We've always been told to take the high road, but sometimes a person needs to be taught a lesson. These outrageously petty people knew how to do just that—and payback never looked so sweet.
1. The Magic Formula
I used to have to report website usage, ROI, and all sort of statistics for a bunch of different sites. I built a cool mother of a spreadsheet in which you only input a few numbers and it would calculate just about everything the company would need. It was a bit too complicated for my boss to understand, yet he would take it to clients and brag that he made it.
That ticked me off. Then, after a while, he realized that the spreadsheet was all he needed, and he could use my paycheck to buy a new house. He laid me off. I told him he might need help with the spreadsheet, but he said he was smart enough. So before I left, I made sure to make him eat his words—I changed a single formula in the spreadsheet and had a good laugh about the reports it spat out. They made no sense at all anymore.
2. And That’s Why You Lock The door
I was at a restaurant for lunch and I got “the urges.” I dash off to the bathroom and it turns out to be tucked away and single stalled. I get in quickly, notice the sign that reads “please lock the door while in the restroom.” Weird. Why wouldn’t anyone lock the door? But anyway, I lock it but the moment I sit down someone starts knocking.
I say, “There’s someone in here.” But then the door starts shaking like I’m in a horror movie. I’m literally sitting on the toilet trying to do my business. The knocking and shaking don’t stop. Then whoever is on the other side starts KICKING the door OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again. Many people have told me stories about getting terrorized in restrooms, so I’m panicking while sitting on the toilet.
Is this just a ploy to get me to open the door? What was I going to do? Open to the door to a violent crazy person? Then I thought to look at the situation in a funnier light. I’m standing on the side of the locked door. They can’t hurt me. If they break the door, the restaurant will make them pay. I take a few deep breaths (albeit in a nasty bathroom) but I kind of just brush my hair and wash my hands really clean for another five minutes.
The door is being kicked to no end and the knocking doesn’t stop. I get a text from my friend asking if I’m okay. I text my friend to see if she can take a peek at what’s going on. And she tells me it’s JUST A LITTLE GIRL. And it’s the same kid who screamed at her father in the restaurant earlier. I had noticed she was the kid that screamed at her father, “I WANT TO ORDER SOMETHING NOW!”
See I would never do this to a child. But I—as a child—also would never kick and scream on a stranger’s door, let alone the public bathroom door when it’s only been less than a minute. It’s infinitely rude. I finally open the door and I see that she went to the server. And I catch the server saying, “Oh, look you can use it now.”
When I get out, I glare at the mom who just looks at me with a deer in the headlights look.
Pixabay
3. 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.
4. Teacher Tantrum
A math teacher handed back our tests in class. They were graded and marked and all that. She was going over some of the questions that most people, myself included, got wrong. I was writing down some notes on my test so I could reference it later and remind myself why I got things wrong and what I was supposed to do instead. My teacher’s reaction was bloodcurdling.
She ripped my test away from me and started screaming at me that cheating is absolutely not allowed and that I should be ashamed of myself. Confused and in shock, I started choking up and tried to explain that I was just trying to take notes. It was one of the most humiliating incidents in my childhood, and I still don’t understand why it happened.
5. Slow Roast
My old boss was a super mean, super-sheltered Mormon girl. Mormons don't drink coffee. One day, she asked me to go get the lawyers in the office coffee. I went, being the office's whipping boy—and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity. I brought her a frap back, telling her it was like a smoothie. She got addicted. Literally. Before I left, she tearfully told the story on the phone about how she was now addicted to coffee.
6. Taking Out The Trash
I’ve never met anyone that said “Oh good, a Home Owners’ Association.” We all have trash cans, but the sight of them offends the delicate eyes of some, so I complied with the new rule of “no seeing bins from the street.” I find a notice of my bins being out, which is surprising because I’m the only one who touches the cans and I know I’m 100% compliant.
I call in and ask why I got the notice. The full description says “Bins in the driveway with lids off.” I asked if this happened to be a Tuesday, and sure enough, it was. Wednesday is the pickup, and I was doing my weekly cleaning. I was freaking using them, I calmly explained through gritted teeth. “Oh okay, I’ll remove the notice.” Great, but how do I prevent this from happening again?
"Oh, uh...I guess notify us.” Alright, I said, I’ll notify you every time I’m using my trash cans. “Oh that won’t be necessary....” Clearly, it is. That was five Tuesdays ago. Today, I once again called promptly at 10 o’clock and let Alan know I was about to use my trash cans. “You know what? I’m just going to put a hold on any trash can notices for you.”Hey, that would be swell, Alan. That would be swell.
7. Salt of the Earth
Lawyer here. I once amended a will for a doctor in which he disinherited his son by removing everything he had intended to bequeath and replacing it with a "manure spreader.” I didn't ask any questions because changing a will is an easy thing to do. But one day, that doctor will die, and his son will have essentially be told to "eat excrement".
8. Don’t Follow Your Dreams
I was on the ride home from school and my mom said, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” I answered, “Maybe be an author or something like that.” She replied with “That is so dumb, that is the stupidest thing. You are smart and you have the whole world at your fingertips, and you want to be an author? You can be a scientist or a doctor, but you want to waste your life being an author.”
9. Just Desserts
I've been enrolled in a cooking school for over a year and my mom has never been supportive, mostly because I dropped out of a nursing program to get into this cooking school. She's always making snide comments about how I should've been a nurse or a lawyer, or how I'll only ever be a subservient housewife with this profession.
When I do make something, she always criticizes it. Like she's Gordon Ramsay or something: "Oh, too much salt". "It's undercooked". "It looks disgusting.” Even though pretty much everyone else says the opposite. She's looking for any little thing she can critique about my cooking. She keeps telling me I can't cook and need to get into a real career.
I've cooked three-course dinners for the family and they always get positive reviews, except for her. She had a party for her work friends, I made a whole tray of my specialty take on homemade meatballs. It’s a recipe I conceptualized myself, and my signature dish. Everyone kept going back and getting more, so many that they ran out.
I asked mom what she thought, and she said, "They were drinking, they couldn't taste anything". So I figured if I wanted to get her to compliment my cooking, I'd have to trick her. I cooked her a meal, one of her favorites from scratch, which was her biggest weakness that she can never resist. I dressed it up to look professional and put it in a generic To-Go Box and had my boyfriend take a video of me preparing it, start to finish.
