Whether it's for something completely petty, or getting back at someone for completely ruining your life, there's nothing like the sweet, sweet taste of revenge. These people decided to serve it both ice cold—and absolutely brutal.
1. 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.
2. Office Space
This happened years ago, but still makes me smile. I started working in a corporate office in a secretarial position for my first job after college. There were two older ladies who were also secretaries working in the office. One of them was just fine, but I spent most of my time sitting beside and working with Agnes. Agnes was quickly approaching retirement age and wasn’t going anywhere without a big push.
This was in the days where we just started getting computers and she was absolutely hopeless. She’d pull stuff like “I can’t answer the phone—I’m on the computer". Multi-tasking was not in this woman’s repertoire. She was also super fussy and annoying. If I ever came back from lunch five minutes late, she would exclaim loudly “Oh my god, there you are! I was wondering what had happened to you!” making sure the whole office knew I was late.
Meanwhile, she was usually late coming in in the morning and often left early for various appointments. If I made a typo in a document, she would make sure the rest of the staff knew about it, loudly. She tended to pout when things didn’t go her way, and she would “quit” her job when someone ticked her off, and then my boss’s boss would talk her into staying.
I’d heard about this tactic of hers and one day, our boss did something that annoyed her and she “quit” again. My boss’s boss was away that day, so I took my chance. I quickly advertised and planned a big retirement party for her. It was a done deal by the end of the day. People were dropping by and congratulating her, and everyone looked forward to the party.
At that point, I guess she figured it was too late to pull her usual shenanigans and she actually retired. I told my boss to not bother replacing her because it was darn easy to cover the little work she actually accomplished every day. And guess what? It was.
3. The Winning Kick
I was a primary school teacher in a rural central school. I had this one kid in my class of nine students who were constantly disruptive. He would jump up and down on the desks, throw objects at staff and students, and would swear constantly. Not much could be done, one of his parents worked at the school and the principal almost refused to suspend or expel him no matter how bad his behavior was.
One afternoon, I was out on playground duty and he was kicking a soccer ball around with some other kids. The ball came past me and I stopped it. He yelled out, "Kick it here," while calling me a name and walking toward me. I took a few steps back, lined him up, and belted the life out of the ball. What happened next made everyone's jaws drop. It hit him square in the nuts and stomach.
He fell down like a bag of bricks. All the kids in the playground were laughing and I ran over to "see if he was OK". He got up and looked at me with tears welling in his eyes. I had a slight smirk on my face and said, "You wanted it, you got it". Then his face turned back toward the ground again and he began throwing up.
He didn't come back to school for four days after that, and when he eventually did come back, he was almost a model student for the remainder of the year. The next year I was put in a different class and his issues started arising again. He didn't last till the end of the first term before his parents decided to home-school him.
4. All That Glitters
I work for a construction company and we do remodeling on homes. We have a rule here that we get to keep anything we find hidden behind the walls. We hired this guy (we really needed a worker badly) who was a total jerk from day one. I’ve been working for this company for five years and this guy has only been doing construction for one year after he got fired from his accounting job.
Anyways, he would always make fun of my clothes and my accent, and one day he went too far by telling my boss about my private Instagram account pictures. He got on my phone and looked through my Instagram page and showed my boss pictures of me with weed. Joke’s on him; my boss is my friend from eight years ago and this wasn’t a surprise to him.
Still, I was so mad that he violated my privacy—so I made a plan to screw him right over. He was the kind of guy who would always come in late and complain that trains or traffic is why he was always late. One day, I overheard him saying that if he won the lottery he would quit this job for not getting the "respect" he deserves.
You know, because you have to earn your respect here. So a few days later, I bought some fake gold coins online and put them in a metal box I found at the antique store. Then I waited for a chance to hide it in a wall. Luckily, I did not have to wait long. The day he found the coins, it seemed like it was his best day ever.
The first thing he did when he opened the box was call my boss a loser and quit immediately on the spot. He said, “screw this place, I’m rich". Little did he know, that was the best day of my life. After he quit, my boss told us that he was going to fire him anyways for always showing up late...I wish I could see the look on his face when he finds out the gold coins are fake. Best $40 I spent in my entire life.
5. Bringing The House Down
I had the neighbor's house condemned and torn down. It's kind of a long story, but it was so worth it. So, the property next to me had two houses on it. The owners decided to gut and remodel one of them, and they piled the demolition debris in the front yard...directly next to my house. That stuff stayed there for a full year, with the owners ignoring my every effort to get them to do something about it (they did not live on the property, they were renting it out).
So I eventually checked with the city about their remodel permits and found that not only did they not have permits, but as far as the city was concerned, the house didn't exist. It had been built with no plans or permits filed and tied into the other house utilities. So I talked to the city planner’s office and they came out to put a stop-work order on the house (which was not really necessary since no work had been done in a year).
They also condemned the house. They told the owners they wouldn't be fined or prosecuted if they demolished the property. That sounds drastic, but the house was already gutted with no windows or doors, and they weren't going to let them restore it. So that's how I got someone's house torn down.
6. I Don’t Know Her
I’m a 20-year-old girl, and I’ve been teased all my life and have been in recovery for a multitude of things for the past year or so. I go to university in the same city I grew up in, so there's a high chance of me coming across people who I went to previous schools with who hurt or tormented me. I was well known for being bad-tempered and easy to wind up when I was younger.
What happened: I was in the pharmacy waiting to pick up my prescription when someone shouted something at me. I pretended to not hear them and they shouted again. They ended up getting frustrated and tugging on my arm. I twisted around and immediately recognized who it was—a guy around my age who had teased me for over 10 years.
So rather than get angry, I thought I would mess with him and see what happens. Him: Hi, heard you were in around here. Me: I'm sorry, but I don't know who you are, do I know you from somewhere? Immediately he deflated. It was glorious to see, and I had to stop myself from smiling. Him: It's me, [his name], from school. Come on, you know me.
Me, with a confused face, acting 100: I'm really sorry, but I don't know you. Did we go swimming together perhaps? Him: .....no, I don't think so Me: I'm really sorry but I just don't know who you are. I think you should go to the back of the line, sir. I then went on my phone and just blocked him out of everything we could possibly be connected on.
He looked lost and eventually went to the back of the line. I got my prescription, ignored him, and went to my car and drove off. I literally screamed for joy and also because I was about to break down. It was a wonderful feeling, to see him like that and to feel like he had nothing against me. To make him feel like he hadn't had a large effect on my life, even if he had.
7. Bait And Switch
I taught a high school stats class. There was a group of very talkative and disruptive kids who were doing well. I sensed something was fishy. When I looked at their tests, I saw that they all had the same answers. So I looked at the seating chart and noticed that they could all look over each other's shoulders of the smart, quiet girl. I knew what I had to do for the next time.
I decided to give her a different test; only her. When I handed back the tests, I told everyone who got under 50% to come and see me. These kids got around 10%. When I was alone with them, I said, "Well, this is your punishment for cheating. Don't do it again".
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8. Sort Out Your Priorities
I am 5'4" male who looks less muscular than I am. I was in line for priority boarding and it had just started when the woman behind me said "Excuse me, this is for priority boarding. You need to wait with everyone else". I ignored her and presented my boarding pass with my active duty ID. My only revenge was when the attendant said "thank you for your service".
I turned to the woman behind me, grinned, and said "thanks!" Before boarding.
9. Cooking With Gas
Several years ago, I lived in the northwest coast of Puerto Rico. It’s a very relaxed area, with tons of good restaurants and lots of green space. My apartment was on a cliff, not far from the water. The electric infrastructure was a bit old, so when it was rainy season, we’d lose power for a few hours at a time. Not a big deal—I had a gasoline generator.
Enter a new neighbor. He lived two doors down from me, and drove an amazing custom Chevy van from the 70s. All it needed was an epic airbrushed Wizard on the side. Sadly though, that’s where anything good about him ended. I caught him taking the gas out of an orange jug I’d leave outside in case the generator ran out. Although I saw him do it, and called him out on it, he denied it and played stupid.
So after the second time, I took all of the gas in the jug, filled the generator with it, and put the rest in my car. I then went to the nearest gas station that had diesel and filled it up with diesel. A few days later, I am woken up by a tow truck backing up to pick up his now disabled van. I looked out the window and you could see the anger on his face. He moved out the next month, and from what I gathered from talking to people in the community, he was a general piece of trash human and what happened to him was deserved.
10. You Are What You Eat
A couple of things about me that made it really suck to have a food thief: I have a lot of food allergies, so I can't just get lunch at the cafeteria or at a nearby restaurant. I have a new baby, who I'm breastfeeding, and who I pump for when I'm at work. You know how hungry pregnant people are? Yeah, the caloric requirement for breastfeeding is 100-200 calories higher. I am always hungry.
Because I have a new baby, half the time I don't manage to show up at work with a lunch. I either run out of time to pack one, or if I did remember, I leave it on the counter. My solution to all of this was to leave lots of non-perishable snacks in my office. And also a lot of candy, because I also have a three-year-old and therefore work is the only place I can shovel Skittles into my mouth without a little hand extending into my field of vision and a little voice saying "pwease?"
These were snacks that were specifically free of my allergens. Some were also specialty foods because of this. The type of specialty food that just doesn't taste as good as food that contains the allergen, and also costs twice as much. Because I'm not getting a lot of sleep right now, I deserve nice things. So, because I'm not getting a lot of sleep right now, when I first came back from maternity leave, assembled my snack hoard, and started having things go missing, I genuinely thought I was just losing my mind.
Boxes of candy were running out faster than I thought I was eating them. I'd come in in the morning and things wouldn't be where I'd left them. At one point, I brought a bag of chips to work, folded the rim of the bag down so I wasn't plunging my arm elbow-deep into a grease pit, and then put a bag clip on it when I went home. When I came in the next morning the bag was unrolled and re-clipped.
I went "Wow, I must be more tired than I thought," rolled the bag back down, and the next morning it was unrolled again. Just little things like that, almost every day, that made me go "Wow, the post-baby brain is worse than I thought!" And then. And then! Then I got the flu. I got sick, and I was out for a whole week. Left behind at the office was an almost-full box of Enjoy Life cookies, which are not enjoyable but are free of all major allergens, and are also $5 a box for, like, 12 sad little sand pies with some cinnamon on top.
I ate one row of these cookies, and then I was out of the office for a week. For one week, I was not eating any of my snack hoard. But someone else was. Because I came back to work, opened my box of cookies, and found one. There was one single, solitary cookie left. And, on further examination, the one box of candy that had been opened was nowhere to be found, and on top of that the thief had done me the courtesy of opening a new box for me, except that they actually followed the "push here to open" instructions instead of just ripping one end of the box open like I do.
The combination of these two things—the sheer freaking audacity it takes to open a new box so you can continue taking from someone, on top of the consumption of almost a whole box specialty cookies that aren't even GOOD—enraged me enough that, after going to my boss and getting some vague promises about checking if the security cameras in my wing of the building are functional or not (what??) I went straight to Amazon and ordered myself a nanny cam.
Not for my baby. For my snack hoard. Conveniently, it arrived the day before Valentine's day. I set it up on top of a file cabinet looking down at my desk. On the desk, I laid out a fantastic spread of snacks. I got all my thief's favorites, and then I took it one step further. I bought myself a Valentine heart, broke the seal to make it more inviting, and left it out on my desk.
The next morning, I came in to some very obvious snack carnage. My thief had slowly been getting more brazen (again, who OPENS a new box of something?? And opens it DIFFERENTLY than the person they are taking from??) but this was just on another level. Individually wrapped things had been dumped out of their boxes. Bits of packaging had been thrown away. And, yup; they'd eaten some of the Valentine candy.
For shame, office thief! Don't you know that's from someone who loves me?? I played back the video. All was quiet throughout most of the evening, and I was just watching the shadows lengthen as the sun slowly set through the hallway window. And then! Shortly before midnight! The night janitor arrived! And went right ahead and took a 12-minute break in my office, sitting in my chair, eating my food.
I started taking screenshots. I got him shoveling candy into his mouth with full palm-to-lips intensity. Pouring things out onto the desk to pick his favorite flavors. Not even bothering to put them back where he found them. And yes. Eating my Valentine's candy. Screenshots went directly to my boss in an email. I went directly to my boss's door to hover and grin and ask if he'd read my email.
And I got assurances of a strongly worded email to the cleaning company and the barring of this particular employee from our place of business. I was also, tactfully, asked to please take my unauthorized spy camera home, which I did. I thought this was over, but it wasn’t. One day, the girl who works the concession stand dropped by to thank me. Apparently the food thief would start his shift just as she was closing down for the night, and would try to get free coffee in that "creepy guy" way.
And then one of the reception staff came by with the same sentiments. I'd never met the guy face-to-face, but apparently, as a woman, it was not a fun experience to have. I'd shown my screenshots to a few co-workers and word had spread fast. I worked an earlier shift, so I didn't recognize him, but people whose shifts overlapped with his did.
I hadn't told my husband about what I'd done because when I came home raging about the blatant theft that had gone on while I'd been sick, his only response had been "You really shouldn't be leaving food at work, then". But, when I came home with the nanny cam and explained where and why I'd gotten it, his reaction surprised me".
You know, I think this is the first time I've seen you stand up for yourself. I'm proud of you". Y'know what? I'm proud of me too!
11. Spoiler Alert
I was a physics teacher at a private all-boys high school. One of my students was always very rowdy, and normal threats or punishments weren't working. I found out this kid loved Game of Thrones, and that worked brilliantly in my favor. One day, when I asked the kid to quiet down and he refused, I gave him a Game of Thrones spoiler. I then informed him that every time he misbehaved, I would spoil the show for him.
He didn't believe me, so he tested it out a couple of times and was met with a new spoiler each time. He didn’t misbehave in class after that.
12. Snowed In
I live in New Jersey and we just had a snowstorm so I thought I could make some quick cash by shoveling driveways. So I start off and do a couple of houses and make about $80 (pretty good money for me). So I go to this house and this lady says that she will give me $50 for shoveling her driveway and sidewalk, so I start and finish about 20 minutes later.
I go up to the door and knock, but she won’t open it. I go to the back door and knock, she still doesn’t open. Then I see her looking at me through the window but she quickly turns away and pretends like nothing happened. At this point, I realize that I just got tricked into doing a ton of work and I’m not getting paid. I start to walk home all angry—until it hits me.
I remember that my friend who lived down the street has one of those machines that clear snow. Let the revenge begin. I borrow it from him and run down to her house. I turn it on and blast that snow that I shoveled and some more all on her yard. Then she rushes outside and starts yelling at me, but I return the machine to my friend’s house and go home.
13. The Grass Is Greener
In our first house, my wife and I had a neighbor who disliked us from the start. Apparently, the people who lived in the property before we did were his family friends—they went through a divorce and ended up selling the house to us. He was petty and mean to my wife, who doesn’t like confrontation, and he'd do annoying things to mess with her.
He'd park across our driveway before she left for work, throw pieces of wood over the fence, let his dog go all over our lawn and not pick any of it up, etc. I tried talking to him a couple of times, but he promptly told me to screw off. That was the last straw—I had to fight back. I knew he loved his lawn because he'd always brag about how it looked to everyone, so the next time it rained, I went out back and threw an entire box of oxo cubes into their backyard and let the rain melt them into the grass.
His dog absolutely destroyed his yard looking for the smell and I would make sure to comment on it every chance I got. We moved shortly after.
14. Dad Of The Year
So, my daughter, who was about eight at the time, was REALLY into Minecraft, as most kids are these days. She was also desperately wanting to join the YouTube/Let's Play culture, so I had installed some screen recording software that would let her make videos of the games she was playing so she could later upload them to YouTube.
Anyways, one day I'm minding my own business when I hear her quietly sniffling over on the computer. I asked her what was wrong, but she didn't want to tell me so I let it go, but decided to keep on eye on her. A few minutes later I discovered what was happening. Someone was harassing not only her, but also all the other kids playing on whatever server she was on.
This kid was saying stuff about how he was going to harm my eight-year-old daughter (she told him how old she was hoping he would stop), how he was going to hack into her IP and take her information, swearing profusely (remember, this is a game for kids), etc etc. By this time I had gotten my fiancée involved, and she was also obviously quite upset at what this kid was doing.
We then realized that our daughter had been recording the entire incident, and a plan began to form. I started by googling the kid’s username. There were several hits immediately, the most interesting of which involved a page where he was publicly applying to be a mod for a server on Minecraft. I was able to learn a lot about this little idiot.
He claimed to be 15, likes hockey, used to live in Toronto but now lives in Florida. But the real shocker was easily his Skype contact info; it was literally firstname.lastname. I know your name now, you jerk. So I head over to Facebook and search for the name. Nothing. Hmmmm. On a hunch, I searched for just the last name, while narrowing my results to only the state of Florida.
Several dozen hits. Hmmm. So I have to start combing through each one, until I find what I was looking for: A middle-aged man with the same last name, whose profile indicates he was born in Toronto and now lives in Florida. I FOUND YOUR DAD, YOU LITTLE JERK. So I sent him a message on Facebook, asking if he had a son named firstname who goes by his username on Minecraft.
Dad confirmed I had the right guy. So my fiancée begins telling the dad everything that his son was saying to my daughter, and we sent him the recorded video as proof. Radio silence for a few days. Then we got the message back. This jerk had his computer taken away from him for the entire summer. He had also been lying about his age; he was only 11, I think.
His parents were livid with him, and he surely hated the next few months of his life. No one screws with my daughter.
