, proceeded to brush past the manager, and walked towards his car. That was the final straw. My family friend blocked his path at the door and told the man, "You need to stop parking in that spot. We are tired of you treating everyone here like [dirt]".
The man casually told him to mind his own business. My family friend then took the man's cup out of the guy's hands and dropped it on the floor, opened the door for the man, and said, "Don't ever come back here; you're not welcome here". The man went back to his car, moved his car, and called the authorities. When officers came, the manager actually pretended that the man had dropped the cup, and nobody contested it. The guy hasn't been back. It was an epic win.
24. Saucy Spite
While in college, I leased an apartment off campus and sublet it to two roommates. One roommate decided to make "his grandmother's pasta sauce" and used my giant—like feed 20 people giant—saucepan to make it with. Then, he never cleaned it. Neither of us even ate the darn pasta sauce, but the pan just sat in the kitchen for at least two weeks, just getting nastier and nastier, while the other two of us asked him repeatedly to clean it.
Finally, he was about to go away with friends for the weekend, and we were like, "For the love of God, clean it", and he said he would. He left anyway with the saucepan still not cleaned. By this time, it was creating new life, and pretty soon, primates were going to evolve from the mold that was on it. So, we did what any fed-up roommate would do—we took the pan and put it on his pillow for the weekend while he was gone and shut his door. He was not happy when he came back; we just sat there and smiled at him.
25. Morning Revenge Routine
I have a little different sleep schedule than my roommates. Sometimes they respect that, but most of the time, they keep it down to the decibel level of a freight train. So, when they come barging in the middle of the night yelling and singing the chorus to whatever song they had been listening to on the way in, it never fails to wake me.
I lay there listening to them howling and throwing stuff around the house until they finally settle down and I can go back to sleep. Then, at four in the morning, it's MY turn. I wake up and turn my stereo up in my room. I walk through the house stomping so hard that, one day, I'm going to break a foot. I slam doors and cabinets as I make breakfast, then it's time for my workout in the garage.
For two hours I crank the loudest, hardest rock I have, and I will drop my weights on the rack, scream during and after sets, and make as much noise as humanly possible.
26. Bad Rap And Broomsticks
My neighbors upstairs are in a seemingly unstable relationship; they argue every morning, and then get busy at night. The girlfriend has a voice of a squealing meerkat mixed with Fran Lebowitz's voice. There is nothing that masks her howling except for the music of the ignorant rap kind. I hear things like, "YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT ME...SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT, UP!" This left me with no choice.
As a result, I blast my music bright and early in the morning, to shut that woman up. I never hear the guy, though, but I hear him storming down the stairs at 8 AM every day. They are practically my alarm clock. I usually just move into the kitchen when they do their thing at night, but if the girlfriend has parties, my broomstick meets the ceiling every two minutes.
27. Five Minutes Of Freedom
I once had a roommate who would stay up all night playing games/movies/music with his speakers at full blast. Since our rooms were right next to each other and the walls were pretty thin, I could hear everything. I had told him many times to lower his volume at night, but he would just look at me and say okay, and lower the volume for five minutes before turning it back on at full blast again.
One day, I decided I had enough of this. So one night, I blasted a Sigur Ros song on repeat the entire night, knowing that he hated the band. At around 4 AM, his girlfriend came over and asked me to turn down the volume, so I did—for five minutes. I then turned it back on at full blast. He dropped out of school shortly after.
28. Two Bars Away From Going Bonkers
I have a record player, and nice speakers, which I tend to use quite often. Literally every single time I play a hint of a note on them, one of my apartment mates, who used to sing back in the day, starts singing and whistling. It's never the same song. The worst part is that it's always two bars, over and over again, and the absolute worst part is that it’s always contemporary Christian music.
I finally snapped. I was listening to piano music, very softly, like barely above one, and trying to study when he marched into the apartment and started singing some Jesus song. I looked up the lyrics, found the song on YouTube, and blasted it, repeating only the two lines that he was singing. He left, and I haven't heard from him since.