I called her and told her that my boyfriend and I were eating at this diner (that doesn't exist), and made up a fake name for it and everything. I told her they had her favorite meal and asked if she wanted us to bring her one. Of course, she said yes. I brought the dish and told her more about the fake diner. She started eating it and complimented how good it was.
She even said how she wanted to go to the diner and get another one. After she was almost through with the meal, I asked her for her honest opinions, so we could write a review on Yelp. She went on for 10 minutes about how great it was, and then I sprung it on her. I had cooked it. Her tone changed. She put the fork down and said she was lying, that it tasted like garbage.
My boyfriend showed her the video, and she googled the restaurant and it didn't show up. She then started pointing out flaws with the meal, like how there was too much sauce and it was really spicy and burned her mouth. I asked her why she almost finished the whole thing if it was so spicy. She didn't say anything, so I just asked her if she was ready to admit it.
She said no, so we left, but I spotted her eating it from the other room. I asked her again and she laughed and finally told me yes, that I'm a good chef. So, after a year of doubting I was a good chef and holding my dreams back, she finally admitted it.
10. 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.
11. Nitpicking In The Newsroom
I was working in the newsroom of a newspaper and one of my duties was to take official reports and input them into the system so they could get printed in the paper. The paper’s official style rules said to use abbreviations like “VCR”, “CD player”, “TV”, etc. Some petty, power-tripping jerk browbeat and scolded me.
He said that I absolutely had to type “videocassette recorder”, “compact disc player”, “television”, etc. When the editor asked why I had done that, I said, “That guy told me I had to do it that way”. I assume the dude got in trouble afterward, but I didn’t really care. It serves him right for being so petty and uptight.
12. A Lovely Eau De Parfum
Two guys at work used to pick on me relentlessly. So, I used to go in early and spray raccoon urine on the chairs in their shared office. After two weeks, they were mostly immune to the horrible smell but everyone around them was not. To this day, they have a reputation for the worst body odor in our Fortune 500 company.
13. Cheaters Never Prosper
I do a computer science degree at university. We had a group work project which is set out in two stages. Part A involved making an application and writing a report about it (50/50 split). In Part B, we got feedback from Part A and had to improve upon it. In total it was 100% of a module. It is also important to note that there is a group contribution report (GCR).
This is where each student puts in how much they think each student has done. I was in a randomly selected group with four others, and we each picked a part of the work that we wanted to do. I was apparently the group’s most confident coder, so assigned myself about half of the code. I finished up my work in about the first three weeks and worked on other projects I have for other modules.
Soon after I finished my work, the others asked me if I can do their parts of the code too. I initially protest as I have my other coursework due, but eventually I say fine, so long as it is noted in the GCR. They all agree. I sweat it out over the next three weeks or so alongside my other coursework. Eventually, this bothered me, however, and I contacted my module organizer explaining that I had done half the work.
They suggested that if people weren't pulling their weight to leave the group (taking my code with me) and do the report solo. That would mean I would need to work flat out to produce the report and probably would mess it up. I didn't want that, since the deadline was in about a week. Except then they asked me to do more work. By this point, I felt pretty used by them.
Still, I didn't really mind so long as I got the marks. All in all, I worked out that I had done the workload of three people. There was talk amongst the others of all writing that we each contributed 20% of the workload to "make us look better as a team". I flatly refused. They exploded. They started calling me every name under the sun, swearing at me, telling me to screw off.
I sent off my GCR with 60 for me and 10 each for the rest. And thought that was that. Then my module organizer emailed me asking if I had any proof of my participation, as they all put me at 0% and themselves at 25%. I'd worked my butt on this project, putting in 150+ hours on the code and another 50+ on the diagrams and report. All while attending lectures 20 hours a week.
There was no way I was letting this slide. I emailed him back, linking him to the GitHub I used to share the code with the team and showed him that all the commits (version of the code) were done by me, proving that I did all of it. And thankfully we did the whole report on Google drive so I could also see the history on that document and send him screenshots of all the alterations made by me, proving that I wrote ~20% of the report also.
He added it all up and made a special exception for my group, saying he would give me most of the credit for the work. I think I ended up with a 65 and they all got 11 for the whole coursework Part A. They would need 69% to even pass the module. When they found out their marks, all rage broke loose. They started calling me up and emailing me and messaging me almost for about three hours.
I was happily out at the time and didn't have my phone with me so didn't respond. My module organizer sent another email explaining that they had lied and he had proof about it so he corrected the marks accordingly. When I got back to my phone, I screenshotted all the messages they had sent and recorded all the voicemails, including the ones they had sent previously where they told me to “screw off.”
And screw off I did. I sent all these voicemails and screenshots to my module organizer requesting that I leave my group. I said I understand that it is more work for me but I'd rather not deal with that. He agreed and also escalated the messages to someone higher up. At this point, I quit the group and decided to work on Part B, the next part, by myself. But that wasn’t the best part.
I also TOOK ALL OF MY CODE WITH ME. I removed their access to all of it. I of course asked my module organizer first and they said it was fine as it was my work and if I was no longer in their group the others couldn't submit it. I did the whole report from scratch. I then get messages from the group to “please come back, we really need you” kinda stuff a few days before the assignment was due.
They even offered to pay me. I screenshotted it and sent it to the module organizer, just to let him know what is happening and then I just ignored them. I ended up submitting two weeks early for the deadline and got 100% on the whole Part B. This is basically unheard of at the university. Little did I know, they were trying to get their bitter revenge on me.
Later that day, I get an email from a plagiarism and collusion officer. Not someone you ever want to get an email from. Basically, it says I'm summoned to a hearing as an external body looked at both my group (me, myself and I) and my old group’s coursework and thought it was very similar. I get the whole project that my group handed in and my own back as evidence so I can look and prepare my answers to their questions.
I email my module organizer and ask if he supports me in this because basically they can punish all of you OR one group (never nobody). He says yes he supports me in this. Perfect. I prepare for this meeting by going through the hundreds of commits I have made to the code while they had access to find the one that is most similar to it. I find a PERFECT match, 0 differences, not even a single character.
Through the thousands of lines of code. So I turn up to this meeting and there is the VP of computing there. My old group, when asked to present their answer as to why this has happened, go on about how they did all of it by themselves blah blah blah. You get the point, this goes on for about 10 minutes. Then I am asked to present my argument.