15. A Bump In The Road
This happened a few months ago as I was driving my work van, which is the biggest Mercedes sprinter you can drive without a commercial license, around Amsterdam delivering groceries. This story takes place on a single-lane road with high curbs on both sides that takes you from one neighborhood to another. The speed limit is 50 km.
Now, I've driven here so many times before that I feel comfortable doing 60-ish, just a bit faster than normal without the risk of getting caught speeding in an urban area. Suddenly I hear a loud beep behind me, and wouldn't you know it, it's a BMW! "What a surprise!" I think to myself. I was quite impressed by my ability to guess the brand of this automobile, because everything forward of the rear doors wasn't visible in my mirrors.
The tailgating and honking continues for a little while until I spot the perfect opportunity to teach this IKEA-pencil-equipped jerk a lesson: a long straight section in the road. For those of you who haven't been to the Netherlands before, our government loves two things: taxes and using those taxes to build speed bumps.
As such, we have a wide variety of speed bumps, and this straight section was equipped with my personal favorite: the bus bypass variant, a trapezoid block just wide enough that a normal car has to pass over it with at least one wheel, but a bus can pass over it unobstructed. I've had plenty of practice with these obstacles and line up for a flawless pass while accelerating to a mind-numbing 70 km.
The BMW is still glued to my rear bumper. I pass over the obstacle without the slightest inconvenience. The oblivious BMW driver, however, hits it in the worst possible way, launching himself into the ceiling of his car and grinding his oil pan as the suspension compresses on him. After that little incident, he kept a good distance.
16. The Grass Is Greener On The Other Side
My neighbor is a retired 70-something former preacher. He's also a judgmental jerk who makes weekly rounds through the neighborhood looking for any minor code violations. Things like flowers that are overhanging onto the sidewalk by an inch or two, etc. He can report it to the city to get the owners fined. He also mows his lawn twice per day during the summer and has a bed of green that would make Hank Hill proud.
I take pride in my yard, but it's 70% native plants and wildflowers with a small patch of grass in the front. I don't water the grass because pouring water on the ground seems stupid to me, but it (along with a healthy mix of other stuff) comes in pretty full and there aren't any bare spots anyway. I mow every five days, less if we're in a dry spell and it grows slower.
Anyway, when I get out there, I cut all the grass, but with a focus toward leaving a path that is as baffling as possible. Sometimes I will attempt a checkerboard and then veer off into spirals, other times I will approach with an even more abstract eye. The grass doesn't seem to mind and I enjoy the challenge of thinking of new ways to traverse the lawn.
Today, I saw my neighbor standing out front with his grandson who got sent to live with him for some reason. He was complaining to him about something, throwing his hands up in the air, clearly very exasperated...Then he gestured toward my lawn and then made a little spiral gesture while contorting his face in disgust.
I don't know exactly what he said, but I imagine he was lecturing him about how if he didn't get his life together he'd end up like me, the neighbor with the weird lawn. Small victories, you know?
17. Noise Pollution
I used to have a terrible work schedule. I'd have to wake up at 2:30 am every morning so I could be at work by 4 am. My downstairs neighbors would blare loud music at all hours of the night and I could feel the bass through my mattress. I went downstairs and politely asked them to turn down the music, and they seemed to kindly agree.
As soon as I got back into bed, they turned it up even louder and kept it going until about 1:30 am. They didn't know who they were messing with. Before I left for work at 3:30 am, I turned over my amplifier so that the speaker was facing the floor. I turned the volume up and set my guitar on top of it. I left for my 12-hour shift, and the feedback was still screaming when I came home. The neighbors never blasted their music again.
18. Scorched Earth
This all happened to me a few years ago. I told a friend the story of my divorce, and I was told to share. I thought we were happy. We were your usual suburban professional couple. Financially secure, healthy, good bedroom life, two kids—a 14-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy at the time. I thought we had a healthy social life, too.
We were going through one of your typical married couple rough patches. Both of us were working long hours, not spending enough time together, and we were going through some developmental problems with my son and tensions in the house were running a little high. I noticed that she was spending a lot more time on her phone texting with her "girlfriends".
I didn't think much of it, though now I wish I had. I started making a much more concerted effort to get out of work when I could, help around the house and be more emotionally available, but over the course of a few weeks the gulf just kept getting wider. I ended up accidentally finding some messages when I charged up an old IPad for my son to use.
Her FB messenger was still logged in and there were a lot of highly questionable messages with a guy from her hometown who I will call JimBobCooter or JBC for short. The messages weren't completely inappropriate, but I could tell there were quite a few missing based on the times and context of the messages. I made a mental note to keep an eye on this and went about trying to fix things up.
The next day, I took the day off to knock out some projects that I thought would make her happy, and left her some sweet notes reminding her how much I appreciated her. Still, she was once again in the corner of the living room "texting her girlfriends". I took the boy’s iPad to the office opened up FB messenger…and watched in real time as my wife tore me down.
Her and JBC were making fun of me. All of my flaws, insecurities and secrets I entrusted to my partner were now fodder for her and JBC. Not only that, but while there wasn't outright innuendo, there was an undertone to the whole conversation, especially when she was bashing my performance in the sack. I managed to take some screenshots, but missed a good bit of the messages, because as the conversation was unfolding she was deleting them.
I wasn't emotionally capable of confronting her. I stayed in the office until she was asleep and had a couple drinks. I took off the next day and spent some time soul searching, drinking, and trying to figure out what to do. The wife came home and wanted to know what was wrong and I just copped out and told her I had a bad day. A couple minutes later I was watching the iPad again. The train wreck kept unfolding.
So began a couple solid weeks of taking screenshots, drinking and detaching myself from the relationship. I knew there was no going back from this. The messages were now overtly intimate with my wife completely into it, and JBC was sprinkling in "I love yous". I consulted a lawyer and got my options, and started moving forward. Here's where everything got absolutely surreal.
Watching the messages, I found out JBC was coming to town to spend a weekend of quality time with my wife in a pretty nice hotel. I was missing a good bit of the info, as they must have had a phone conversation about it at some point, but I was able to infer enough to get the when and where. Sure as heck, the next day the wife is buttering me up and wanting to take a spa weekend with the girls to relax and when she gets back we can really focus on our marriage.
I go with it all the way. It's the greatest idea she's ever had, and I'll do anything to get us back on track. I get with the lawyer and have him draft a strong separation agreement stating that she would move out, she would get weekend visitation, no child support in the interim until the divorce is final. Then I sit through the most agonizing two weeks of my life.
After all this, most of my feelings for her are completely gone, and I'm just seething with anger like I've never felt before. D-day arrives. I take the day off work. I withdraw half of any money in any accounts we are joint on, leave her half alone. I had already redirected my pay check to a new bank. I close our money market account and get a cashiers check for her half and deposit my half in my new account.
I stop at office max and print out about 75 pages of FB messenger screenshots, and I waste time because I don't want to be at home. She texts me that she's taking off and that she loves me. I tell her to have fun. I show up to the hotel at about 8:30 and call the wife's phone from the lobby. It goes straight to voicemail. They are probably already at it, whatever.
I walk up to the front desk and ask if I can use the phone to be connected to JBCs room. It rings three times and he picks up. JBC: Hello? Me: JBC, can you send my wife down to the lobby please? JBC: I don't know what you're talking about, bro. Me: Ok then. I guess I'll have to call Mrs. JBC and get her down here. (Totally a bluff. I knew he was married, and I knew her first name, but that was it.)
JBC: (Inaudible, shuffling, panic) Me: You got five minutes. Click Not even two minutes later, my wife comes walking out of the elevator looking a little flustered. I sit her down in the corner of the lobby. Her: Starts spewing garbage saying it's not what it seems etc., etc. Me: I'm not here to argue. The things that are said in this pile of papers are what's going on. The only way I'm not giving a copy of this to our daughter, your parents, and emailing it to everyone we know is if you move out immediately.
See, my wife was very prideful. Our daughter was going through a rebellious teen phase and her knowing probably would have forever ruined their relationship. My wife was also her parents’ golden child and she always worried about what they thought of her. I didn't have much leverage, and shame was my only card to play. Also her professional life is built up around her image, so I knew she would protect that at all costs.
Her: Sniffle, mumble, inaudible Me: This is a check for half of the money market account. I've withdrawn my half of the money from all the other joint accounts. You should have more than enough to get a place. She starts to cry a little. I could almost see the different thoughts and waves of emotions going through her, but now was the time to keep pressing.
Me: Here is a separation agreement that I think is more than fair considering what's going on. I'm going to need you to look this over, sign it, and leave it at the house when you get your stuff. Do you want to look through these screenshots? Her: No. Me: Ok. Go have fun with JBC. Do not come back to the house or I'm going to send this (holds up ream of screenshots) to everyone.
I bounce out of the lobby, and I can hear her start to have a breakdown. I get to the car drive off to a parking lot and have my own crying rage fit. Previously I would have cried in front of her and yelled and whatnot but I managed to get my stuff together enough to pull it off. I don't know what she did that night or over the weekend. She texted and called over and over, wanting to talk.
I just turned the phone off and by the time Monday afternoon rolled around there were movers getting her stuff and she delivered the agreement. I let her have a talk with the kiddos basically saying mommy and daddy need some time apart, we still love you, etc., etc. Standard divorce talk. After a week she wants to have a real talk for the first time.
I oblige her because I've already got my stuff together and I've got an idea of what I want, but I should hear her out. She's so sorry. She wants another chance. She wants her family back. She'll do anything. She's on her knees crying into my lap. I have no intention of ever taking her back. I tell her she needs to set up marriage counseling on her own at a time that works for me.
I tell her that I can't live with her, but she should be around the children to try to maintain a relationship with them. So starts our new normal of her coming over the house, cooking and having dinner with the kids three nights a week (she always saved me a plate, I made myself scarce), her cleaning the house and doing the kids’ laundry then heading back to her place.
We went to counseling. It consisted of her working through her issues with the therapist trying to figure out why she did it, her begging for forgiveness, and me stoically playing the victim. I was never going to give her another chance. All I wanted to do was waste time, establish myself as the primary caregiver to the kids, and establish her as not having residency in the house.
After a few months, I go to my own therapist and get diagnosed with depression and PTSD. I ask my work if it's possible to go to part time for the foreseeable future to deal with personal issues, and it's no big deal. After six months of therapy, I told her that I couldn't forgive her right now and that I wanted an amicable divorce, but she is still the love of my life and maybe someday we could give it another try.
She was devastated, but agreed to the divorce if I promised to try again someday. Once the divorce was filed I needed the kids to want to stay with me. I left a Google search for "how to survive your wife's infidelity" up on the shared PC at home, and I left some printed out infidelity articles not so hidden in the kitchen. My daughter found them and came to me crying.
I told her she wasn't supposed to find those, that mom made a mistake, that mom still loves her, and that I would always be here for her. My daughter who used to hold my wife in such high regard now wouldn't talk to her without screaming, and it crushed her. Not surprisingly when the court needed statements from the kids a few months later, little brother followed big sister’s lead and they both wanted to stay with Dad in the house they grew up in.
When the divorce was finalized I got the house (had to buy out some of her equity, but that's ok). I got primary custody of the kids. I got awarded generous child support due to the difference in our incomes due to me working part time. Now for the last two years, I've gotten to live in the house with my kids, work part time, get the now-ex to subsidize it for me, and when she takes the kids over the weekends I get to have my fun with tinderellas and some FWBs I've cultivated.
In the eyes of my kids I'm the patron saint of fatherhood for taking the high road and always being there. In the eyes of my ex I'm the one that got away that she will always pine for, and I get the bonus of having her come over for intimacy whenever I want it by dangling that carrot of maybe getting back together. But that is never going to happen.
19. You’ve Got Mail
I had a letter mailed to my office that was basically threatening me, saying I better stop handing out C’s and D’s or "word on the street" was going to come out that I was a bad teacher. It might not seem like the worst rumor, but if spread correctly, no one would take my class and I'd be out of a job. I had a pretty good idea of who it was.
For obvious reasons, I immediately ruled out all the students doing well in my classes but didn't think direct accusations would be effective anyway. I decided to get to the bottom of it, and my plan was rather genius—I took the letter to each of my three classes and turned it into a lesson on faulty rhetoric.
My expectations were exceeded when I began to read the letter out loud and without fail, each class erupted in laughter and exclaimed things like "What a butthead!" before I could even weigh in. The kid I suspected the most was sat slumped in his chair without much to say that day.
20. A For Effort
A few years ago, I was heading to class to take a final in my music history class and I forgot a scantron. I stopped by the college bookstore, grabbed a scantron, and ran up to the counter. This is when I met "her". "Her" was a mid-50s woman with wrinkles on her face that can only come with holding a constant scowl on your face for decades.
When I pulled out my card, she pointed to a sign that said $10 minimum. Yes, $10. The scantron was about 20 cents. I can totally get a $5 minimum, but 10? Come on. Well, I didn't have any change in my pocket, but there was a take a penny, leave a penny jar. So I reached over and grabbed a couple of dimes someone was kind enough to leave".
Her" put her hand over the jar and said you can leave change, but you can't take change. At this point, I figured I could either get really upset or play the game she wanted. I told her I understood and that there were a few more items I still needed. I proceeded to go to the furthest corners of the store and pick up about $200-worth of small items from the highest, lowest, and most inconvenient spots in the store.
I walked up to the counter with my basket, and the entire time "Her" had a wicked smile on her face like she'd won. Welp, as soon as I signed for the items, I told her "I'd like to return everything but the scantron please". She was livid! People don't usually yell at me, but she completely lost it. She ended up calling campus officers.
When the officers arrived, they informed her that what I did was completely OK. "Her" couldn't handle it, but had to refund me for everything but the scantron. The officers told me with a smirk to please not do that again. I said yes sir and headed to my final. I was about 20 minutes late for the final, but ended up making an A.
21. A Messy Message
We lived in a neighborhood of townhouses. One neighbor let her dogs go #2 all over everyone’s lawn and she never picked it up. We tried asking her to be more considerate, but she didn't listen. We even tried picking the mess up for her and putting it on their doorstep, but she still refused to do it. So, my one neighbor decided to get a piece of it and smear it all over the front of the house. After that, she started picking it up.
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22. The Bride Wore Blue
Last summer I was at a cousin's wedding. His bride and her family had been close with ours since before I was born, and the couple had known each other since they were toddlers, so it was a particularly exciting event for both sides of the family. However, after the ceremony was over and the party had only just started, one of the bridesmaids decided to announce her own engagement.
The attention was immediately taken away from the newlyweds and brought to the bridesmaid (who I'll call Sarah) and her equally-smug fiancé. My cousin's wife (I'll call her Emma) didn't make a scene or utter a single negative word about Sarah. She looked like she was on the verge of tears, but she kept grinning and acted very happy for the other couple.
This was unusual, as Emma is typically quite confrontational and speaks her mind no matter the consequences. This was a warning sign. Sarah later picked Emma to be the maid of honor at her own wedding, which took place last weekend. I wasn't there for it, but my cousin sent me some of the best bits on snapchat and explained the whole situation. This is where the fun begins.
Emma's two much-younger sisters were the flower girls at Sarah's wedding. At the very last moment, Emma switched out the white petals in their baskets to blue ones she had secretly brought with her. She told her sisters not to say anything about it or let the bride see them until it was time to scatter them down the aisle. Sarah looked very confused upon seeing the blue petals (which didn't coordinate whatsoever with her theme), but of course she didn't say anything about it in the moment.
Most of Sarah's other bridesmaids were also Emma's friends, had attended Emma's wedding, and were in on Emma's scheme. At the reception, Emma's sisters and the other bridesmaids were tight-lipped when Sarah began demanding to know why there were blue petals. The wedding planner ended up getting a lot of flack for not checking the flower girls' baskets before they walked down the aisle.
Finally, it was time for the speeches. The speeches took place in front of a massive screen, displaying a loop of photos with Sarah and her husband, which had been compiled by Emma. Emma took the remote that controlled the presentation screen and at first she showed some pre-approved humorous photos of Sarah with Emma and other friends to facilitate a couple of light-hearted jokes.
Then, at the very end, Emma said to Sarah that she must be wondering why there were blue petals instead of the white ones originally planned. That was when Emma displayed the last slide from her presentation, and jaws dropped. Emma announced in front of everyone that she was five months pregnant, and that she'd just discovered the baby was a boy, hence the blue petals. The last slide? Her ultrasound picture.
There were shocked yells and gasps, Sarah had a fit, but those involved in the scheme cheered so loudly that I sincerely regret watching the snapchat recordings with headphones. Apparently Sarah had been very nasty to her bridesmaids before, driving several of them away and forcing the others to pay ridiculous amounts of money for dresses.
Emma and my cousin were eventually thrown out of the party, but they were all smiles. Sarah's fuming mother went to confront her outside, and Emma retorted with, "Gentle, gentle! I'm pregnant!" I reckon Sarah doesn't speak to the majority of those bridesmaids anymore.
23. Ring, Ring...It’s For You
Once there was a guy sleeping in my calculus class. I walked over to my desk phone and said to everyone, "Did you guys hear that ring?" I picked up the phone, nodded my head, and hung up. Then, I set my brilliant plan into motion—I woke up the guy and told him he was needed in the main office, so he left. The entire class was confused. Ten minutes later, he returned and was like, “They didn't need me at the office". I said, “I know, but I hope that walk woke you up".
24. Mi Casa, Tu Casa
We bought a house a couple of months ago, and the sellers insisted that we pay several small fees that are customarily covered by the seller. The total was $187 and in comparison to the house price, we weren’t going to walk away over something so small. We renovated the house and there was a table/credenza thing that had been built into the entryway.