29. A Haiku For You
One of my friends recently broke up from what I would describe as a "pathetic, desperate relationship". My friend was desperate to be in a relationship and she kept settling for guys who she didn’t actually like in any way, shape, or form. I have repeatedly sat through hours of her complaining and whining about all of her issues, but her most recent relationship was the last straw.
Despite the fact that she hated him and only saw him a grand total of 10 times over two months, she was now posting wistful cryptic statuses on Facebook. They would say things like, "Senseless as it is, my heart is still full of another", or "The grass wasn't green enough here. Now we are just past tense", and "Someone who can't be bothered to find time to see me, or doesn't believe me when I say something, isn't worth my time or my tears".
So now, every time she posts one of her annoying statuses, I have been posting nonsensical Haikus without any explanation. My favorite so far was, "Impromptu Haiku, Melted chicken lays an egg. Microwavable". Needless to say, she is confused.
30. Three’s A Crowd
I hang out with my boyfriend and his best friend a lot, and it's happened quite a few times that the three of us will fall asleep while watching a movie, or something. Somehow, I end up with a small portion of the bed, while the two guys take up the majority. It's a bromance thing that I don't want to actively disturb...but it irritates me enough to still take petty action against them.
So, instead of waking up my friend, who pretty much lives next door, I make a lot of noise setting myself a bed on the floor. It worked twice; he woke up and left. Most times, I find myself still on the floor at 9 AM with a pillow made from T-shirts and a horrible backache.
31. Parting The Sea Of High Schoolers
When I was 22, I had a severe accident causing me to require a cane to walk with for a couple of weeks. One day, I was in a shopping center trying to go up some escalators. I was running late for something and a huge group of young high schoolers was blocking both sides. I said excuse me, and of course, no one could hear me. I knew I had to take it up a notch.
So, I whipped out the cane and pushed the kids aside with it, and made my own path. I now know I will make an awesome grumpy old person!
32. A Swing And A Hit
When I was about five, I attended daycare. On this particular day, I decided to head over to the swings and enjoy myself. Just as I was sitting down, a younger girl, maybe three-ish, decided to be a little pain and stand right in front of me at the apex of my swing. I asked her to move, as she was in my way, but she said no. I asked her again to move and was greeted with the same reply.
I then issued my final warning. I said if she didn't move, I would kick her in the face. I guess she thought she could call my bluff, which was the wrong decision. I moved as far back as I could to gain the most momentum possible, lifted my feet up, and landed both feet square on her nose. Blood immediately started pouring out and she ran away. One of the daycare employees came over quite quickly and told me I had to get off the swings. I still have no regrets.
33. An Argument About Nothing
My boyfriend and his mother argue all the time. They're ridiculous, they argue about nothing. Not like terrible aggressive arguments, but stupid bickering because neither of them can say "OK" or "you're right" or "this argument is stupid, we both don't know what we're talking about". They had no problem doing it in front of me—so I had no problem going this in front of them. I turned to their dog and got into an argument with the poor dog. When they ask what I’m doing, I just explain that my argument is as futile as theirs.
34. Cleaning House
I once lived with this girl who would smoke inside the house pretty regularly. I have no problem with smokers, and I enjoy the occasional puff, but I don't want it happening in my house. I was sick of my clothes and furniture always smelling, so whenever I saw her smokes sitting on the table, I would put them out in the rain so they'd get ruined.
She thought she kept forgetting them outside. I ruined probably 3–5 packs a week while we were living together. This same girl would always complain about how messy the house was all the time. Once a week, I'd clean up the house and every single time, about 90% of the mess was hers. I'd pile all of her stuff at the bottom of the stairs and tell her to take it up to her room.
A week later when I would clean again, the pile would always still be there, untouched. So, I decided to escalate the situation. I would throw all of that stuff away and pile up all of her stuff from the most recent cleanup. I did this for months. I threw away tons of her clothes, multiple pairs of shoes, and all sorts of other stuff. I have no remorse. I'm not going to live in a filthy hovel because you're too lazy to pick up after yourself, especially when I'm already doing most of the work.
