There always seems to be at least one person in any workplace whose goal in life is to make you miserable. We've all got to put up with these jerks day in and day out—but when the chance comes to get your revenge? There's nothing more satisfying than that.
1. Special Delivery
Back in my early 20s, I worked as a delivery driver at a pizza joint close to the main college. After about four months of working there, the owner hired a friend of his to manage the joint since our current manager had just left. We’ll call the new guy “Donnie”. Donnie was the epitome of the "power trip for no reason" boss.
He would call you out for little mistakes, make you stay late to help do his job, throw you under the bus when talking to the owner, and always bail early. To top it all off, he was convinced everybody liked him. We even caught him taking from our tip jars a couple of times, but the owner never did anything about it.
Anyway, I had planned to go out one night with a girl I had just met and wanted to get off work a bit early so I could go home and wash the pizza smell off me. I asked Donnie if that was possible—and he absolutely lost it. You would have thought I’d asked for a raise, bonus, and a six-month vacation. Despite the fact that three drivers from the next shift had shown up already, he started shouting, "What, are you stupid?? We have three deliveries up!! You can stay until your shift is over”.
"That's cool", I thought. He was a jerk, but he was well within his right to make me stay until my shift was over. I sucked it up and started getting the last deliveries together. However, when he saw where I was taking one of the pizzas, he ordered—not asked—me to pick him up a chocolate shake from a drive-through joint close by.
I flat out told him, "No freakin’ way. You expect me to do you a favor when you won’t do me one? Suck it". I grabbed the pizzas and stormed out. Donnie started yelling from the kitchen, something like, "Haha, look at him getting all political. Awww, I think he's mad". Granted his past behavior had factored into how angry I was over something pretty minor, but I was furious.
The universe had reached its jerk quota and beckoned to me to teach this moron a lesson. As I was driving away from the last delivery, I called the store and got Donnie on the phone. I apologized and said I would get him his milkshake, and even pay for it. I went by the drive-through of the fast-food place to get a 32oz chocolate milkshake.
Then, I made a beeline to the grocery store right down the street to pick up a family-size bottle of chocolate-flavored Ex-Lax. I poured half of the shake out—for me to enjoy later, of course—and mixed in about 15oz of Ex-Lax. Keep in mind: it only takes like two tablespoons of this stuff to give you a healthy case of the runs. It was on now.
After giving it to him, he said something about it tasting funny but still managed to inhale that sucker like a true fat boy. He didn't even say “thanks”. Fast forward three hours or so, my date and I were cruising the bars and we headed into the pizza joint I worked at. Instantly, the cook made eye contact with me and came rushing over, practically falling over patrons.
Barely able to contain himself, he told me, "Donnie is having uncontrollable, violent diarrhea. He's been in the bathroom since you left, has messed his pants already, and is making this place smell like an open sewer". I went back to the kitchen and Donnie was nowhere in sight. But right as I started to talk to a fellow pizza slave, he came rushing from the bathroom.
His pants were half on-half off, one hand was out in front, and the other hand was holding his balloon knot shut. He had exhausted the entire restaurant's toilet paper supply and was heading to the bar next door. The best part? He lived about 65 km (40 miles) away and continued pooping himself periodically throughout the trip home.
Despite everybody knowing the true story, though, he never figured it out and blamed the fast-food joint for his wild ride on the Hershey Highway. I think the whole ordeal humbled him a bit because he ended up turning into a decent guy.
2. Hide And Seek
I won’t go into the details of my boss but, suffice it to say, she was a total nightmare—an incompetent micromanager with an additional side-order of petty evil. So, I got myself a PCB prank device. If you’ve not seen it before, it makes a random “BLEEP!” at odd intervals, between a minute and ten minutes. It sounds like the “battery is almost out” bleep.
I hid it where I knew she wouldn’t find it and watched, over the course of a few weeks, as her sanity and temper both got frayed beyond belief. She replaced her phone twice and her computer once, and never at any point did she stand a chance of finding the thing. My secret? I’d hidden it inside her monitor.
3. Overtime Pay
I worked as an installer in a remote office. I traveled a lot for work, often spending weekends on site. This was fine under my old boss, who gave me a lot of leeway by letting me work from home, giving me comp time, etc. After four years, I got a new boss. At the same time, the company laid off everyone in my office, which was about 100 people.
The new boss insisted I come in anyway to sit in an empty office. It was a 45-minute drive, but I still had to travel Sunday through Friday with no overtime and no comp time. When I complained to HR, the HR manager told me that since I was salaried, if they wanted me to work 80 hours a week, I would work 80 hours and I shouldn't expect any compensation.
Everyone I talked to seemed to think it was true, and that being salaried meant one didn’t get overtime. That didn't make sense to me. I called the local state Department of Labor office and told them what I did, and what I'd been told by HR. Their response made my blood boil—they told me to get a lawyer and said that if my work didn't rectify this by giving me every dollar they owed me, the company would have to pay the state 50 cents in penalties.
So, I got a lawyer. In a matter of four months, I settled out of court, got a new job, and got a severance. I also made my boss do an exit interview where I told her that if she'd been halfway considerate, she wouldn't have to scramble to cover for the next eight scheduled installs by flying people out from the East Coast and paying them overtime.
4. Know Your Worth
I was a typesetter when it was still done on dedicated typesetting machines, not desktops. This was specialized work and demanded pretty good pay. I agreed to take one job at less than my usual hourly pay for six weeks while I learned their system, which was one I hadn't used before. Well, six weeks came and went...and I didn't see my promised raise. But it gets worse.
In the meantime, the horrible shrew of a paste-up "artist" went out sick and I was left doing both type and layout. A very important project came up, and there was only me to do it. Without me, they'd be totally and royally screwed. Even if they could find a typesetter who could do paste-up, there was just no time to run the ad, hire, and train one.
I reminded the owner and manager of the raise I'd been promised when I was hired, and how long ago that was. Then I put all my personal desk trinkets in a box and told them they had until the end of the business day to make a decision. I got my raise—retroactive to my hire date—by 5 pm.
5. Short-Staffed
I had an abusive boss who would make physically impossible demands. She thought she was the queen of the workplace because her supervisors let her do whatever she wanted, but I would soon put her in her place. So, during one of her tantrums in which about 12 hours of work was being laid on me at 4 pm but was due the next morning, I told her, “Fine, I quit”.
She screamed, “YOU CAN'T QUIT! YOU HAVE TO GIVE TWO WEEKS' NOTICE”. I said, “What? No, I don't. Goodbye, and good luck with all that work that needs to be done before tomorrow”. It was very satisfying.
6. Throwing Wrenches
I had a female co-worker who falsely accused me and two other guys of plotting to take from our job. Despite the combined seven years on the job between the three of us—compared to her two months—our man-hating boss believed our co-worker. She gave us this ridiculous, patronizing speech about "security concerns" and made us all turn in our keys.
She didn't fire us though, because our seven years of experience made us absolutely indispensable. The place would have ground to a halt without us, and everyone knew it. We were, naturally, incensed at this series of events. Our direct supervisor was pretty cool, so we warned him that we weren't coming in the next day.
Then, the hot mess began. In one of the biggest "Are you kidding?" moments of my life, at 9 am, the co-worker who accused us called our direct supervisor and demanded to know why we weren't at work yet. Needless to say, everything shut down for a while. Clients were upset about a complete lack of services, troubleshooting was out the window, and the three of us laughed like Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
It took a few days for any semblance of order to come back. Even then, the place limped along, hamstrung because nobody else knew how to do our jobs, much less how to do them as smoothly and efficiently as we did. We never received an apology from anyone in the company, and when we went in to confront our accuser, she ducked us for a day and a half before we could get a meeting with her and the bosses.
The bosses took a "we can't really know what happened, but if she accused you, you must have done something" attitude, and our man-hating boss spent a good hour trying to get us to confess to something we never did. We proceeded to spill all the dirty laundry we held on our co-worker, including some examples of outright theft, and walked out of the meeting.
As we left the office, we apologized to the co-workers who got extra work because of our departure. Their reactions caught us totally off-guard—not a single one held it against us. As our direct supervisor later said, "I don't blame you. I wouldn't have been able to work there after that. Heck, you guys have been working here longer than me, I'm more likely to have stolen something".
A year later, the company's clients had dropped by about 50% and, right now, I think they're about to go out of business. The company had barely scraped by with people who knew how to put out every fire, and nobody else had been there more than a few months. So, when they drove out all their experienced employees, everything fell apart.
7. Call The Caterer
Our company was giving us employees an appreciation lunch and had requested a small group of employees to plan and execute the event. On the day of the event, upper management got a stick up their butts and decided that the planning committee was using up too much company time. They told us that any of us who worked the luncheon would have to do it on our lunch breaks or stay late to make up the time.
We, of course, found that unacceptable. Prior to the luncheon, we had a huge meeting where all the managers and bigwigs praised all the workers for a job well done, etc. In the end, they asked if anyone had any questions or comments. That's when I took my chance to get even. I stood up and in a very friendly manner said that we needed managers to volunteer to serve the luncheon.
All you heard were crickets for about ten seconds and then a lot of whispering and scrambling as upper management made lower management raise their hands. It was so awesome to see them all using their lunch hour to serve us!
8. 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.
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9. It’s Just Not Working Out
I had a boss from the underworld back when I worked for a logistics company (we will call him ”David”). This particular company did not hire directly for dock workers—you had to go through a temp-to-hire service—and it had a 90-day window in which the dock super (who in this case was David) could call your temp agency and tell them your stint at the company was over. The temp would be called into the office where David would look at him or her and say with a large, smug grin: “IT’S JUST NOT WORKING OUT”.
This prick would ridicule new temps about the way they dressed, the way they talked, and their mannerisms in front of everyone at shift meetings. When a new batch of temps would start, he would pick an unlucky one out and ride him or her until they quit or made some minor mistake. Then, he would tell the temp agency that person was just not working out for the company.
David was married to some big shot at a hospital in town. She was the breadwinner, so he had no problems with keeping some low-level super job. To top it all off, David was also the only minority with a supervisory position, so the Logistics Company didn’t want to fire him. David was simply a shift super for the dock and he had no desire to be promoted because he had absolutely no responsibilities except to post an end-of-shift report, which he had one of the receivers do for him (that was my job). For two years, I typed this jerk’s nightly reports, knowing full well he never witnessed any of it going on—he just sat in his office eating or riding the dock on a golf cart looking for reasons to fire new people. I knew something had to change.
Anyway, I was hired in as a temp, kept my head down through David’s nonsense, and eventually, I got promoted to head of a different department away from him. Three years later, the company decided that receiving (David’s department) was lacking direction, and decided to hire a department head for them. I got the job. I was now David’s boss.
He turned pale when it was announced the next day at work. I thought he was going to expire on the spot. He knew that for years I witnessed every bit of the terrible things he had said and done to the temps. I showed up nightly for three months on his shifts to “monitor” how David ran his shifts, watching him make stupid mistakes one after another; any one of these things I could have easily terminated him, but I held out and documented everything.
When it finally came time, I called him into my office, armed with months (years, really) of reasons to fire him, but I simply looked at him and told him, “David, it’s just not working out”.
10. Overseas Exit Plan
I had a bunch of jerk-face bosses who were looking all school year for reasons to fire me. It got to the point where I was turning in three times the number of lesson plans despite already having less freedom to do my job than any other teacher at that school. It was all personal too. Very unprofessional stuff like “my son is in this guy’s class and he does it this way, so you should do it that way also”. Meanwhile, I'd walk by that same teacher’s class and he'd be showing the Peanuts Christmas Special.