After demolition, we were planning on throwing it out. When one of the neighbors noticed we had put it outside to be thrown out, they texted the old owners to see if they wanted it, as it was something they said they had loved about the house. The old owners text me, since we were getting rid of it anyway, that surely we wouldn’t mind if they came by and picked it up instead?
I told them interestingly we had recently gotten an offer from someone else to buy it...for $187. Since it was theirs originally, I told them we’d be happy to part with it...for $188. They dropped the check off and picked it up a week later.
25. Nature's On Her Side
My grandmother had a neighbor who refused to help her repair the fence between their properties. It was still fully functional as a boundary line, but it was falling apart. Any conversation about fixing the fence ended with him saying that it was on her property, so it must be her responsibility to repair it. I guess that was fair.
She took a fall and was hospitalized for a few weeks. Upon her return, she found a new fence built an extra five feet into her property and a bill in the mail from the neighbor. He argued with her for months that she owed him, saying that the original fence was actually on his property and that where it was now was the boundary line. So my grandmother got a surveyor and...surprise!
The neighbor had taken five feet of her yard. At that point, she was already very old, frail, and tired of fighting her neighbor. But she had an ingenious way to get her revenge. She planted blackberries along the back fence and within two years, it was covered. Every year, she’d walk the fence and throw seeds over it because, of course, it was still her yard.
After five years of fighting, the blackberries had reclaimed her property. She’s been gone for a few years now but the blackberries remain, and it's her way of haunting her neighbor. He’s tried ripping up the ones on his side of the fence on numerous occasions, but the plants reseed themselves and grow back every year from her side.
26. Not Smart Enough
I took the final for an engineering class this morning. Usually one or two people will go to the bathroom during class, however for totally unknown reasons, about half of the class needed to use the restroom during the exam. Obviously a vast majority of them were looking up the answers on their phones. This irritated me, but I just stayed focused and barely finished since it was a hard exam.
I remembered that there was one particular problem that was only barely related to the stuff we went over in class where part A was fairly easy but I had no idea how to do part B. I didn't fret over it too much though, since that part was only 5 points out of 100. Well, our professor, who is on the older side and I would have thought was somewhat ignorant of technology, sent us an email just now explaining his diabolical plan to catch cheaters.
Many of the students in this class use Chegg (a website that has answers to lots of homework questions if you're not familiar). To be fair, I have an account, too, though I only used it for studying and checking homework solutions. Anyway, he explained that he was tired of people going to the bathroom and looking up answers on their phones, so he made the question I mentioned earlier as a trap.
He purposely made part B impossible to solve and about a month before the final, he got a TA with a Chegg account to ask the exact question, which was distinctly worded to be unique. He then created his own Chegg account and answered the question with a wrong solution that seems right at first glance but is actually fundamentally flawed and very unlikely that someone would make the same assumptions and mistakes independently.
He said that out of 99 exams, 14 of them fell for the trap and that everyone who had his wrong solution on their exam was given a 0 and reported to the university for violating the academic honor pledge they signed on the front. He also sent an email to all the other professors in our department giving them the list of cheaters. Meanwhile, he gave full credit on part B of the question to everyone else.
27. Field Trip Fallout
I had my senior level Abnormal Psych class visit a local homeless shelter. A few people in the class felt it was dumb or a waste of time, so they bailed just as the tour was starting. That ticked me off, so I made sure my next move would teach them a lesson—I made the final exam for that class four questions that were VERY easy to answer; that is if you had stayed for the whole tour.
It was absolutely impossible if you did not.
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28. World’s Best Coffee
One of my best friends, "Alex," was a staffer in a legislative office. His boss was head of a key Senate budget committee, so there were always people coming to solicit the senator’s support for a particular project or grant or whatever. Someone representing an arts program that was looking for a $250K grant is waiting. I'll call her "LobbyAnn".
She comes up to the reception desk and asks for a pen. The Senator keeps giveaway pens with her name on them in stock—reasonably nice ones—so Alex reaches over to the can where the pens are. LobbyAnn says something along the lines of "Well, then the Senator will know that I showed up without a pen". (So what?) She looks across the desk.
Alex has some work spread out with his own favorite pen, an expensive one with lapis inlay and engraved with his name and term of office of a campus organization. LobbyAnn reaches over, snatches it up, and drops it in her purse. Alex, who is a very polite person, is completely gobsmacked and then tells LobbyAnn that's his personal pen and it’s not up for grabs.
In a few minutes, the senator comes out to get LobbyAnn. As they're walking past Alex's desk, he stands up and says in a very clear voice, "I'm going to need my pen back". LobbyAnn stops in her tracks, as does the senator, and Alex says, calmly, "That pen is precious to me, you took it right off this desk, and I want it back".
The senator kind of gasps and says "She took your lapis pen?” and then she turns to LobbyAnn, who is frantically fishing around in her purse and stammering something about just borrowing it, and says, "Give it back". Once the pen is back in Alex's hands, the Senator says to Alex, "Come on back, I need you," and turns and walks back into her office, leaving LobbyAnn standing there as the Senator shuts the inner office door in her face.
Then the senator picks up her purse, smiles a big bright smile, and says, "Want Starbucks?" So she and Alex go out the side door and across the street. They could see the front door of the office from the Starbucks. It apparently took LobbyAnn about five minutes to realize how bad she'd messed up, and that she was not going to see the senator that day or any day.
Indeed, the project that she was going to ask for money toward was probably doomed as well. She'd lined up strong support in the House, so it might have made it through, though it was not the kind of project the senator favored. When she came slinking out, she almost certainly saw Alex and the senator sitting there drinking their drinks. Alex always ends this story with, "That was the best coffee I've ever had".
29. Shade Of Blue
My dad was talking to our neighbor about what color he should paint the house and he said, as a joke: “Well, I might as well paint the old house blue". The neighbor became angry and responded, “You can't do that! A blue house? How stupid and annoying! Don't be dumb,” etc. And that’s how I grew up in a blue house.
30. Domestic Bliss
Blockhead and Sarah have been like family to my wife and I for several years, practically ever since we moved in across the street from them. The four of us were extremely tight. Our kids are the same age as theirs and are all good friends. We were one big family unit. We did dinner together a few times a week. We went on vacations together. I truly saw Blockhead as a brother, and my wife and Sarah were very close too.
Five months ago, I was completely blindsided by the discovery of an affair between my wife and Blockhead. My wife had left her email open on our computer, and I saw an email from her to her long-time therapist saying that Blockhead would be joining her at an upcoming session "again". Uh, WHAT?? My mind started racing. Why in the world would Blockhead be going to her therapy sessions without my knowledge?
I did a search and found some other emails to and from the therapist, proving that Blockhead had been going to sessions together with her for about six weeks. I checked our mobile phone account and discovered that, since late summer, they had been exchanging hundreds of texts every day, peaking at nearly 500/day by the holidays.
Speaking of the holidays, my wife and I hosted both of our families (parents, siblings, etc.) for both Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, and Blockhead and Sarah joined us either for dinner or after dinner on both holidays. Text records showed that the entire time that they were at our house celebrating with our families, my wife and Blockhead were texting each other across the room.
They were doing that pretty much every time the four of us hung out, for months. And, you know, all day, every day just in general. But what bothers me the most is that they were doing it with Sarah and I right there. I confronted my wife with the evidence and she admitted that yes, she and Blockhead had fallen in love. "It just happened! I don't know how! But I love him and I just don't feel anything for you anymore, I'm sorry!"
They had gone on a school district trip together, something had happened in her hotel room, and things had moved quickly from there. She explained, as I lay face-down on the couch, unable to look at her, that they had already made plans to move out and divorce me and Sarah, and while they didn't plan to move in together immediately because of the kids, they'd probably do so eventually.
The meetings with the therapist were supposedly mostly for the purpose of finding a way to break this to me and Sarah as gently as possible, because they were so very concerned for our well-being. Sarah and I are fairly certain that they weren't planning on telling us about the affair at all, and were simply going to "discover" their feelings for one another several months down the line, after they'd come up with some other reason to divorce the two of us.
My wife moved out two months ago. I was, and still am, utterly destroyed. I cry every day. I cried writing the first few paragraphs of this story just now. I worry non-stop about the impact on our kids. But I am also not exactly a shrinking violet when I feel that I've been wronged. And in this case I was, objectively, very very wronged. So, a couple of years ago, Blockhead ran for a Board of Education seat as a pretty extreme underdog.
I helped him with his campaign materials and debate prep, and my wife, a well-known school district employee (this becomes important later), got the word out as best she could. Much to our surprise, he actually won in a squeaker, by just a few dozen votes. Being on the Board became the center of Blockhead's world. He joined every committee that he could.
This turned into the foundation of his affair with my wife, as they were constantly going to school events and meetings together on evenings and weekends. Once I discovered the affair, my thoughts turned pretty quickly to revenge, and it occurred to me that an extramarital affair between a member of the Board of Education and an employee of the school district was at least bad politics and possibly violated district policy.
Making things far worse for them was that my wife was in the running for an open administrative position, and everyone knew that she was more or less guaranteed the job and the major pay raise that came with it. She had just finished her master's degree in school administration, at the urging of her principal and the superintendent, so that she could be promoted to this specific position.
I had plenty of evidence of the affair. Texts from both of them admitting to it, text records showing that they were texting hundreds of times a day, emails to and from the therapist, etc. I considered simply emailing all of the evidence to the Board and the superintendent, but felt like I, as the grieving, betrayed spouse, might not be seen as a credible source.
So instead, I invented a fictitious "furious friend" who was planning on showing up to the next Board meeting and publicly shaming the two of them for their affair. I told my wife that I'd tried to talk this person down but couldn't guarantee that they wouldn't show up and humiliate them publicly. As I expected, this led Blockhead to conclude that the only option was for him to pre-emptively admit the affair to the Board.
The superintendent subsequently recommended that Blockhead resign, which he did. Sarah said that he was utterly humiliated and crushed, and barely got out of bed for a few days afterward. Once word of the affair and Blockhead’s resignation started getting around, the superintendent (a long-time friend of both my wife and Blockhead) contacted my wife and tearfully informed her that it was no longer politically appropriate for her to be promoted to an administrative position within the district.
The position that had been lined up for her was later filled by an outside candidate. This sent waves of confusion and rumor throughout the district, as it was pretty well-known that my wife was getting the job. The day after she was informed that she wasn't getting the promotion, my wife and I, despite our crumbling marriage, took our son out to breakfast together on his birthday, and a parent stopped by our table to congratulate her on her new role.
She said thanks, then excused herself to go cry in the bathroom for a while. I let the dust settle for a couple of weeks, and then, right before my wife moved out, let them in on my little secret. There was never a "furious friend" threatening to expose them in the first place. Just me. Word of all of this has gotten around our fairly small town, which Blockhead grew up in and my wife has worked in for nearly 20 years.
My wife refuses to talk to me about how things are at work now, but I've heard from some people I know in the district that her formerly spotless reputation has taken a major hit. Blockhead, formerly a gregarious social presence in our neighborhood and at events and pubs in town, has completely gone underground and barely emerges to mow his lawn.
He's moving out soon, to a ugly little townhouse which is all he can afford due to all the child support he's going to have to pay his wife. My wife and Blockhead claim that they plan on trying to make things work together, despite all the public humiliation. I wish them lots of luck with that. I'm sure it will be a lot of fun to show their faces together in town.
Sarah and I are still friends. We've been incredibly important to each other since this all started and have certainly gotten a lot closer, but not in the way some think. This would all be so much harder to deal with if I didn't have her to lean on, and she says she feels the same way about me; we're going through basically the exact same situation with the same players, after all.
Blockhead hasn't moved out yet; once he does, we plan to go back to getting the kids together more often like they used to. It'll never be the same, of course. She already does come over with the kids from time to time, but it's just tough with Blockhead’s constant presence across the street.
31. Pain In My Pre-Med
I was a professor at a state university where I taught pre-health and pre-med students. I have many stories, both good and bad, but I've never felt the need to retaliate against a student until one student entered my world. This student wanted to go to medical school, though they were of very middling intellect and came off as socially inept; not to mention personally odious.
She figured the best way to get ahead was to complain about everything. In academia, if you complain enough about a class, we give you a higher grade and send you up to the next poor instructor for you to torment. So, this student went all out to find everything and anything to complain about: the exam had too many questions, lecture notes were not in the format she liked, I didn’t return her emails on the same day, and the list went on.
By the end, she had escalated these issues to the top, and I got called into the Dean's office. My administrators above me have worked with me for years. They knew this student’s history of filing complaints about everything and everyone. They told me to go easy on her just so I could be done with her. I gave her a higher grade than she deserved (which seemed to be the point of all of this), then washed my hands of her...or so I thought.
A year later, I was assigned to be the committee head of the faculty that creates group letters of recommendation for medical school applications. This student submitted the form for our committee to create her recommendation packet. Students can, and SHOULD, waive the right to read these evaluations. If you are afraid of what a professor will say about you, don't ask them for a letter.
The student made sure to point out to the committee in a formal letter that because of the problems she had with ALL of the professors that would be writing letters, she wanted to make sure their letters were appropriate and of the correct tone before we sent them off. Therefore, she would be reviewing them before approving them for inclusion in her packet.
Nobody wanted to write a true letter for fear of getting sued. She would be seeing all of the letters, as would her counsel before we sent them. So our hands were tied. But one brave soul decided to rebel—he went around and solicited her letter-writers into creating sublime choruses of praise. These would be letters you would expect to read to the Nobel Committee about Hawking, Einstein, Newton, and Feynman.
Nobody would believe that a student with this background or MCAT score could get even one of these eulogy masterpieces, let alone such letters from a whole panel. I included a note from the committee stating that the student had previously filed academic complaints against every professor that wrote her a letter, therefore these letters may not reflect her true academic potential.
The student didn't have the right to see THAT part unless they requested it later after the letters had been sent out. She sent out applications to every medical school that existed. Within her application packet came those beautiful letters, and those three explosive paragraphs explaining that this student filled academic complaints against every letter writer, and did not waive the right to keep their letters secret.
It doesn't take a genius on the admissions committee of each of these schools to read between the lines and drop that application in the trash before granting an interview. She did not get one interview. With more than 30 applications, not one school invited her to continue her application process. That gets a professorial cheer!
32. Noise Complaint
I noticed my Spotify had a PS4 with a German name connected to it, which is odd because I don't have a PS4. Spotify was unable to disconnect me from it using my account, so I decided to take it into my own hands. I blasted heavy metal at full volume on their PS4 at midnight Germany time. I think they may have been in game since they let it go for a few seconds then attempted going to the next/previous songs and pausing it a few times, to no avail.
Eventually, they uninstalled Spotify and I changed my password, but darn that felt good.
33. This Land Is My Land
When I was really young, our neighbor demanded we move our septic tank because he claimed it was partially on his property. He was a complete jerk about it and just kept hounding us to do it. My dad's a really laid-back person, but eventually, even he got annoyed. So one day, he had the property line surveyed. Turns out, not only was our septic tank on our own property, not his, but the corner of the guy's house and part of his driveway was actually on our land as well.
My dad spent the next few months asking him when he was going to move his house off our land.
34. The Party Pooper
While walking to my gate at LAX, I noticed a woman whose dog was in the middle of the waiting area doing its business. The woman was loudly face-timing with her back to the dog, so I assumed she didn’t notice. That was likely the thought shared by the gentleman who tried to get her attention. “Excuse me, miss?” he said, in a polite tone.
The woman glared at him. “Your dog,” he sheepishly continued, pointing to the mid-poop pup. The woman rolled her eyes and went back to face time as the man slinked away, seemingly embarrassed. “Some people,” she bellowed to her face-time companion with no hint of irony, “are just so rude". When her dog finished, the woman started walking away, leaving everything right on the airport floor. Another woman tried to stop her.
“You’re not going to clean that up?” she asked, as shocked as the rest of us were. “They have people for that,” the offender replied, disappearing into the crowd, as much as someone yelling into their phone can disappear into a crowd. I stood near the pile and warned people to walk around it while someone else got a maintenance worker’s attention.
No one said anything—we were so shocked that anyone could be that horrible. When I got to my gate, the woman was there, too. Great, we were both going to Tokyo. When I travel abroad, I get embarrassed by other Americans doing things one hundred times less embarrassing than leaving animal poop on the floor of an airport. To make it worse, her dog was now barking at everyone who walked by.
I have nothing against people flying with their dogs. I do it often. But it is a privilege I take seriously. My dog is well-trained and behaves better than most people. He certainly behaves better than that jerk. Speaking of jerks, there is a pet relief area inside LAX, past security, just two gates away from where The Party Pooper let her dog go to town.
It didn’t matter. She was the type of person to litter three feet from an empty garbage can. While her dog barked at the world, the woman had moved from face-timing with no headphones to listening to music with no headphones. I don’t like to throw around the word “sociopath,” but I don’t know how else I could explain just how selfish and terrible of a person she was.
I’d bet her car was somewhere in long-term parking, parked across three spots with paint on the bumper from the child's bike she hit without leaving a note. Everyone else tried to ignore her, sitting as far away from her as they could. I am not everyone else. I sat down right next to the horrible woman. “Are you going to London on business?” I said.
“I’m going to Tokyo,” she responded gruffly, annoyed that I interrupted her DJing. “Oh, I said. Then you better hurry. That flight got moved to gate 53C. This is the flight to London". I figured I could give her a little moment of panic as payback for how terribly she was treating everyone. I didn’t predict what would happen next. She grabbed her bags and her dog in a huff, and stormed out of the gate without even checking.