35. That Bad Behavior Cost Them A Penalty
When I worked at Randall's Deli, there was a lady who came in with her kid once. The kid was in full soccer regalia, and the lady mentioned how they were short on time, so I needed to hurry. No biggie. She wanted some meat and cheese cut up, and most importantly, an eight-piece of fried chicken. As I was cutting the meats, the kid kept smearing his hands and face ALL OVER the glass case I just cleaned.
I asked him to stop, and his mother did absolutely nothing. Game on. I sliced her meat and cheese very slowly and deliberately, on a weird thickness that would be awkward for sandwiches. It was too thick to put on right but not so thick that she'd notice, and she'd have to tear the meat up to get it to fit right on the sandwich.
Then, I made a big show about how we didn't have enough chicken and began making a fresh batch, which took 20 minutes. The whole time, the kid's still smearing the glass, moving things around, etc. All in all, I had to clean up after the kid, but I overheard the mom saying how late they were after I took up over thirty minutes of their time when it would have normally taken me about five. I like to think I won that round.
36. Fuming To Get Him Moving
In college, there was a guy who, the moment you spoke to him about anything, thought you wanted to be friends, and followed you around everywhere. Though he didn't have any friends for this reason, I tried to be nice, but he would follow me around everywhere and invite himself into our place and private matters. I had a class with him, and he would sit next to me, in the front row.
He was also much larger than me. He would fall asleep mid-class, head tilted back, and sometimes start snoring. His sitting next to me needed to end. Coffee makes me have the most rancid and unholy silent gas. I would, therefore, drink a few cups of dark black coffee before class, and unleash the maelstrom of my brimstone fumes while he sat next to me. I did this every day for a couple of weeks, and it would wake him up immediately. The best part was that everybody around us thought it was him.
37. Licked Into Shape
A past roommate of mine would constantly eat my food. He took my large Costco-sized jar of peanut butter and was eating right out of the container with his spoon in his room. When he was done, he just left it on the floor with the lid off. At the time, I had a large golden retriever who loved peanut butter. I wondered why he wouldn't get out of the guy’s room until I noticed the jar of peanut butter.
I looked in the jar and he had licked the inside of the jar as far as his tongue would go. The peanut butter was in the shape of an inverted cone. I took the spoon out, put the lid on, and put it back into the kitchen cabinet. A few days later when he was eating the peanut butter off the spoon again, I asked him how it was. He said, "Great, why"? So I told him the truth—and his reaction was priceless. He was mad but couldn't say much because I had told him not to eat my food.
Public Domain Pictures
38. Knocking Out The Nosy Neighbor
Back in college, I rented a room in Southern Utah. My next-door neighbors were this older retired couple. Every so often, things in our backyard would turn up missing without explanation. Then one weekend, I noticed the little old lady next door casually snooping around my backyard. I watched her pick up a rake and pack it over to her house, clearly taking it.
So, I warned everyone else in the house, and nothing was ever left out again until one Saturday morning. I was sleeping in and looked out my window. There peering in was the same lady, clearly scoping out the goings on of my room. This was the last straw. She didn't notice that I was awake and continued on to her little saunter in my backyard.
When she was out of sight, I pulled off my bed covers and boxers and let Emperor Wang hang out. It helped that it was a little hard. As she came back, she took a quick glance, stopped for a second, then moved on. I thought that she didn't see, but I was wrong. She came back very sneaky and went in for a closer look—much closer.
When her face was about five inches from the glass, I struck. I reached out and smacked the glass as hard as I dared, right where her face was. She was so taken aback, you would have sworn that I punched her. As anticipated, she took off, and I spent the rest of the morning in laughter. We never had problems with trespassers again.