They said my lesson plans weren’t detailed enough, so I asked for their best lesson plan from any other teacher to compare, and mine were clearly more detailed, a fact that shocked even me. They spent so much time telling me I was a bad teacher that I actually began to believe it. Now, this school had a free year’s license to Rosetta Stone, so I switched my language to Korean and learned Hangul. Almost weekly, there would be someone who would say, “Korean!? Who the hell knows Korean!? What would you ever do with that”?
At the end of the year, they told me not to come back, but all I could do was smile. I said, “Thank you, but I just got a job in Korea”. They had the dean in there to make sure I didn’t make a scene, and I think even he was surprised that I was almost laughing as I walked out of the office and shook hands with everyone with a big sly grin on my face. Right now, I am sitting here at my desk in Korea, the only native English teacher at my school, and they love me. To tell you the truth, I might have stayed at that job another five or 10 years. Getting asked to not come back was the best thing that ever happened to me.
11. An Eye For An Eye
I had a picture of my mom and me on my desktop (I know, corny). This guy, Pat, kept commenting on how attractive my mom was (he was about the same age). After about a month of this, I asked my mom to jokingly call him and tell him he was sexist and a bad influence and whatnot. She did this, but they ended up talking for 30 minutes, and after that, Pat told everyone at the office that my mom was trying to pick him up. For the next year, every time he saw me he asked how my mom was. At my five-year pinning ceremony, he told the story to a bunch of strangers and my bosses.
Fast forward a year later—I had just gone through a bad breakup with my long-time girlfriend and this Pat guy kept coming into my office and telling me that I need to get out and start playing the field. He did this for about a month, so then I asked a guy at work what his daughter’s name was (she was around the same age as me). I found her on Facebook and asked her if she would help play a prank on her dad. When she agreed, I set my devious plan into motion.
I went out on a “date” with his daughter and took a picture of the two of us drinking out of the same drink with two straws then proceeded to put it in a heart-shaped frame on my desk. Then I got another manager to tell Pat that I got a new girl and that I was head over heels for her. He came straight to my office and I didn’t say a word—all I heard from behind me was, “What are you doing with my daughter”? To this day, he hasn’t asked when my mom is calling next!
12. Who Called The Fire Brigade?
I used to work as a developer for a company that makes EDI software. My boss was a paranoid, penny-pinching, micromanaging knob. For example, he'd say things like: “I know your contract says you can take an hour for lunch, but most people take just 15 minutes and I think you should too”, or “I don’t see any reason why you should not make a habit of coming in 30 minutes early and leaving 30 minutes later”.
My main beef with him was that he refused to give me time off to be with my wife when her mother had only a few days left to live. Our office was in a converted factory that was split into several units. My boss’s brother owned the building. Within that building, there was our company, a karate studio, and a creche. I noticed that the fire alarm panel at the main door to the building never had any lights lit on it. It looked like there was no power going into it.
So I called the fire brigade. The surprise inspection came 30 minutes later due to the fact that there was a creche in the building. The building owner got himself a conviction and a $10K fine (I had hoped it would be bigger). He had to pay a load to get a new fire alarm system installed. A few months later, when I was made redundant under questionable circumstances, I told my boss who called the fire brigade. The color drained from his face. I then launched a legal claim against him for unfair dismissal and my case. I have enjoyed punishing him for the unfair way he treated me.
I should point out just how beautiful it was to watch the inspection. The fire brigade sent around two young ladies, who looked more like salespeople and nothing like fire safety inspectors. They came into our office and asked to speak to the building manager. My boss came out of his room with a big Terry-Thomas grin on his face to greet them. “Hi, I manage the building for my brother”. “Great, we’re from the fire brigade and we are here to have a look at your fire safety systems”. His jaw dropped.
13. Nickle And Diming
This happened a few years ago, I was working at a large national chain restaurant as a manager. I was asked to temporarily re-assign to a location in a city about an hour away, and accepted...they put me up in a hotel, the whole nine yards. The first weekend I was there, I discovered that the general manager had screwed up and not ordered any change (small bills/rolls of coins) for the safe, and that the local branch of our bank would be closing in the next hour.
I also happened to have a personal account at the same bank, and had, in the past, gone and gotten change from the branch back home. Since time was tight, I quickly looked up the address of the bank, grabbed $800 dollars, and jumped in my car. I get to the bank, wait in line, and then ask them to make change for me from the bills.
The teller tells me that the bank doesn't make change. Me, thinking it was because they didn't know me, informed her that our restaurant had an account she could look up. Her reply made my stomach clench. She then told me, "No, we don't make change at all." The thought going through my brain was, "What the heck? You are a BANK!!!" I tried explaining the situation, but was quickly shot down.
I left and went back to my car. Then I had an idea. I went back inside the bank with my personal checkbook. Got to the front of the line, and (luckily) had the same teller. Before she could even greet me, I held out my checkbook and told her, "I would like to close this account, since this bank is no longer customer service oriented." She kind of rolled her eyes, but went about my request.
Then she asked how I wanted my cashback. An automatic response, I'm sure, but it was one I was counting on. I said, "$400 in $5s, $300 in $1's, $70 in rolled quarters, $25 in rolled dimes, $4 in rolled nickels, and $1 in rolled pennies. The rest can be on a cashier's check." No reason for her to deny it, so I got my change. And the following Monday, I returned, closed out the other two accounts I had there, and I opened accounts at a different bank where I have been banking ever since.
14. The Secret Ingredient
Someone kept taking my lunch at work and I, being the pacifist that I am, decided to just mention it casually to my wife. I didn’t think it was a big deal, but these were the sandwiches that SHE made for me every day. She decided to make a special sandwich for me which consisted of bread and a secret ingredient: toothpaste. I put it in the fridge and after lunch, it was gone.
I don’t know if the sandwich was actually consumed, but I told HR about it. They thought it was so awesome, they gave me a $20 gift card to Outback Steakhouse.
15. 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.
16. 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.
17. Proud Poppa
This is not my story, but my father's. He was working hard in an early computer company. This is back in the late '60s. He was the only one who knew how to support and manage the large microcomputers that some of the customers had. His boss was berating my father for wanting personal leave—my mother was about to give birth to her first child, my eldest brother.
The boss didn't even want to allow my father to leave when my mother went into labor. My father lost his temper and told him to get screwed. He blew up about how incompetent he was, and how he was riding on other people's talent. He quit right there and then left for the hospital. I still remember my mother telling me that my father came in, congratulated her on the birth, and told her he had just quit his job.
She laughs about it now, but you can imagine how she felt! A day later, the owner of the company called my father and offered him his old boss's job. The kicker? The old boss now had to report to my dad. That's gotta hurt.
18. Hacked
I worked at a company that did phone surveys. There were probably 250 people working there at any given time. In a practical joke gone awry, my prick boss pushed and then tripped me. I had worked there for many years and ran system backups on the weekend. Nothing fancy, just babysat the computers after typing in a few lines of Unix commands.
Thanks in part to this, I had just enough access to the system to crash the entire dialing floor for three hours. 250 people sitting there, doing nothing, and being paid on crunch day. And I didn't get caught. It felt good, man.
19. Data Overload
I had a jerkwad that started at a failing website with me. Within the first week, he decided he wanted to fire me even though he had no idea what I did. I was the only IT person at this point and was probably one of the more productive people in the entire building. He told me I had a week to “turn things around” or I was gone.
First of all, there was no explanation as to what needed to be “turned around” or what in particular was wrong. My assumption is that he had his own IT guy that he wanted to bring in. I basically told him to shove it up and if he didn't like it, I'd walk right there. He was a bit taken aback by that and after another nine months of being there, he was a bit less of a jerk.
Fast forward another three months, and we decided we were going to fire him. The decision was based on information I had provided to them regarding his lack of performance and waste of company resources. The irony, right? Against my recommendation, the owners gave him advanced notice of their decision and let him stay for an entire day in his office without any supervision.
As I didn't trust him, I was monitoring his activity very closely. What I discovered was shocking—he was copying a large amount of data from our servers and deleting it. Additionally, he was copying all his contacts and other client-related information to a USB drive. On his final day, the owners took him to lunch right before he was going to leave.
Since I had backups, I took the opportunity to “return" all of the data he took. Finally, a couple of very incriminating emails accidentally got forwarded to his wife. Before you jump to conclusions, I was not snooping through his private stuff. The emails were in his work account and discovered them when I was removing the items that he took.
He’d been cheating for months and was talking to this other chick about ditching his wife and screwing her out of the house and leaving her with the kids. I’m not sure how that worked out, but hopefully for the better. That guy was a bit of a jerk.
20. Screwy Louie
Our boss was some random guy who had a problem with making unwanted advances. He even asked me if I knew where he could find a "good woman" who would do whatever he was into. One evening, he made the mistake of leaving his email open after he'd thrown me and my supervisor under the bus over something we had nothing to do with. I had a chance to get back at him big time—and I took it.
Turns out, this guy was cheating on his wife. We found the emails, forwarded them to the wife, and he went nuts trying to fix it all. Screw that guy. He got fired a few weeks later.
21. It’s Quittin’ Time
About four years back, I started a new banking job. All was well, just that the management was pretty strict with timekeeping, which was weird as we were back office. My experience was in a similar field at another bank, and we had flexible schedules and received time in lieu. But rules are rules, so I followed them. I learned my tasks and got to know the wider team.
Anyway, about four months in, I started to realize my senior manager didn’t like me. I’m pretty assertive as a person, and I do know how to stand up for myself. He hated it. I would speak up during the meetings, ask questions, give suggestions, and so on, while the team would stay quiet. Then came the nightmare week that everything went south.
I was working overtime, which was (obviously) unpaid. On Thursday, I did nearly two hours of overtime. On Friday, I thought I’ll leave a few minutes early as I was done for the week. My manager was off. I left 10 minutes early. On Monday, I come to work, and I got called into a meeting straight away. There were three of us in the room: myself, my manager, and my senior manager.
Our conversation went as follows: My manager (MM): I heard you left work early on Friday Me: I did. I left 10 minutes early. MM: Did you ask for permission to leave early? Me: It was 10 minutes. You know I did about 4 hours of overtime last week. Why are we having this conversation? Senior Manager (SM): Because you left early without asking for permission. As a senior, you should be setting an example for the rest of the team.
Me: Is this a joke? SM: Your working hours are 9 am to 6 pm, not 9 am to 5:50 pm. You shouldn't leave early without asking for your manager or my permission first. Is that clear? Me: Got it. It’s perfectly clear. I listened and started coming into the office at 9 am and leaving at 6 pm on the dot. At first, they didn't realize what was happening. But the week after the meeting was the last week of the month.
And let’s say the last week of the month was…intense. Especially the final day. The reports had to be completed, signed off, and submitted before the month's end. We covered multiple jurisdictions and would deal with Southeast Asia in the morning and the Americas in the evening. Our team was “expected” to work overtime due to this.
Here comes Friday, the last day of the month. Showtime! I’m at my desk at 9 am sharp. Most of the team have already been at the office for at least an hour. I, of course, have a cup of coffee from the cafeteria because I was a bit early. My manager looks at me and raises his eyebrow, but he doesn’t say anything. Work work work. Break time (we had two 20 minute paid breaks and 1-hour unpaid lunch).
I’m the only person to go on my break. Lunchtime. Everyone was eating at their desks, while I go to meet my friends for lunch. On the second break, I once again leave my workplace and go for a short stroll around. Back to work. About a quarter to 6 pm, I get a call from one of the senior managers in the US. She needs the report amended.