She was so self-involved, she didn’t notice that the monitor at our gate still said Tokyo and almost everyone at the gate was Japanese. Based on her actions, she believed me that the fight had been moved, so she’s also a jerk for not thanking me. “Some people,” I thought as I watched her rush away from the gate without stopping her, “are just so rude".
The flight to Tokyo was at gate 69A, so the 53 gates were on the other side of the next terminal. And I felt guilty knowing she probably berated some poor clerk who had to explain to her that there was no gate 53C. I don’t know if she made it back to this flight before we took off or not, but I didn’t see her board and I didn’t hear her dog.
Her missing her flight was not my original intention, but it would be a fine punishment for her being so rude to everyone and making a low-paid stranger clean poop off the floor. What makes me wonder if I went too far is the knowledge that Delta only has one flight to Tokyo each day. Whoops. Maybe she can re-book on another airline. I hear they have people for that.
35. Real Life Lord Of The Flies
I used to teach high school English and theatre. My students weren't terrible, they were just teenagers. I ended up getting a reputation of being able to work well with "problem students," so I ended up getting a lot of problem students shoveled into my class. I rolled with it as best I could, not realizing this was the result of my being a newer teacher and at the bottom of the totem pole.
I was teaching Lord of the Flies and allowed the students to vote for one of their classmates to be in charge of the class. One of my classes voted for one of my "problem students". I let the class crash and burn for a week. It was part of the lesson, and I was surprised at the results—I still remember the individual student who was voted leader saying he couldn't take it anymore. He never realized how much of a pain he and other students were being. He ended up being one of my top students for the rest of the semester.
36. A Taste Of Her Own Medicine
I was out to a movie with my friends last night. We come and sit down, and I realize pretty soon that this girl in the row behind us has her feet up on my friend David's seat. She's there with one of her friends. So David turns around and he says something like, "Uh, do you think you could put your feet down?" And I think they say something in response but I didn't hear it.
The feet didn't go down. A few minutes later, David says, "Hey, will you get your feet off my chair? It's extremely rude". And they still don't budge. So I tell David that he should go find an employee and get them to talk to this girl. He does exactly that, and after a couple of minutes, an employee comes and talks to this girl.
She is obviously pretty peeved but begrudgingly agrees to put her feet down. After the employee leaves, she puts her feet right back up. At this point, I'm teed off. Why is it so important to you that you have your feet up on someone's chair? You're just being a brat. So I get out of my seat, walk up two rows, sit down in the seat directly behind this girl, and stick my foot on the back of her chair and push it forward.
They both turn around and try to say something to me, but I can't really hear them since the movie had started by this point, so I just say "just watch the movie". I kept my feet up there the entire movie. It felt like I had done wall sits for two hours but I'm glad I did it.
37. I've Got The Power
My upstairs neighbor was noisy late at night. At like 2 am, he'd blast music and walk around with heavy feet. We had repeated conversations about it, but he blew us off. He bought us earplugs and told us to simply "deal with it". Unfortunately for him, the breaker box for the building was in our unit. After conducting a few tests with his friendly roommates who hated him just as much as we did, we zeroed in on the breaker to his room and an unoccupied area.
Guess who had strange power issues at night while he was being disruptive? He wasn't the brightest bulb in the box and he never suspected us. The landlord was aware of his disruptiveness and he was already on thin ice, so we asked him not to follow up on the guy's complaints and he was on board. After he got aggressive toward one of his roommates over an unrelated incident, he was kicked to the street at the end of his lease.
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38. Not Their Lucky Day
My first car was a 1984 Jeep CJ7, a pretty sweet ride for a dirt-poor teenager in the 90s. I was working midnights at a gas station and loaned it to my brother, who was taking a date to a party. I got a call around 1 am from my brother, who told me he left the keys in the Jeep and it was taken. I was devastated…but I was still on the phone with my brother when the thieves pulled my Jeep into my gas station to fill up on gas.
As luck would have it, the gas gauge on my Jeep was broken and always read "empty," and I worked at the only 24-hour gas station in the area. I pressed the silent alarm and...proceeded to fill up my Jeep (it was a full-serve station). When the thieves were out of the Jeep, I saw an opportunity to slip the key out of the ignition and into my pocket.
They paid for the gas and argued amongst each other about who had the keys last. The delay was enough for the authorities to arrive. I had to explain the story to the officer half a dozen times before he understood. The thieves had this stunned look of disbelief on their faces I'll never forget. The officers were belly-laughing telling the story to dispatch, all the while the thieves sat in cuffs in the back of the squad car.
The story made most of the major newspapers the following day.
39. Not A Righteous Rant
I had a student in my college composition class who was constantly making obnoxious, offensive comments. He thought he was the edgy class clown but mostly he was just annoying. He kept getting away with his appalling behavior until one day, he slipped up big time—he wrote an essay that was just an incoherent rant about how much he hates a certain ethnic group.
I reported him to the dean of students for hate speech. Other than the occasional comment about how he was being silenced for "standing up for America," he finally stopped making obnoxious comments in class after that.
40. It All Comes Out
My petty revenge story is a little gross, so I apologize in advance. I have a sensitivity/intolerance to most meats. Red meat is the worst, and beef is particularly bad. Doctors recommended I try to get my protein from alternative sources if possible, so I’ve happily been a vegetarian since I was 13 or so. When I was younger, my aunt did not believe the doctors, and thought I was just being fussy.
We come from a meat and potatoes town, so she had plenty of friends backing her up on this. This is the same aunt who convinced my parents I was faking asthma (turns out, I wasn’t...shocker), and also refused to get her own daughter glasses because she thought she just wanted them for attention. She later discovered her daughter’s eyesight was atrocious...another shocker, I know.
The whole family regularly had dinner together, taking turns hosting. When it was my aunt’s turn to host, she assured me my burger was meatless. As you probably guessed, it was not. I was starving that night and gulped down my (beef) burger first. My aunt was smiling, and I thought it was simply because I liked her cooking. Looking back, I realize her little smirk was because she thought she had caught me in a lie or achieved whatever her end game was. She would come to regret it.
Well, a few minutes passed and I got that familiar, unpleasant feeling in my stomach. It was then that I realized what she had done, and why she was smiling. When I eat meat, I almost always get sick. I just can’t hold it down. So, when it came time to kneel before the porcelain throne, I decided to stay put. I instead took aim at my aunt, who was seated beside me at the head of the table.
41. Full Stop
My old boss had a problem with tipsy kids taking his mother's mailbox. He got tired of replacing them, so he told me to go out there and make sure whatever hits it doesn't keep going. I bought a six-foot-long steel post with under three feet sticking out of the ground, then poured concrete around it and installed the mailbox.
The next tipsy kid that hit it never got a chance to take out the rest of the mailboxes on the street.
42. Animal Instincts
Years ago, shortly after I graduated high school, I got a new job to support myself during college. The new gig was in a pet store and I was working in the department that sold the fish, aquariums, reptiles, and birds. The store manager was an awesome guy who I will call Kurt. Kurt was an old school guy. He went to work, worked hard, and went home. That’s all he expected out of you as well.
My immediate manager over my department was this large snaggletooth witch of a woman. I’ll call her Stephanie. We got off to a bad start because she quickly found out that I knew more about reptiles than her (she preferred the fish, whereas I had kept snakes for the past 4-5 years). Her ego couldn’t handle a fresh employee not needing her guidance. From then on, she was terrible to me. She singled me out to clean the goldfish tanks, and had the other employees cover sales EVERY day I worked.
She would say rude things to me such as, “you are the weak link in my team, you are the reason I’m having problems in this department". Fast forward about a year, my hours had been cut by about 25%, and I asked the store manager what the deal was. He told me that our department had lost too much money between lack of sales and broken merchandise, etc.
This puzzled me but I didn’t think much of it because everybody’s hours were cut. Simultaneously, myself and a few co-workers had noticed something strange. Stephanie had recently taken much more interest in the customers. She insisted on helping certain customers and sending us to do busy work while they were there. A customer came in one evening and was talking to us about “how nice Stephanie is."..
Turns out, Stephanie was breeding mice and selling them to customers outside of the store. We actually found out she was breeding all of her animals (her dogs, turtles, mice) and selling them to customers she met through our store. Not only was this taking business from us, our store had a couple of corporate policies, for example we did not feed nor sell mice as live food for snakes, we donated a lot of time and money to shelters, and we condemned breeding dogs and cats for sales.
Stephanie was making money by selling animals to the customers, and all the while her department had hours cut for all of its employees. It didn’t quite make sense, how this was costing us so much money, until one evening I thought I had figured it out. Stephanie was an otherwise lazy woman, but when one of “her” customers came in, she was by their side the whole time.
I watched closely as she followed a customer around, helping them pick out a cart full of expensive aquarium decorations and terrarium supplies like lights and bulbs. I followed and wrote down every item she grabbed. I wanted to see where this went. She directed the customer to a register and went to check them out (she’s lazy, and would never do this for any other customers).
I noted the time and went back to work. I later spoke to other cashiers about Stephanie checking customers out, and they said that she only ever rang up certain customers and she acted weird when they did it. They suspected she was misusing coupons for them or applying hefty discounts. I got my co-workers to corroborate my story about the under the table animal sales and suspicious behavior, and I went to talk to Kurt.
I handed him a paper with about 20 items and the time written on it, and I said, “I think if you look up a transaction from register 2 at this time last night, you will find a large discount applied to it. These are the items I would expect you to find on that transaction". He was a bit puzzled and I explained everything to him. I told him I didn’t want to make any accusations before because I wasn’t sure, but after seeing her in action I was pretty sure something was going on.
He thanked me and assured me he would look into it. A couple weeks later, I was at work and I noticed Kurt was standing near the door and watching closely. It just so happens Stephanie was coming in for her shift right about that time. The second she walked through the door, he called her over to his office. Apparently waiting in his office was a regional manager from corporate.
He had looked at the list I gave him and looked up transactions from the night before. He found one at the exact time I wrote but it only had about half of the items I listed, but every item that was on the receipt was on the list I gave him. This prompted him to watch her for a few weeks, and in that time frame they found her to be taking “her customers” around shopping, personally taking them up to the register, and scanning every other item.
Then she would put the expensive stuff into the cart without ringing it up. In that time span, she had given away over $1,500 in merchandise. He also looked back at the logs we keep for broken merchandise that is written off and found an excessive amount of aquarium supplies and decorations that were signed off by her. It was something like 1000% more written-off broken merchandise than was found at the same time last quarter.
All in all, she was charged with defrauding the store in over $3,500 in merchandise, and it just so happened that Kurt had already arranged for officers to meet them after firing her to walk her out. I don’t know if it went any further, but I did watch her get walked out in cuffs with about 20 employees staring, I wish I could have said something, but I had to settle for her making eye contact with me as she walked out, to which I gave her a quick wink.
43. Dishonorable Honour Students
I taught an AP Chemistry class. Our school’s rules allowed for unlimited skips in classes of honors-level or above. I had three students that would only show up for the exams and all three would pass with identical grades, despite never sitting within eyesight of each other. I spent the entire year trying to figure out how they could have possibly cheated. In the AP class, your grade was based solely on the final exam at the end of the year.
All other classwork, homework, and exams were to help you learn, and were the deciding factor for being allowed to take the AP Exam. I decided to throw them a curve ball—instead of a written exam we'd have a lab exam for a final, and it would include a chemical that stained your skin blue if you touched it. Since these three students never showed up for class, they never knew anything about lab procedures, and they ended up failing the class and having blue skin for the rest of the school year.
44. Peace At Last
I was waiting for my flight to board at a major east coast airport. In walks this young, slick, LOUD business kid on a conference call, shouting into his Apple earbuds. Drops his bag on the one free seat and starts pacing the floor, up and down the aisle, oblivious to dozens of folks eating lunches, working quietly, and babies sleeping.
He continues pacing and shouting, “Yup, yup, we’ll upload that into the system…blah blah jargon jargon acronyms and business,” annoying everybody around and making everyone else get out of his way. Folks start giving him the stink eye, but his shouting and pacing continue, his circuit widening until he’s walking out of sight, then circling back, still shouting into the air.
After 20 minutes of this, I’m over it. The kid stalks off in a hurried pace, abandoning his backpack for the three or so minutes it takes him to pace the terminal. So I walk up to a TSA guard and point to the bag, “Sir, there’s an unclaimed backpack on that seat!” Then I walk away. TSA starts making announcements, trying to find the owner of the bag, but business kid is too oblivious, pacing and shouting.
TSA is already removing the bag when he realizes and chases after them. Too late, he’s a suspect and he has to follow them out of the terminal for a bag check. And now it’s quiet again.
45. Shut It Down
The rich brats next door were always throwing loud parties whenever my mom and dad went out of town for a few days, which was often. One Sunday morning, I did a quick inspection of the property and found a bunch of litter had been left in the street or thrown into the grass. The worst part is that there was a public bus stop at the corner of our street, so we started getting complaints.
That night around midnight I gloved up, collected a bunch of them, then snuck into the neighbors' yard and scattered them around the pool, the garage, and the back door where mom was sure to see them when she came home. There were no more parties.
46. Just Desserts
About three years ago, I was working in a pretty big factory. They hired through five different temp services, so the place was pretty much like a revolving door. People came and left without any warning, and sometimes it was hard just to find a familiar face. So when someone started taking my lunches, everyone became a suspect. I fell victim to the Lunch Box Bandit for a week straight, I'm talking about six 12-hour days with no lunch.
Needless to say, the frustration spawned several evil plans, but I felt the Carolina Reaper would give me the fastest and most effective results. All I know was people where gonna think twice before taking lunches. I spent all night making the best steak fajitas for lunch the next day. I finally minced the Reaper peppers into a nice pico de gallo, and topped my devil fajitas off.
I carefully placed my fajitas into a Tupperware bowl, garnished them with cilantro and limes, then covered them with a clear lid to display their beauty. The next morning, about an hour after I placed them in the fridge, a woman started screaming for help. I ran to the lunchroom to find the Lunch Box Bandit laying on the floor gasping for air.
The Reaper peppers triggered an asthma attack, and he had to be rushed to the hospital. He never said anything, and neither did I, until now.
47. Going Once, Going Twice...Sold!
I had a very strict policy about passing notes in class. I had suspected a bunch of students had been passing notes to each other, but I could never catch them. That is until one day after all the students had gone home, I found a large stack of old notebook paper on the floor. It was a note more than 10 pages long that had been stapled and taped together.
The girls in question had been passing this same note around and adding to it, presumably since the beginning of the school year. I would hand out a lot of extra credit from bonus questions on homework to extra credit assignments, and I kept track of how much each student had accumulated. At the end of each semester, I would have an auction.
The students could spend the extra credit they had accumulated on prizes, usually toys, and candy. I saw the perfect opportunity to serve them their karma—I saved the giant note that the girls had written until the end of the semester and then auctioned it off to a group of boys in the class. None of the girls in question passed notes after that.
48. Looking A Gift Horse In The Mouth
This happened a couple of Christmases ago. About four months before Christmas 2018, my boyfriend at the time accidentally spilled a drink on his laptop and wrecked the thing. He couldn't afford a new one and it was his main source of entertainment, so I said he could borrow mine since I didn't use it that often. Everything was fine until Christmas that year.
He still hadn't gotten a new laptop by that point, but I assumed that was because he was saving up to get himself a decent laptop rather than a bad one he could just about afford. Anyway, he handed me my gift…and to my surprise, it was a brand new laptop. I assumed that he bought me a laptop to replace my old one and was going to take my old laptop for himself. Nope.
His gift to me was buying himself a new laptop so that he didn't have to use mine anymore. Nothing else. Just that. I was outraged. But then a petty thought crossed my mind. Little did he know that I'd fallen into a bit of money so I had decided to surprise him with a top-of-the-range gaming laptop which was easily more than double the price and quality of the one that he bought himself.
So I decided to “give” him his present. When he opened it, his eyes lit up and he looked so excited at the prospect of his new laptop. But when he started to open it, I took it back from him and told him that it was actually for me and my gift was letting him keep his new laptop without me trying to use it all of the time.
Of course, we got into a massive argument and that eventually led to us breaking up. I returned the laptop and used the money to go on a spontaneous holiday with my friend for New Year’s Eve. No regrets.
49. Mind Your Own Beeswax
Beehives. Putting them up is allowed where I live, and I have had them for over 10 years. They don't bother anyone and most of my neighbors love them as they are good for their gardens and they get free honey. However, one of my neighbors who moved in five years ago does have a problem with them, apparently. She has called the council and the authorities too many times to count, and they say all tell her the same thing:
They're allowed, they're not annoying anyone, and the bees were there first. So, she tried to take matters into her own hands whilst tipsy—she jumped the fence in the middle of the night with a can of fly spray. It was very dark, so she accidentally jumped into my neighbor's yard instead. Their very large guard dogs bailed her up and she pretty much destroyed their gardens, boat, shed, and car windows trying to get away from them.
When officers arrived at the scene, she admitted that she had tried to poison my bees but went into the wrong yard. She tried to sue me, saying: "If I wasn't trying to poison her bees, none of this would have happened". The officers just laughed at her. They threw the book at her and now my neighbors are suing her for all the damage she caused.
She is now beyond broke. The bees are still there. When I hand out free honey around the neighborhood every few months, I always make sure she is around watching me and I intentionally don't give her any. Other neighbors tell me they regularly mention my bees around her just to see her lose her cool.
