Sometimes, we can destroy our enemies without ever lifting a finger. Why? Because they destroy themselves.
1. A Bumpy Road To Justice
My neighbor accused me of reversing my drive and hitting his car. He gave me the date and time I had allegedly done it and pointed to a (small) scrape on my car that supposedly matched perfectly the location of the dent on his.
This was 7 weeks after the alleged event, by the way. I said it wasn't me but told him to contact his insurance and we'd see what they said. A few weeks later, I get a letter from my insurance asking what had happened. That’s when I revealed everything. I responded with the date I had bought my car and updated my insurance—which was two weeks after the supposed bump.
He never spoke to me again, but I used to give him a cheery wave every time I saw him glowering at his window.
2. Practice Makes Perfect Revenge
Years ago, I worked extremely hard on preparing a presentation for a tech conference. It would be my first speaking gig. I was nervous all get out. I practiced. I refined. I got advice. I practiced some more. My manager was generally a nasty woman, but she was supportive of this even though she never once saw or heard my presentation.
So we travel to Vegas. It turns out there was a far greater demand for our talk than they expected, so they moved us to the main stage room. There were expecting about 500 plus walk-ins. I was now 10x more nervous than I had ever been before.
Well, immediately pbeforethe start, my manager noticed a very well-known media person and their photographer sitting in the front row. She got all excited and insisted that she was going to co-deliver the speech. She even went so far as to put her name on tthe itle slide.
I of course was fuming. We go on stage and she does a decent intro and then I start in. She keeps interrupting, so I just let her run with it. It reminded me of a morning show. A bunch of people with overwhelmingly fake smiles talking over each other.
This was a deeply ttechnicaltopic with a live demo. She fumbled each slide worse than the next. Then it happened. She got to the "Live Demo" slide and...froze. I had the wherewithal to let her sit there. It was gloriously brutal.
We had a, let's say, confrontation after. I left within 2-3 months. She got fired shortly after.
Oh, and the media people she was prancing for left immediately before the start. I think they were just sitting there from the prior session. Perfect.
3. Double-Cross Examine
When I practiced family law, I saw this kind of thing often on the stand. Turns out if your opponent is crazy, most of the time all you need to do to reveal that is give them a microphone and mildly question their story. The best, however, was in Motion to Withdraw hearings.
For context, I hated these hearings. I dreaded them. I already felt like a failure for having to withdraw from a case, 95% of the time this was because the client couldn’t or wouldn’t pay me, but sometimes it was because they turned out to be uncooperative and/or combative with me.
They were not difficult to win, however. Inevitably if I simply asked the (ex-)client when and how they intended to right their retainer, they’d start listing off excuses about how they don’t and never will have the money to do so. It’s heartbreaking, but it also proves my point.
TThe uncooperative clients however, were the best. I’d read off a list of times they cursed me out, ignored my advice, and threatened me and my staff, then just wait. You could watch their blood boil on the stand, followed by completely unhinged justification as to why no lawyer could reasonably work with this person.
“Mr .Jones, can you explain why you threatened to ‘shove a phone up my paralegal’s butt’ if she called you again?”
“She calls me every WEEK with ANOTHER THING that I have to do! You’re supposed to be handling my case! It’s why I hired you! I don’t have time to be searching through my emails and getting bank records and bringing you papers eeveryday! And every time my retainer is empty for like a day, she calls to remind me to refill it! I’ve got other things to pay for, like the darned child support you put on me when I left! How rude can you be, right? Right? I swear if I have to hear her voice one more time I’m going to drive over there and run her over!”
“Your honor, I rest my case”.
4. A Stake In This Game
I was in a meeting with my project manager, who had not been in the office or worked a proper full day for MONTHS. I was about to answer a question for our stakeholders, and she snapped at me to let her speak one sentence and then she will let me have my bit.
I did as I was told, and she told the stakeholder a completely wrong thing about the system we were handling and made a complete fool out of herself. She got sacked this month.
5. Life Comes At You Fast
A co-worker who I hated got fired a few weeks after I decided to stop fixing his mistakes even if it impacted a client.
6. One Too Many
At my current job, part of my duties aisto do trailer audits, which means I make sure people are unloading/loading safely. I was training a new member for the position to do the job. After a few weeks, it turns out that the other person wasn't doing ANY aspects of the job.
Instead, they were just mingling like it was a cocktail party. When asked why they weren't doing anything, they said it was because they were never trained. Well, turns out that due to past complaints about this particular person, management put them on a specific plan where if they got any type of training they were to have a piece of paper documenting what kind of training it was, who trained them, etc.
The management would then sign off, with all parties’ signatures. When they pulled the file that said they were indeed trained in all duties of the job, they just sat there silent and got fired.
They were fired because they pulled the same stunt in every department of the building, and mine was their last chance.
7. You Come Into MY Court?
I was prosecuted in the local magistrate’s court in the UK. The defendant had paid for some fancy lawyer from London to come up to defend. The chair of the magistrates, who were all lay people, was a frail-looking senior lady and he tried to snowball her.
He came perilously close to calling her "dear" while talking down to her. What we locals knew, however, was that she was a terrifying Harridan with a mind like a steel trap and a tongue like a razor, and she ate him alive.
She tore apart his arguments, lambasted him for bringing complex arguments to court without prior warning to the clerk, and picked apart his understanding of the rules of evidence. Never saw him again.