There were four of us on that call. I’m doing the amendments as we speak and closely monitoring the time. I see it’s two minutes to 6 pm… One minute… 6 pm. SM2: *rambling about the report* Me: apologies, but I have to stop you right here SM2: yes? Me: It’s 6 pm here. My day is over. SM2: Huh? Me: As per my management, my working hours are 9 am to 6 pm, so I must leave now. Have a great weekend, and we’ll catch up on Monday!
I logged off, got my coat, wished everyone a great weekend, and left. It was 6:04 pm. Both my manager and my senior manager were dumbfounded by what has happened. Looking pale, they stare at me in disbelief. It was a glorious sight. I wanted to apologize to my senior manager that I wasn’t able to leave at 6 pm on the dot, but I thought that would have been way too passive-aggressive, so I just left.
I relaxed the rule a bit after a few months. Yet, I never did more than 30 minutes of overtime. Ironically, once my stakeholders understood that I will not be available for 10+ hours, they started collaborating earlier in the month. I would have most of my reports done and submitted by the last day of the month. It actually all worked out REALLY well for me.
22. Lawyer For A Day
So this is about five years ago. I worked as a chef at a bakery, and it was my job to make everything but the baked goods. Every morning the Baker and I would walk in at about 4 am and knock out all the food needed for the day. This would leave me ready to go home around 10 AM or so. This put us at the perfect time to deliver online orders.
It was common for companies or other entities to place large catering orders with us. The baker and I would split them down the middle and deliver them on our way home. The delivery in question was for Bob, Dick, and Harry, Attorneys at Law. I have never delivered to BD&H before, but they were a regular of sorts. Every financial quarter, they would hold a huge meeting.
This meeting would require roughly $700 of bagels and bagel accessories. This spread included eight dozen bagels, all ten of our flavors of cream cheese, pastries, brownies, and enough coffee to power a college dorm though finals week. My passenger seat, entire back seat, and entire trunk are filled with food. Now, BD&H is located on the ninth floor of a commercial skyscraper deep in an industrial complex downtown. Parking was non-existent.
There were meters outside the building, but I knew I would need close to ten trips to deliver all this food, and didn't have a lot of change on me. Company policy was to just pay whatever fines I needed to park and then turn in my receipts. The money would end up on my next paycheck. So the building has its own parking garage, so I pull on in. My problems start here.
The security guard, let’s call him Sam, stops me and says that the parking garage is for employees only. I happily show him my delivery invoice, and offer him a bagel (never leave the store without at least two extra). Sam refuses the bagel and says I can park in one of the guest spots on the bottom floor. The fee is $5 for every 30 minutes, minimum $10.
I thank him and head to the bottom floor of the garage. So there are a total of six guest parking spaces. Just six. All of them are taken. I head back up to talk to Sam when I see an open parking spot reserved for Bob, Dick and Harry, Attorneys at Law. There are cars in every spot, with many spots being reserved for employees by name. The last spot is empty, and is reserved for "Guest of BD&H."
Perfect. I pull on in. I grab the most important part of the delivery (the coffee) and head to the stairwell. I get into the elevator and hit the button for floor nine. Then another wrench in my plan comes. The elevator asks for my employee ID card. Well...crud. So, I try the lobby. That works. From there, it's nine flights of stairs until I am outside of the Bob, Dick, and Harry office.
After introducing myself, I am shown to the room where the meeting will take place. A table is set aside for me. I set down the coffee and head for trip number two. That is when I see Sam talking to the receptionist. At this point, I realize I’m in big trouble. He runs over and starts shouting at me. "I am putting a boot on your car. I told you to park in guest on the bottom floor!"
I don't get a word in before he launches into a speech about security and how I could be hurting his building or people. That is when a very well-dressed man walks over. It so happens to be Bob, the Bob of Bob, Dick, and Harry's. Bob asks what is the problem and soon the two are arguing. Bob: He is delivering food for my meeting. He is allowed to use my parking spots.
Sam: Those parking spots belong to the building. You are leasing them like you lease this floor. I am the one who says who can park there. He isn't an employee so he isn't parking! Bob had the perfect response to this. Bob: Then I am making him an employee! Sam: You can't do that! Bob: ... ... ... You know what. You are right. Harry! Harry! get over here.
Harry walks over with an amused look on his face. Bob: Harry here is the head of our HR department. Harry, hire this boy. Harry pulls out a piece of paper and scribbles, "He is now a member of Bob, Dick, and Harry's" and signs it, then asks me to sign as well. I do so. Bob reaches over to the receptionist, who is already grabbing some things.
Bob: Here is your employee badge, your -PARKING PERMIT- and your elevator key card. Now please, do the job I have -HIRED- you to do, and deliver my bagels. Sam looks on in utter fury as I ride the elevator down to my car. Seven sweet, sweet elevator rides later, all the food is delivered. Bob and Harry meet me at the table. Bob: Now, you have made great strides in this company and I am proud of your work, but I feel it is time for us to part ways. Here is your final check.
Bob then hands me a crisp $50 bill. Harry: And your severance package. Now please be sure to return your badge and card on the way out. Harry hands me a $20 and sends me on my way. The receptionist is sure to validate the parking ticket that Sam gave me, and I head on out. On the way out, Sam grins at me and asks for my ticket. I place it in the machine in his station.
It sees the validation I got, and lets me out for free. Sam glares at me as I drive off into the late morning sun.
23. You Were Warned
A coworker chewed on everything from pens and pencils to safety goggles. I warned him to stop, but he just made a joke out of it by chewing even more. Little did he know that I'd soon have the last laugh. Everyone except him watched as I rubbed the pen all over a particular area of my rear end and then handed it to him and said “DO NOT CHEW ON THIS PEN”. Straight into his mouth, it went. The whole shop erupted in laughter and he began spitting like crazy. Notice was served and the chewing immediately stopped. If you mess with the bull, you may get the horns...
24. Getting Off The Roof
I was about 18 and working doing residential roofing for a summer job. I had never installed clay or tile shingles before, so my boss told me to watch one of the other guys for a few minutes to get the hang of it. No less than two minutes later, he started screaming (literally screaming; the guy had anger issues) asking why I was standing around and not working. So I grabbed some tiles and started shooting them down.
Since I still had really no idea of what I was doing, I, of course, shattered the first two tiles I tried to shoot down. My boss came over and started screaming at me again for breaking tiles. But that's not even the worst thing he did— he then proceeded to PUSH ME OFF THE ROOF! Granted the fall was only about 10 feet, but it still could’ve finished me. At that point, I was fuming mad and decided I was done with that jerk. As I was packing up my gear, I could hear him cursing me at the other guys on the roof.
As I was walking off of the job, I noticed this moron standing on one of the air hoses running from his nail gun to the air compressor on the ground. In one swift movement, I grabbed the air hose and yanked it hard toward the ground. He came tumbling down off of the roof and landed in a pile. As I was getting into my Jeep, I heard him threatening to call the cops on me. The foreman came up to him and pointed out how foolish he would look when all of the guys on the crew clearly saw him stumble and fall off on his own. It was glorious to hear that freak ranting and screaming at all of us as I rode off. I realize that I probably committed assault, but turnabout is fair play as far as I am concerned.
25. Super Sale
I posted an ad on Craigslist for an insanely good deal for a 42" Plasma. I left my co-worker's office number, cell number, and email as ways to get in touch. Lather, rinse, repeat.
26. Balancing The Scales
When I was 15, I worked at a cafe in Sydney. The place had poor business practices and was generally very dirty and poorly managed. I was being paid below minimum wage, but I only realized this after I quit. I sent an email to my boss specifying a dollar amount that he owed me, to which he responded by saying that he paid me correctly.
Long story short, I got the workplace ombudsman involved. Not only did my boss have to pay me the money he owed me, but he also had to give the other employees what they were owed. But that's not even the best part—shortly after that, he had to sell the business because while the ombudsman was there, he noticed the uncleanliness and sent in a health inspector.
27. The Critter Cam
I had been working for about six months as a second-tier support technician for a fairly large corporation, supporting both Mac and PC users. The support team I was on consisted of a hillbilly imbecile—we’ll call him Keith—and a bitter, middle-aged grumpy jerk—we’ll call him Bill. I sat in a cube and Bill’s cube was opposite the wall I faced.
Across the aisle was Keith, who always spoke as if he was at a rock concert. In other words, I could hear him through concrete walls. Bill hated me with a passion because I took half of his responsibilities as well as the role of "Mac Technician" to help the creative team stay productive. He had argued that we didn't need the creative team in the first place.
Keith hated me because he spouted socio-political hate speech all the time and I called him out on it every...single...time. The guy could not STAND to be wrong, even when presented with mountains of evidence proving it. This is where it gets good. For about three weeks, someone had been moving stuff around on my desk.
At first, I thought it was one of the interns playing a prank. But I figured out it couldn't have been them because we would go to lunch together and my stuff would be moved. So, that means it was either Keith, Bill, or a ghost. One day, I went to lunch and came up with a brilliant idea: I could turn on the photo booth on my MacBook!
I stuffed my laptop in the corner facing the doorway of my cube and off I went. It took a couple of days, but I finally caught BOTH Keith and Bill rifling through my stuff, moving stuff around on my desk. AND I caught them talking about me behind my back to each other while they did it.
Now, I'm not a violent person, nor am I someone that would react irresponsibly toward this event—but this made me FURIOUS! I compiled the data into a single movie on my MacBook, slapped it on a DVD, and then walked on over to HR. The human resources guy was taken aback by the footage I was able to get. He had never seen someone come in with actual video evidence of their complaint regarding another co-worker.
Fast forward a few months: Keith left the company because he got denied a managerial position and Bill was still working the same cruddy position he had before, except now he had a strike on his record for harassing a fellow employee. I left the company shortly after Keith to finish my bachelor's. Now, I have a cushy engineer position with a small, yet awesome software company.
28. Don’t Overstay Your Welcome
I was working as one of two laundry people in a hotel. The other laundry person had just quit, and I was training a new guy who was not capable of working the job, let alone holding an intelligent conversation. I had just received another job offer and asked for the hotel to match the salary of the new job to keep me on.
The manager not only refused my raise but then asked me to work on my only day off so she wouldn't have to come in and train. I put in my two weeks' notice and grudgingly told her I would work the extra shift. Worst decision ever. At this particular hotel, there was a guest who stayed there each month, and we called him “the food man" because he refused to use anything but the sheets and towels in the room to wipe the mess off his butt.
So, every night he stayed there, he covered two sheets, four towels, and two to four hand towels and washcloths in his mess. I have no idea why the hotel management let him stay there but they were always the worst days of work. The day before the shift I had covered, the manager came and told me, “Prepare yourself for tomorrow, the food man is staying here tonight”.
That was pretty much the last straw. I finished the day, and then just didn't set my alarm. The manager got called in and ended up working a nearly 11-hour shift with the most annoying trainee ever. I feel a bit bad for sticking it to the trainee, but there is always collateral damage.
29. Sharing Is Caring
In my freshman year of college, I had the biggest jerk roommate ever. He was a whiny, lazy jerk who wore my clothes and stretched them out, scratched all my CDs, lounged on my bed, used my computer, ate my food, etc. He decided that he was dropping out after about a month, so he didn't care about anything or anyone.
We had a suite with no other suitemates, so we had a bathroom and shower to ourselves. I knew my supplies of everything were dwindling faster than I could use them. Deodorant, printer ink, shampoo, etc. I knew he was using my stuff instead of buying his own. So, I decided to teach him a lesson. I discretely purchased and hid a new supply of said toiletries.