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50. ‘C’ You Later
I had a kid in my high school science class who used to say out loud that he believed that you could pass any multiple-choice test by always answering 'C.’ So, on one test day, I walked up to him, handed him a multiple-choice test, and said, "I made this version of the test JUST FOR YOU!" The kid turned pale—he furiously filled the test out with everything EXCEPT a ‘C.’ On his version of the test, ‘C’ was the correct answer every single time.
51. Driving Me Crazy
When I was 15, I began working, and by the time I was 17 I had enough money to buy my first car. Me being young, when my egg donor (my bio mother, who doesn’t deserve a different title) and stepdad said they were titling it in their name, for insurance and registration purposes, I didn’t question it. Six months later, they’re divorcing.
When the divorce is finalized, my egg donor informs me that MY car, that I paid for, was going to my ex-stepdad in the divorce, since it showed as joint property between them. I was furious. The car looked nice on the exterior, but burned through a quart of oil every two days, and drove horribly, but it was still my car.
So the week before my ex-stepdad was due to pick it up, I quit putting oil in it. I drove around town extra that week, and I was that smoke cloud in town of burning oil. Then I topped off my revenge. See, my friend had a goldfish die. It was a pretty big fish, 3-4 inches long. I asked for it. The morning of the car being taken, July mind you, I cut the yellow foam beneath the passenger seat.
The foam was sticky, abrasive, and resealed easily due to the stickiness. I cut the foam, and stuffed the fish body into the padding, pushed it as far over as I could, then the foam stuck back together nicely. My ex-stepdad showed up with his girlfriend (girlfriend was the mistress, thus causing the divorce) and he made a big show of giving her MY car as a gift to her. I just smiled.
I wish I knew how well the car went over, hours later, in the hot July weather, but I can imagine.
52. Saturday Sale
When I was 10 or so, an old lady yelled at my brother and me for sitting on "her" curb. She could have asked nicely, but she decided to be a jerk instead. So we came up with the most ingenious prank we've ever pulled. We decided to have an estate sale for her. We got up at like 4 am on a Saturday morning and put up homemade cardboard garage sale signs we made with her address on them.
In big, bold letters, we also wrote: "Early birds welcome". We then sat on the curb a little down the street across from her house and watched people bang on the door for an hour or so. The best part is we didn't put a date on the signs, so if she didn't find them all, people would just keep showing up every Saturday.
53. The High Road
I was visiting my friend at his dad’s house in an area where the land is so steep that all the driveways have to switchback up from the main road to the houses. A straight driveway is not an option because it would be steeper than the building code allows. A few doors down the road, there lived a nice old couple who until recently had had a vacant lot next door to them, but the lot had sold and the new owner had started construction on a new house.
Unfortunately the lot was so steep that the new owner built his driveway partly on the old couple’s land (it was carved out of the hillside with an excavator). This probably wouldn’t have been a big deal if the new owner had approached the old couple first and asked nicely, but did he? Would I be telling this story if he had? In fact, the old couple had no idea what was happening until they came home one day to see a huge scar in the hillside snaking up from the road in front of their house.
It went across the corner of their property, winding upwards to where an excavator was working to prepare the land for their new neighbor’s house. They were pretty upset, but being nice, reasonable people, they figured it was an honest mistake, so they went over to talk to the machine operator. He didn’t know anything useful, but he was happy to give them the phone number of the new property owner.
The old guy gave him a call and politely explained the situation, but his new neighbor, whom he’d never even met, was having none of it. He flat out denied that the driveway crossed the property line, and he was rude enough that the old guy was pretty upset. At this point, the old couple weren’t sure what to do. They double-checked the property pins to make sure they were right, and of course they were, but after further conversations with the new owner it was clear he was an unreasonable guy who wasn’t going to come to the negotiating table willingly.
The old couple didn’t want to take court action because that would have been expensive and, frankly, the damage to their yard was already done. At the same time, they couldn’t just let someone walk all over them like that, especially if they were going to be living next door for the foreseeable future. So the situation stewed for a while as construction continued on the new house, until one day when my friend’s dad saw the old couple in the neighborhood and they started chatting.
Of course they told him the story about the jerk new neighbor. Now, my friend’s dad really likes the old couple, who don’t have a mean bone in their bodies, so he was pretty angry about the situation, and when he went home he couldn’t get it out of his head. That evening, after a few drinks, he had a brilliant idea. He called up the old couple, explained his plan, and asked for their permission to carry it out.
They chuckled and gave him the go-ahead, so he hopped into the rusty old full-size pickup he kept as a second vehicle and drove it over to the old couple’s place, where he parked it across the encroaching driveway, making sure it was entirely on their property. The next morning, the work crew arrived bright and early to find that they couldn’t drive to the house they were building because some jerk had parked an old F-150 across the driveway.
They saw a note in the window with my friend’s dad’s phone number on it, so they called him to ask what the heck was going on. He explained that he had permission from the owners to park there and that, no, he would not move his truck so they could get to work. Furthermore, if anyone attempted to tow the truck, they would be charged with trespassing and theft.
There was no way the construction guys were going to haul all their tools up the hill by hand, and they didn’t want to get in the middle of a court battle, so they just called the new owner to let him know they’d be taking the day off and that they’d continue to take days off until the property boundary dispute was resolved. The new owner called the old couple in a fury, but the old couple told them the same thing my friend’s dad told the construction workers.
Basically, the vehicle was parked on their own property, so if he had a problem with that he could go screw himself. To make an already long story shorter, the new neighbor ranted a while, but eventually he wanted his house to be built, so the nice old couple ended up with a significant sum of money in exchange for an easement allowing the driveway to pass across the corner of their property, and my friend’s dad got several thank-you cases of drinks and the satisfaction that comes from putting an jerk in his place.
54. Game On
One time, I had a student who was really concerned about his grades. He suckered me into helping him right before progress reports were to be released, so he could play in the big game coming up. It's something all teachers will fall for because we want all students to achieve, so I helped him. I kept him updated on his grades.
Up until the day of his big game, he was barely passing at a D-. On the day of the game, he came into class and did absolutely nothing. He just shut down and was obnoxious because it was so close to progress reports. He figured the material from that day wouldn't be submitted for the progress report because it was so close...but he was wrong.
He thought he was good to play the next football game. So, I decided to put in the extra effort and grade the work for that day and see what would happen to the overall class average if I recorded the grades and submitted them. He ended up with a 59.4%, a failing grade. So I hit ‘Submit Grades.’ There went his game.
55. Perfect Timing
I was at a gas station putting air in my tire. This gas station required you to pay $1.00 but came with a pressure gauge. The gas station across the street had free air but no gauge. As I’m filling my tires, a lady pulls up beside me and starts asking questions like how much it was to use, how much time, etc. I answered her questions as best I could but really was more focused on filling my tires since there was a time limit.
My car has annoying warning lights that let you know if a tire is low, even the spare, and I hate when these sensors are lit up. The lady is still waiting there and is getting visibly annoyed. This lady yells out, “Will you hurry up! I’m in a rush!” I was confused for a second but quickly realized that she just wanted to use my time without paying.
I did what any gentleman would do and proceeded to move slower. I pulled out of the spot and into a gas pump. She almost hit my car swooping into where my car was. She jumps out and as she puts the air pump to her tire, it shuts off. I guess I was smiling way too big because as she jumped into her car and sped off she yells, “screw you” at me.
I was so pleased with how it all timed out I didn’t even care. Such a great moment.
56. Pencil Me In
When I was hired for the job where I currently work, I was hired to work on Tuesday through Saturday from 2 pm to 10 pm. This had been my schedule for months, never changing. I was verbally told that this was my set schedule, and I even clarified this because I had to arrange for childcare. For example, one week I was accidentally left off the schedule entirely and was told to just work my normal schedule.
Around Thanksgiving time, we closed down for a week. The company policy is that you have to work your last scheduled shift before the break and your first scheduled shift after in order to get your holiday pay. On the Monday following Thanksgiving (remember I’m normally off on Mondays), I got a call saying I was scheduled to work and that because I didn’t come in, I wouldn’t get my holiday pay.
This kind of ticked me off because I had been told I would work Tuesday-Saturday and thus had only arranged childcare those days, so I couldn’t even come in that day if I wanted to. The exact phrase I was told over the phone was, “It is your responsibility to check the schedule every week because we don’t have set schedules".
Fast forward to this week. While checking the schedule, I noticed that my schedule is the same as normal with the exception that I am off the schedule on Saturday. So, I decided to not look a gift horse in the mouth and just take the three-day weekend and don’t mention to my boss that she left me off. So Saturday (which I normally would work), I don’t go in since I’m not scheduled.
I got a call from work and didn’t answer, and they didn’t leave a voicemail. Then I receive a text from my boss saying that my schedule “never changes” and it will be a no call/no show on my attendance record for not coming in to work. I reply that I am not on the schedule and so I’m not required to come in, as it is my responsibility to check the schedule every week because we don’t have set schedules.
I received no further reply and am looking forward to seeing how work goes on Tuesday. I also took a picture of the schedule to make sure that I can prove I was off on the schedule in case my boss tries to write me up. By the way, I do have a new job lined up and am just waiting for my start date before I quit this one.
57. Get Out (Leave)
After all of my siblings moved out for college, my parents changed the basement into a liveable unit and started renting it out. The first two tenants stayed for five years and they were great. We never had an issue with them. The third group of tenants, however, gave us a lot of problems. They stopped paying rent after three months and since it was winter we couldn't evict them.
My parents had to suffer through their parties while not receiving rent that was meant to go to 70% of the mortgage...They almost lost their house because of these jerks. Well, my brothers and I were home for Christmas that year and after hearing about the issues, we decided to take care of it. Since it was my parents' house and the tenants stopped paying rent, we decided to "move in" with them. These people were such jerks, I don't even regret what we did.
We had the keys, so we would come in and out of the apartment as we wanted. A friend needed a place to sleep? No worries, we had a unit downstairs with two beds and two couches. We'd let them stay for as long as they wanted. The bars were closing but we wanted to keep partying? No problem, we had a furnished apartment and we wouldn't be bothering my parents.
I would go there to shower at 2 or 3 in the morning so I didn't wake my parents up. My brother slept in one of the beds for five days. I invited 20 people once and we were all drinking until 5 am, up until one of the tenants left for work in the morning. They did complain about privacy. We told them that according to the law, we were not allowed to throw them out at that moment; but since they stopped paying rent, they lost all privilege over the unit.
They called 9-1-1 the first night they found my brother sleeping there. We explained the situation to the authorities and said that they'd have to take us to court if they wanted us to stop using our apartment. Some other things we've done: We brought our pets (the tenants were allergic, so I borrowed my friend's cat), we used one of the bedrooms as storage for stuff we were supposed to get rid of, we opened all the windows in the middle of winter, and we disconnected the water heater. We told them to take care of it themselves since they weren't "tenants" but squatters.
58. The Baker’s Revenge
This may be the pettiest thing I have ever done. So in my city, there is a pub that's attached to a donut shop that serves the best donuts in the city, which always causes a long line. Because it's attached to a pub, it doesn't close shop until 9 pm, as there is a solid flow of business rolling in. Anyway, my girlfriend and I get a serious hankering for some snacks one night so we decide to head to the donut shop, and arrive out around 8:30 pm by car.
Now, there are only three parallel parking spots a little up the street from the place, and they are all 15-minute spots, which are usually full. We see up the street that, count our lucky stars, a spot is free! My girlfriend pulls a little ahead of the car in front of the spot, turns on her indicator, and begins backing into the parking spot…when this little white Vespa driving behind us whips into the spot.
I roll down our window and call out to the driver, "Scuse me, we were just backing in". The driver, who seems to be a pretty university student, shrugs her shoulders and calls out to me, "Sorry, first come first serve!" while she and her friend share a good laugh. My girlfriend suggests we just get donuts another time, and I tell her she can drop me off here, I’ll buy the donuts since I know what she likes, and she can loop around.
She agrees, and I pop out of the car, pass the little white Vespa where the girls are still gathering their things, and head to the shop. As always, the line is super long for donuts and since this is the last batch, the donuts are slim pickings. Wouldn’t you know it, those same girls are behind me now, looking at the five or so different flavors that are left.
They’re talking about which ones are best and which ones they haven’t had yet. I hear one of them jokingly mention, "Thank god we got a parking spot," and they burst out laughing. Here’s where I got my sweet, sweet revenge. I get to the front of the line, and when they asked for my order, I request two dozen donuts, which is every last one remaining.
The girls behind me didn’t listen to what I ordered, but eyebrows of confusion started to form on their faces as they slowly saw each donut loaded into the boxes and their options dwindle. One of them (the driver) in desperation asked the baker who was loading them in, "What, you’re not even gonna save a few for us, though?" My response was perfect.
I turned around and said, "Sorry, first come first serve". She honestly looked like she just simultaneously solved a movie mystery and pooped her pants. It’s difficult to put into words but truly an expression I can never forget. Best donuts I ever tasted, and there were also enjoyed by the rest of my office the next morning.
59. What Is That Under My Desk?
I taught visual arts at a middle school for several years. To survive teaching this age group, an experienced teacher understands that most boys are sneaky as heck. They really can't help it, as its age-appropriate behavior, slow frontal lobe development, etc. One special little ray of sunshine kept reaching under the table unscrewing the bolts attaching the table legs.
Any bump from an unsuspecting kid would send the table crashing. So, one morning before class, I gave him a taste of his own medicine. I globbed an entire jar of petroleum jelly all over the leg bolts under the table. Watching this kid's face slack into horror after reaching under the table to grab the bolts was so satisfying. He couldn't wipe it away, hide it, or deny it.
60. Such A Tease
I work as a bartender in a small cocktail bar for some time now, and I'm usually chill. But bullies still push my buttons in the wrong way. Before starting, I may be in the wrong for doing this, but it is what it is. A week ago, a bunch of guys came for a few drinks. They seemed like okay dudes, early 20s, but the group dynamic was kind of off.
Now, introducing the main antagonist. He was an obnoxious guy, too loud, snapping his fingers at me when ordering (don't snap fingers at bartenders kids, we're not dogs), punching his friends in the shoulders all the time. Basically, a sportier, really aggressive version of a David Spade character. Next to David Spade sat the victim of most of his "playful" teasing.
I really felt sorry for this fellow. He wasn't a drinker, and he looked like he would rather be drinking from the toilet than continue sitting next to this macho maniac. He was really uncomfortable. David continued to bug him to take a shot at least, "Come on, one with me, don’t be a wimp". Until, after a whole night of persuasion, finally my dude waved the white flag.
Ok, let’s do one shot together, then leave me be. "Two of your most messed up shots," Spade shouted, snapping his fingers at me, while I imagined snapping his neck. Oh, you'll get a messed up shot, buddy. I gave him a very “special” present. I made two shots, but while looking almost the same, they were different. David got stuff like Red Jacques absinthe, Tabasco, etc. Really nasty business altogether.
The other guy got mostly syrups and juices, harmless stuff. They looked almost identical, nonetheless. They took their shots and all heck broke loose. The good guy chugged his shot like a champion, not even flinching (why would he, he drank juice). But David Spade...Boy, oh boy. He looked like he'd have a brain aneurysm.
Tears pouring from eyes, coughing like his lungs want to come out, he had a face and a posture of a man who just got tormented with some sort of chili sauce. The other guy looked surprised until he caught a wink from me, but David Spade and the rest of the crew, now roaring with laughter about his misery, suspected nothing.
They got their shots on the house, poor dude was left alone, and David was a good boy for the rest of the night, defeatedly enduring small mockings from his fellows. Now, I may have used my powers in the wrong way, but this is the first and only time I messed with customers’ drinks. And I regret nothing. He was rude, aggressive even, to everyone around him. Screw you, sporty David Spade.
61. Music Mayhem
We had neighbors (one girl above us, one girl below us) that were good friends with each other. The one above had two small dogs (we were only allowed one per apartment) and the one below had a bigger dog. We all got along fine, but the girl above us was a bit of a jerk—she would leave her dogs alone for far too long and be very invasive of our lives.
She'd constantly beg to use our internet or drop by and make herself at home. I was sitting in the living room one day and I heard dragging in the hallway. I went to check it out and saw both of the girls moving a mattress upstairs. They told me the girl below was moving in with the girl above us, making the living room her bedroom so she could sublet her apartment to save some money.
This was an old building, so there was not much in the way of soundproofing. That meant that we would have girl #1 still living there, who was loud enough, as well as girl #2 and the three dogs above us. We decided to keep the peace and not say anything....until that first night. They decided to have their own dance party at 3 am, in HEELS, while screaming wildly.
We said "screw it" and called the landlord. The next morning, there was a pounding on my door. I went over and saw that it was the girl above us. She was flipping the heck out. We apparently ruined their lives by revealing to the landlord that the girl who lived below us was subletting her apartment. That's when the serious battles began.
It turned out she had been behind in rent, so the landlord was sick of her and gave her an eviction notice. That led to her going absolutely nuts. She would constantly stomp on her floor, run the hot water in the building for hours so it would run out on everyone else, encourage her dogs to bark, etc. We changed our WiFi password, enraging her more.
We wanted to take the high road, but soon enough, we needed to take action. We were going away for a couple of days and we knew our next-door neighbors quite well, so we mentioned our plan. They thought it was hilarious. Right before we left, we turned on that annoying French nun song, "Dominique". The upstairs girl may or may not have been named Monique. We hit the replay button, cranked it to full volume, and left for two days.
The landlord called us after about 24 hours. We feigned innocence and claimed that it was a simple oversight on our end (but really, he knew what was up). We gave him permission to go into our place and turn off the music. Both the girls ended up leaving by the end of the month. They did not stop being jerks, but it was satisfying to know how much they suffered for at least 24 hours.