I ask if I can share my screen. VP: "Yeah... Okay.".. puzzled. So I share it. Show all the screenshots I took as some of the people in the meeting weren't aware that we knew each other, including them basically begging for me to come back and offering money to me. And as if this wasn't enough to convince them, I then showed me downloading a fresh version of what they submitted, and a fresh version of one of my commits, and running it through a trusted comparison software.
I narrated this to explain what I was doing just to be clear. Took a while, but it came up—as I knew it would—with 0 differences. Everyone was stunned. One of the group members uttered "but."... I just laughed. I was quickly asked to hang up as I was no longer involved. It turned out they had cloned one of my commits and still had a copy on their laptop when I blocked their access.
They just submitted it and hoped for the best. One of my friends who is friends with someone from my old group asked what grade they got and they said that they failed the whole module. They would have to retake it over the summer, costing everyone in my old group their placement year jobs. This meant that they all lost out on being paid ~20k each for the year’s work. While I happily get mine.
14. Can’t Catch Me
I knew a guy going through a divorce whose wife had cheated on him. During the proceedings, he liquidated his 401k and sold the house which was in his name. It was more than a million dollars. He’s a dual US and Romanian citizen and just left for Romania a few days before their divorce was final with the money. All she got was her BMW lease.
15. Kind To Be Cruel
The first time my husband spent time with my parents was when I realized I was in a vicious family. When we left, he was like, “Wow, your parents have literally not said a single positive thing about you. All their ‘funny’ stories about you growing up are really just awful.” I kind of just figured that was normal. Lots of eye-opening times later, and I don’t talk to my parents anymore for a slew of reasons.
16. “I’ll Just Be A Few Minutes…”
So years ago I delivered jugs of water to homes and offices. My work truck was fairly big probably about 35ish feet long. I had a building I delivered to that had 8-10 stops in it and was one of the few places that had a loading bay for delivery vehicles. This bay was wide enough for 2 large trucks side by side and long enough for my truck to mostly fit with a bit of the cab sticking out in the alleyway (not so far as to block traffic).
On the other side of the alley was another building, and the dumpsters for said building. These dumpsters were in a position that it could be a little tight to get into the dock but it was doable. This day I pull up and see a small courier car (size of a Honda civic) pull into the bay and stop right at the entrance. This position is just enough that I cant get the angle I need to be able to nose up to the dumpsters and back into the open spot in the loading bay. If I tried I’d likely hit the car.
Luckily for me, the driver was just getting out of the car. So I politely asked if she could back up a couple of feet so I could get into the dock. Her: I’m only going to be a few minutes… Me: Yes but if you take 5 seconds, we can both do what we need to do… Her: I’ll be a few minutes… Then she just walks into the building.
So I’m kinda stunned at this point. I’ve been in the delivery industry for almost a decade most other drivers get that it’s a tough job and we can all do what we need to do and there’s kinda an unwritten code even amongst competitors. So I maneuver my truck nice and tight to the building so as not to block the alleyway while parking perpendicular to the loading dock entrance and blocking her car in.
I start loading the first of 2 or 3 cartloads into the building. She comes out and sees my truck… Her: Well isn’t this cute… You need to move… Me: I’ll only be a few minutes. Her: I need to go. Move your truck now… By this time my cart is loaded and I tell her, “It’s okay, I’ll only be a few minutes.” And I walk into the building.
17. 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 fun,” 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.
18. Solve The Equation
In high school, I was easily the best student in my class, especially when it came to math, physics, chemistry and the like. I was one of the fortunate ones to whom that stuff came very easily. However, I was pretty shy and didn't really participate in class, I just aced every test. My classmates obviously knew I was great at these subjects, so they'd often come to me for help instead of going to the teacher.
Most teachers didn’t really care, but there was one lady who did. It's been a while so I can't remember her name, but she taught geometry. One day, she came in determined to expose me, apparently. She drew a very convoluted problem on the board and gave us five minutes to solve for some angle. It was the kind of problem that would take me 20 minutes, at the very least.
The rest of the class would probably find it impossible to get through. Yet, as soon as the five minutes were up, the teacher ordered me to get up to the board and solve the problem for the class. I asked for a little more time, but she insisted I got up so we could "do it together". I didn't really have a choice, so I stood up and walked toward the board.
I suffered silently for a few moments, trying to think of how to approach the problem, until she finally relented and gave me pointers on how to solve it. After I did, she sent me back to my seat and told the class that if people had any questions, they should be going to her. I obviously got super angry and was on the verge of tears for the rest of the class.
I got her back later that same month, though: she had parked her car in a bit of a hidden space, so I peed on her door handle. I guess that’s even pettier than what she did to me but screw her.
19. Read The Fine Print
I once worked at a sign company and my supervisor had a nervous breakdown. She would sleep at the office, not shower, not change her clothes, wouldn't work, wouldn't do anything. Even though I was a temp, I took over like a boss. I went to meetings in her place and did everything in the whole department myself. When the time came for my contract to end, the manager of the whole operation had to decide whether to hire me or not.
She called me into her office and offered me LESS than I was making through the temp agency. I reminded her that I was a good worker and that I had increased output by over 200%, as well as basically doing the supervisor's job all at the same time. She held her ground, so I said, “No, thank you”, and I decided to just leave at the end of my contract. But before I left, I made sure to leave them a little parting gift.
In the meantime, every sign you see anywhere has braille on it as well as letters. It was part of my job to engrave the braille text into each sign. So, whenever I did a sign that wasn't a number, I would make it say, "I hate this job and my cheapskate manager". No one but me could visually read braille, so no one ever knew.
And before anyone calls me out: No, I didn't do that to the fire and emergency-related signs.
20. I Don’t Need You
I hated gym class, not because of the physical activity (I was in hockey and football) but the fact there wasn’t enough time to shower before the bell. So you stink to high heaven for the rest of the day. Because of that, I would walk the track with all the girls. This annoyed my coaches something awful, so they flunked me in my junior year and won't let me double up my senior year so I would have to stay back.