Then, I went to work on my old toiletries. I peed in his bottle of shampoo, and mine because I knew he was using it. I popped the top off my cologne and peed in it. He used Old Spice, so I peed in that too. I wiped my butt with my deodorant, and his, then put the caps back on. Basically, if I could pee in it or on it, I did.
All the while, I had my own supply of everything hidden in my room or I'd shower at my girlfriend's place. I hated that guy so bad but by the end of it all, I took some solace in knowing that he'd been washing his hair with my pee for about the last three weeks of his time there.
30. Lecturing About Light Switches
I worked at an independently-owned coffee shop and wine bar. Most of the people working there were young women because my boss was a class-A pig who liked to yell at them and periodically make them cry. Every few weeks, he would find some minor little detail that someone did or didn’t do (grinding flavored beans in the non-flavored grinder, for example) and literally yell at that employee, sometimes in front of customers, calling her stupid, empty-headed, etc. I witnessed these little tantrums on my shifts and I’d always try to help console the poor girl.
One night, I was working with a girl who had just gotten torn apart by him the day prior and she was trying her absolute hardest not to mess anything up to the point where I was actually doing most of the work. It was an evening shift and we “turn into” a wine bar in the evenings, so there were certain things we had to do to prepare for that. Heidi, my coworker, had turned the lights down and we were busy doing other prep work when the phone rang. I answered and the boss said he was watching us over the cameras. He sternly told us to turn the lights down.
I informed him that we’d already done that, but that I’d turn them down even more. I did so and then went on with my work. An hour went by and he suddenly walked through the back door. My stomach sank–he never showed up to the shop later than 2 pm unless something was wrong. He said, “Who turned these lights down”? I told him that I did. He started lecturing me on how to turn the lights down, what the place needed to look like, etc. I just stood there and let him finish his rant. When he was done I said, “I’m sorry that I didn’t turn them down enough. Could we maybe put a line on the light switch, so we know where they should be every night”?
Well, that started another rant! This went on for a good 20 minutes. Customers started watching, and Heidi did her best to stay behind him so as not to somehow evoke his wrath upon her. I, on the other hand, just stood there, letting him yell at me. Each time he would finish one rant, I’d just say something like, “Well, if I’m not doing it right, then there should probably be some regulation”. And it would start him up again, yelling about how there shouldn’t be any regulation because we should be smart enough to figure it out ourselves.
Finally, I just walked away from him. This caused him to blow up: "What do you think you're doing?!" he yelled at me. Very calmly, I said, “You’ve repeated yourself plenty of times. I know what I did wrong and I know how to fix it. I think you just want to yell at me in hopes that I’ll cry so you can feel good about yourself. That’s not going to happen, so there’s no point in me standing here taking this abuse when I could be getting work done”. Surprisingly enough, he actually left the store and never bothered me about stupid stuff again.
31. Heart-Shaped Box Of Chocolates
I had a manager at a clothing store who just went on a power trip anytime the boss was around. On Valentine’s Day came, I bought one of those huge boxes of chocolate shaped like a heart and put it in the backroom with a note from the boss (who was married), telling her how much he cared for her and how he wished they could spend more time together. I ended the note with his number, and a prompt to call him if she felt the same.
And you know what happened? She did call him. Turns out they had an affair, and the wife found out and left the boss, who in turn fired the manager. I don't know what happened after that since I quit shortly after Valentine's Day, but it still made my day.
32. Desktop Shortcut For Solitaire
A lady on our team never did any work. Instead, she would whine her way out of stuff or go on endless lunch breaks where she just played solitaire. Eventually, it got to the point where we were uninstalling the games from her computer accounts via the local admin accounts. One day, I noticed she STILL had one game on her PC, even after we removed the default ones.
That same day, she left the office and left her PC logged in—a rookie mistake that I planned on exploiting. I got on her PC and found the game linked on the desktop. I went to the shortcut properties and changed everything so that when she clicked on the game, it would open the Wikipedia page on work ethic instead of the game. She doesn’t play games in the office anymore.
33. A Taste Of Your Own Medicine
I worked at a cruddy hostel for an abusive boss in a place infested with bed bugs. He asked me to do an overnight shift on Christmas eve the day before. So, I agreed and never showed up to work again. His reaction was epic—he left me like 50 angry voicemails telling me how badly I’d screwed him over and that he had to do it himself and missed Christmas. It was funny.
34. 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.
35. Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner
I worked at Chick-fil-A in Georgia from the time I was 15 until I was 17. I got a better job at 17 and turned in my two-week notice. However, with one week left to go, the AC went out in the kitchen. I don't know if you've worked in a kitchen in Georgia in August, but it's ridiculously hot. I asked the owner when he would get it fixed.
He told me that he wouldn't get it fixed for another month. So, I quit. When I got my paycheck, I found that my pay rate had suddenly gone down to minimum wage for quitting before the two weeks were up. So, I decided to get petty—I went down to a butcher and bought a cow head. It was skinned but still had its eyeballs. It was really, really gross.
Since my parents were out of town, I left it on my back porch for a couple of days to get a good coat of maggots and insects. Then, one Saturday, I snuck into the restaurant and put it on a toilet in the men's room. The toilet's pipes looked something like a cross, so I lit a couple of candles around the toilet and put up a sign that said "EAT MORE CHICKEN".
38. Absence Makes The Job Get Harder
My boss tells me I'm not a manager, so I stopped doing her job. For background: I work in mental health and substance use services. I have worked in my job for a long time now. My boss is never available for help and hardly on site. Recently, she has got a new manager who is not impressed with her work ethic, but it hasn’t done much good.
My boss will often ask me to do her work for her to save her coming in, which I have never minded doing up until recently. I had a meeting with my boss after an incident at work where someone tried to assault me. I told my boss I didn't feel supported by her after it had happened as she wasn't present and didn't manage it well afterward.
In the middle of the meeting, my boss says: Perhaps you want to consider some easier work in a different department? Me: What, why? Boss: Well you do take on a lot of extra work that you don't need to. A lot of this work is managers’ jobs. Maybe you need to learn to say no to taking on all this work? I asked if there was something wrong with my standard of work, if she had concerns, etc.
She says no. Three months down the line, four people from the team leave and they get new people in. Boss: Oh, hey, can you induct new starters on their first day? Me: Sorry boss, that's a manager’s job. Boss: Can you complete a fire risk assessment? Me: Sorry boss, that's a manager’s job. After a while, she stops asking me things, then one day she's working from home.
I'm pretty sure she has been telling her manager she's on-site throughout but mostly isn't. Then disaster strikes. A huge incident kicks off with residents, emergency services are called, etc. I call the boss and explain to her what happened. Boss: Can you please do follow up with the staff and residents involved, write the report, then send it all directly to me please?
Me: Sorry boss you will need to come in to manage this, I'm not a manager, that's not my job. Boss: Just this once please? Nope. I refused to manage the incident, and then the dirty truth came out. Turned out she was visiting a friend who lived up the coast while she was meant to be on site! Someone accidentally let this slip to her manager when he called in the incident and there was no one to manage.
He then asked me to deal with the incident. I explained I couldn't and that my boss had reported me as taking on too much work. A full investigation has now been launched into her conduct and ability to do her job. The manager now talks to me directly and supervises me, and he is helping me apply for a promotion. The boss is on “leave, pending investigation.”
37. 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.
38. Motorsport
I had a warehouse manager who was a dirtbag. My plan to teach him a lesson was simple—I took out ads in the local papers putting his car up for sale at half price and had people calling his house at all hours of the night.
39. Spill The Beans
I got a new job at one of my old employer's bigger customers and convinced my new employer to quit buying from my old employer. All I did was tell my new boss about their shady business practices.
40. Touchy Subject
I was working as a laborer on a building site when I was 17. My job was pretty much just sweeping the floors and keeping the site clean while the carpenters and builders did their business. There was this one prick working there named Tony. Tony was a fat, old Croatian guy who, despite living in Australia for the last few decades, never managed to learn Australian etiquette.
He was a carpenter, but he'd march around like he was the king, blasting orders to everyone including the foremen, builders, and people who didn't even share his trade. Not only that, but he'd always be walking around with a cubeb out of his mouth. Now I'm an ENT myself, so the fact that he smoked didn't bother me.
However, doing it at work and no one had enough balls to tell him not to did. When I first met Tony, I could tell he was a prick, so I basically avoided him as much as I could. But every time I walked past him, he would grab me on my shoulders from behind with enough force that I was unable to move, and yell in my ear, "YOU WANT SOME?"
He'd do this every day or two. At first, I would just politely decline, wriggle free, and attempt to avoid him. But he kept at it. After about a month or so, I began telling him to screw off and stop touching me, but it continued. Instead of offering me some, he started yelling, "DON'T TOUCH ME, DON'T TOUCH ME", in a mocking tone. He found it so funny, but I'd have the last laugh.
Things had gone too far, and the foreman wasn't doing anything about it, so I had to take things into my own hands. One of the other workers had mentioned to me that Tony told him how worried he was that his wife might find out he was having an affair. So, I grabbed his phone from his workbench, selected a few choice messages, and forwarded them to her.
He also had a few strips of timber that had measurements written on them, sort of like a template, I guess. He had written "DON'T TOUCH" on them. I grabbed about five of these timber strips, added the word "ME" to the end, and super-glued the suckers to his car. While I was there, I also let his tires down and super-glued the caps back on.
“That'll do”, I thought. I managed to leave that day before he'd had a chance to discover my shenanigans, so I didn't get to see his reaction. Not surprisingly, I was called by the foreman that afternoon, telling me to look for somewhere else to work. I may have lost my cruddy job, but it was worth it just to take that jerk down a few pegs.
41. Stalling For Time
I had worked for a family-owned computer reseller for five years when greener corporate pastures called. I gave the required two weeks' notice, and the owner of the reseller business called the CEO of the company for which I was going to work. They got my departure delayed by two weeks. Then, they got everyone in the company to take me aside and tell me how big of a mistake I was making. Little did they know they were the ones making the mistake—the mistake of crossing me.
They all made my life miserable for those two weeks. When I left, I changed the entire internal network’s passwords to "I don't know". When they called to ask me what the passwords were, I told them the truth.
42. The Gardener
When I was younger, I worked in loss prevention for a supermarket company. There were a few guys there that everyone called "The Blue Ribbons" because they were in tight with the manager. They had a habit of acting like your friend and then bashing you to the boss behind your back. And not just bashing your personality.
They’d say that you were lazy, never did any work or anything that made you look bad, and kept them looking good. I was really good friends with my partner, Rick, who worked in the store with me. We both completely loathed this group but that's the way things fall sometimes, so it was no big deal. They were just a few guys we knew not to trust and didn't particularly care for.
Then we found out that one of the guys, Sean, was up to no good. He was telling our boss an outrageous lie—he said we were both taking time by saying we were working a certain number of hours, and then not showing or taking insanely long breaks. It was a pretty interesting accusation considering we were catching more than our fair share of thieves and associates.
Rick and I actually worked in the same store that Sean's girlfriend worked in. She was a customer service rep, and she and I took breaks together and got along quite well. She was a nice person but was definitely a bit on the trashy side and flaunted her looks. Sean was a really jealous boyfriend and they fought constantly.
They broke up and got back together about once every two weeks. I'm not a bad-looking guy, but Rick was quite the dashing fellow. I also knew, through some of the girls he'd been with, that although Rick wasn't a big guy, he was very large where it counts. I accidentally on purpose mentioned this to Erin during a smoke break.
I was kind of complaining that I was twice Rick's size, but I guess he was just huge, and it didn't seem fair, and blah, blah blah. The seed had been planted. Rick worked in the store quite often, so things were brought up, flirting ensued, and to make an already very long story short, Rick ended up getting some action from Sean's girlfriend right in our office.