62. Hot And Cold
My boyfriend and I were both in high school, and at the end of the relationship he told me he was "just in it for the [intercourse],” that he "didn't really mean any of it," and that I obviously "just wanted him for the same reasons". He then went and had a hot and heavy make-out session with my best friend and came back and told me I was "a bad kisser compared to her".
Yeah, he was a jerk. Well, flashback to a few months previous. I was angry at him because he was being really hot and cold, and so I wrote an angry poem about him. The magazine he had been trying to get into had a website and would publish poems based off of popularity on the website. He had gotten me to join a few months previous and I only had a few poems up.
I decided against posting it then because it would "be too mean". Well, after he had pulled that stuff, I decided I wanted a little revenge. So I posted the poem. And suddenly it was getting A LOT of popularity. And I get a notification from the magazine saying they want to publish it. So what was the first thing I did? Messaged him that I got published in this magazine.
He got excited for me and congratulated me, until... he read the poem. Several million people have read the poem in the magazine, and to this day, he still hasn't gotten published.
63. Easy Breezy
When I was a very new professor, I made sure to spell out the course requirements both verbally during class time, and on paper in the syllabus. For students who were taking the class pass/no pass, they had to take a midterm and final exam, as well as write a paper. It was made very clear that their passing grade in all of them had to be a C or better.
I had a smart-alec in class that came to me during my office hours and told me that he was not going to do the paper. His voice took a breezy, commanding, almost condescending tone, but he who he was messing with. I said, “Okay,” just as breezily. He got a C on the midterm, a C on the final, and an F on the non-existent paper. He didn’t pass the course that he thought would be a free ride.
64. The Whole Package
I work from home. I receive a notification on my phone that my Amazon package has been delivered. It's a couple hundred-dollar item, so I immediately go outside—but no package anywhere. I was outside as the delivery van was driving away, so there was literally no way someone snatched it in 20 seconds. The Amazon driver is two houses down".
Excuse me. I received notification that my package was just delivered, but it's not there". Driver looking shocked, stammering over words. "Oh, uh, what's the address?" I give him my address. "Yeah, I just delivered it to you". "No, you didn't. I'm calling Amazon and y'all can sort this out". I start walking away. Driver calls out, "Oh I found your package. But it says there's an issue and I can't deliver it. It's likely a duplicate and another driver will be by later to deliver the correct one".
"Then why did you mark it as delivered?" "Oh, because I didn't see there was an error. The other driver will be by later". "No, I'm calling Amazon now". I walk away and called Amazon to report the incident. They say nothing is wrong with my package and it's marked as delivered. I tell them about the interaction and they say the driver should've given me the package.
Even if it's a duplicate, the driver is not supposed to withhold a package. They'll investigate and get back to me in 24 hours. Two minutes after getting off the phone with Amazon, my doorbell rings. I happened to be next to the door, so I open it within five seconds to see the same delivery driver hauling his butt down my driveway.
He jumps in his delivery van and speeds off through the neighborhood. I look down and my package is there. I call Amazon again to let them know that I just got the package and it was the same driver who hauled tail. They said they would be opening an investigation into the driver. I also told them about how fast he was driving through the neighborhood.
I felt like a Karen calling to complain, but I truly believe this driver was running a package scam. He marks a package as delivered, the customer says they never received it, the driver says "Well, someone probably took it before you looked for it".
65. It's Raining Snails
My parents have an extremely nosey neighbor who would just stand at the fence and watch what we did. I mean, with her nose resting on the top of the fence. This woman was in her 60s and she had kids and grandkids. I found out the other day that my dad was in the garden with a shovel. Turns out, he throws the slugs and snails in their trampoline and on their veggie plot for being annoying every time they aren’t there.
I couldn’t stop laughing at how petty and hilarious this was. Still makes my day.
66. A Real Mouthful
I come from a family of six: my parents, my older sister, my older brother, my little brother, and me. Often, in order to encourage us into good behavior, our parents would buy us our favorite candy to munch on in the car. Now, I've never exactly been a giving person, and I’m not huge on sharing just for the sake of sharing.
My parents, however, were trying to raise respectful and generous kids and often forced me to share things even when I didn't want to. That's all fine and good, except that my sister manipulated this system. See, she would say she didn't want a bag of candy, then once we were on the road she'd start taking candy from all three of the brothers.
That really annoyed me. I didn't get candy often, as my mom didn't like feeding us sugary food, so when I got my own bag of Sour Patch Watermelon I wanted to eat every last one myself. Besides, my parents would always offer to buy her a bag of candy for herself, she would just refuse because she knew she could leech off the rest of us.
So after a point, I started refusing her requests for candy. But that didn't fly with my mom, because that was being selfish, so she would force me to hand over the candy. One time I even said when I purchased my bag at CVS to my sister, “I'm not going to give you any of my candy. If you want Sour Patch, buy your own right now".
"I'm fine," she responded, "I don't want a whole bag of candy". Fast-forward 20 minutes into the car ride, my father was requisitioning a candy to give to my sister, as I sat fuming. This went on for years. My whole life, really. And I hated it. I would hide my candy when I got it, I would try and keep it out of her reach, but always a parent would intervene.
Fast forward to my sister's college graduation. She is now 22, I am a senior in high school at this point, and we're up at her school at a fancy restaurant celebrating after she had graduated that morning. In attendance are all immediate and some extended family, some close friends of my sister, and her long-term boyfriend who I was meeting for the first time.
So, enough people for the following to be embarrassing to my family. Our meal ends and my mother offers to buy a nice dessert for anyone who wants it. My brothers, my dad, and I all take her up on it. I ordered a vanilla bean cheesecake with a burnt sugarbird’s nest on top. My mother repeatedly offers to buy my sister anything she wants, but my sister says she couldn't possibly eat a full dessert right now and turns it down every time.
The food arrives, and everyone is staring at mine. I'm sitting right at the head of the table in full view of everyone, so it's hard not to look, and aside from the cake slice being large and delicious looking, the burnt sugar bird’s nest is huge and ornate, hollow on the inside like an old-timey brass globe. Honestly, it was pretty impressive.
And right as the food gets placed in front of us, my sister says, "I'll just have a bite of everyone's". At this point, I'm seeing red, having flashbacks to all the times my food has been taken. Logically, the right thing to do would've been to just hand over one bite. I mean, it was her graduation, it was a huge cake, it would've been no loss. But it had become a matter of principle.
So, the moment she says this, in one fell swoop, in full view of everyone at the table, I sweep up my slice of cheesecake and stuff the entire thing into my mouth at once, shattering the sugar nest, crumbs falling everywhere, in front of my whole family and some college students close to my sister who, again, I’ve never met in my life.
My sister stares, appalled, and says, "Did you do that just so I wouldn't get any?!?" And I look at her, cheeks ballooning out like a chipmunk, face covered in cheesecake and graham, and nod. There was a fair bit of shocked silence, at that moment and in the very tense car ride home. But to this day she never asks for anything from me anymore.
67. Discarding Reality
I had a student tank an assignment. My policy was that students can redo any assignment but the highest possible grade I will give a redo is a B. He refused to believe that he actually failed the assignment, and went to my department chair. The chair supported me, so he went to the dean. The dean supported me, so he just kept moving higher up the chain of command only to be told that I was right.
He made all sorts of irrational demands, which ticked off the various administrators he pestered. Finally, he became so annoying that everyone put their foot down once and for all—he was told to accept the grade, work out the redo with me, or face some sort of sanction for wasting everybody's time. After a month of this nonsense, I met with him and my chair.
I told him once again that he could redo the assignment for at most a B. He still tried fighting it, but the chair stepped in and said he had one minute to accept the deal or face the consequences. With no other option, he agreed to rewrite the paper. I gave him one week to get it done. On the day it was due, he showed up at my office and handed it to me.
Without even looking at it, I dropped it in my recycling container and said, “Thanks, I'll change your grade on the assignment to a B". It seems petty, and the rewrite could have been just as bad as the original. I’ll never know. But the satisfaction I got from watching him jump through all those hoops and rewrite the paper, only to have me discard it, was worth it.
68. High School Mind Games
I taught a class right after lunch so I had a couple of kids who would come in late and obviously high. The class was pretty quiet before they got in, so every now and then, I would mess with them and ask them for the assignment I gave out; the one that everyone else had already handed in at the beginning of class. The look of panic was amazing—they would just start fumbling with words.
I told them it wasn't a big deal and they could hand it in next time. They could never figure out that there wasn't an assignment.
69. Keep On Trucking
I was helping my friend move last weekend and we're driving down a double lane highway, speed limit 50, at about 10 at night. A jerk in a lifted truck and blue, blinding high beams and fog lamps comes speeding up behind. It’s fairly common for people to race down this stretch late at night with few others on the road.
I'm following my friend in the left lane coming up on another car to pass that is in the right lane. At first, I'm like whatever, moron, I'll just merge back over to the right and let him pass. I'm too tired to deal with this and had been going back and forth all day. Well, even though I signal and I'm starting to merge over into the right lane, the truck decides to cut around and ride the other car in the right lane so I can't complete my lane change.
Okay, idiot. So I decided to just keep going and pass the guy on the right. He swerves right back around and rides me again. My friend in front of me eventually sees what was going on and he moves over to the right lane and I pull up beside him. We both smile at each other and decide to screw with the truck. We both talked before about how much we hate jerks in lifted trucks driving like idiots.
First, my friend speeds up a bit and the jerk cuts over like he's going to weave through, then he slows down and I speed up and he cuts back over. We do this for about two miles until the speed limit drops to 25 right before a center lane opens up. We both slow down to exactly 25 at the "reduced ahead" sign well before the actual sign, which makes this guy even angrier.
He decides to floor it past us in the center lane, through the intersection RIGHT PAST A COP SUV. The officer does a quick U-Turn, flips his lights on, and nabs the truck going probably 70 in the 25. We finally get to my friend’s house and the whole time we're unpacking we can't stop laughing. It provided us with the morale boost we needed to finish up that night.
70. Feeding The Problem
We briefly had a neighbor who was a complete jerk. My personal pet peeve was when he would yell at our kids to "shut up" while they were playing in the backyard. Next to his driveway was a big tree and I noticed he'd throw occasional hissy fits over the birds defecating on his car. One week, he was out of town but his car was still in the driveway.
Each day, I put a heaping pile of berries (blueberries, strawberries, etc.) next to the tree. He returned home to a car absolutely COVERED in technicolor bird poop.
71. She’s Got The Touch
I used to live on the third floor of an apartment that had its laundry in the basement. This means four flights of stairs for me, no elevator, and I have a newborn so I'm washing quite a bit. So we have cubbies in the laundry room for our soap and stuff. I've lived there a year and never had an issue leaving my soap down there.
Apparently, some new people had moved in that were using my soap. When I realized it, I left a note asking that they stop. Nothing. They kept using. Okay. Now I’m angry. So I got two bottles of soap. A blue-colored one, and a clear colored one. I marked the bottles CLEARLY that they belonged to me (so they couldn't accidentally say they thought they were theirs), and filled the blue soap with blue Rit dye.
I then filled the clear soap with unscented bleach. And waited...Didn't take long. The next morning, I hear screaming coming from the laundry room. Four floors up I heard it. I waited a while and ventured downstairs. In the laundry room, I found a bunch of wet clothes in the garbage that were bleach stained. Four days later, I saw a young man get into a car with a blue stained t-shirt.
72. The Final Countdown
When I was in my last year in engineering college, I took a job as a tech high-school teacher in a public school in my city to help me pay my tuition. One day an electronics teacher called in sick, so they asked me to cover for him a few hours. The content wasn’t a problem for me, but the kids were older than the ones I usually taught.
When I entered the room, there was an unusual silence. Since these kids were older, their attitude was different. I introduced myself, explained the situation, and started the class after they told me what their status in the subject was. A minute after I turned around to write on the board, one kid yelled a nickname they had been using for me (without me knowing) and every kid started laughing.
I didn’t know who it was, so I turned around and asked, "Who was it?" Of course, there was dead silence. So I said, "Guys, I understand your group commitment and how you'll support each other. You know as well as I do that I can't let this slip through. So you'll all be asked to finish a very difficult assignment immediately after class unless the guy who called me names stands up like the man he thinks he is and takes the punishment for himself instead of having you all take it for him".
A few seconds later, the guy stood up and said "It was me, sir". I told him it was a noble choice to confess and I proceeded with the instructions of his epic punishment. I told him to go right outside the classroom and count all the tiles on the floor in the hallway, out loud, one by one. The hallway was about 30 ft x 8 ft, and the tiles were 2 in x 2 in.
His classmates were giggling. The guy went out and started counting out loud. "ONE!... TWO!... THREE!..". I continued with the lesson. When the kid outside was at around 20, he started to lower his voice, so I yelled out through the open door, "I CAN'T HEAR YA!!" Then he raised his voice and went "TWENTY-ONE!! TWENTY-TWO!!"
At that point, his classmates burst out laughing and I asked them for silence to continue the class. When the guy was at around 50 or 60 tiles, I asked him back in. I told him it was OK to pick on people, but he must know about the person first, so he knows what he is dealing with and is prepared for a comeback. Those kids never called me names afterward—at least not to my face.
73. If You Can’t Dish It In…
This happened a couple of years ago. It had snowed a bunch and so I went out to clear a spot for my boyfriend at the time for when he got home from work. I spent a while digging it out, and as I was finishing up, some girl just drove up and parked in it—while I was still shoveling it! I told her that I had just dug it out intending to use it and asked her to move. Her response made my blood boil.
She just got out of her car and walked away…Turns out she lived two buildings down, so she normally wouldn't park there anyways! Our complex had a mini snowplow and the dude was plowing in the area and saw this all go down. He helped me move all the snow from the pile he just created and put it all around her car. We buried it up to the door handles on all sides.
He then dug out a new spot for me. I saw her later trying to dig out her car, and it turns out she didn't even have a shovel. So, naturally, because I'm petty, I went out and re-shoveled the sidewalk from the lot up to our building, throwing all of the extra snow on her vehicle while I did it. Then I went inside and took my shovel with me.
74. Oops, I Did It Again
In college, the guy in the dorm room next to mine was apparently a bit insane. He would bang on our shared wall whenever he heard any noise. The first time he did it, I was just talking to a friend in my room at normal volume in the middle of the day. It kept going like this for months. He once banged on our wall for like five minutes because I sneezed. One day we noticed that he had a large pair of panties and a pair of earplugs taped to his door.
There was a note that read: "Put on your big-girl panties and deal with it". Apparently, his neighbors on the other side were sick of him, too. So one weekend, I was leaving the dorm to visit home, and he started banging on the wall because I flushed a toilet. That was the last straw. I ended up putting a Britney Spears song on repeat, with my speakers up against his wall, and I left for the weekend...being sure to lock all the doors behind me.
75. All Tied Up
I knew this lovely German lady who I will call Heidi. She was married to a man who I’ll call Jerk. The jerk was a jerk for a number of reasons. He worked with my dad in IT, who said he had a hero complex where he would cause disasters at work and then try to be the hero and “save the day". We even suspect he caused a huge IT disaster at our national airport while he was working there.
He was also really creepy. He creeped on my younger sister, calling her randomly and asking to pick her up. He was the exact opposite of his wife, who was lovely and sweet and charismatic, and I have no idea how they ended up together. Unfortunately, a while after we made friends with them, Heidi got very sick. Her colon stopped working, and she almost lost her life.
Thankfully, she was in a country with stellar healthcare that saved her life, but she found out she has Crohn’s, and she had to get a colostomy bag. While she was recovering from her surgery, her husband committed a horrific betrayal. Jerk announced he wanted to divorce. His words were, and I quote, “I didn’t marry a sick woman". Ugh.
He left her high and dry, and very soon was seeing someone else. He lost all the friends he had made in our country with his awful behavior, and my family told him he was no longer welcome near us as we were there for Heidi. He finally screwed off back to home; apparently, he had got into quite a bit of debt and skipped off to avoid paying.
Good riddance, we all said. Heidi found her feet eventually. She took up photography and went to university to study it. She did very well for herself, and lived a happy life free from Jerk. After about a year, Jerk contacted Heidi, and she told us the whole incredible story. Apparently, he was trying to sweet talk her into going over to Israel, where he was from, to go through with the divorce proceedings.
According to Heidi, your marital status is on your identity card in Israel, and it’s one of the first things a girl asks to see when you go on a date. When the girls saw he was married on his card, they’d never go for a second date. So every time he’d call her asking when she was coming over, she’d put on a huge grin and give him the perfect reply.
“Ohhh, I don’t know, I’m not really in a position to fly with my condition and all. Maybe when I get better". She knew full well he wouldn’t set foot back here because his creditors were still looking for their money back. She would just relish in the knowledge that he was getting rejected by all those women he was pursuing in Israel while she chilled with us having a great time.
Heidi is doing much better now. She went back to Germany, though she still visits my family and her friends from time to time. She’s still her awesome self. I don’t know what Jerk is up to now, but I suspect after all these years he is still a jerk.
76. Thank Goodness For Google
I had a student who copied off of his partner for every assignment for the whole semester. However, he was smart enough to always change the wording so that it wasn't identical, thus, I would have no proof to take to academic integrity. He slipped up on the last take-home assignment when he couldn't copy off his partner.
Instead, he used blatantly plagiarized information from Google. Finally, I had proof! He now is not getting credit for the course and has to retake it. He now also has a tainted academic record due to his offense and is potentially going to be on suspension until next fall. Gotcha!