39. The Day The Music Died
Inconsiderate neighbors would blast neo-grunge at around midnight. This was something they knew bothered me, and it felt like going over there was an exercise in redundancy. All that would happen is they would give me lip service and look at me like an old cranky jerk. So after tapping the wall a few times, I felt it necessary to retaliate...by whipping out my accordion.
I started playing the Tetris theme song as fast, loud, and awful as my sausage fingers would let me. Soon the music stopped, and I heard their back screen door open. I could hear the kids laughing themselves silly outside in disbelief. The music stopped ever since and there has been no mention of the accordion ever when interacting with them.
40. A Shift In Position
I flew from Pearson in Toronto to CDG in France in 2010. I had one neighbor, as I had a window seat. She seemed to be just about the nicest French lady. We made small talk until the food came, and I watched her take an extra single-serving bottle of vino from the flight attendant's cart, then ask for a third, which he provided. I opted for some pain meds I had brought and went to sleep.
I awoke to see this same seemingly nice young lady pounding on the seat ahead of her. Apparently, the gentleman in front of her, who was well over six feet, had reclined an infinitesimal margin. However, this is not what was bothering her. Over the next hour or so, every time he would shift in his seat, and thereby cause the screen mounted to the back of his headrest to shift concordantly, she would begin to pound on his seat.
The dude had a remarkable amount of restraint. I would have been confronting her after the first time, and I'm sure I would have made everyone on the plane aware that we had a jerk by the second time, but he let it go on for about an hour before contacting the flight attendant. He asked her in English to please keep her hands to herself, and she responded in French, saying that this guy "wouldn't stop shaking his seat".
It was quite an exaggeration, made more so by the fact that she had to disguise her lie in a language he might not be familiar with. Despite all this, I awoke several more times on the eight-hour flight to that woman bashing on his seat when he would shift even in the slightest.
41. The Great Smoke Out
In one of my last apartments, I had a neighbor upstairs who had this kid that would run back and forth in the apartment all day and night. It would wake me up, and was extremely frustrating, as I was paying a LOT of money per month for this condo. I started by tapping on the ceiling with a broom, hoping they'd get the hint. When I would knock, they would bang back.
One night, I went upstairs and asked them to please keep their kid from running after 9 PM at least, and they pretended to only speak Spanish. I had heard them speaking English to other neighbors before. The running wouldn't stop. Luckily for me, we lived in an area where people commonly didn't have air conditioners and would leave windows and doors open with fans blasting in cool air. That worked perfectly in my favor.
So, I started going out on my patio and lighting up. I would take in huge rips, and release them upward right into their windows and doors. I've never inhaled so much in my life as those nights out on that patio, letting out a huge cloud directly into their door for them to smell all night. I loved it when I would hear their door slam shut when I started, and would instead aim for their windows.
42. The Missing Piece
I had a housemate who would always do puzzles in the middle of the living room floor over the course of weeks and leave them there. It wasn't a big room, we all had to do a lot of tippy-toeing. I got sick of it and, one day, the tides shifted. Suddenly, she found that each puzzle had a single piece missing. She'd tear up the living room and her room and anywhere else she could get into. She'd never find the piece, of course, because I had it.
The puzzle company got so many complaints from her; she'd email them constantly about each puzzle piece. To start with, they'd just send her the missing piece but after a while, I think they must have thought she was lying because they just stopped responding. I suppose the answer would have been to get puzzles from a different company, but she was not that smart.
43. They Deserved To Be Dumped On
In university, I lived with two girls who were my friends. I had lived with them separately before, but for some reason, they just went crazy on me. They blamed everything that could go wrong in the house on me, even though I was going home on weekends to work, had a part-time job two nights a week on campus, and spent most remaining nights at my SO's place to avoid the craziness.
I think they literally got me close to a nervous breakdown by generally trying to ruin my life, which was already pretty stressful. One night, I came home from a long shift. I worked in a kitchen that cooked a lot of bacon and curry, so I had a pungent odor. Plus I closed, so I was sweaty from cleaning, doing dishes, etc. I was way too exhausted to take a shower, so I crashed still wearing my work clothes and didn't even brush my teeth or anything. It turned out that this would play well into my revenge.