I had already picked out my college and was accepted at a tech school, I just had to finish my senior year. I figured I could work out something with the guidance counselor and the coach. Nope, neither would budge. Ok, I walk away thinking I'm screwed and have to basically take one class my second senior year. Then it dawns on me. Can I just start going to college now? Are there other alternatives?
I call my college admissions and college guidance counselor. I explain my situation and what other options are available? Since this is a non-traditional college (No SATs) you can start without a diploma. I called another meeting hoping the high school admin would change their minds. No joy, they stuck to their story and refused to budge.
Thinking they had me cornered, I stood up and said, "Well I'm just going to have to drop out then. I can’t see missing a year of college to just do gym class". The coach thinks he's all cute and says, "You can't go to college without a diploma". I relay what the tech school admin told me of their policy on this. Faces dropped.
The guidance counselor knows that that a drop-out looks badly on her and the school (small school) when the state audits. Suddenly, she starts back pedaling, but I wasn’t hearing any of it. Later on that night, the principal and vice-principal call to talk. I wasn’t interested, since I was all excited about starting classes in the fall.
21. That’s Not Supposed to be There
My co-worker had a client in a messy divorce where the parties were required to split up some antique pots. When the husband delivered the wife's share of the pots to our office, he had defecated in each one of them. It was a whole big incident.
22. Going Whole Hog
After my dad passed, we were cleaning out his apartment. My mom, paternal aunt, paternal grandmother, and I were there. I was 11, my parents were divorced, and while my mom tried telling me that my grandma was not a trustworthy person, she detached her own biases enough to still allow me to be close to my dad's family and make my own decisions.
My dad had a motorcycle, which he adored. At his apartment, because he had no will, every major possession was supposed to be recorded to the estate lawyers to be sorted out later. Nothing was to be taken home. On his motorcycle keys, he had a keychain of a bike. I was in the kitchen alone with my grandma, and spotted them on his key rack.
Nonchalantly, I said, "Oh, it's dad's motorcycle keys!" My grandma said, "Oh yeah, it is". Then she grabbed them and slipped the keys in her pocket. Weeks later, I overheard my mom talking to the lawyer about not being able to find the bike keys. I told her what happened. My mom asked me if I was 100% sure I saw what I saw, and I was positive.
Lawyers spoke to lawyers, and my grandma denied that it ever happened. It came to the point where I had to give a sworn testimony at a deposition, all while my grandma looked me straight in the eye and calmly told everyone present that I "was a grief-stricken delusional child who was prone to lying". She then tried telling everyone that my word could not be trusted due to the intense trauma of my dad's passing, and questioned the courts about whether it was wise to believe an 11-year-old over an adult.
She chose possessions over her family. Every member of my dad's side supported her—and then she topped even herself. She lied on my dad's gravestone, making him two ranks higher in the service than he was, and then also stating he served in a battle that he never did. I don't even visit my dad's grave anymore because it's just lies.
I tried to sporadically interact with them for a few years after that, but officially cut contact in 2013.
23. Little Light Lie
Some years ago, we had some new neighbors move in next door. Nice enough people, but we had a problem with them. The husband traveled a lot and his wife was afraid of just about everything—the dark, thunderstorms, you name it. The problem was the floodlights over their garage doors. She would leave them on all night, every night, even though you couldn't see them from inside of their house.
They were positioned such that they would shine into our bedroom at night. We were not able to block them effectively with our curtains. We asked them politely several times if they could turn them off at night since they served no effective purpose. They adamantly refused. I offered to pay for a timer that would control them.
No way they would consider it. I thought about taking the bulbs out, blasting them out with pellets, etc. The solution that I arrived at was to simply loosen them up enough that they wouldn't come on. Since they couldn't see them from inside the house, it was about five-six months before they realized that they were not working. They screwed them back in. I waited a couple of weeks and unscrewed them again.
Another few months went by. Finally, one day, my neighbor asked me if I ever had any trouble with my outdoor lights. I told him yes, as a matter of fact, I did. I said that they would loosen up occasionally and I would have to retighten them. I blamed it on vibration from the traffic on our street. He said that he had the same problem.
I told him that I finally just gave up and left them off. He eventually did the same. We were happy with the final outcome and we were able to keep pace in the neighborhood.
24. 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".
25. Mr. Misery
When I was in the seventh grade, I had a teacher who hated me. He always picked on me because I was a little slower than the rest of the class at getting math equations. He sent me to an after-school remedial class, which was for children with special educational needs. He did this even though I never had special needs.
I was just a very literal thinker who used to question why certain things had to be done in a certain way. I was once late handing in my homework project by 10 minutes because the teacher wasn't there at the time. I was on time, but he was late, and he gave me three months of detention. Every lunchtime, I had to write lines and if I didn't finish before lunch was over, I didn't eat.
I told my mum, obviously. She pretty much said to just deal with it because we were emigrating to the UK later that school year. She was kind of right. I never finished my detention because we left the country, so screw that idiot.
26. Reference Check
To get revenge, I just tell the truth when people in our small industry call me to ask about what it was like working for him. He hasn't ever been hired for any of the jobs where I've been consulted on his work and demeanor. The best one was when I was called by a friend of mine about the guy applying for a job at the company I was contracting at the time.
I said, "If you hire him, I'll quit". I still work for them, on and off for the last three years.
27. Taking The Hard Road
So this happened earlier today and was too perfect to not share. I work in construction as the foreman for a new house build. The location is kind of strange; the house is 250 feet up a hill via a footpath only. All of our materials have to come up this footpath by hand. It’s a pain in the butt to manually carry, quite literally, an ENTIRE HOUSE up this hill.
One of our saving graces is having the two parking spots on the street at the bottom of this hill marked with official No Parking signs. Unfortunately, there is an elementary school about half a block away and the parents of children seem to regularly (at least twice a day) think it’s ok to park in our spots. Now I consider myself a reasonable person, so if someone is parked in the spots and we don’t have a delivery or a need to park a truck, I will let it go.
If we need the spots and there’s someone parked there, however, I will ask them to move nicely and most of the time they do so immediately. Until today. I get a phone call from the lumber delivery truck that is en route to our location. He says he’ll be there in about two or three minutes. I let him know I will meet him on the street and make sure he has space to park.
He’s carrying all of the material to frame the roof of our house, which is a lot of really big lumber and will take easily an hour to bring up the hill, so naturally, I didn’t want him parked in the middle of the street with his hazards on for an hour when we have a perfectly good parking spot for him. As I begin my trip down the hill, I notice there is a school parent sitting in her car idling.