Dolores M. Harvey, Shutterstock
8. Let’s Go To The Tape
I let the lady who changed lanes into me run her mouth about how I rear-ended her…before pulling the officer aside to show him my dashcam footage.
Scott Richardson, Shutterstock
9. Do-It-Yourself
This wasn’t an enemy, but in retrospect ,they should have been. I work as a teacher and we had an ex-manager guy who decided to get into teaching late. He had lots of pretty horrible habits like eating other people's lunches, perving on the female teachers, and squeezing people's shoulders painfully hard as a “friendly” gesture.
But the habit that this story is about is how he tried to use incompetence to get people to do his tasks for him. None of it was really important; he just seemed to enjoy talking people into doing things for him.
So he comes up to me one day with a USB data stick in his hand. He had a copy of a previous year's exam that it was his responsibility to update and edit. He'd taken the file home and his daughter had done the update...Yeah, the dude really roped in his own family into doing his paid government job for him.
He wanted me to copy the file from the USB back into the server, replacing the original file he'd copied. It was click and drag between the USB and the file server. I flat-outrefused, saying it was part of his responsibility and that I was too busy with my own tasks. His response floored me.
He proceeds to loudly and publicly proclaim to the entire staffroom that I didn't understand how difficult it was for people of his generation to learn computer technology and that I reeded to help him out. He said that he was currently doing a computer course but this (dragging a file between two folders) was too difficult for him to sort out.
I let him go on for about a good 5 minutes about how horrible I was for not helping the poor helpless old man out,until I just as loudly asked him "How the heck did you get the original file from the server onto the USB in the first place?"
You could have heard a pin drop in that staffroom. He walked off and copied his oile.
10. Outfit Repeater
My roommate's ex abandoned his vehicle in front of my house. I tell him to please move it or I will have it towed. The vehicle suddenly has two flat tires, and the ex files a report claiming my roommate and I had slashed his tires.
I waited until the ex made his statement about how we had slashed his tires and that is why he couldn't move his vehicle. He then filed a claim against us in small claims court. I knew just what to do. I provided the authorities and the court copies of my and our neighbor’s door cam footage, showing the ex arriving in the middle of the night to slash his oires.
The cherry on top? The ex shows up in court wearing the same shirt as in the videos.
11. No…Don’t Go…
10 years ago, I had a co-worker who everyone found pretty annoying. She was an idiot who thought she knew better than everyone else and would get offended at every opportunity. She took something I said the wrong way one day and got upset.
Well, I just didn’t say anything. I would not indulge her insanity. So, she quit. Grabbed her stuff and walked out on a job she’d had for years. No one spoke a word to stop her.
12. Code Red
I was a lead developer in a small company producing IT devices. My manager hired his friend from his previous company who was super arrogant and thought he knew everything better.
Theoretically, my opinion on the development of the project should have taken priority, but neither my manager nor his buddy cared about it.
I tried to talk to the manager about the problems with the new colleague, but he brushed me off. The new guy—being so brilliant—was given one important component of the system to do. Of course, he made it clear that he didn't need any help from me. Weeks and months passed. In the meetings, his component was always in the last phase of testing. But I had access to the git repository, and I saw how messy it was.
No one asked me for my opinion, so I didn't say anything. I waited. The deadline came with the supposed release of the product. And of course, nothing works. The higher-up management became interested in the case, and my manager could only avoid being fired in one way—he fired his buddy.
A few weeks later, I left the company. That was over a year ago, and as far as I know, the product still hasn't hit the market.
13. Clock’s A-Tickin’
During my very long and exhausting divorce, my ex-husband kept insisting he was ready to settle. We would schedule a conference with my lawyer and then push papers around the table for 2 hours. He would just argue over petty details rather than aiscussing anything.
This happened a few times. I was incredibly frustrated because I genuinely walked into this wanting to compromise so it would be over quickly. But that was never an option. Note that I hired a lawyer and he did not—he was convinced he could do it on his own better.
So after a few rounds of this, I had a dark idea. I got the impression that he was trying to waste my money until I could no longer retain my lawyer, and then he thought he would have the upper hand. I made less than half of what he did at the time and my lawyer's retainer fee wiped out my entire savings, so it was a very real concern.
My suspicions were confirmed when one day as we were walking out of my lawyer's office, he told me this, word for word while chuckling. I passed this on to my lawyer, and it was then that I learned that we were 6 months out from being married 10 years. At that point, I would be entitled to a sizable part of his pension upon retirement.
She let him play his games for 6 more months without saying a word, and then finally took our case before a judge 5 days after our 10-year anniversary. Not only did I get part of his pension, but she also got the judge to order him to pay almost all of my lawyer fees.
The beauty of it was that it was 100% his fault for playing games.
14. A New Lease On Life
I used to live in an apartment that had a very old lease. College students bassed this place’s lease down like inheritance until it came to us. Legally, the landlord could only increase the rent yearly by a small fraction of the current lease’s rent.
The exceptions to this were if the apartment was being renovated (in which case it would be her responsibility to accommodate us while renovating) or if it had been vacant for a year between leases. She knew our lease’s rent was extremely low, and so wanted to get rid of us and jack up the rent on a new tenant.
She sent us a letter about 2 weeks before our lease would be renewed saying she was renovating and we’d have to leave. Well, it happened my roommate was not just a college student, but a law student. And he happened to know she had to give us a lot more notice than that.
We pold her we weren’t leaving and she’d be welcome to take us to court. Which, she did. She told the judge she wanted to renovate, and the judge asked her for the new floor plan and a cost estimate of the proposed renovation. She had none of those things.