77. No “I” In Team
This story takes place in my third year of college. I was taking a class where the entire grade was determined by a semester-long final project. We were supposed to be in groups of three on the project, but the third guy in our group had more sense than me and bailed early. This left just me and Lazy Girl, hereafter known as LG.
LG didn’t do anything the entire semester. I would ask her to work on pieces of the project, but she always had an excuse for why it wasn’t done yet (or in her case started). Now, I didn’t want any confrontation with this girl, as she was my friend at the time, but I finally lost it one night towards the end of the semester.
I’d asked her to meet at my house to work on the project, but “something important came up". Fed up with this one-sided partnership, I decided to air my woes at the local bars that very night. And guess who I run into? LG and her boyfriend out drinking together! She made up some stupid excuse for me—so I made a plan to get even.
I powered through the entire assignment, except for the conclusion, which I asked LG to finish. I held out exactly zero hope that she would finish this section, so I quickly finished it myself and turned in my project with a little note to the teacher. The note detailed how I had done literally everything for the project and that despite my best efforts, I could not get LG to contribute.
I said that I was turning in my version and that our conclusions section may differ, as I’d asked her to actually do that part herself. So here’s a little tidbit about our final projects: We each had to turn one in. LG here not only didn’t do the conclusion, she didn’t turn in a project at all! She tried calling and complaining at me for not “giving her credit,” to which I went off on her for not doing anything on the entire project.
I mentioned how I even gave her the opportunity to turn in my work for a grade if she’d only do ONE thing! She hung up after that, and that was the last time we spoke.
78. That's Bananas
I had a girl at my old apartment complex open the washer with my clothes inside, take them out, and put them on the folding table. She did this right in front of me as I was removing my second load into the dryer. I asked what she was doing and she was like, “These have been in here for like 20 minutes,” and I was like, “No, they haven’t".
I used the laundry app and it said it had just finished washing two minutes prior. I was literally about to put them in the dryer, so I told her, "Please don’t touch my clothes like that". She just let out a rude scoff. I went back 45 minutes later to take my clothes out of the dryer and she was in there doing the same thing AGAIN with someone else’s load. She was taking their damp clothes out to put her own load in.
I knew for a fact the clothes were just done because the cycle only goes for 45 minutes. So I decided to teach her a lesson. I threw my half-eaten banana in with her wash.
79. The Early Bird
My roommate enjoys nice long showers in the morning using all of the hot water. Recently, I realized that he literally jumps out of bed and runs into the bathroom when he hears my alarm. I started putting my alarm on silent for a while and this was working well enough, but I still missed my morning shower several times because of his unreasonably long showers.
So I just started moving to two alarms, with one alarm about an hour and a half before I normally get up. This has caused him, for about two weeks now, to get up really early to run the hot water out, yet he’s still out of the shower with enough time for it to be warm again for me when I jump in. Small victories are nice.
80. The Workout That Worked Out
I had a kid in preschool who had mastered the whole "going limp" thing. He was a hefty boy and none of the teachers could pick him up when he did this, which meant it was a massive power move on his part. I happened to be on a fitness kick at the time and was going to the gym four mornings a week and working out with a trainer.
One day, I was complaining about this kid and my trainer had me start doing deadlifts. He said it was good exercise, but would also help me with this kid. It took about two months, but the day I was able to pick him up when he went dead was SO satisfying! The look on his face was of utter shock. No one, not even his parents had been able to pick him up for ages. He never did it again, at least, not at school. He'd lost his move.
81. Pennies From Heaven
Four years ago, I'm working the register as a cashier. It's 10 pm and these two young men in their early 20s come up to the counter. They have three random novelty items (I don't remember they were), but it was strange and unusual to get odd items this late at night. Maybe it was for some fraternity, I don't know. It's a college town, so I get weird stuff from frats a lot.
I scan the items and tell them their total is $22.31. Grinning at each other, they reach into their jackets and slam down two-gallon zip-lock bags. When I saw what was in them, my eyes rolled back into my head. They were full of only pennies. I stare them in the eye, but they didn't even look back at me. Everyone else in line groaned and went to other registers.
These two kids knew what they were doing, but they didn't know what they were in for. I prepared for this. I knew this was going to inevitably happen. I grinned with them, because I was gonna get paid during this, while these pranksters were only here for recreation. This conversation occurs between Me, the Ringleader (the other guy was silent and awkward), and a friendly co-worker of mine.
Me: Is this $22.31? Ringleader: ... Me: Did you count it? Ringleader: Nope. Me: Are you going to? Ringleader: Nope. Me: Is it at least $22.31? Ringleader: Don't know. Me: Nice. Co-worker: Hey! You guys can use the self-checkout. It can take all of your coins at once. Me: Oh, don't worry about it— Ringleader: Nope, don't trust them, lady.
Co-worker: What? Why!? Ringleader: Doesn't count all your change right. Co-worker: I've used them before. It really works! Me: (to Co-worker) I got this. I unpacked the Ziplocs and threw all the pennies on the counter. It was a beautiful, massive mess. And I dug in. The two, still avoiding my gaze, start chuckling as if they were taking away my dignity. They whisper to each other "Dude oh my God," "Dude yeah," "Dude, hilarious". I counted each penny, one by one.
My co-worker comes up to me. Co-worker: Guess I'll help you count this. Me: Don't worry about it. (She looks at me confused. Then she puts on her “get down to busy” look.) Co-worker: I got your back. Me: *Oh...*ok. We worked up a system where we counted ten, put them in a pile, then with ten stacks of ten pennies we separated them, making $1 piles.
We made progress slowly but surely. Some customers came to the line, but we advised them to get to another line. Some of them looked at us confused, but when they saw the counter full of pennies they understood. Some decided to wait, but when they realized it wasn't going to take just a few minutes they took their leave. Another register opened so it wasn't too bad for other customers.
We get to about $12 (about 10 minutes in). Then I enacted my revenge. I "knocked" over the piles. Co-worker: Hey! Me: Oops. Sorry. (Co-worker looks at my grin. I give her a wink and tilt my head, motioning her to leave) Co-worker: You know what, I think I better let you do this. Me: Ha, alright. (Co-worker leaves. I look at the two guys. They are absolutely stunned at the fallen piles of pennies.)
Me: (To Ringleader) Yeah, I'm going to have to count all of this again. Ringleader: ....Ok. I started from zero. I count slower than ever, and made my way back up. The duo is entirely silent. I get to about $7, when suddenly I say: Me: Drats. I lost count. I better start all over again. Ringleader: Really? Me: Oh yeah man.
Ringleader: Why!? Me: I lost count, sir. I could be in trouble if my register doesn't have the right amount of cash, and I don't want to rip you off. Ringleader: ... Now it's about an hour later. My manager walks past, looks at me. I smile at him, and he looks at the counter. He walks away without a word. I eventually count all the change. Here comes the best part.
Surprisingly they had only $18! Me: Hmm, I think that this is $18. (The duo has been completely silent. They look done for the night.) Me: I'll recount it. I freaking recounted it. Me: I think this is actually $19.23. (Without a word, the Ringleader whips out a $5 bill) Me: Seriously? You had cash? Ringleader: Needed to get rid of my change.
Me. No problem. I'll just recount this again. I want to make perfectly sure that this is $19, since I counted $18 the first time. Ringleader: Are you kidding me? (I shake my head no, completely serious) He then takes out a $20 bill straight out of his pocket and throws it at me. My co-worker gives the biggest WHAT THE HECK face.
Internally, I’m disappointed, because they were smart enough to have a backup plan. And the fact that he was touching his cash in his pocket the entire time kind of messed with me. I take the cash, do the transaction, give him his change, thanked him, and wished him a good night. The two start to put their pennies back in the Ziploc bags and I didn't help them at all.
I watched them just how they watched me. Lots of pennies dropped to the floor, but they didn't care to pick them up. It looked like their souls were sucked out of them. It was past midnight and I clocked out way past when I was supposed to. A lot of my co-workers gave me a thumbs up or told me good night. Even my manager told me “good job,” the only two words he ever said to me.
Went to bed at the dorms after such a great petty penny night and crashed. Strange to say, but I'd love to count pennies again.
82. Over The Moon
In college, our neighbor kept trying to get us evicted because we had too many cars. She also installed cameras to spy on our house. She called a noise complaint on us one day while we were playing basketball in our driveway and my roommate told her to kiss his butt. He then mooned her and she did not like that one bit. She proceeded to call 9-1-1, saying he had been indecent in front of her kid.
The officers who arrived watched the tapes over. Seeing as we did nothing wrong (and my friend only mooned her as a joke), they just told us to ignore her. We ended up hanging a giant sheet of plastic 20 feet up in the trees along the entire property line so they couldn’t see us. It looked trashy as heck, but it actually brought us peace until our lease ended. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to renew.
83. Have Your Cake And Eat It Too
My old college roommate didn't know how to cook or do dishes and didn't go food shopping much. This led to him eating my food, especially my leftovers as those were prepared meals. Now, I would use my leftovers to meal prep for the week and told him to stop as it was expensive as well as inconvenient. The behavior did not stop and he actually seemed to be eating more of my food out of spite.
To punish him, I baked a chocolate cake with habanero peppers and mixed the frosting with wasabi. I labeled it with my name and a bold "Do Not Eat" and waited. This guy has a very low tolerance for spicy foods, so I thought he would take one bite and quickly realize the error of his ways. About two days later, him and a couple of his friends got to drinking while I was at work and decided to dig into my food.
Somehow, they ate about a third of it before realizing it, and when they inevitably went to throw up from over drinking and eating spicy foods, the cake hit them a second time. I don't know for sure, but it couldn't have felt good coming out the backend either. When he asked me why I made this monstrosity, I told him I found a chocolate habanero recipe online that I wanted to try. He stopped eating my cooking after that.
84. The Long Shot
I was on the field on playground duty. To my left were a bunch of trees and behind them was all the play equipment, such as forts, bridges, and monkey bars. The monkey bars were closed at the time due to an incident that had happened earlier in the week. They were taped off with a big sign telling the kids not to use them. This one kid just wouldn’t listen.
I must have been over there 10 times, clearly explaining that they are out of bounds, but this kid couldn't care less. He was showing off to his friends, and every time I would walk back over to keep an eye on the more than 50 other kids on the field, he was back on the monkey bars. There was a soccer game that was going on behind me.
I stood there looking at this kid still on the monkey bars when the ball rolled past me into the trees. One of the boys from the field took off after it, and for some reason kicked it back to me. I realized that I'd just been presented with an amazing opportunity, although one heck of a long shot. I instantly line up what looks like a pass back to the kid, but instead, I kicked it too high and deep.
The ball dipped and curled, dodged two trees, and cleared the fort by inches. It came out of nowhere and smacked this kid right-center on the side of the head, knocking him off the monkey bars and into the dirt where he promptly started crying. It looked like a total accident. In no way did it look even remotely deliberate, but it was. Nobody went near the monkey bars for the rest of the day.
85. Private, Keep Out
So, I'm married to a wonderful woman. She's smart, funny, and very kind. Her mother is generally very nice and tends to have a great attitude and be very enjoyable. Sure, she’s a bit of a prude, but still generally enjoyable. However, she can be a bit of a major snoop. If my wife leaves her phone sitting around, she will just pick it up and start going through it.
My wife has kind of laughed this off as a remnant of her mom being controlling when she was a kid. I'm not a fan of this because my wife and I will sometimes text about things that simply don't involve her mother and I don't feel are her business at all. So over Christmas, I saw my wife set her phone down on the kitchen counter, and I had a brilliant idea.
Her mom was still in the kitchen and I sent my wife the most racy and depraved text about all the things I was going to do to her when everyone left. Honestly, most of them are things we haven't even done, but I had to make it extra scarring. I sent this text from the bathroom. And maybe it was my imagination, but I could swear I could hear an audible gasp shortly after her phone went off.
When I went out, her mother absolutely would not look me in the eye. Then not so discreetly, she asked her daughter to come to talk to her in the other room. When my wife came back into the living room, I thought she had been crying, however, upon closer inspection, she was laughing. Her mother had questioned her about me “harassing” her and asked if I always talked down to her like that.
My wife had told her kindly that what we do is between us and us only. Probably the best gift this Christmas.
86. At A Loss For Words
I’m in a class where a group research project and presentation is a huge chunk of overall points. Everyone knows that in group projects, you always have that one slacker who doesn’t do anything that you have to compensate for. However, I got stuck with possibly the worst three people to be in a project with in the class.
I did the entire research, presentation, poster boards, etc., among many other annoying things myself. I tried talking to them and telling them they needed to put in their share of effort. Ignored. I’d send them tasks to do, ignored. I’d try to schedule meetings, they’d say they were coming and then leave me alone at the library.
This happened from the get-go. It was abundantly clear that they expected everyone else to do the work, but “everyone else” turned out to be just me. So here was one rule: We couldn’t have things 100% memorized word for word, and we couldn’t read off of anything. Basically, we had to actually know the subject we were discussing.
I was fully prepared to do most of the talking and even wrote down a small script for them and told them to know what to say during their part, at the very least. The night before, I told them we had to meet to at least go over the whole thing one time. Once again, none of them showed. At this point, I’m livid and decide they can just do it themselves.
This means they’d get up there, not know a darn thing to say other than the small info I gave them, and they couldn’t even make up anything because they did no research. Thing is, if we miss the presentation without an excuse, we fail the project. If you have an excuse, you have to have documentation. That’s when I came up with the perfect solution. I commute and live an hour away, so I decide that I’ll conveniently have a flat tire right before class.
I went out and actually bought a tire so I could have the receipt to prove it. I emailed the professor, who said I could present by myself during his office hours. Turns out, they COMPLETELY tanked, and not only probably failed the project but since they’re bad students, the professor might even make them fail the entire class.
87. ER Karen
I worked in an emergency room (ER) for six years. Every person who has worked in the ER knows that Mondays are the busiest days of the week, and also when all the crazies come out. This day was no different. I worked as a nurse in triage, where you initially get assessed in the front before going to the back. Here we determine who needs to go back first and who can wait.
It's NOT a first-come, first-serve situation as most people think. We had a few stretchers in the front for people who needed to be monitored a little closer or needed IVs, blood draws, labs. There were six stretchers, but this day was so busy that all stretchers were filled, plus five more in the hallway. This lady comes in on an ambulance but because her symptoms did not indicate an emergency she was put in stretcher triage to wait her turn.
To be fair, she was in a lot of pain. After an assessment, I recognized her symptoms as being caused by gallstones (painful but not life-threatening). We put her on a stretcher, started an IV, drew labs, and hooked her up to the monitor just in case. A few minutes later, the patient’s daughter comes in the front door. One look at her and we knew she would cause problems.
She had everything from the shoes to the haircut. A classic rich Karen. When she saw that her mom was still in the front and hadn't seen a doctor yet she started screaming that she knew the CEO of the hospital and that we would all be fired if we didn't get her mom back to see a doctor RIGHT NOW! We explained that her mom has a history of gallstones and even the patient was saying that she has had this pain many times because of the gallstones.
We explained about being really busy and that there were no rooms available in the back and will get her back as soon as we could. She eventually calmed down but was still antsy. About an hour later another patient comes in and was put on the stretcher beside the mother and her daughter. This patient had worrying complaints, but on initial assessment, we could not find anything wrong.
However, as a nurse, you learn to ALWAYS trust your gut. When your gut sounds an alarm, you listen. Something about this patient was setting my alarm bells off but all his vitals were normal and I had no solid evidence to declare him an emergency. I hooked him up to the monitor and kept a very close eye on him. I let the charge nurse know of my concerns and she said to let her know as soon as something changes.
Not five minutes later, something changed. Now, at this time I should explain that this hospital was a level 1 trauma center, meaning we get all the bad cases from car crashes to shot victims. Since we had to be ready for any traumas, we had a room with three beds that was closed off from the rest of the beds because traumas usually involved a lot of people and a lot of blood.
Even on busy days like this one, those rooms were empty unless there was a trauma patient. Now, back to the second patient. I was taking the vital signs of the mother when I looked over to the second one. I noticed a worrying change in his rhythm and stopped with the woman to start assessing him to see what was going on. Well, that did not sit well with the daughter.
She actually grabbed my arm and told me to finish with her mom. I jerked my arm free and said I had to make sure the man was OK. As I turned around, his rhythm went life-threatening. I called the charge nurse to inform her of his condition, all the while unhooking him from the monitor and throwing his bed into drive. This is where the crazy ramped up.
As I started pushing him back, the daughter actually jumps in front of the stretcher and stops it. She's screaming that her mom was here first and needed to be seen before. She kept screaming that I was a liar and that she was going to get me fired. I'm usually a mild-tempered person, but knowing this guy was literally minutes from crashing, I said to the woman, "You have a choice: get out of my way or get run over".
I started pushing the stretcher forward. Now, I'm really good at pushing stretchers fast and getting the patients where they needed to go in a hurry. The daughter tried to stand firm but she saw I wasn't going to stop and jumped out of the way just as I was an inch from hitting her. Unfortunately, she did not move fast enough and I ended up running over her foot.
At this point, I didn't care and got the patient back to the trauma room, leaving the daughter screaming and lying on the floor. We spent about 30 minutes on the patient but he ended up coding. By the time I got back up front, the mother and daughter had been taken to the back to see a doctor. Still, my charge nurse warned me that they were filing a complaint against me.
A few days later, the actual CEO of the hospital came to visit me on my next shift. He was known to be a kind and fair man. Since this happened during a time before cameras were put in the ERs, he had to take what happened from word of mouth. Apparently, the daughter said I attacked her several times and put her mom's life in danger by not assessing her properly and that I should be fired.