I don't think Sean ever found out, but every single time we saw him we just smiled at each other. We knew that he thought he did a good job hassling us and being a pain in the butt. But it was worth it knowing that I planted the seed, and Rick got down with his girlfriend.
43. 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.
44. Fair Wages
Another boss was hired and the whole story was fired, except my old co-worker buddy from the story above and me. We basically ran the place and trained everyone that started to work there. One day, I found out that one of the people that I trained and had been hired after me was making more than me. After hearing that, I walked into my boss’s office and asked if I could get a raise.
I had been working there for over a year and many more responsibilities had been added to my job. He flat out told me, “No”, and basically said that I was replaceable. "OK", I said, "have fun replacing me". I walked out in the middle of my shift and called it a day. He called me a bunch of times telling me I had to finish my shift. That's when my petty side came out.
I asked him if I’d gotten my raise yet and he said, “No”, so I hung up on him. The next day, he called again, telling me I needed to come in for my shift. I asked again if I got my raise. “NO”. “OK, I'm not going in”. Less than a month later, he got fired and the owner of the store called and asked if I wanted his job.
45. Drinking Buddies
I had a dirtbag boss that would demand we hang out and get plastered with him during and after work. He didn't like his family and would sometimes keep us at work three or four hours late while he swilled cheap booze and we pretended to. Then, of course, he'd drive home. This was all on top of the kind of general rudeness that's already been described.
One day, I decided I was sick of it. So, I decided to get petty—I called in an anonymous tip that resulted in him getting a DUI. Fired. Done. The new boss is cooler.
46. Slow Roast
My old boss was a super mean, super-sheltered Mormon girl. Mormons don't drink coffee. One day, she asked me to go get the lawyers in the office coffee. I went, being the office's whipping boy—and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity. I brought her a frap back, telling her it was like a smoothie. She got addicted. Literally. Before I left, she tearfully told the story on the phone about how she was now addicted to coffee.
47. A Lovely Eau De Parfum
Two guys at work used to pick on me relentlessly. So, I used to go in early and spray raccoon urine on the chairs in their shared office. After two weeks, they were mostly immune to the horrible smell but everyone around them was not. To this day, they have a reputation for the worst body odor in our Fortune 500 company.
48. Read The Fine Print
I once worked at a sign company and my supervisor had a nervous breakdown. She would sleep at the office, not shower, not change her clothes, wouldn't work, wouldn't do anything. Even though I was a temp, I took over like a boss. I went to meetings in her place and did everything in the whole department myself. When the time came for my contract to end, the manager of the whole operation had to decide whether to hire me or not.
She called me into her office and offered me LESS than I was making through the temp agency. I reminded her that I was a good worker and that I had increased output by over 200%, as well as basically doing the supervisor's job all at the same time. She held her ground, so I said, “No, thank you”, and I decided to just leave at the end of my contract. But before I left, I made sure to leave them a little parting gift.
In the meantime, every sign you see anywhere has braille on it as well as letters. It was part of my job to engrave the braille text into each sign. So, whenever I did a sign that wasn't a number, I would make it say, "I hate this job and my cheapskate manager". No one but me could visually read braille, so no one ever knew.
And before anyone calls me out: No, I didn't do that to the fire and emergency-related signs.
49. Reference Check
To get revenge, I just tell the truth when people in our small industry call me to ask about what it was like working for him. He hasn't ever been hired for any of the jobs where I've been consulted on his work and demeanor. The best one was when I was called by a friend of mine about the guy applying for a job at the company I was contracting at the time.
I said, "If you hire him, I'll quit". I still work for them, on and off for the last three years.
50. An Acquired Taste
I worked at a large nightclub. We got a new general manager that turned into a complete jerk. He would make comments about employees and constantly make fun of them. He would also tell the same stories over and over again. One day, when my buddy and I were closing the place down, I saw a jar of jellybeans on the general manager’s desk—and a lightbulb went off in my head.
I proceeded to rub my hands all over my sweaty balls and run them through his jellybeans. Then, I just dipped my nuts ever so gently into the jellybean jar. My buddy walked in while I was doing this. I told him to be quiet and not to say anything. The next morning my buddy gets called into the general manager's office for a meeting.
The general manager offers him some jellybeans which he politely declined. The general manager proceeded to finish the rest of the jellybeans. At one point a jellybean stuck to his mouth. My buddy had to leave before he laughed and ruined everything. I still do not really feel bad about doing that. That manager was a jerk.
51. Let The Dough Rise
I used to have a baking job in a local bagel shop, and I also did some prep work. I was an "unofficial" manager since I had worked at the shop for years and made more money than most employees. Because my shift started early, I got to leave early. Some of the other employees didn't like this, particularly a new girl and her boyfriend.
They always had attitude problems toward me. I never knew why, they just didn't like me, I guess. Which is totally fine! One day, it was 11 am and the boyfriend started his closing duty. I told him, "Sorry, Boyfriend, you can do all of your closing duties if you want, but you still have to stay until close". He ran and told his girlfriend.
She started yelling at me from the front while I was in the back, calling me all sorts of rude names in front of customers. I asked her to come to the back if she wanted to talk to me and she came to the back, shaking. I was absolutely terrified—I seriously thought she was going to punch me in the face. I was all done for the day, so I went home to cry about it.
She ended up quitting and leaving a note to my boss about what a horrible person I was. My boss crumpled up the note, threw it away, and told me what a great person I was. Fast forward to recently, my boss ran into her stocking groceries in another town where she has moved back in with her parents and her boyfriend.
In the end, I didn't really have to do anything but turn to friends like my boss who helped me believe that I am a good person and that others are just rotten. I'm happy in a relationship, going to school and I have my life together, for the most part. I’ve often found that in the end, karma is the best way to get back at someone.
52. Technical Difficulties
I used to do IT work for a large university. A few years back, they decided that everything would be better if IT were centralized, then parsed back out to the departments. In many places, that might work. At this place, it was going to be a disaster for reasons that aren't relevant to the story. I knew it was going to be a mess.
And I didn't want to work someplace where a user is required to fill out a ticket before I could even look at their problem, so I decided to leave. As I was cleaning out my office on my last day, a professor came running down the hallway in a panic. This guy had been a huge pain in my butt for years. He was a jerk, he was condescending, he thought he knew anything that mattered about computers, etc.
He was your standard jerk. I also knew that he had been one of the biggest proponents of switching up how IT worked and that on at least two occasions he suggested that the best way to save money for the department would be to cut my position. So, while I had always been professional with him, there really was no love lost.
He was huffing and puffing down the hallway, and said, "I'm so glad I caught you before you left. I'm giving a big presentation in 30 minutes to the administration! My computer won't turn on, and my only copy of my presentation is on there!" My response was killer. I just told him, "I'm sure if you fill out a ticket with the central IT desk, someone will be with you shortly".
He just stopped straight still, and I think he suddenly pieced together that I knew exactly what he'd been saying when I wasn't around. He turned beet red and walked down the hall back to his lab, and slammed the door shut. His stuff wasn't fixed in time.
53. Heavy Lifting
I worked in construction right after high school and was harassed daily for the first two weeks by this older guy. He carried an old metal lunch box daily to work and would leave it on the cement in a corner of the building till lunchtime. After having had enough, I used the nailer to nail the darn thing to the cement floor.
I put his food back in afterward, of course. At lunchtime, he bent over to pick up the box and injured his back. Weeks went by and he finally came back one day. He could no longer work and ended up retiring early. I would have felt bad, but the guy was a major jerk, and not just to me.
54. Ten Out Of Ten Would Recommend
I worked for a photography company that contracted with the Army. My hours were being cut because work was really slack. It was down to like four hours a week. So, I found a side gig videotaping jury research and making a sweet $20 per hour. I told my boss at the photography company, and he was livid. He said I couldn't work anywhere else.
He said if I didn't show up to a crummy Saturday meeting because I was working at my other job, he would consider that as me quitting. So, I “quit”. Then, I started rating my old company through the Army's vendor rating portal. I gave solid, horrible reviews about all the real stuff they did. My old boss was soon replaced.
55. Hotkeys
I left my boss a laptop sandwich. How do you make a laptop sandwich? Take a #2 on the keyboard. Close the lid.
56. 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.
57. Credit Where Credit’s Due
I had a co-worker who kept taking my work, taking credit for things he didn't do, and was a general jerk towards me. I knew he was going to take something I was working on, so I made sure he got his karma by purposely messing up...hard. I mean very, very hard. As in, I indirectly bad-mouthed the CEO and higher-ups in a report going to a customer and sat back and waited.
He got fired without severance pay, he lost his house, and his wife left him. He lived on the street for three months before he was given a tiny government home. I send him a Christmas card every year.
58. It’s Company Policy
I worked in the IT department of a rather large law firm. A guy I was sort of friends with worked a couple of desks down from me, and he had a bad attitude. He ended up getting into a long feud with the tech support manager, who was, admittedly, a stupid cow. He ended up getting fired over the feud, and I think just his general attitude.
He called to tell me about it the night it happened since I was working on a project after hours and wasn't there at the time. The next day, my boss calls the department into a meeting to tell us that my pseudo-friend had quit, but that because he was in IT and had access to all the passwords, they were not allowed to give him two weeks' notice.
This was, of course, complete nonsense. Everyone knew that he got fired, and everyone knew our boss was lying through his teeth. So, fast forward about six months later, and I had just survived being scapegoated big time for some stuff I wasn't even remotely responsible for. I could see the writing on the wall that they were working on building a case to get me canned. But they had no idea who they were messing with.
It just so happened that I got a job offer through a referral from a friend that worked at another company. So, when the offer came through and was way more than I’d expected, I did a little dance and then I shut up about it. My girlfriend was a flight attendant at the time, so we planned a little last-minute getaway between jobs.
The day before we were scheduled to leave for EUROPE, I went to work, did my best to close out all my issues, and, for the sake of my coworkers, put out any fires I could. Then, I marched in and handed my boss my letter of resignation, effective immediately. He read the letter. There was a long pause, and then he asked me when I wanted my last day to be.
I looked at him for a minute, savoring the trap. Then, I reminded him that "because I had access to all the sensitive system passwords, I wasn't allowed to give or take two weeks' notice". His jaw hit the ground, he muttered some sentence fragments, and it was pretty clear that I’d caught him in a lie. And the best part?
While we were living it up in Italy a few weeks later, I checked in on my bank account at a cyber cafe and saw that my direct deposit had cleared a check. It was for the pay period of the two weeks after I left. So, even though I didn't work it, I was given my two weeks' notice in salary. That extra paycheck essentially paid for an extra week in Europe. And that extra week was by far the best part of the trip.
59. Third Time’s The Charm
I worked in a place where the management structure in each store was a manager and three assistant managers. I was one of the assistants. One of the others was a guy and the third assistant was a thin, blonde girl. All of us, including the manager, were in our early 20s. The manager had his little "boy’s club" going on with the guy—and they were up to some fishy stuff.
The girl was pretty and flirty and was treated very differently from me. The two guys were definitely out to get me fired. I was constantly getting written up by both of them without being told anything. Then, my manager scheduled a surprise meeting with the area manager to confront me and let me know that if I was written up just once more, I would be fired.
I am positive that my job performance was better than most people there and in no way did I deserve the treatment I was receiving. We were not unionized. So, at this point, there was no recourse for me but to quit, which I couldn't do because I was finishing college and had living expenses to pay. Soon after the ultimatum, I applied for a position in corporate and ended up getting the job.