When the judge asked why, she said she’d only decided to renovate a week prior. When the judge asked why she’d made this decision so quickly and not given the mandated deadline of 6 months’ notice, she said she was only renovating so she could start a new lease on the property.
The judge facepalmed at her response, dismissed the case, and renewed our lease with no rent increase for the year, since she hadn’t presented us a new one with enough delay to contest it. We were just sitting there with our mouths open, bewildered that she could have been dumb enough to say the quiet part out loud straight to the judge.
15. What Goes Up Must Come Down
My ex-boss was a complete jerk in every aspect. We worked as surveyors using drones to scan and survey large areas, and he would go out of his way to get the cheapest and least reliable drones to do the job.
One of those drones was this god-awful fixed wing (shaped like a plane with only one propeller) that you launched using this horrible slingshot system that had a 50% chance of just launching the thing nose-down into the ground.
I told him it was horrible. I even recorded my launches with it so he could see this thing was a piece of trash, but he insisted I was just a “bad pilot who couldn't take off a drone to save my life". After three crashes, two rolls of duct tape ,and a few arguments, he decides to come with tus o the next big job we have and just do it himself.
Now, the turnover times for these jobs were insane. The man had zero concept fofhow long things take, so he'd promise the clients the data the very next day. WThismeant that EVERYTHING would have to go perfectly the day of the flight, with zero delays, so I could process the data overnight and have it ready for them the next day.
No room for errors, no second chances, every morning it was make or break. So we get to the site in the early morning, and I'm completely hands-off. Normally I'd pack a second drone for when this one inevitably kamikazes into the earth, but this time, I decide he needs a slice of humble pie.
I watch as he sets up the drone, runs through the checks, loads it onto that god-awful slingshot ,and gets ready to pull the trigger. I take a few steps back, take out my phone to record, and watch the fireworks. It was better than I could have imagined. He pulled the lever and the bungee cord released. It whipped the drone ten feet into the air at Mach 2, before the thing nose-dived right into the ground, breaking off one of the wings.
After about 2 seconds of teetering on the ground, the drone’s autopilot thought to itself "Hey, that was a launch, wasn't it?" It then automatically kicked the propeller into high gear, shattering it against the cold, unforgiving ground.
He just watched the whole thing happen with an absent look in his eyes. Once the drone settled down and dying throes stopped, he picked up the drone, walked back to us, and said "wWell darn”.
The 4-hour drive back to the office was completely silent, and our boss had to call the client and explain why we wouldn't be delivering the data to them on time. We had another job we had to do the next day, so they'd only have it next week.
I could hear the client screaming to him over the phone from the next room. Needless to say, we never used that drone again. He never stopped buying cheap drones, but now when I told him they were trash, he believed me.
The Lazy Artist Gallery, Pexels
16. Her Day In Court
Several years ago, my older brother was fighting for custody of his son with his ex-wife. As the first custody hearing date approached, they were exchanging [un]pleasantries over text and my brother ended up saying something along the lines of, "I'm not continuing this conversation. I will see you on the 15th”.
The ex-wife told him, "The hearing is on the 25th, idiot”. So of course instead of correcting her, my brother just allowed her to keep thinking it was the wrong date, and she missed the first hearing entirely.
It became the first of many mistakes she made in the court system that eventually led to my brother and the woman who is now his second wife winning full custody of his son.
17. They Get By With A Little Help From Their Friends
I once worked for a project in a call center and we constantly had the management on us about call quality. They would review every call and send the report to you and your supervisor, who would sign off on it tand hen send it back.
If you got two reports under 90%, there'd be a warning and you'd be fired after four. Now, this was all done via email, so I'd save all my reports just in case. MIn myfirst couple weeks, I got dinged with a warning but efor verything after that I maintained at least 95% or above according to the reports I was getting.
One week I noticed a few agents were getting let go, agents, I always thought were good. At the time, the project was looking for supervisors and these were the guys you would want. I found out they had all been hit with bad reports, which led to the firings.
Then one day HR calls me and lets me know I'm fired for several reports saying I scored insanely low scores. Just one problem. I had the reports saying those were all over 90% and I told HR I had them. The HR rep asks me to forward all of them to review and I do so.
A couple of hours later I get another call from HR saying I'm being reassigned to another project with better pay. Turned out the higher-ups were fudging the reports AFTER the supervisors signed off on select agents because they had certain agents they were friends with and wanted them to get the management positions.
Even worse, everyone in management knew and didn't care. The project got shut down and the fired agents were all brought back and placed in bbetter-payingprojects like I was.
Tima Miroshnichenko, Shutterstock
18. Embarrassment Is The Same In Any Language
I was doing a mortgage for a French guy in Miami Beach who had a French realtor. Even though both people were completely fluent in English, she frequently did asides in French, having no idea I spoke the language.
When they settled on a property and we were riding the elevator down from the condo, she told him that look, these guys are scumbags and they're going to screw you over. I have a much better person that you can work with.
Towards the end of the ride, I say to the guy in fluent French that we would be happy to compare our proposal with whatever her people could come up with and it's his choice, but certainly, we would like to work with him on this and any future investments.
He starts laughing his butt off and she was completely mortified. He went with us and fired her as his agent. On the spot.
19. All Going To Plan
I'm working on a job site and the architect is there one day. I've been given some light fixtures for the sconces in a leasing office lobby. The fixtures are meant to be hung from a ceiling, and they can't be installed on a wall.