Assuming she’s just waiting to pick up her child, I walk up to her car and politely let her know that she is parked in a no-parking zone and we really need her to clear it to park a delivery truck. She scoffs at me and rudely states back, “I’ll just be a few minutes, and your truck isn’t here, take a chill pill dude.” Before I can respond, a giant lumber truck comes around the corner and I wave to him and then gesture towards him to the woman in the car…who has now put her window back up to ignore me.
Oh, it’s on, lady. I put on my best customer service smile and wave at her through the window. She put it down halfway and angrily shouts “WHAT!” By now the truck has pulled up alongside her car and I politely ask her again, with a stronger tone of voice, to move her vehicle, reminding her that she is parked in a tow-away zone. Then she gives me this wonderful idea.
She says, “Can’t you guys just unload around me? Jesus, it’s not that hard.” I give her another smile and walk away, a brilliant plan forming in my head. I instruct the delivery driver to park as closely to her as possible and block her in with the porta potty that is at one end of our reserved spots and the parked car that is parked just adjacent to our spots on the other end.
He smiles because he immediately gets what I’m trying to do, and proceeds to expertly block this lady and her car into a little two parking spot block. We unstrap the lumber and my guys begin humping material up the hill, meanwhile I call the parking enforcement to let them know the situation. At this point in time, I wasn’t trying to get her in trouble, I just wanted a record of why we were blocking part of the street so we don’t get in trouble with the city.
The very friendly traffic officer lets me know that she can be there in about 30 minutes and deal with the situation for me, wonderful! As we continue to unload lumber the child of the parent shows up, and wouldn’t you know it Mom is just now realizing that the lumber truck is parked so close she can’t get out of her driver's door to meet her kid. What followed was so, so sweet.
She awkwardly clambers across the inside of her car and stumbles out the passenger door, sending glaring looks at me and the truck driver in the process. She loads her kid into the back and then begins to realize that she has no way of leaving. She comes storming up to me and the driver and states, “I’m in a big hurry, you need to move your darn truck right now so I can go.”
Before I can respond, the driver gets a grin on his face and says, “Ma’am in order to unload the lumber on the truck we had to unstrap it, and per our company policy I’m not allowed to move the truck with any unsecured load on it. Sorry.” This sends her into near aneurysm levels of blood pressure, meanwhile I can barely contain my laughter. “Screw your policy, I have somewhere to be!” She barks back at him.
At this point, with impeccably convenient timing, the parking enforcement officer shows up and parks behind the truck. She doesn’t see the officer arrive and while the officer is still getting out of her vehicle, I have the perfect reply. I just casually say, “Can’t you just pull out around it? It’s not that hard.” With the biggest grin I’ve ever had, I watch as she realizes that I just used her line on her.
“Screw you!” She yells, and storms back to her car and angrily clambers back in through the passenger door and into the driver’s seat. At this point, the officer is walking up to me and the driver. Before she can even introduce herself, the Mom in the car slams it into reverse and stomps on the gas, crashing into our porta potty and knocking it over.
She then throws the car into drive and tries to mount the curb and drive on the sidewalk. The officer, driver, and I are staring in disbelief as she gets halfway over the curb and gets stuck. I can hear her screaming over the idling truck from inside her car. The officer promptly walks up to the door of the car and orders her out. Here comes my favorite part of the entire thing.
I watched her face go to shock as she realized she just did all of that in front of an officer. She gets slapped in cuffs as the parking officer calls for a second unit and she is promptly sat on the very curb she tried to drive over. She sits on the curb yelling to the now two officers about how we told her she could stay there and that we never asked her to move.
The traffic officer responds that she was the one who was originally called when she first refused to move and that she already knows what’s going on. While myself and the driver are giving a report to the second officer, my guys finish moving the remainder of the lumber and the driver finishes his statement and takes off to go back to the yard.
By the end of the ordeal, she was charged with Child Endangerment (her kid was in the back of the car the whole time), Reckless Driving, Destruction of Property, (the porta potty), and Driving on a Suspended License (surprise!). On top of all that she also got her car towed. The kid went home with his grandma and she went to spend some quality time in a cell.
I never expected her to actually heed my advice to “Just pull out around it.” But I think next time she’ll probably think twice about parking in a tow-away zone…if she ever gets a license again.
28. Forgive but Never Forget (or Enrich)
In her will, my vindictive grandmother left my aunt $20 as a reminder of the $20 my aunt take from her once.
29. Lean On Me
I was waiting outside the toilet at my mom’s house for my partner to come out. I was with her because she has severe depression and anxiety, and wanted someone there. My mother came out of her room and exploded, asking me why I'm sacrificing so much and telling me that my girlfriend was faking it to manipulate me, horrible things like that.
Worst of all, my girlfriend heard everything and broke down really badly. I haven’t taken her to my mother’s since.
Pexels
30. Psycho Coworker
In my old department, there was this dispatcher who probably shouldn’t be a dispatcher. We’ll call him G. One day, G needed to stay home for the gas and electric people to do some work on his home. Instead of taking a whole day off, he made the mistake of telling our boss that he’ll be at work no later than noon, but he could be there sooner if it’s really busy. G said he’d call to see how we were doing to see if he needed to come in early. I was left to dispatch for that day.
I came in at 6 a.m. Starting at 7 a.m., he called numerous times. By the time it reached 9, G must have called at least 20 times. Each time he said the same exact thing: “Is it busy? How does it look? Do I need to come in?” By the 20th call, I got fed up and told him that it’s really busy and we could use the help if he’s able to show up. He hesitated because he had no one to watch the house, but eventually agreed and said he’ll be at work in a few minutes.
When he came in, I let him know about the workload. He realized that it wasn’t that busy and asked why I did that. My response? “Because you called me more than a psycho ex-girlfriend would. I had to stop you somehow.” Our boss wouldn’t let him leave and thought the whole thing was hilarious especially since G knows better than to do things like that to me.
Pixabay
31. 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.
32. Pop Quiz
In grade four, a teacher gave us a few questions before lunch break and expected us to answer each of them correctly right after the break was over. One of my classmates couldn't get a few of the answers correct. So, the teacher made him walk to every bench and get a smack from each student that was present in the class.