I let my boss know that I would be out of there in two weeks and told him about the new position I had gotten. Come to find out, this was the third time the position had been available. The best part? My boss had applied for it twice and failed to get it both times. The company had called him to let him know it was being posted for the third time.
They had even asked him if he wanted to interview again. He didn't because he was ticked off that he kept getting passed over. It was totally awesome to find out that I got the job on my first interview, and he couldn't get it at all. He left the company shortly after I left. The other two assistants are still assistants.
60. Chef’s Surprise
A new guy was working with me in catering. A vegetarian customer gave him an undeserved earful. So, I gave the customer a free bowl of "vegetable soup". He had no idea what he was actually eating. It was actually beef barley. He had the runs for a week.
61. NYC Comes First
I used to work at a sandwich shop and bakery in Nashville, and my shift started at 6 am. The horrible, uptight manager would call at 6:01 if I wasn't there and he'd flip out. I had taken a weekend off to travel to New York to play a show, and when she realized she forgot to take me off the schedule, she tried to get me to cancel my trip. When I said we had already booked a show, she told me my music sucked and that the girl singer of our band was “too ugly for country”. Firstly, she’s hot and secondly, we didn't even play country music. Inside I raged, but I kept cool on the outside. I eventually decided that enough was enough.
I told her I would cancel my plans so I could work that Saturday for her. Little did she know that while I sent her that message, I was already on my way to New York, and I put my phone on silent mode when I went to bed. The next morning, I had six new messages. The first three were her freaking out, the fourth was just silent, the fifth was my shift leader saying, “I think he's trying to tell you to take a hint”, and the sixth was my boss telling me I was fired. I just shrugged and carried on with my life.
62. Failed Sabotage
I had a jerk-wad boss who was out to get me. Within his first week at the company, he decided he wanted to fire me even though he had no idea what I did. I was actually the only IT person and I was probably one of the more productive people in the entire building. He told me I had a week to “turn things around” or I was gone. There was no explanation as to what needed to be “turned around” or what in particular was wrong.
My assumption is that he had his own guy who he wanted to bring in. I basically told him to shove it up his rear and if he didn’t like it, I’d walk right there. He was a bit taken aback by that and after another nine months of being there, he continued being a jerk toward me. Fast forward another three months, and the tables had turned—the company had decided it was going to fire him. The decision was based on information I had provided to them in regard to his lack of performance and waste of company resources. The irony, right? The owners (against my recommendation) gave him advanced notice of their decision and let him stay for an entire day in his office without any supervision.
As I didn’t trust him, I started monitoring his activity very closely. That's when I discovered his secret operation—he was copying a large amount of data from our servers and deleting it. Additionally, he was cleaning out his contacts and other client-related information. He was copying all of this to a USB drive. On the final day, the owners took him to lunch right before he was going to leave. I took the opportunity to “return” all of the data he took. I had backups, which I was going to restore; however, I didn’t want him to walk away with stuff that didn’t belong to him.
Finally, a couple of very incriminating emails "accidentally" got forwarded to his wife. Turns out, he was cheating on her for months—he had been talking to this other woman about ditching her and screwing her out of the house, then leaving her with the kids...I'm not sure how that worked out, but I hope the wife got him good.
63. Lazy Boss At The Bookstore
The best way I’ve gotten back at a boss? Brutal honesty. I worked at a bookstore. I used to be on the overnight shift, shelving books, but they did away with that to try and save some money and brought us all into the daytime shift. When they enforced that change, I was doomed to eight-hour shifts—usually by myself—at the registers.
Now, our store manager at the time was totally useless. He’d lock himself in his office filled with pictures of his ballerina boyfriend and do absolutely nothing during his shifts. One morning, in particular, I was at the register, and I had a line. I tried paging for backup, and no one came. I assumed everyone was busy, so I just did my best to bust out the line.
Meanwhile, our phone started ringing. No one went to get it because everyone was busy helping customers...or so I thought. After three rings, our intercom system beeped and the manager started saying: “Backup to phones...back up to the phones”. The brilliant part was that you had to pick up the phone to even use the paging system.
Meanwhile, I was nearly through my line, and a sweet old lady tottered up and told me she ordered a book and got a phone call about it being in. I got her details and went hunting through our order shelves. I couldn’t find it. I verified that I had all the info right and tried again. The order just wasn’t up there. So I paged for a supervisor or manager, and then the store manager paged for me to call him at his office extension.
So I called the manager’s office and explained the situation to him. He told me to look at the hold shelves again. I tried to tell him I’d already done that, but he just hung up on me. The lady was looking unhappier by the second, and I was worried I was going to get yelled at. So I paged the manager again, asking him to come to the front register.
He paged me back, telling me to call him at his office extension. I do. He asked me what I wanted from him. I told him I still couldn’t find the lady's order and that I could really use some help—but he cut me off mid-sentence and told me he’d check in the office to see if there were any additional orders back there. Meanwhile, I kept telling the woman how sorry I was, and I asked her if she can move aside while we kept looking and I continued ringing up other people.
I was nearly done, there were maybe two people left in line. I’d handled three more pages from the incompetent manager—all of which were to tell me he couldn’t find this book—and I was forced to tell the lady we can’t find it. She still looks annoyed, but she patted my hand and told me she knew I did all I could. She called the manager a useless piece of trash for not getting off his behind and coming out to help like a good manager should do, and then she breezed out of the store.
Two minutes after that happened, the line was gone, and I was alone. Three people come up to the registers, claiming that the manager sent them up there to “help me out” and he told one of them to have me go into the back “to talk” when I had a free moment. When I got back there, he was all buddy-buddy. “Hey what’s wrong, you sounded stressed...everything okay”?
And I remembered that old lady. And I told him that no, it wasn’t okay. So he asked me what was going on—and I told him exactly what frustrated me. I told him it was the first time ever that I felt a manager didn’t have my back. I said he was unprofessional and complete nonsense. I also told him—word for word—what the old woman said. He just stood there and stared at me. I asked him if I could go back out there and do my job since it was awfully busy out there (I sort of expected him to fire me)…He didn’t speak, just nodded. So I flounced back out.
Apparently, he locked himself in his office and cried for the rest of the day.
64. You’re Not The Boss Of Me Anymore
I was hired on contract by a small three-man start-up to do a particular job. By a year later, after they’d hired a few extras—including a product manager who was technically my boss. I was scratching around for things to do and thinking about moving on. One day, my “boss” (I didn’t like him at all) sat me down and proceeded to explain my next task.
Now I had absolutely no interest at all in this new work—it was mundane, boring work and not at all related to what I was originally hired to do (and since completed). When I tactfully explained that it really wasn’t my area of expertise and I didn’t really have any interest in that type of work, I was taken aback by his response. He told me that I “simply have no choice but to do what I’m told”.
Now, to be clear, it was more of a “How dare you defy me? You’re my property!!!” type of attitude, rather than an “If you want to continue working here, then you will have to work on this” situation, which, by the way, I would not have had any problem with at all. Well, I all but laughed in his face and told him I had no interest in doing it. I could tell he was pissed, and no doubt he was deciding how to get back at me.
But before he had time to engineer his revenge, I had cheerfully informed the CEO that, given I wasn’t actually working on anything, it was my last day. And he was good about it. It felt so good to then inform my “boss” that I was finishing up that day. The look on his face was priceless! I somehow refrained from remarking that I “actually didn’t have to do what he told me after all”...
65. No Drama, No Fuss
I quit. No drama, no fuss. The first time was at my first job out of college where I got some experience. It was a great place to work until a new owner came in and basically gutted all fringe benefits and insisted everyone start working 60+ hours a week. I stayed for around nine weeks while I found a job and then bailed, leaving all my projects for the next guy to pick up.
The next time was at my next job. I had been there several years and a new CEO came in, informing us that he was moving the company to where his family lived. As a result, we were all fired, but he expected us to stay on to close his company. With that one, I just got up and walked out immediately. Some workers criticized me and said I was being irresponsible and “not a team player” by walking out, so I just looked at them and gave them the biggest reality check ever: “You’re continuing to work for a man who just fired you, is expecting you to basically dig your own grave, and who will then throw you to the wolves looking for work when he’s done”.
66. Mr. Sci-Fi
I used to work at a video store in the '80s, and there was a guy who worked with us who was the biggest leech. He was so lazy—he couldn’t do anything, he ignored the customers, etc. He was into sci-fi, so he’d show up for his shift, pop in Star Trek or Star Wars, and then literally just lean against the counter and watch TV the whole time and not do one bit of work.
Finally, the assistant manager and I devised an ingenious scheme. When we saw that he was scheduled with one (or both) of us, we’d grab either The Sound of Music (running time: 2 hours, 54 minutes) or Gone With The Wind (running time: 3 hours, 58 minutes), depending on how long his shift was. Five minutes before he’d arrive and clock in, we’d pop in one of those movies, and boom—three to four hours of uninterrupted work from Mr. Sci-Fi. He’d finally pull his weight out of sheer boredom.
67. I’ll Do More Than You Asked
A million years ago, I was waiting tables at my first job. Enter ye old standard awful boss—I could easily talk about what a dumb prick he was, but I’ll skip to the straw that broke the camel’s back. We were short-handed one day, and I was pulling double closing work for my shift (remember, as a waiter, you make $2.63 hourly plus tips, so anything that doesn’t involve tips is essentially just free labor that they can get away with).
After I finished up my work, I ordered and paid for lunch (something I would often do, since half-off is a decent deal). My horrible boss came charging into the side room that employees would use to eat and relax in before and after work and he just effing exploded on me with an off-duty cook watching. I was shocked when he pointed a finger at me—apparently, another employee had simply bailed on their work, and he was blaming me for not having done TRIPLE duty before punching out. Essentially, he told me that if I didn’t do the cleanup and restock before I went home, I would be fired.
I wanted to keep my job, so I did the task, but when it was done, I felt that it could be better. I opened up the ice bin and got another bucket of ice. Then another. And another. I filled the ice bin up to the ceiling, then I went home. I had a message from him waiting for me when I got home, but laughed and went about my day. When I went in to work the next day, I had been fired, then an investigation had taken place and I was rehired. That horrible boss’s hiring and firing privileges were revoked, and he subsequently gave his two weeks’ notice.
68. Follow The Clues
Back in 2005, I was leaving my job as the night auditor of a hotel to go to school in Arizona. The whole staff, with the exception of the manager and assistant manager, were pretty bummed out because I’d made it my mission in the year and a half that I was there to treat them all like people and not like paid slaves as a lot of the guests and management did.
The day before my flight, I went to Walmart and bought a big bag of Tootsie Pops. I went to the hotel at about 6 o’clock that night and got the set of master keys from my friend working the front desk. Starting with the comments section of a guest reservation for the following day, I left a trail of little riddles all over the grounds of the hotel. The back office, several guest rooms, a closet by the pool, in a bush, you name it. It would require pretty much everyone working to get the game finished before most of the staff went home at 5 pm.
The very last clue led to the maintenance tunnel that bisected nearly the entire building. And at the very end of the tunnel was my piece de resistance—taped to the wall, was a heartfelt goodbye letter and a bag of Tootsie Pops. The letter specifically ended with, “In this bag, I’ve put one Tootsie Pop for every single person that works at this hotel...except for the manager and the assistant manager, because screw them”.
A week later, I called up the hotel when I knew my friend who’d given me the keys that allowed me to set up the game would be working again. She told me that the game was a huge hit. Thanks to the walkie-talkies that we used every day to communicate back and forth, the entire staff (front desk, maintenance, housekeeping, and even the breakfast hostess) had gotten in on it and were following my clues to the prize.