I woke up the next morning and immediately felt the need to take what would end up being one of the largest dumps of my life. I'm not proud, but it happens. Except when it was all over, the toilet didn’t flush. I pulled the lid of the tank off and realized there was no water. I turned on the sink and it sputtered, but nothing was coming out. Our water was shut off.
This had happened a couple of times before and the building staff left a notice, which I was kind enough to put on the fridge. But instead, my roommates threw this one out and didn't tell me. Now I couldn’t even wash my hands, flush the toilet, shower, or brush my teeth. I went to the kitchen and even the Brita in the fridge was bone dry.
I thought about leaving a note in the bathroom saying, "Plug your nose and flush", but figured they didn't deserve even that, for I felt ultimately wronged in this situation. It wasn't until months later that one roommate admitted to discovering my shame.
44. Park At Your Own Risk
I used to live in Pakistan and there was a park in front of my house. Over time, the locals converted it into a marriage lawn, in fact, three marriage lawns. So there would be times when there were three weddings going on at the same time. As a result, we started to see that on most nights there were cars parked on both sides of the street, which was fine.
But then, there would always be some jerk who would park their car in front of our main driveway, which was also the entrance to the house. That meant we could not go outside if our car was already parked inside the main entrance, and, if you were coming back from somewhere, you were out of luck. You could not possibly go onto the lawn and search through three different gatherings to find that one person to move their car.
We had to go to the management office every time and ask them to fix it. They would go find that person, which would sometimes take 30 minutes or more. This one time when we had enough of it, my brother and I came back home only to find that our driveway was blocked. We couldn’t really park our car anywhere else, since all the spaces were gone. We had to take matters into our own hands.
So, we parked our car at the entrance of the park. The entrance was only wide enough to let one car go through, so we blocked the whole entrance by parking our car sideways. Within a matter of a few minutes, there was a crazy traffic backlog and within minutes, management was at our door asking us to please remove our car. Sure enough, my brother and I were like, nope, I think we'll leave it there.
After repeated requests, we finally moved it and that was the last day we had any problems. Going forward, they always had people standing and directing traffic to proper parking or they put "No Parking" signs in front of all the facing houses.
45. Healthing At Its Finest
My wife and I live in the Bay Area, so the weather is always cool. Unfortunately, this means the apartment complex we live in has absolutely no air conditioners, not even internal fans. During the autumn, we have our summer. We live on the second floor of a three-story apartment complex and our downstairs neighbors LOVE to smoke.
California is one of those progressive states, and smoking is one of those offenses that you can probably be executed for. The apartment complex we live in is no exception and has very strict rules against it. You can't smoke in your apartments, adjacent to your apartment, or anything like that. For some reason, it never bothered me, but it does bother my wife, and it also bothers me when it enters my house.
To evade the rules, my downstairs neighbors opted to smoke out on their back patio. Since it's warm inside, our only source of fresh, cool air is from the back patio, so we keep the door leading to the balcony open, and the smoke enters our apartment. My wife's mitigation tactic is genius—she grabs a massive Costco-sized aerosol can of Lysol and spray copious amounts of it out the patio window.
Imagine if you will, a bunch of stoners gathered around to smoke their doobie when all of a sudden a huge disinfectant-mist cloud starts to form around them. It's hilarious as I can hear them coughing and sputtering and snorting and grumbling under their breath. It’s passive aggressiveness at its finest, but at least we're not snitches.
46. Engineering A Solution
I am a young engineer and this was in my first few months at the new job. An overweight coworker complained that I had parked too close to her car and heard that I did that a lot. So, in the middle of the office, she called me out, and said, "A little driver etiquette for you—you need to leave enough room for people to get in their car". I was in the lines, in the middle of her terrible parking and the bad parking job on the other side.