I attempt to convey this to the architect, but he brushes me off and just tells me to follow the prints. I turn to the apprentice and say, well you heard the man, put them up. A bit later, we hear the crashing of glass.
The architect asks what was that? I said your light fixture.
20. Some Humble Pie
When I was a teenager, a cousin of mine, Jenny, fought with her mom, Jackie. The fight was so intense that Jackie BEAT Jenny severely, so she called my mom and dad, asking for help, and asked to live with us for a while.
At the time that sounded horrifying, but we quickly learned the horrible truth. Jenny was full of hot air. Jenny was a drama queen, loved to stir up trouble, lied constantly about basically everything, and Jackie never laid a hand on her. We had heard rumors but dismissed them and believed her…until one incident.
My mom always kept a few frozen pies in the freezer, just in case company came over. Jenny took a pie from the freezer one day, ate the entire thing, and when mMomcame home, she got angry because those pies were for company. She asked Jenny who ate the pie and she said I did.
My mom yells for me, I come into the kitchen, and she asks if I ate the pie, I said no, and I get yelled at for eating the pie. Jenny then proceeds to launch into telling this overly elaborate tale about how I took the pie and ate it just to get her in trouble.
She went on for like 3 minutes and mMomjust kept getting angrier and angrier at me. All the while, I couldn't help but grin like a madman. 3 minutes later she finishes her story and I point something out.
It was a coconut cream pie she ate. I DESPISE coconut. I hate it and will never eat it. My mom KNEW this, and the realization hits her. Jenny gets a look of horror on her face. She got grounded for a month. The look of both of them is seared in my mind. Makes me smile when I think of it.
The funny thing is, she tried it again 2 months later, this time eating a chocolate cream pie, but mMomdidn't believe her.
21. Whisper Network
I was working as a cub reporter in a small town and had done a piece on a stray dog menace in an area, as plenty of dogs had gone after kids within a short while. The dog lovers of the town took that piece as an “I hate all dogs" article.
They shared it in their WhatsApp group and started talking trash about me. What they did not know was that the administrator of the group ran a dog shelter and a few months back, I had done a piece on the shelter, so I was in the group too.
At one point, they began scheming that they'd cook up stories about me lying in the story and complain to the publication. Mind you, these are “upstanding” citizens—doctors, lawyers, sand enior executives.
So their word weighted a rookie reporter. I just showed the chat to the editor. He had a good laugh about it. Never knew what happened after that but hours later, they stopped complaining about me. The administrator of the group aapologizedto me separately (he didn’t need to) but never did tell them that I was a part of it.
22. This Comes From The Top
I worked in a country-wide company and needed something done by a peer in another office. She was very uncooperative and was arguing with me that she should not do what I was asking because it was not the correct procedure.
It was, in fact, the correct procedure as per my boss (who was her boss' boss), but before I could tell her where I had gotten my instructions, she took it upon herself to send me a very condescending email, CCing her boss and mine. She was trying to put me on the spot for being wrong.
I just waited until both her boss and mine told her that I was right, and I was just sitting there thinking "Why are you making this so hard on yourself girl".
23. It Goes Both Ways
As I was being fired from a job, the district manager requested we record the conversation. He thought I was going to be very upset, so I obliged. Then, when he started to tell me why I was being fired he started with, “You are going to be graduating college soon, and we want to make sure we get ahead of you leaving us”.
I very calmly asked that he send me the recording right after he said that. Then later that day I called a lawyer. I now have no student loan debt. I was able to win litigation due to a breach of contract.
Krakenimages.com, Shutterstock
24. Step Off The Soap Box
This happened at a local electoral district association meeting. It was expected to be a largely pro-forma re-nomination of the previous candidate (my boss) when a former candidate decides to throw his hat in the ring.
He starts giving this long diatribe about how much support he has locally (he didn’t) and starts rambling. Do you know when someone starts talking faster instead of making a point? It was that.
My boss texts me to say “You can feel free to interrupt and move for a vote”.
I reply “One sec, I have a feeling he’s gonna say something stupid”. Right then, he lets slip a horrible name about my boss’s race. Needless to say, once he realized what had happened, he made the smart choice and withdrew.
Henri Mathieu-Saint-Laurent, Pexels
25. Money Talks
Decades ago, I worked for a small, luxury furniture store. Part of it was managing the paperwork, and part of it was programming the software. I wanted a raise, so I asked the new office manager for one.
He was a real piece of work, roundly despised, and later fired for harassment. He explained to me that I deserved a raise, but because we had so many outstanding accounts receivable (unpaid bills), he couldn't afford it.
"So if I can get it down there's money to pay me?" He agreed...but I had to get it down to zero and I had three months. Darn. So, I became a debt collector. This was a luxury furniture store, so our clients had money.
It turns out that the reason so many had outstanding bills is that no one was willing to ask the rich people for money. I did and they paid. However, not all of them did. I was permitted to contract with a debt collection service.
Any debts passed to them were no longer reflected in our accounts. That cleared quite a few debts. A few others were written off when they threatened to sue over the old bill (those went straight to the owner and he didn't want bad publicity).
At the end of three months, I had a meeting with the office manager. He was looking over the accounts receivable and told me he was very impressed. I knew what was coming. I let him ramble on. I had pulled in a ton of money for the company. He was happy about that.
He'd love for me to permanently add collections to my responsibilities. I was doing great work.
"But there's just one problem, we aren’t at zero. There are still thousands outstanding. I can't give you that raise”.