I also called my mom, who worked at the hotel next door (which, funnily enough, was where Assistant Manager had started as a desk clerk). I told her about what I’d done and, after she stopped laughing, she revealed to me that Assistant Manager had been trying for a week to get my new number because “they wanted to talk to me about something”.
69. Small Changes Lead To Big Problems
My father is a project manager working on financial programs for banks and financial companies. A lot of the stuff he does is projects for programs that basically do the accounting and back-end management of money for large companies. We're talking about programs that manage and account for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Basically, as is standard in the financial industry, his bosses were complete idiots with no understanding of coding and the amount of effort it takes. My dad found out his job was getting outsourced as he was finishing up a huge project; from what he told me, it was something like $100K+ lines of code. He saw the perfect opportunity to exact his revenge—he went in and added three lines of code that messed up the whole program, and told them that they could figure out what was wrong with it themselves. I hope to one day live up to such awesomeness.
70. A Different Kind Of Windows Start-Up Noise
I once channeled my inner 12-year-old and set a coworker’s (good friend) Windows start-up sound to a sound file of the juiciest flatulence I could find then cranked his speaker up before he got to work. The results were oh-so-satisfying. Once he got in, the dead silence in the office was abruptly broken with a giant PFFFFFFFTTTT, which was quickly followed by fellow officemates yelling at him for being nasty. I was crying from laughing so hard.
71. Nothing Fancy
I worked with a supreme jerk for a few months in my early 20s. He's one of those guys that tells stories to try and impress other people, but really he just ends up making himself look like a villain (cheating on his girlfriend, beating people up for fun, selling substances). It was a boring, mindless job, so I took it all in stride; in one ear, out the other...until the night I discovered his secret side hustle—he was selling pills right in the middle of the store, amongst the eight to 12 security cameras. I didn’t pull any superhero moves to get him busted, just reported to the owner (whose son is a sheriff), who watched the tapes. The jerk was gone within hours. Felt okay.
72. No Key
Before you ask, I was dealing with a crippling inferiority complex and some pretty bad depression, which is why I didn’t do anything sooner. I used to work for this local coffee and sandwich place down in Florida. There were multiple locations and the one I worked at was in a library. We would regularly be short on supplies or change or something, but it was the only job I had been able to find and it could have been worse, so I dealt with it.
Then they moved all of my hours to a different location, half an hour away from my home, in a hospital. It was the only source of food for hospital employees (they only had kitchens for the patients). I thought it would be fine, but it turned out to be an even bigger nightmare. I routinely had to go to the grocery store to make sure we had something to feed the people in the hospital. I’d be reimbursed for the cost of the groceries, but never gas, and usually I would be yelled at for getting “the wrong thing” no matter how often I tried to compare it to what we had on hand.
They had always ignored lots of labor laws, but it got way out of hand here. I would be literally the only person on shift for eight or more hours, so no breaks. Ever. Bathroom breaks had to be fast and I had to run because the cash register was stuck open and the owner refused to give me a key to lock up or to fix it. He would even have me open and would scream at me for being “late” even though he knew I had no key. For a while, he made me have security let me in until security put their foot down and pointed out that it wasn’t their job. He had to come himself, and he didn’t like that, so eventually, he give me a key.
I worked way more than 40 hours a week and never saw a dime of overtime, but I couldn’t find any other jobs, so I toughed it out. Then, suddenly, out of the blue, he cut my hours. At first, I was glad to only work 20ish hours for a little while, but then it kept on going. Eventually, he had me working about 5 hours every other week. So I told a coworker who worked before me that I wasn’t showing up on a certain day and then I didn’t. I found out much later that he does this regularly to people to drive them to quit, so he doesn’t have to fire them and pay unemployment.
Disgusting.
73. Appreciate What You Have
When I was doing my articles at a small law 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.
74. Firing The Hardest Worker
I was a right-hand girl at a small local grocery store. He fired me for a lot of poor reasons, none being the one that was offered to me (“not living up to expectations”, expectations which he never bothered to share with me—it had more to do with the up-and-coming required pay raise). So I let myself get fired and left him to deal with the fact that the other employee did nothing but talk with customers all day. But that's not all—I was the only one who could deal with the many substance users, not to mention the fridge and freezer cleaning, and his wife—a skinny woman who worked with her mouth rather than her body—was to take over where I left off. Good luck, and good riddance!
75. Taxes Not Reported
I was the manager of a nightclub. One morning, I got a phone call from the assistant manager saying my services were no longer required and that he was taking over my position at the request of the owner. So, I rang repeatedly to ask why I’d lost my job and I couldn’t get through. The owner was always unavailable. I rang every hour for 2 days. In the end, after coming to the realization that I’d been screwed over, I rang the inland revenue and asked if I was due a rebate.
They had no knowledge of me working in the place despite the owners telling me I was paying tax and national insurance that was taken from my wages each week. I was also issued a wage slip each week. So I reported him—and he got exactly what he deserved. I told the inland revenue his name, how many bars he owned including the names, what car he drove, how many staff he had working for him, and a description. Two months later, he had to sell up and move on. A few of his other bars closed down not long after that.
76. A Series Of Small Pranks
I worked in a coffee shop and my manager was a scumbag. He had two open cases against him for harassing my coworkers, constantly making people work 10- to 12-hour shifts, making me close at 11 pm and open the next day at 3:30 am, giving us no breaks, serving spoiled food to customers, changing our temperature logs so we wouldn’t get in trouble with corporate, serving burnt hours-old coffee, and so on.
I started doing all sorts of pranks to feel like a little bit of vengeance was taken. They were little victories, but they were oh-so-good. When he would go into the office, I would put salt in his coffee, smear jelly, and sometimes put jelly donuts under his car door handles. I asked friends who stopped in to park extremely close to his driver-side door if I knew he was leaving soon so he’d have to crawl in the back, I changed the password on the office computer so he couldn’t play solitaire when he was supposed to be helping us during rushes.
We were forced to fill out receipt surveys pretending we were customers, so I would put really negative ones about him specifically. In my last month, I stopped caring and I would yell at him to stop screwing around. He was from India and wasn’t used to women, especially a 19-year-old girl, being so aggressive and not taking his nonsense.
77. Pizza Delivery Boy
Not too long ago, I was a delivery boy for an Italian restaurant. My boss paid us under the table with table scraps; $6 an hour to be exact. We had to use our own cars, we weren’t given mileage, and he decided when he wanted to pay us. The people who worked there were all jerks and insulted me on a regular basis, yet they demanded I do favors for them while on deliveries. The boss had some of the most broken English ever and he got frustrated when you didn’t understand him. He would flip out when little things went wrong. He “bag-tagged” the staff on random occasions and spoke to us like children. He was a loose cannon with no remorse.
Finally, one day after taking up an offer on a new job where I currently work as a Tech Support Analyst, I was threatened because I wasn’t focusing on my work (I busted my rear for them, constantly, this being the one exception). That's when I put my foot down. I looked at the cook and asked him if he knew how much I cared about this job.
I told him I was doing them a favor by staying there because I didn’t need the job, the harassment, or to put up with being berated by a bunch of ignorant losers who think they’re hot stuff even though they’ve worked in a pizza shop for the last 20 years of their lives. I’ve never seen anyone’s jaw drop so low. Oh, and the boss? He was in Italy on vacation, so he got to find out about losing his fastest/best driver when he got back.
78. A Grand Exit Speech
I worked at Walmart as a cart pusher. You know how in Office Space, the guy has eight bosses who all curse him out for one mistake? Well, I was scapegoated for mistakes done by others, which I would have to then solve. They were primarily maintenance issues. Surprisingly, I loved the customers. Being a cart pusher, I mostly dealt with old people asking for electric carts. I’ve always been polite and I always smile when dealing with customers. We had a few regulars who took the time to learn my name, and I had a fun time working there for them. Sadly, my boss would put an end to all that happiness.
Fast forward a month, and my bosses were all awful to me. I was only going to be there for the summer due to leaving for college. I think a few of the people immediately above me resented me because they had wasted their lives away, and now worked full-time at Walmart. Suddenly, after being treated like just an instrument rather than a person, they cut my hours severely. I decided enough was enough. My pride was worth more than the minimum wage they were giving me. I quit when I was the only person working on the 1st of the month, just before a holiday. My exit speech was a little bit plagiarized from The Cask of Amontillado. It felt great.
79. The Worst Option
For a while, I worked as a web designer in a small ad agency serving a very niche industry. Previously, the design team had no creative lead and were all sort of operating independently across varying clients. We decided to hire a creative director to fill that gap, and I was given the task of sorting through and giving first-round interviews to find the person who would later become my supervisor.
Two candidates in particular stood out from the rest for very different reasons. One was exceptionally talented, an all-around nice guy, and somebody who generally would have been great for the role. The other (let’s call him John) had mediocre talent and came across as an insufferable and arrogant prick, but he had previous experience working within the niche industry that we serviced. He also had contacts within that industry that could lead to new business. Despite my strong recommendation to not hire John, his relationships in the industry were too compelling for our agency’s leadership to pass up, so they hired him.
It didn’t take long before the company realized he was a nightmare. He had virtually zero experience in anything related to digital design. Design for apps, websites, mobile, etc. was all completely and utterly beyond his grasp, but he used his position of relative power to make decisions on those projects that the entire design team refused to support, most of which came back to bite the company in the rear end later.
The design team hated him because fixing and working around his screw-ups became part of our daily routine. The sales team hated him because he’d claim it took him unbelievably exaggerated amounts of time to complete even the most trivial of tasks (for example, four days to design a business card template), so they wouldn’t even assign him projects anymore.
Work that was clearly his responsibility started to rapidly trickle down to the rest of the design team. We’d be working late nights four out of five days a week because all of his projects that were in danger of missing deadlines would be reassigned to us. Meanwhile, he’d be the first to walk out the door every day, right at 5 pm, without fail. On top of all that, the guy was, without a doubt, the biggest tool I’ve ever met. Always right about everything, completely unbending on his idiotic opinions, and completely clueless that literally, every person in the building wished he would get hit by a truck.
I genuinely tried to work with him for about a year, until I decided that the job had become intolerable because of him and it wasn’t going to change any time soon, so I turned in my two weeks’ notice. About a month after I left, I was informed of a shocking new development—t he had been let go from the job. Shortly after that, I noticed that he had changed his LinkedIn status to show that he was working for a new agency I had never heard of, also servicing that same niche industry.
I looked them up, and quickly figured out that he had started his own agency... a primarily digital agency... when he had NO experience in digital or interactive design and had literally messed up every digital/interactive project he’d ever been on (I know because most of them were reassigned to me when he proved incapable of doing them himself). I looked at the portfolio on his website and found literally project after project of my work. He was using my work from the ad agency as an example of the work his agency could produce.
I briefly considered contacting him and requesting he remove my work from his portfolio for ethical reasons. But I could already hear his reply in my head: “As creative lead, all work done by my team is an extension of my creative direction”. He’d used similar lines in the past to insert himself into receiving credit on successful projects he’d had zero involvement on.
So instead I sent an email to one of the partners of the agency we both had worked for, saying something along the lines of, “Hey, not sure if you’ve noticed this, but it looks like John is using your company’s intellectual property to directly compete against you... If I had to guess, I’d assume his next step would be to make a move at your client list”.
The reply was short and sweet: “Thanks for bringing this to my attention. He’ll be hearing from our attorney in the morning”. John’s website was brought down less than 24 hours later.
80. Not Lying In Court
I had a six-month school internship at a mobile phone store. The boss was a total jerk that treated his school interns like full-paid workers (even gave me some concerning money responsibilities). A while after the internship, he called to tell me I would have to give a statement in court. He had a problem with some customer and a shipment and he planned to tell the court that he explained everything to me concerning shipping precisely.