I wanted to say something back, but in the middle of the office, I knew I'd get into trouble. I was mad all morning but found a solution at lunch. I came back from lunch early, and I parked near the entrance to the lot and took up three spaces. I walked into the building and watched her drive in, jaw hanging open. She hasn’t liked me since, but she had a reputation for being "THAT" employee, so I wasn’t too worried.
She complained to the plant manager, and my boss was there and said, "She called him out in the middle of the office, which was uncalled for. And he didn't take anyone else's spot. No harm was done". He's awesome like that.
47. Amazon To The Rescue
Last December, the guy sitting next to me at work brought in speakers and played Christmas music from his phone on the speakers. I'm not sure if he thought that he was doing people a favor, or if he just wanted to have Christmas music to himself, but it was really bothering me. Of course, I didn't tell him the first or second time he did it, so it would have been too awkward to just say something to him now. I had to find another way, and the move I decided on was hilarious.
So, I signed up for an anonymous email account and sent him a link to an Amazon page where you can buy headphones. He had someone at his desk when he got the email, and I heard him say, "What is this? A link to headphones? Weird". He kept on playing the music. Thankfully, he must have put two and two together because he didn't play any more music for the rest of the season after that.
48. Berry Satisfying Payback
At my first apartment, I had an absolute jerk of an upstairs neighbor. He would be up until 3 AM playing music really loudly, then wake up at 6 AM and take a shower. Of course, being an old complex, I could hear his water and the pipes groaning every morning. I gave up complaining to the manager—a nice old man, but not capable of dealing with conflict—after about two months of it.
The jerk upstairs had a white pickup that he parked at the end of the units, right outside my bedroom window. He kept all his work gear in the truck overnight, without any cover over the bed or his gear. So, I invested in a little bird feeder to hang outside my window next to his truck. For the first week, I only put seed mix in it. And then I upped the ante.
After that, for the rest of the year I lived there, I put a mix of dried blueberries, cranberries, cherries, and unhulled sunflower seeds in the feeder. It was expensive, but it was so worth it to see his white pickup and all of his ladders, gloves, paint trays, rollers, and tools covered in berry bird poo.
49. Venting My Anger
I was on an airplane flight. The guy in front of me reclined his seat until he was practically resting his head on my chest. I'm 5'10" and my legs aren't so long that my knees will touch the seat in front of me; therefore, I don't normally have a problem with the people in front of me leaning back. I don't know if this guy's seat was broken, or if it was some sort of sleeper-sofa unit that belonged on a long-haul flight, but I ended up looking down on the guy's face like I was his dentist.
I politely asked him if he would please put his seat up. He just looked at me and said, "No". That threw me over the edge. I then decided to turn my air vent on full blast and aimed it right at his face. When he reached up to adjust it, I pushed his hand away, and said, "Excuse me. That's my air vent. I like it that way". He ended up leaning forward the entire flight but left his seat back reclined practically to my chest.
We were both uncomfortable the entire flight, but neither of us would give in. As my wife put it, "So, this is what happens when an inconsiderate [jerk] meets a passive-aggressive [one]". It sucked.
50. Life In The Fast Lane
I hate anyone who drives with those bright-as-thirty-suns headlights. They are the most obnoxious things in the world. I was driving home one day from class when this guy came behind me, his headlights destroying my eyes. I was so mad. Not only did he have the obnoxious lights, but he was tailgating me. I was doing 15 over the speed limit and I was not in the fast lane.
He could pass me, but he refused. He just continued to tailgate me. There wasn't even another soul on the highway. This was in New Jersey. On highways, the state troopers don't just sit in their cars and keep their radar devices on. They only turn them on when they think they see someone speeding, so radar detectors can't spot them from miles away. Armed with this information, a lightbulb went off in my head.
I spotted one sitting in the grassy middle part of the highway, facing my direction. So I proceeded to turn on my signal and go in the fast lane. I hit my brakes hard. He slingshotted past me and gave me this perplexed look. All of a sudden, my radar detector went crazy. The officer pulled out and pulled over the jerk.
Sources: Reddit,