I pointed to the accounts still outstanding. "If you check the unpaid accounts, you'll see that almost all of them are members of the owner's family. I can send them to collections if you like. That will reduce it to below zero”.
He was angry and quickly told me to forget about it. I got the raise.
26. Tight Quarters
I was making a delivery in the downtown area of a small city. I worked for an event rental service—tents, tables, chairs, that kind of stuff. We made deliveries using large box trucks with hydraulic llift gateson the back.
For those who don't know, a lift-gate is a heavy metal mini-elevator that fits underneath the back bumper of large trucks and folds out a few feet behind the truck whenever you need to use it.
Finding parking downtown in a big truck can already be a huge inconvenience, but we found a spot right outside of the venue we were delivering to. It was a very busy street, so that was crazy lucky.
We didn't have a ton of space to work with, but we had enough room to fold out the llift gatebehind the truck, and a bit of ground to work with behind that. I had 2 other people working with me; one would stay up in the truck and and another would take turns running the gate and carrying the stuff inside.
This is when an older woman in a nice BMW SUV decided that she was going to parallel park right behind us and take the little working space behind the truck that we had. Sure it's annoying and inconsiderate, but hey it's a city and people need to park, I get it.
Now, our guy up in the truck was readying the next load of stuff to come down to the ground, so the lift-gate was lifted up—about 5 feet in the air. The lady in the SUV backs up, cuts her wheel, and slices the absolute heck out of her Beamer right into our steel lliftgate She finished the park job, but her SUV is cosmetically screwed.
The passenger fender/headlight area is annihilated, and naturally, our big hunk of steel is unscathed. She gets out and starts screaming at us that it's somehow our fault, and this is where nature takes its course. She lays into all 3 of us for a solid 2 or 3 minutes and eventually loses a little steam.
I give her a chance and tell her that she's fighting a losing battle and that we aren't at fault. Of course, she immediately fires back up like a lunatic and calls the authorities. I shrug at her, we complete the rest of our delivery, and officers show up a few minutes later.
When they pull up, this lady has full 180s. "Oh officers, I'm so glad you're here—that's them over there”. No joke, literally pointing. They ask what's going on, and we don't even have to open our mouths. This lady tells the whole story about how she crunched her BMW into our parked truck.
The officer looks over to me, and I just give them an exhausted head shake. "Well ma'am…” they explain that she is at fault, and the ccherry on topis the citation she received for running into us.
27. The Writing On The Wall
I have always done my paperwork in a distinctive blue Pilot G2 pen. At one of my previous jobs, I had just gotten my machine-making product ready for packing. The only problem was the outer lip diameter was just too big.
Nothing I did could get the diameter down. It was decided, and hoped, the product would further shrink in storage as it continued to cool and set. So quality tech signed off approving the variance.
Several months down the line, a couple of customers complain the lids aren’t fitting right sometimes (we later found out only with hot foods or in hot environments). They ended up refunding anyone who bought a product made by me.
I get called into the front office for a final warning, a big quality alert, and a copy of the quality paperwork. The quality tech is saying she never approved me running that product with the quality variance and has a copy of my paperwork “proving” it.
I waited until everyone had spoken their piece. I then pulled out my pen, flipped the write-up over, and wrote, “I refuse to sign this write up because I do not deserve it”. I then told them to go pull every quality sheet, every training signoff, and even my job application and job offer and notice I write in very identifiable blue ink.
The quality sheet in front of me is a photocopy because all my writing is in black, not blue. The plant manager threw the write-up into the shredder and told me to go home for the day (I had already worked a 12-hour shift before this) and forget about this happening.
He did not look amused. There was a new quality tech the next night I went in. If you work in any field that requires regular paperwork, use a blue pen.
28. Not Quite A Slam-Dunk Case
I was on a jury hearing on an intent-to-sell case. The prosecution had the detective on direct examination to establish the defendant's MO. Apparently, the defendant would sit in his car in front of his house, and a customer would pull up and request a product.
The defendant would take the cash, go into his house where his grandmother (yes, grandmother) would exchange cash for the product, and the defendant would go back outside to deliver the product. Apparently, the defendant felt that since he never directly exchanged money for the stuff, he was safe from prosecution.
Anyway, the detectives bought products several times to build an airtight case, then returned days later with a bunch of squads and nabbed everyone. The defendant took the stand while his attorney attempted to establish a simple case of mistaken identity on the part of the detectives.
Lawyer: "So in your neighborhood, is it common for young men your age to dress similarly and sit in or hang around their cars at the curb most every evening?"
Defendant: "No”.
Lawyer: *splutters* "Er, what I meant was...”.
Prosecution: "Objection. Asked and answered”.
Judge: "Sustained. It wasn't the answer you wanted, but it was an answer. Move on”.
Guilty on all counts. Roll credits.
29. Scratch My Back, I Won’t Scratch Yours
My ex-co-worker was a piece of trash. He was using "I have a baby so I need certain shifts more” a lot, yet would routinely drop them if he randomly decided to party the night before. He would call me in the middle of the night to cover his morning shift, etc.
I would cover his shift, and yet when I needed him to cover my shift (which I would ask him days or even weeks in advance) he would also pull the “I have a baby” card. Christmas season comes and I ask him if I can take the 31st of December morning shift so I can spend New Year’s evening with my boyfriend, go somewhere, celebrate, etc.