Of course, he didn’t. And of course, I didn’t lie in front of the judge. My boss’s attorney gave me a look I will never forget when he realized his stupid plans didn’t work out. A few weeks later, my now ex-boss tried to call me again. I didn’t pick up. Screw this guy.
81. Crushed Lunches
Someone in my office would always crush lunches with his gigantic lunch box. Either he ate bricks or lead, I don’t know, but I always came to the office fridge and found that my lunch was in pieces. So, after three bouts of this, and numerous notes from myself and other colleagues, I decided to teach him a lesson—I carefully removed his lunch box, emptied the contents (a gigantic sandwich, a Twinkie, chips, some vegetable pieces, and a few other bits), and ran over them with my car. I carefully packed it back in and put it back.
He kept his lunch in a cooler by his cube from then on.
82. Can’t Take Credit For That Work
My coworker was always complaining and always lazy with his work, yet he got recognition for the simplest things he would actually do. He also took credit for a full day’s work that was pretty much all me. I always got ignored. So one day, I came in early and exacted my revenge— I unplugged his ethernet jack just barely to the point it looked like it was still plugged into his computer.
For four hours, he couldn’t do any work. Meanwhile, I got my work done, and he couldn’t take any credit for it since everyone knew he didn’t have internet access. Halfway through the day, he left on the break. I plugged his internet back in and bam, just like that, it was working. By then, he couldn’t claim my work, and I began to get noticed more.
83. Rigging The Toilet
I worked as a mechanic at Pep Boys several years ago. The service manager was a complete menace that regularly cost me money because he would give all of the good jobs to mechanics that he liked better. While I worked there, some of us discovered that if the drainage pipes in the shop were pressurized, the toilet would shoot water out of the bowl. That's when I had my eureka moment.
The day that I quit, I waited until he went into the bathroom to take a dump. I filled up a Cheetah (a device used to seat a tire onto a wheel) and released about 200psi all at once into the drainage pipe. The toilet spewed water and poop everywhere, the manager screamed and then comes storming out of the bathroom COVERED in excrement.
84. The One-Upper
A woman I work with literally copied this great story that I tell about me being in the same hospital at the same time that my niece was born. She tells it as if it was her husband and she was in the hospital giving birth. She’s a known one-upper; everything you do she did it better, faster, it was worse for her, etc.—so it didn’t surprise me when a coworker told me she regularly tells clients that story. She likes to play games—but I do too.
Every single day as I get in, I pour a tiny bit of my water bottle out on her desk, chair, or on the carpet somewhere in her office. In my mind, mold is slowly growing in her office, her skirt gets wet when she sits down, and any fresh documents she sits on her desk get sat right in a small puddle of water.
85. Truth Prevails
Last year when I was working at Chipotle, one of the assistant managers got on my last nerve. He would just sit in the office on his phone gossiping or screaming in Spanish all day, and if something needed to be done, he’d always make one of us do it, no matter how long the line was. He’d take breaks for over an hour when we were allowed 30 minutes, and he would blame other people for things that went wrong.
One night AFTER I left for work, disaster apparently struck and we got lots of bad reviews. I came back to work the next day and my manager sat me down to discuss all of the things I did wrong. The assistant manager told me, “I don’t want you to lose your job, but you need to do better” and that was a wrap.
I find out he somehow blamed me for everything HE did wrong. At that point, I was done taking his nonsense. So instead of making a scene, since I’m the quiet one who just listens instead of causing drama, I took my assistant manager aside and told her how it really happened, getting other coworkers that hated him to back me up. They reviewed the security cameras and he got fired the next day. I saw him about a week later at the neighborhood grocery store and it was mad awkward because I don’t think he realized quiet little me was the one that got him fired.
86. The Power Of Caterers
One time, I was working a small event at the convention center as a banquet server. After we had loaded in and set up, I was one of three servers working the event of about 100 people. There was a buffet. The local weatherman was there, but he demanded I bring him a plate. Pretty rude, but I went and got one for him anyway. Then he demanded that I fill his coffee. There was one on the table—it was a self-serve event—but I poured his coffee anyway. He was still being very rude.
Then this weirdo demanded that I cut his chicken for him. That was the final straw. So I asked how old he was, exactly who he thought he was, and who he thought I must be to take his mistreatment. I then took his plate and announced to the entire room that if I see this man-child eating or drinking ANYTHING, I would take all the coffee, and all the food back, and end the event. He left hungry. Don’t mess with catering.
87. Stacy, not STACEY
My first name is Stacy with no E. One of my biggest pet peeves is having people spell it wrong. I worked with a woman named Lesa. Not the normal Lisa, but Lesa. We worked on a project together and she had to email me several times a day. Each time she spelled my name STACEY.
It didn’t seem to matter that my signature was spelled without an E or that Outlook had it spelled without an E. She ALWAYS put the E in it and it drove me nuts. I finally admitted to her that it bothered me. She apologized. I figured with an oddly spelled name, she’d be extra sensitive to it. Nope. The very next email she sent, less than an hour later, she spelled it wrong again. So, I gave her the exact same courtesy —from that moment on, any time I wrote her an email or referred to her in a group email, I typed Lisa. It still gives me great satisfaction that I did that.
88. Mysterious Moving Filing Cabinet
I was a work-study student in my college’s IT department for four years, including summers. I did just about everything in the department, and I had a great relationship with my coworkers. But in my last year, they hired a full-time basic support guy, who immediately started acting like he knew everything. He also acted like was in charge of me, when I spent literally all of my time training him and doing damage control on his attempts to help.
We shared a desk, which infuriated me because even outside of work, I would not have liked this guy. He was a Grade-A misogynist, a complete loser...basically, every bad IT stereotype rolled into one annoying package. I wanted him to feel pain, and pain he felt indeed. Under our desk, we shared a filing cabinet. Every time he did something to bother me, which was pretty much every day, I’d inch the filing cabinet over so when he’d sit down and roll his chair forward, he’d bang his left knee off the sharp corner. He never figured it out. He’d just swear and slide it over a little. Dumb as a post, that one.
Pxfuel
89. He Needed His Caffeine
When I was working as a barista, we had a regular who would come in a couple of times a week and act like an entitled jerk to all the employees. His sense of entitlement was really something else—would always order a double espresso with his meal, claiming he was “very busy and needed his caffeine” and insist we serve it to him after his meal. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but he would never tell us when he was finished eating; he would expect us to keep an eye on him and bring it as soon as he was finished (this was not a café with table service, by the way). He would obnoxiously clear his throat and make snide comments at us until we noticed and brought it to him, where he would complain about the terrible service and not tip.
I always gave him decaf.
90. The Deli Worker’s Trick
I work in the deli and when we weigh food on the scale, it usually takes a bit off because of cup weight (usually .04lbs). Anyway, if you put the lid on, it won’t take the weight of it off, so it adds .01lbs to it. If people are being rude to me, I use this to my advantage—I just put the lid on and then print the price tag out so they have to pay a slightly extra amount of money. A very small screw you.
91. Accidental Victory
I quit a job in a place I liked because of disgust for the new management (they were dishonest, judged people by brown-nosing instead of competence, etc.). I resigned seven days after my first child was born—that should show you how desperate I was. By total coincidence, my new employer was in the same building, one floor above. Within four years, a total of eight people have moved from the old to the new company—basically bleeding them dry of talent. The dumb boss of the old place gets very nervous when he sees us talking to any of his remaining employees in the elevator. But the best part of it all, karma-wise—I didn’t do this on purpose/out of spite—it just happened.
92. 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.
93. 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."
94. Restricted Cheez-Its
I was the coworker who had his revenge upon me. I had played a few pranks on a couple of friendly coworkers over the past month or so. They really got me good—I came to work one day to find they had convinced the vending machine guy to put my favorite coffee cup on top of my favorite snack in the machine. Thus, I couldn’t have my favorite snack (Cheez-Its) for two weeks and had to keep an eye on the machine constantly to make sure no one else got them, for fear of breaking my favorite mug.
It was well played.
95. 60 Days
The company I worked at for many years fired me without warning. My boss was a strange guy, and I had seen him fire other people without warning as well. He always offered to let people stay on for 60 days until they could find new work. But they would have to sign a document stating that they were “voluntarily” walking off the job and waiving all rights to unemployment.
When he fired me, he also gave me the option. I did not accept, as it seemed a lot better of a deal to have unemployment in case I could not find work within the 60 days. The company tried to appeal my unemployment, but my case was foolproof—after several years of loyal service, the only black marks on my record were being less than 15 minutes late to work three times. I let the judge in the unemployment hearing know that they offered to keep me on if I had signed away my right to unemployment. She let me know that it was against the law to do so, and ruled in my favor.
Every weekly unemployment deposit was like a tiny victory until I found a new job.
96. The Magic Formula
I used to have to report website usage, ROI, and all sort of statistics for a bunch of different sites. I built a cool mother of a spreadsheet in which you only input a few numbers and it would calculate just about everything the company would need. It was a bit too complicated for my boss to understand, yet he would take it to clients and brag that he made it.
That ticked me off. Then, after a while, he realized that the spreadsheet was all he needed, and he could use my paycheck to buy a new house. He laid me off. I told him he might need help with the spreadsheet, but he said he was smart enough. So before I left, I made sure to make him eat his words—I changed a single formula in the spreadsheet and had a good laugh about the reports it spat out. They made no sense at all anymore.
97. Oh Snap
I started work in a new IT role on the same team as another guy who instantly decided he wanted to make me out to be a pathetic, worthless excuse for a man. This was despite the fact that, while we were both in our mid-20s, I had outranked him in the profession and was happily married while he was single and living with his parents.
He used to try to bait me into arguments, so he could rattle off his well-rehearsed right-wing cliches and boast about how I wasn’t a “real man” because I didn’t drink $80 scotch or have a knife collection or whatever. I just ignored it since I already figured I was winning the game of life. One day, he sent me one of his emails to the whole team saying, “If you don’t drink this, you can kiss your manhood goodbye” with a picture of some expensive scotch or something. At that point, I knew exactly how to make him eat his words.
So I replied to all, saying: “You know what else kisses my manhood goodbye? Your mom”. “Oh snap” replies all around. Six months later, I was promoted to head of the team and he was fired.
98. Woman Overboard
A colleague of mine dialed into a meeting of two or three managers plus about 25 sales representatives, only for everyone to suddenly go quiet. One person told him the meeting was cancelled and he could drop the call, as they were just chatting about sales stuff. He pretended to hang up and stayed on the line. That's how he found out the truth.
They were basically planning a mutiny because they didn't like that their regional manager was a woman. They had a whole strategy for how they were going to cause a massive screw-up that would cost the company a ton of money and make it look like it was her fault so that she would get fired. The idiots even did a little "are we all in agreement" roll call at the end.
We worked in a call center, so his end of the call was recorded. Within a week, every last one of them was fired and within a month they were replaced.
99. 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.
100. Following Up
My insufferable manager followed me after work to my second job because she didn't believe I had one and was just using it as an excuse to get out early. My manager at my second job said, "There's some crazy lady banging on the doors yelling your name." So, I grabbed my uniform from my bag, opened the door, threw it in her face, and told her to shove off.
101. Going Out with a Bang
I did not like the overly condescending boss that I had at my last job. One day, while looking over my shoulder at my work as usual, he said: "Can I ask a stupid question?" Since it was my last week at that job anyway, I immediately came back and responded with: "You seem qualified!" I have to say I was pretty proud of myself!
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