It turned out that the mother did actually have gallstones and nothing else. However, the daughter’s foot was broken due to me running over it. I calmly explained exactly what happened and that the daughter’s action might have ended up in the patient dying because of the delay she caused. When I got to the part of what I said to her and running over her foot, the CEO actually started laughing.
He then tried to cover his mouth to hide his laughter. He explained that the daughter was a friend of his sister’s and he knows exactly what kind of person she is. Not only did I not get fired that day, but he also put a personal note in my file praising my actions. On my next review, I got a large raise and a bonus thanks to the CEO's note.
88. What’s Mine Is Yours
I don’t mind when my roommates borrow my stuff. We’ve all been there. All I ask is that they replace what they take. You drink my milk? Just buy me new milk. It’s as simple as that. Unfortunately, my current roommate doesn’t seem to get this. She keeps taking my stuff and when I ask her to please replace everything she takes, she’ll buy one new thing and “forget” to do it the next time despite having more money than me.
I finally snapped when I wanted to wash my clothes but only found an empty box that used to contain my washing powder. I don’t buy fancy or expensive stuff and I don’t care about brands. After using the last of my powder a week earlier, she could literally have bought the cheapest no-brand powder in the world and I would have been fine. So I just snapped.
I had told her over and over to not use my washing powder if she wasn’t going to replace it and I just had enough. I bought a new box of washing powder, some Dylon machine dye, mixed it with a bit of the washing powder, and dumped it into the old box. When the dye is dry, it looks like washing powder, especially if you’re not expecting it.
I took my new box of washing powder to my room and waited. A week later, I came home from work and saw her laundry hanging outside, all with a mysterious pink color. She stomped up to me and demanded to know what I had done. I told her I was going to dye my own clothes and someone had told me the shade would be lighter if I mixed it with powder (lie), then asked her why she had used it when it had clearly been in a box with my name on it when I had told her not to use it because she never replaced it?
I don’t think she believed me, but she finally got the message. She almost never takes my stuff now and when she does she’s quick to replace it.
89. There Isn’t Room In This Town For The Both Of Us
So I’m at Costco, in need of dog food, and it’s ridiculously busy for a Monday. Barely any parking spots, until I spot one at the end of the lot. I make my way down the aisle and am about to turn into the parking spot when a lady RUNS OVER THE CURB and almost hits me to take the spot. Thankfully, I tapped my brakes in time or she would have taken off my bumper.
I look up and she is shaking her head and wagging her finger in a “no” motion at me. What the heck? I was like okay, I’ll just wait for her to back up since I’m obviously turning into the spot. She doesn’t. My girlfriend is with me and was so angry that the lady wasn’t budging. So I gave her my Costco card and just sat in the aisle in a face-off with this lady.
My girlfriend goes inside, gets the dog food, comes back out, and loads up the car. She then pushes the cart into the spot we were waiting for and hops in the car. The look on the woman’s face was enough to give me satisfaction for a week. She had to get out and move the cart so she could park once I reversed through the entire aisle. Worth it.
90. Take Your Time
I was in line at a grocery store cashing out a 12-pack of drinks. A woman walks towards me and takes her place in line, however instead of standing behind me in line, she decided to stand right beside me. The woman in front of me finishes her transaction and what do you know, the lady beside me actually pushes past me and tries to cut me.
Honestly, in my head, I was about to just let her go because she clearly was in a much bigger rush than I, and I personally didn’t mind waiting an extra two minutes. No big deal to me. However, the awesome cashier (who has cashed me out frequently) says to her “Uh, I’m sorry but she was waiting here before you". The lady scoffs and steps aside.
With a huge smile on my face, I make sure to have a nice and lengthy “How’s your day?” “Yeah thank god it’s Friday!” “Did you do anything fun on Halloween!?” chat with the cashier. She knew, I knew. The lady knew. The whole time I felt the lady in a rush’s eyes burning a hole in the back of my head, and I was just loving every minute of it.
91. The Cost Of Cheating
We dated for four years and had what I thought was a great relationship. We were both well-established professionals who both owned homes in the same neighborhood and both had daughters in the home. Her daughter was 11, and mine was 16 when we met. We had actually planned to get married, build a house, and raise the two together.
We planned the house build because she had recently been diagnosed with a neurological illness that would eventually put her in a wheelchair, and needed something disability-friendly. During the planning stages, I began doing landscape and construction projects on her home to increase the resale value. All in, I invested roughly $30K into the home, running everything through my side construction business for tax, permitting, and resale purposes.
We had a contract that "payment" would be made upon the sale of the home. I produced invoices for each and every project, but never pushed for payment because of the prior agreement. Fast forward six months, we're looking at property to develop and finalizing drawings on the home when I began feeling ill. I couldn't eat, constantly vomiting and passing blood.
I began noticing that my abdomen looked swollen, which was odd because we were both very clean eaters and were in the gym every day. So I went to the doctor and began having tests done. During this time, she began having small cognitive issues, and the stress of her current position was exacerbating her condition, so she took a $20K per anum cut in pay along with a lesser position inside the company.
After a month or so of different tests, and a biopsy, it came back that I had a golf ball-sized tumor in my stomach, and would need to begin chemotherapy. So I began chemo and radiation treatments, which made me, expectedly so, extremely ill. She was spending time helping around my place on the weekends and staying over more, to the point that both her and her daughter were at my home more than theirs.
At this point, I suggested that we go ahead and put one of our houses on the market, and move in together until the new house was built. I have great supplemental insurance as well as a long-term health plan, so using that coupled with the sale of one of our houses would push us through comfortably, and help ease the financial stress on her. This backfired on me horribly.
Shortly after this discussion, she became extremely distant. Her daughter wasn't coming down and hanging out with mine anymore, and she had excuses for not getting together. She quit driving me to treatments and stopped staying over. She then dropped the truth. A sentence that will forever be burned into my psyche: "I love you, but I can't see myself taking care of someone this sick in the long-term, and I don't think we should see each other any longer".
A. TEXT. It broke me. I won't lie. This was the first woman I had ever opened up to and planned a life with since my wife passed when my children were 1 and 3. However, I tried to be mature about it. I forced myself to understand her position and to accept what I could not change. I calmly, the next day, gathered all of her things, packed them neatly, loaded them in my truck, and took them to her house to leave on the back porch while she was at work, in order to avoid any awkward exchanges.
Walking around the back and under the porch cover, I sat down on a box, and saw her in her back living room. I wish I could unsee what came next. She was there getting it on with a man that she had introduced to me as a life-long friend. I had once had dinner and drinks with this man and his girlfriend. We had gone on vacation with them as well.
I never spoke of the incident with her, and simply sent her a text later, explaining that I would leave her things on my side porch to pick up at her convenience. I discovered eight or nine months later from his now ex-girlfriend that they had broken up due to him confessing that he had been sleeping with my partner, dating back to about the time we were finishing drawings on the new home.
Now I’m angry. Revenge time. At this point, I had finished chemo and radiation for the time being and was feeling healthier. I was going through some much-neglected paperwork when I ran across the file that contained $32,680.00 in unpaid, long overdue invoices, which were promptly sent to my attorney to begin lien proceedings on the home.
It turns out that I couldn't have done this a moment too soon because she was set to put her house on the market. Coupled with interest over the course of, what was then, 19 months overdue, the invoices were hefty. That, along with the agreement of settling them when the house was sold and attorney fees, left her with roughly $10K after the sale of the home and settling her current mortgage.
She promptly had to back out of the purchase of another home and moved in with her oldest daughter and two grandchildren. She also had to leave her job and begin receiving disability. I ran into her a little over a year ago, and she looked as if she had aged 20 years, and was in the wheelchair we had talked about. We chatted cordially but briefly and I excused myself and went on with my day.
A few days later, her younger daughter called me and spoke of my running into her mom, and could we hang out sometime. I gave a vague answer, thanked her for calling and again, went on with my day. The ex then called me a week or so later, and began apologizing for leaving me as she did. Again, cordial but short, I thanked her for calling and hung up.
She began texting, and this went on for several weeks until once she asked if I could ever see us rekindling what we had, to which I replied: "I can't see myself taking care of someone so sick in the long-term. Remember the box on your back porch? Did you think that (life-long friend) brought that over to you from my house? Good luck to you. Goodbye".
92. Sounds Wrong
My uncle is a deputy sheriff, and one time, he was at an airport speaking to my aunt over the phone in Spanish. Once he was done with his call, some nearby Karen who overheard him went up to him and started demanding to see his green card. Huge mistake. My uncle decided to mess with her and said he didn't know what a green card was.
He told her he had never even heard of it. She became more upset and kept demanding to see it. He messed with her more and then eventually went, "Well, I don't have a green card, but I have this," then brought out his wallet and showed her his badge. She immediately walked away while my uncle just kept laughing at her.
93. Peer Pressure
During an exit interview with my last job, HR asked me where I was going to next. HR: So, what’s the name of the company you are moving to next? Me: I'm not really comfortable disclosing that. HR: Are you sure? It would really help us out. Me: I'd rather not say. HR: It’s company policy. You need to tell us. This is where I snapped.
Me: I said NO, and if you continue further you'll be hearing from my lawyer. I told my old boss this after I left and he was absolutely shocked. HR has no right to know anything about the next place you are moving to. It’s literally none of their business but they tried to press it out of me anyway, more than likely to call them up and talk bad about me.
94. It’s A Nice Day For A White Wedding
When I was 13, so eight years ago, my dad remarried after divorcing my mom four years before. Before the divorce, his fiancée had been his mistress. My mom is completely better off without him, and ignoring the fact that I wouldn’t exist, I don’t think she should have married him in the first place. Even if I think my parents weren’t a good match, that’s no excuse to cheat on your wife.
Even worse, this new woman was horrifically vile in all sorts of ways. She constantly belittled me, made fun of the fact I needed to take pills for my mental illness—despite her being a freaking pharmacist—and was generally awful to my siblings and me. But she was a decade younger than my dad and reasonably hot, so he didn’t care at all how she treated us.
The one time he actually listened to us about her is when they were thinking of having a baby, and my brother said he’d ask our mom to sue for full custody of us if they did. So anyway, they got married. I was a bridesmaid, cause that witch had no real friends. The other two bridesmaids were her sister and my sister. My brother was the best man because she didn’t like my dad’s best friend.
He and my dad still don’t talk to this day, even though the guy was like an uncle to me as a little kid. It was a wedding, though, and everything went normally at first. But at the beginning of the reception, before the first dance, we were taking pictures in front of a chocolate fountain, looking like the happy family we never were and would never be.
I’m on the autism spectrum and have a problem maintaining eye contact. This extends to looking at a camera. So when we had to retake a photo because I wasn’t looking, she leans down and whispers something in my ear. I’m not going to repeat it, but it involved the r-word. I don’t like saying it. I snapped and decided she was going to pay for this.
No one noticed—or at least no one called me out—when I started slowly moving the chocolate fountain towards the edge of the table. When it got to the edge, it makes contact with the back of that pure white wedding dress and slowly drips down. By the time she notices, it looks like she’s pooped herself. But for all anyone else knows, this was an accident.
She has no spare dress, and that stain is not coming out. So first dance, cutting the cake, speeches, everything, this woman has what looks like a poop stain on the back of her dress. It was a small revenge, but it was so worth it. What’s supposed to be the happiest day of this stupid woman’s life, and she’s going to remember that stain every time she thinks about it.
They never did get the stain out. And nobody knew it was me. Until now, I guess. Hi family, if you’re reading this. Suzie, you’re a witch and you deserved that chocolate stain.
95. It’s A Dog’s Life
Several years ago, shortly after I had moved into my current house, my neighbor at the time would get mad at me for letting my dog poop in his yard. Now, my dog only goes out in the front yard when I'm with him, and I keep him contained in my yard. Sometimes he sneaks a squat when I'm tending the garden, but I usually catch him in the act and use a leaf or something to toss the pile back into my yard.
However, my backyard is fenced off by a wooden privacy fence that was in disrepair, so I figured my neighbor was complaining about my dog slipping through somewhere and pooping in their backyard. Fair enough, so I go through and repair all the gaps I can find with new boards, and all is well. Next day, I come home from work and my neighbor is complaining about dog droppings in his yard again.
I suggest it must be someone else's dog, he suggests I go screw myself. Whatever, I've done my due diligence, I'm done with their nonsense. I wanna say it was about two to three days later that a cop knocked at my front door. I couldn't believe what he was holding. In his hands was a bag that my neighbor had given him with a huge dog poop in it, and I mean HUGE, almost two inches in diameter.
The officer explains that my neighbor was filing a nuisance complaint against me because I let my dog drop in his front yard, and had been so kind as to provide this bag of evidence of my dog's wrongdoings. He had barely finished his introduction when my 11lb Pomeranian finally woke up from his nap and came bounding to the front door to be petted by the owner of this new voice.
I said something along the lines of "Officer, if my dog left THAT, I don't think he would be able to walk right now". He laughed, petted my dog, and wished me a good day. Meanwhile my neighbor's Bull Mastiff is wreaking havoc in their back yard...
Unsplash
96. Rock On
My house is right on the corner of an area where the road turns into a T, and I had issues with people cutting the corner and driving through my yard. One time, someone even nearly hit my dog. So I bought a boulder that was probably 300 or 400 pounds and put it right on the corner. That winter, we had a bad snowstorm.
Someone was coming through in a lifted Dodge and he hit the boulder going about 20 mph. He totaled the truck. Since then, I’ve had zero issues with people.
Pexels
97. Playing Dirty
I went to HR to report that my team's manager was shorting all of our paychecks. HR's response was to adopt a new company-wide policy addressing the paycheck issue and back-paying most people for a certain amount…That sounded like a decent solution, but then they got revenge on me. They framed me for “work avoidance” because I was the whistleblower.
HR and IT then disabled part of my login account to a tool we used, preventing me from doing my job properly. They then fired me a few months later despite not doing anything to help me fix the issue. They tried to deny my unemployment claim afterward as well. They told the unemployment representative that they "had logs" showing that I did something to break the tool, which was nonsense.
Thankfully, they didn't think to disable my email access in a timely manner, so I was able to back up all my emails with IT documenting exactly what went down. Unemployment approved my claim and hit them with a major penalty to their insurance.
98. Present And Accounted For
My ex stood before the judge during my painful divorce and pointed out a charge on my credit card bill for a strip joint. I got the judge’s attention while she was talking—and I knew exactly how to get back at her. We were representing ourselves, so I told him that she was already aware of what the charge was. She was there and even got a lap dance that night.
There were quite a few chuckles from the peanut gallery, and the judge had this quiet hidden little grin that vanished quickly. It felt awesome to say because I'd been screwed over so much from the divorce. It was bad.
99. The Art Of Fighting
I taught high school art. I had a student become furious with me and eventually threaten to hit me. I tried to give the kid an easy out because I knew he wouldn't do it, and nothing good could come of embarrassing him. However, he wouldn't have it and continued to threaten me. Finally, I gave him an ultimatum—I told him to just go ahead and either take a swing at me or get out of my room.
He was now even more furious that I called his bluff. So in retaliation, he threw a jar of paint at the wall as he stormed out of the room. It made a huge splatter, which he assumed I would have to clean up. Instead, I created a silhouette of Ryu and the paint became the Hadouken. When he came back from suspension he had this look of defeat. Other students thought it was badass.
100. A Taste Of Her Own Medicine
When my boyfriend was 14, he was living with his mom and sister on a housing estate. It was summer and he liked a bit of light in his upstairs bedroom, so he left the curtains open at all times. That included when he was getting dressed and after having a shower, so if you purposefully stared at his window, you could see him from his waist up (and only his waist up).
Well, their neighbor did not like that one bit. She went pounding on their door, yelling at my mother-in-law that her son was a disgrace, hanging around always undressed and exposing himself to her daughter. My mother-in-law told her he had every right to do whatever he wanted in his bedroom, and that if they didn't want to see him all they needed to do was not to look.
A couple of days went by and lo and behold, the authorities showed up at the neighbor’s door. Turned out the neighbor had been filming and taking pictures of my boyfriend to show to the housing people as evidence of his wrongdoing to get them kicked out. Except that the housing office called the authorities on her for taking pictures and videos of an underage kid and kicked her and her family out.
Public Domain Pictures
101. The All-Seeing Pie
Several years ago I was running pies for the Hut. We had a particularly nice house that I always seemed to get. It was a nice couple with three kids and a big house. They had money and always had large orders and tipped well. One day, I get routed to their address but I notice the order is very different than normal. It’s about double what they order and the name on the order is not the father’s name.
Interesting, so I take the order to their house. The house is literally bumping. Mom and dad’s car is nowhere in sight. I get their oldest daughter, roughly 15, to answer the door. Now mind you, I don’t care at all if the kids are having a good time, but she made an enemy of me that day. She proceeds to complain that I took forever in a condescending tone, make fun of my uniform, and stiff me on a $100+ order.
I didn’t say anything at the time, but I got my revenge. About two weeks later the house orders again. Normal order, normal name. And I magically get their order. When I arrive, her father is at the door and I can’t help myself. I ask him if they had a good time at the party. He’s clearly confused, so I remind him of the great party they had two weeks prior.
He sits and thinks for a minute. Then he hands me a freaking $50 tip and says, “Thank you very much, I’m sure we enjoyed the party a lot". After he closes the door, all I hear is him yell “Brooooookk get your butt down here right now". It was a jerk move sure, but nah, be nice to your driver—and tip them.
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