He got almost mad because I asked. His words were "No, no, I have a baby, it's his first New Year’s eEve I have to spend it with him and my wife”. Fine, whatever. But it didn’t take long for his comeuppance to come. The night of the 30th comes. I was awake at 2 am, gaming or watching Netflix.
I felt my phone go off and look who it is, my co-worker who is out somewhere and needs his morning shift covered. I put my phone on “Do Not Disturb” and in my drawer. I didn't answer.
The next morning, I had 50 missed calls from him, a few from other co-workers, and 10ish from my boss.
He didn't show up for work. He got fired that day. Our work environment became so much healthier.
30. Fast And Furious
Back when speed camera vans were common in my area, I was running some errands one time and noticed the van on the side of a fairly busy road. It was situated on a bend so if you were northbound you likely wouldn’t notice it until you were in the curve.
I had a bit of back-and-forth running around that I had to do and noticed it was still there an hour or so later when I passed it in the opposite direction. Later in the day, I was still taking care of things and was headed north again on the same road.
There was a real aggressive jerk in traffic this time, speeding when he could, weaving in the lanes to try to get ahead even though it was now rush hour and no real progress would be made, gunning his engine, etc. I could see after a couple of stoplights that this guy was peeved at the audacity all these other people had at being on the road at the same time as him.
He wound up at a stoplight next to me and one car behind, following someone who didn’t pull away at the green quite as fast as I did, so he cut somebody off to get over to my lane. Now he’s tailgating me on the northbound stretch, and I wondered if the speed trap was still set up.
Because I’d gone a little quicker than the guy next to me, a gap started to open in the left lane, but he was still on my butt because it hadn’t yet widened out to full car length.
As we started nearing the curve where I had seen the trap earlier, I speed up a little to increase the gap, then took my foot off the gas going into the turn. Mr. Aggro Driver did what I predicted he would and punched it to overtake me on the outside…right as the camera van became visible.
The pop of the flash, when he passed the van, did put a grin on my face.
31. What About Bob?
The space shuttle Challenger engineer, Bob Ebeling, knew it would explode. He repeatedly said the cold weather would cause a failure despite pressure from the NASA administration.
Then, in what he described as making the best decision of his life, he refused to sign the paper indicating he approved of the launch, forcing his boss to do it. At the governmental inquiry after the disaster, NASA said "tTheengineers signed a paper approving the launch that day”. Which, yeah, that’s true, but worded as deceptively as can be.
Bob then stood up, walked to the hearing, and said that he refused the launch but was overruled. He said this to the stunned members of the hearing. The government fired the NASA executives and made Bob head of the investigation.
32. “You’ve Got The Right Man!”
Years ago, at the end of high school, I had a "friend" who was working at a Shop-Ko. He was stealing from the till whenever he was put on a check-out. Eventually, he is caught on camera pocketing cash and the authorities are called to detain him in the store when he showed up for his next shift.
As he is getting handcuffed and led out of the building, he yells, "You guys are idiots! I've been stealing from you for years!" Yeah...it didn't go well.
33. Making Up The Grade
Before I changed careers, I was working in an office and had a team of 4 employees I was managing. My boss, who was incredibly dumb, wanted to see what grade I gave to my employees as part of their annual evaluation.
I had 4 great employees who were working hard, and I could even show them some stuff past their "level," since it could be useful experience if they wanted to later get a higher-paying job at a higher level.
Needless to say, their results were much higher than expected, especially for 2 of them. So I gave two of them an A and the two others a B. My boss disagreed with me and told me how their work has to be especially amazing to deserve such grades.
She talks to me about the normal distribution and how there should be X amount of A, B, and C. I let her go on talking. I take back the sheets with their evaluation grades and everything I wrote about them. I ask her what exactly makes them not deserving. She rambles.
I ask her what their day-to-day looks like. She rambles some more, getting a bit angry. I ask her what so and so’s last names are. She doesn't even know! I told her if she doesn't know anything about that, she has no clue how they are performing and therefore can't tell me to change it.
I asked her what she'd do if the majority of the employees performed well, will she give out D and E grades just to follow normal distribution? She tells me, no, it would be ridiculous. I told her doing the same for A and B would be ridiculous too.
I told her if she wants, she can give me an E, but she won't change the evaluations of my employees and as soon as I'd leave her office, I'd show them their grades so they know she's the one who changed them if it happened to change.
Turns out, they kept their A and B. I got a C. I didn't care, left soon after, and changed my career. Never looked back. What a moron.
34. True Colors
Our friend group had one guy I had personally cut off because he was a terrible person when he drank. Another friend of mine was having a cookout and decided to invite the guy I had cut off despite me saying he was going to do some stupid stuff.
Fast forward two hours into the cookout, I was proven right in the worst way. The friend I had cut off from my life got to drinking and decided it'd be funny to sucker punch a guy with Asperger’s. Everyone was telling him what a garbage thing that was to do, but he laughed and shrugged and played it off as no big deal...all as his victim was holding back tears.
I didn't have to do a thing, he showed everyone who he was. Everyone stopped dealing with him after that. Good riddance.
35. In The Hot Seat
A former co-worker decided to curse at me for having used a company truck typically assigned to him from the night prior. His biggest problem was that I destroyed the seat with my “big butt”.
I calmed down as much as I could and called my supervisor, who rushed over and sat us both in the company office. Except a few head nods and "yes" answers, I let my co-worker dig himself deeper and deeper.