Thinking about the incident now, I feel like going back in time and beating the snot out of that horrible teacher.
33. An Acquired Taste
I worked at a large nightclub. We got a new general manager that turned into a complete jerk. He would make comments about employees and constantly make fun of them. He would also tell the same stories over and over again. One day, when my buddy and I were closing the place down, I saw a jar of jellybeans on the general manager’s desk—and a lightbulb went off in my head.
I proceeded to rub my hands all over my sweaty balls and run them through his jellybeans. Then, I just dipped my nuts ever so gently into the jellybean jar. My buddy walked in while I was doing this. I told him to be quiet and not to say anything. The next morning my buddy gets called into the general manager's office for a meeting.
The general manager offers him some jellybeans which he politely declined. The general manager proceeded to finish the rest of the jellybeans. At one point a jellybean stuck to his mouth. My buddy had to leave before he laughed and ruined everything. I still do not really feel bad about doing that. That manager was a jerk.
34. Doing It By The Numbers
When I was 13 or 14, I decided I wanted a PS3. My dad refused to buy me one, but my uncle made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He said that if I worked at his sweets shop for the two months of summer break, he would buy me a PS3 and some games in lieu of payment. For teenage me with no commitments, this seemed fantastic.
My uncle sold a kind of specialty snack known as a mini-samosa in his shop. They are like samosas, but smaller. They were sold by weight, in sealed packs of 250 gs and 500 gs as these were the most common amounts people bought. Making those packages turned out to be my job. You see, sometime between now and when my uncle started his business, he realized that 250 gs was roughly the weight of 28 mini-samosas and thus 56 were 500 gs.
So instead of weighing each packet, I was told to just pack by counting individual items, which was easier and saved time. We also sold them individually for people who wanted larger, smaller, or unusual amounts. This was also around the time when our government started airing customer awareness PSAs (“Jaago Grahak, Jaago” for my fellow Indians).
Basically, just telling customers to beware of shady business people. This is relevant. So, one particularly hot afternoon, it was just me and my uncle at the shop. In India, frequent power cuts were very common during summers and thus there were no fans or AC running. Both tempers and temperatures were running high at the shop that day. It was then that the villain of our story made his entry.
Mr. Karan was a local resident and a regular. He seemed angry from the onset when he barged into the shop. He took a look at the fans and saw that they weren’t running, then angrily picked up a 500 g pack of samosas and asked, “How many samosas are in this thing? ”That’s 500 gs,” I said. “I said how many, NOT how much!” Mr. Karan literally screamed, “Again, HOW MANY in this?”
“56” I replied immediately since, you know, I packed them. “How can you be so sure? You didn’t even count! You’re trying to cheat me!” Mr. Karan was now in full-scale Karen mode. “I demand you pack me 500 gs of those individual ones and don’t you dare cheat me again!” I looked over at my uncle, wet with sweat, fanning himself with yesterday’s newspaper. He slowly nodded.
I beamed a huge smile, “Sure sir! Whatever you want!” So I took a bag, picked up some samosas, and started putting them on the balance. I kept counting samosas as I put them in until they were a little over 500 gs. Then I removed the last samosa and the weight fell below 500. Now, keeping eye contact with Mr. Karan, I crushed the samosa and started putting its powdery remains in the bag until it was exactly 500gms. But wait, there’s more!
Mr. Karan apparently didn’t seem to mind powdered samosa, but instead asked smugly, “So how many samosas now?” “48” I claimed triumphantly. You see, sometime in the past, my uncle’s old chef retired and the new chef made samosas with a little bit more filling in them. They looked the same size on the outside and only weighed a couple of grams more each, and since he made them in bulk and also sold them to other shops in the area, the price wasn’t too much of an issue.
So my uncle let it slide. But those couple grams added up on mass orders, and that is what Mr. Karan found out the hard way. He looked sheepishly at the pre-packed samosas and then at his own package and asked if he could buy the former instead. “No, my nephew made a package especially for you, at your own request. So that is what you have to buy.” My uncle finally spoke.
Mr. Karan silently took his pack, paid, and left. He was a lot more respectful during his subsequent visits. I was reminded of this story yesterday when my PS3 finally crashed.
35. Ice Queen
The spouse had been out of the house for weeks. She waited until he was on a business trip, came into the house, turned on all of the faucets, plugged the drains, turned off the furnace, and left. It was -10 degrees. He came back five days later. The house was ruined. The water froze and cracked the foundation.
36. Big Day, Big Ego
I was at my sister's wedding, and it was the most fun wedding I've ever been to. Everyone was having a blast. I was catching up with some first cousins I don't see very often when my mom walks up to us and starts complaining about how my sister didn't want to invite some of my mom's cousins. My sister and I had only met them a few years before and my sister didn't like them.
My mom insisted that she needed them to be there so she could have fun. The screwed up thing was my sister had given in to my mom's demands and some of those cousins were actually there. So my mom was actually insulting my sister at her own wedding for letting her have her way. I had known my mom's siblings and parents were pretty awful, but this was the moment I accepted that she was just as bad.
37. Just A Tip
A couple of months back, my boyfriend and I went out for drinks one night at this cool little "speakeasy" in Montreal. It's actually quite an interesting place. You come in through a nondescript entrance and the place has a really nice vibe going on once you get inside. Note: this is one of those bars where the server comes to your table and serves the drinks rather than one where you order at the bar and take the drinks back yourself.
The server seated us at our table, and we ordered a couple of cocktails. And then a couple more, and then a couple more after that. Each time we had to order, my boyfriend or I would have to go fetch the server so he would take our order or go up to the bar, order, and then bring the drinks back ourselves. Then, when it came time for the bill, I went up again so he would come to our table.
The server came and thought we were going to order again despite me clearly asking for the bill when I went up. So, he went back to get the card machine and it was another 10 minutes before he was back. At this point, I was quite ticked off at the not-so-great service and was debating whether or not I should tip him. The screen had an option for 10%, 15%, 20% or "other".
I decided to just leave 10% as I wanted to avoid an argument with the server. Montreal service employees are pretty darn notorious when it comes to the expectation of tips. Now, he prints out the receipt, takes a look at it, and sees I left 10%. He then asks if we had a nice evening, to which my boyfriend responded that we did.