He was a very loud and bombastic character, so it was easy. The supervisor advised him to collect his personal belongings and take a few days off to cool down. He was then fired after 3 days of rest. As for the truck seat, I forgot to reset the lumbar support on the seat. That was it.
ESB Professional, Shutterstock
36. Don’t Label Me
I worked at a large vape juice manufacturer printing labels for bottles. We had a particular production manager who thought she was my boss. She wasn't. We were on the same level of the hierarchy.
In any case, she thought her stuff was a priority to me. She could not understand that we had a whole process and knew exactly what needed to be printed in order to fulfill all of our orders. Our actual boss told me to just do my best to work with her and get her what she requested so she'd shut up.
She decided one day to order 150k of each label for two particular lines we had so she would never have to wait for labels again. The was just one big issue. The whole company knew that regulations were changing and requirements on labels were changing.
I tried to explain this to her and I didn't think this was a good plan. She insisted repeatedly. I finally said screw it and started doing it, while having my team do their best to keep up with our actual priorities. I stayed late, and got lots of overtime.
When our boss finally clued into the order, I was 300k labels into 600k of the first line. When asked, I told him that he had told me to do what it takes to make her stop whining and that's what I was doing. He put an instant stop to it. She got written up and those labels were still on a shelf in the corner 3 years later when we shut down.
37. A House Of Cards
An old boss was awful to me after I took an extra few days of bereavement. She was just not smart, so I emailed her a recap of a meeting we’d had about said days off. She responded by not only confirming what she’d said but throwing in a bunch of insults.
I escalated. I’d been at the company in a different location for 8 years with an outstanding track record, so I had some credibility. 2-3 weeks later my team was called into a last-minute meeting where her early retirement was announced, and my colleague saw her crying in the parking lot later that day.
I don’t hate anyone generally but that made me so happy and looking back I do still hate her.
38. Stuck In The Middle
My wife was a school teacher with 20 years under her belt. She was paired with a "co-teacher" for the special-education students. My wife and the co-teacher did not get along. It got to the point where she and the co-teacher (and their respective bosses) were sent to mandated mediation.
Near the end of the mediation session, the co-teacher asks the mediator "So what's the next step if this doesn't work?" Turns out, the next step is "The one without tenure gets let go”.
39. He Couldn’t Manage This One
There was an account manager for a big software vendor that always gave us a hard time. He would constantly nag us about terms in the contract and things like that. One day it was time for contract negotiations and our head lawyer attended.
She also happened to be the wife of the company’s owner. Disaster struck so quickly. When we sat down and she gave him some coffee, he bluntly told her how nice it was that she, as a waitress, was also attending. It didn’t take long for them to find us a new account manager.
40. A Room Of One’s Own
Oh boy, this was college drama. My husband still had a year of college to go after I graduated so I got an apartment in town, but he had his room with some friends on an on-campus apartment. After casually asking around, his roommates were cool with me living there so long as I helped with chores.
Well, halfway through the year a roommate moves out to study abroad and one of the other roommate's girlfriends moves in. She seemed nice and the two of us had a lot in common and ended up friends, or so I thought.
A month in, we get confronted by an RA. There's been a complaint that involves everyone about my stay. This took absolutely everyone by surprise…except the couple. Yeah, they tattled on me to the RA. Never once talked to me. Never brought it up.
Anyway, the meeting happens and the couple is late. They arrive and start revealing themselves. The RA's face went from mild disapproval towards me to downright disbelief and annoyance at the girlfriend as she talked herself in circles about how yes, she knew about me before she agreed to move in and was okay with it but she had feelings you know? Those feelings? Those vague feelings?
She was also paranoid as heck because the RA flat-out asked her if she tried talking to me or my husband about it and she said no, absolutely not. Why? She had one experience in the past with a completely unrelated person so she just couldn't. Because of feelings.
Her idiot boyfriend just sat there silent, only saying once that he never liked the idea but never spoke up because he didn't want to "ruin the apartment vibe" which was ruined by him anyway so...yeah.
All the while I was perfectly calm and even said it was okay, if they had a problem with the arrangements I would have happily just stayed in my apartment with my husband visiting. Everyone else was telling the RA how completely out of the blue this was.
So the RA, who is very fed up with them, tells me that per bylaws I can't be in the apartment unless I'm someone's guest. To which the 3 other roommates immediately say that if my husband isn't home, I can be their guest.
One of them is nearly almost always home. The RA agrees. The couples' faces were honestly hilarious. After that, no one in the apartment liked them. They hid in one room for the rest of the year.
She did attempt to patch things up with me by gaslighting the whole situation, but I just laughed at her and told her she showed her true colors and I wanted nothing to do with her. She was genuinely shocked.
41. I Did It My Way
A contractor on a project I'm working on was doing a really poor job installing equipment. I found their foreman and attempted to show him what he was doing wrong and what needed to be done to fix it. Some of it was so bad I was worried about it failing.
He wanted nothing to do with me. Then he said the words that did it for me. “I've been doing this for 10 years and have installed 12 of these. I don't need your help. We'll take care of it”. Well, I've been doing this for almost 19 years, and making sure it's done correctly is my full-time job.
Ok. Good talk. A few days later I was onsite and saw that he kept doing it his way and hadn't fixed anything. He had installed more of it poorly. I called a meeting and voiced my concerns and a stop work order was issued until the corrections were made.
His bosses realized his attitude cost them thousands and he was off the job the next day.
Jirapong Manustrong, Shutterstock
42. Butterfly Effect
One day, my ex decided to try to snatch our kid from his own mother’s care while I was at work. This was after I filed for divorce. He was intoxicated, failed a sobriety check, and I was granted emergency custody.
It was probably one of the single worst decisions that set him up to be in the position he’s in now.
43. Slow Your Roll
I’m an attorney, and several years ago I had to argue a bitterly contested issue for a client against another attorney who was a complete fool. He went first, and I followed for just a few minutes because I could tell he was about to go off the rails in his response.
Which he did. He started throwing out every argument he could think of. The judge was getting annoyed and told him to stop a few times. Even though he was straight-up lying about my client, I decided it was best if I just turned and walked away from the podium we were standing at and let him keep going.
By the end, I was towards the back of the courtroom. After another minute of this nonsense, the bailiff had to come up and put his hand on the back of the attorney and tell him to stop. Still, the only time I’ve ever seen that happen.
44. Now It’s Personal
I’m a lawyer, and I’m in a jury trial. It's an assault case. My client is pleading self-defense after somebody got whupped. I can't get a bunch of the stuff want into evidence, so I have no choice but to put my client on the stand.
I know this is high risk/high reward. I've prepped the client. We go for it. I get the basics out and let the prosecutor go at him. Well, he got in there and HARANGUED him, mostly about not calling the authorities after the altercation.
The opposing counsel then does a rebuttal. He oputthe officer on the stand to explain how much they don't like my client, don't trust him, wouldn't put anything past him or turn their back on him, etc. It's a small community, they know each other. Reputation evidence, in essence.
I let it go past what I could object to. I was sitting there like "Oh this is too much but go off officer”. It wrote my closing for me. "Why didn't he go to the authorities? The officer told you why he doesn’t”.
45. Timing Is Everything
I reminded my ex-wife the divorce court was the next day and she told me to screw off. So I went by myself. She failed to appear and angered the judge. He asked what would be my desired outcome for assets and custody of the kids. He wrote down whatever I wanted, and I could practically hear her screams when she read the orders from 3500 km away.
46. All-Terrain Idiot
My co-worker messed up and rolled one of the ATVs we use for work. Nice enough guy, but not a good worker and very immature. Plus, before his he got called out for riding it too hard all the time. A meeting was had, and we were told: “not to lift a tire off the ground when turning”.
Except anyone who has ridden an ATV knows that sometimes, even at low speeds, the rear tire will lift. My boss was just exaggerating for some of the dumber ones in the room. Later on, my other co-worker turns around next to me on the ATV (at a reasonable speed) and the tire lifts a bit.
This original idiot co-worker sees this and snitches on the radio, just to try to get someone else in trouble besides himself. I offhandedly called him a snitch off the radio a few minutes later when I was near him.
He then gets on the radio to our boss AGAIN and throws a fit about what I said and has a meltdown. We all get called into the office, but beforehand, the other two of us involved agreed to just be chill, apologize, and let our idiot co-worker talk his way into getting fired.
The boss understood what happened from the start, and as this guy got worked up about the situation all over again, my boss told the kid if he left the room mid-conversation, he was fired. Which he promptly did.
Sergei Domashenko, Shutterstock
47. What Goes Around Comes Around
A guy pilfered a presentation from me 25 years ago. We hated each other. When he started presenting, I realized I had made a huge error in my presentation that he had then repeated, but I didn’t say anything yet. I let him get through it.
I then asked him about the error, and he couldn’t answer. This was in front of the CEO. He got fired, not for just that, he was an overall jerk.
48. Lost In Translation
In high school Spanish, this stereotypical dumb jock who sat in front of me would turn around and take my paper from me to copy my answers. He knew he could get away with it because I was an awkward pushover. But I knew just what to do. One day, I took two copies of a verb worksheet and purposefully put down wrong answers because this guy was like clockwork.
He took the wrong answer copy like a complete sucker, and the next day when the teacher was passing back papers, his worksheet said 60% and mine was 100%. He turns around extremely angry and says, "You got these wrong!!!”
I showed him my worksheet with a perfect score and said, "I'm flattered that you trust me so much". Take that, Patrick. I still savor picturing the disgust on your face 20 years later.
Monkey Business Images, Shutterstock
49. Read It And Weep
I was an attorney. A man sues my client, alleging he missed work for protected reasons, and his termination was wrongful. I look up the plaintiff in the public records database. That’s when I made a slam-dunk discovery. I see that he had court dates on all of the days he missed work.
Instead of immediately confronting the plaintiff before the court and giving him time to change his story, I depose him and have him walk me through every minute of every day he missed work. He leaves out the court part.
A month after the deposition, I send the plaintiff’s lawyer printouts of the court records with the relevant dates highlighted, along with paperwork to voluntarily dismiss the case and a letter stating that any further action in the case will result in a motion against him for bad faith litigation.
Don’t hear a peep from the lawyer, but get the dismissal order from the judge a week later.
50. Quit Your Bellyaching
When I was an 4th grade, my friend and I would kick leaves into a pile that blew against the fence during recess. Eventually ,this one kid found out and right as we were finishing making the pile, would come over to us.
He was small, but the two biggest kids in 5th grade acted like his enforcers. We could let him jump in the pile, or get beat up. One day I decided that since there was a cut-down tree stump there, I'd just bury the stump under the leaves.
Sure enough ,he comes over and demands he gets first jump. I told him it was a bad idea but he goes and full bellyflops right onto the stump. Never had to deal with him jumping into my leaf pile again.
Sources: Reddit,