We both thought it was just a standard question servers ask, so we didn't bother telling him about the poor service we received—especially because it wouldn't really make a difference at this point. The guy then says, "Oh, well if you had such a nice time, then you should've left at least a 15% tip. Because, in Canada, it's customary to leave a minimum 15% when the service is good".
I'm guessing the reason he felt the need to outline that's how it is in Canada is because I'm a brown guy. Now comes the petty part. I responded, "Oh I didn't know, why don't you cancel this bill and redo it so I can tip you properly?” He said, “Sure thing, just give me a second because the manager has to approve bill cancellations.”
Again, we waited a good 10 minutes for him to come back with the new bill. I was happy to wait, though, because once he came back, I put in the PIN and then selected the "other" option for the tip and left him 0%. He printed out the receipt and his look of disbelief was well worth it. We got up and my (white Canadian) boyfriend said, "Our only tip for you is to give better service and not be so much of a jerk. In Canada, we don't really like jerks.”
38. 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".
39. The Cookie Monster
When I was in kindergarten, my dad packed a lunch for me. My school was very into “healthy eating” and “healthy snacks”. I was always very good with eating those foods but sometimes a kid just needs a cookie, specially packed into their lunch as a surprise from Dad. Now, my teacher saw I had a cookie in my lunch box, grabbed it from me and said, “WE DONT EAT COOKIES IN THIS CLASSROOM”!
The teacher then proceeded to EAT the cookie RIGHT in front of my little face. It scarred me for years. My dad set up an appointment with the principal. While we were there, he called the principal and the teacher un-American for not allowing him to put in his child’s lunch box the things he thinks she should be able to eat.
40. Let The Dough Rise
I used to have a baking job in a local bagel shop, and I also did some prep work. I was an "unofficial" manager since I had worked at the shop for years and made more money than most employees. Because my shift started early, I got to leave early. Some of the other employees didn't like this, particularly a new girl and her boyfriend.
They always had attitude problems toward me. I never knew why, they just didn't like me, I guess. Which is totally fine! One day, it was 11 am and the boyfriend started his closing duty. I told him, "Sorry, Boyfriend, you can do all of your closing duties if you want, but you still have to stay until close". He ran and told his girlfriend.
She started yelling at me from the front while I was in the back, calling me all sorts of rude names in front of customers. I asked her to come to the back if she wanted to talk to me and she came to the back, shaking. I was absolutely terrified—I seriously thought she was going to punch me in the face. I was all done for the day, so I went home to cry about it.
She ended up quitting and leaving a note to my boss about what a horrible person I was. My boss crumpled up the note, threw it away, and told me what a great person I was. Fast forward to recently, my boss ran into her stocking groceries in another town where she has moved back in with her parents and her boyfriend.
In the end, I didn't really have to do anything but turn to friends like my boss who helped me believe that I am a good person and that others are just rotten. I'm happy in a relationship, going to school and I have my life together, for the most part. I’ve often found that in the end, karma is the best way to get back at someone.
41. I Salute You, Sir
There are a handful of rules to saluting in the American army. The when, why, and how are drilled into you from boot camp until the day you leave. Even the order in which the salutes are rendered has meaning. When it comes to vehicles, there are helpful insignia and stickers to indicate if it’s an officer, such as a colored sticker located on the front windshield.
My base was small enough where it was everyone's job at some point to do sentry duty at the front gate which had housing for families. Sentry duty was pretty basic. You'd stop every vehicle, check IDs, and then wave them through. If they were an officer you'd see it coming with those colored stickers and after verifying the identity of the officer, you'd salute and send them on their way.
One day while on duty, I approached a vehicle with an officer's sticker and there was only the officer's wife driving in the vehicle. I returned her ID, wished her a nice day, and waved her through. Pausing with a stern look, she said, "Where's my salute Petty Officer?” Now, Karen here was wife to a higher-ranking officer and has clearly fallen under the impression people are saluting her somewhere along the way.
Some of the junior enlisted might've even been saluting her as they're pretty easy to intimidate. I politely replied, "Ma'am, salutes are only rendered to commissioned officers". Angrily pointing her chubby little fingers at the front of her windshield towards her husband's officer sticker, she said "I have a sticker and you need to salute the sticker". Curtly I continued, "I'm afraid that sticker is not an officer either".
Frustrated, she pulled through and left my post. My cover guy (the guy keeping me safe) and I watched her drive down the street and pull right into the administrative building with the top brass. She huffed into the building as quickly as her soft body would take her. We exchange a look between us, with wry smiles knowing exactly where this is probably going.
Later that day, we get a new official base-wide mandate. From here forward all enlisted will salute vehicle stickers of officers regardless of who's in the vehicle. Rodger that. This is where the revenge comes in. It's worth noting that when you salute an officer as enlisted, you do it first, and you hold that salute until you are saluted in return and they lower theirs.
Only then do you lower your salute. It signals that you're saluting them, and they're replying. Additionally, when saluting a group of officers, you generally direct your salute and greeting to the highest-ranking individual. Now as far as I know, this stupid sticker salute order has no accommodation for how a 2004 Toyota Camry fits into the officers pecking order.
Additionally, if the car is unoccupied, it’s not like that sticker is removed. After that order came through, we all began saluting stickers. Personally, I'd direct my salute to the sticker. I would also prioritize sticker salutes over officers. Let me tell you, walking through parking lots was a blast as I saluted empty cars on my way to wherever.
More and more people saw me doing it, and more and more people started doing it. Not long after that, the order was publicly rescinded, which hilariously had the balancing effect of never rendering a salute to anyone but a clearly known officer, cementing Karen never getting her unearned salutes. I couldn't have been happier.
42. Not All Funds
I work as a paralegal for a divorce lawyer and one of our clients told us he didn't clear out the marital account after the parties filed. While technically true, it’s because he removed $45,000 and left about $3.50 in there.
43. Evil Stepmother
I didn't realize this was an example of how awful and vicious my stepmother was at the time, but when I was 11, my stepmother got my two sisters, her biological kids, iPod touches. I did not receive one. At first, I brushed it off as my stepmother not getting me one because I didn't really listen to music much, but then again neither did my sisters.
I realized years later this was just another example of her blatant favoritism towards her own children, whether she would admit it or not—and trust me, she wouldn't.
44. Treat Others As You Want To Be Treated
One of my biggest pet peeves is when somebody buys something, but instead of handing me the money, they plop it down on the counter. So one guy came up and was being… undesirable. Grown man. When it comes time to pay, he grabs a pile of crumpled cash and throws it on the counter in front of me. I stare at it for a few moments and eventually, the guy says something along the lines of, “The money’s right there, you can count it!”
So being the petty little guy I am, I pick it up, thumb through it incredibly slowly (about 30-45 seconds without exaggeration), and this guy is giving me the ANGRIEST look. I open the register to grab his change and I go to set it on the counter. He tries to dip his hand beneath mine to grab it so I slide my hand to the side and drop it on the counter. I slide the item he bought across the counter and look up and smile with a, “Have a very nice day sir.”
He storms off and I ask if he’d like his receipt. When comes back and tries to snatch it out of my hand, he instead rips it in half and it took all of my energy not to bust out into tears. I will go to any lengths to anger people if they treat me like I’m subhuman.
45. 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.
46. Frosty’s Revenge
12 years ago, when I was in tenth grade, my sister built a giant snowman after an unusually heavy Pennsylvanian snow. She was eight at the time and she’d spent all day on this thing. It was actually pretty impressive. The town I'm from is a borough and it only has something like 7,000 people who live there, meaning high school classes were small and relatively tight-knit.
There was one particular kid—who I'll call Scotty—who drove me up the wall. He never did anything to me personally, but he just had a massively annoying way about him. To make matters worse, it seemed as if I had way too many classes with him to be statistically possible. One of Scotty's irritating behaviors is that he drove a loud, redneck-ish, John Deere green truck.
It was obnoxious and—important to the story later—had a huge brush guard on the front of it. Well, on the evening after my sister built her snowy sentinel, I heard the sound of Scotty's truck making its way down the street from inside our living room. Then, I heard the "pfft" of someone running over a snowman and laughing.
Unfortunately for my sister, she had built it close to the road and too easily within the range of this semi-guided jerk. She was rather upset to see her day's work splattered all over the street...Something needed to be done about this. So, the next morning, I woke up early and began building another snowman. It was glorious.
I made the classic, three-section, scarf-wearing, sticks-for-arms-and-vegetables-for-a-face snowman. However, this new snowman's cheery countenance betrayed a grim and dark secret. Frosty was built on top of a fire hydrant at the corner of our yard where there was no curb. For a good two days, I dreamt of Scotty wrapping his stupid truck around my masterpiece out in the yard.
But no dice. I didn't see him at all anywhere around town, so I thought I was out of luck. Then, on the evening of the fourth day, I heard it. My family was eating dinner and I heard the low grumble of fate's motors kicking from gear to gear. I thought to myself, “Will they find themselves abruptly halted in about 10 seconds? It all depends on you, Scotty boy”.
So, I started chewing my food really fast because, knowing the idiot, I knew what was going to happen next. The final acceleration sounded off like a chaotic crescendo as he plowed straight into—not through—the snowman with the deafening crunch of twisting metal. My family ran outside, and it took everything I had to not laugh before I got out there.
There stood Scotty, dazed and bewildered and caught off guard by a battle that he’d lost before he realized it had begun. Payback never tasted so sweet.
47. Technical Difficulties
I used to do IT work for a large university. A few years back, they decided that everything would be better if IT were centralized, then parsed back out to the departments. In many places, that might work. At this place, it was going to be a disaster for reasons that aren't relevant to the story. I knew it was going to be a mess.
And I didn't want to work someplace where a user is required to fill out a ticket before I could even look at their problem, so I decided to leave. As I was cleaning out my office on my last day, a professor came running down the hallway in a panic. This guy had been a huge pain in my butt for years. He was a jerk, he was condescending, he thought he knew anything that mattered about computers, etc.
He was your standard jerk. I also knew that he had been one of the biggest proponents of switching up how IT worked and that on at least two occasions he suggested that the best way to save money for the department would be to cut my position. So, while I had always been professional with him, there really was no love lost.
He was huffing and puffing down the hallway, and said, "I'm so glad I caught you before you left. I'm giving a big presentation in 30 minutes to the administration! My computer won't turn on, and my only copy of my presentation is on there!" My response was killer. I just told him, "I'm sure if you fill out a ticket with the central IT desk, someone will be with you shortly".
He just stopped straight still, and I think he suddenly pieced together that I knew exactly what he'd been saying when I wasn't around. He turned beet red and walked down the hall back to his lab, and slammed the door shut. His stuff wasn't fixed in time.
48. The Professional
I am a small-time landlord with just four tenants. Earlier this year, I had two sisters who didn't respond to my requests to add on the gal's husband to the lease, though he was living with them. Not a BIG deal...but did I mention the pit bull they also brought home, without permission? I DO allow pets, and had previously approved their other dog.
I asked nicely in person and by email in the months leading up to my revenge...They also did not respond when I asked if they were happy there and wanted to renew their lease for the following year. I asked again...Then I emailed them notice that I would start showing the unit two days later. I try to be a nice landlord, I really do.
They had a newborn as well, so I scheduled all of the showings within a two-hour window on the same night so I could be in their space as little as possible. Also, because they had not responded, it was now serious "crunch time" for getting another tenant. Plus, my spouse worked all the following two weeks during evening showing hours.
Because of this, I had the delightful inconvenience of bringing my two- and six-year-old children with me to the showings. Because I'm not a corporation—I'm a small-time family landlord with kids. Try to imagine how difficult it is to conduct business meetings with two kids, right? Then imagine staggering showings every 15 minutes with prospective tenants who are also bringing their own kids.
Just to further clutter your imagination, this is an 800-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment with a cozy entryway. So I arrive with my two kids. Then I find out a detail that makes my heart drop. My tenants are still at home, along with the husband, the newborn, and the other sister's boyfriend. So that's seven people in a small kitchen already.
Then the first prospective tenants start arriving. Husbands, wives, with kids, and some showing up early so there are two sets of them. That's 14 people in a small kitchen...And I'm a mom. I have magical powers. So I'm holding my toddler, my daughter is safely under the dining table coloring, and I'm chatting with the prospective tenants and directing traffic while my actual tenants prepare to depart.
If you didn't know this already, it's common practice in the US to leave the premises during real estate or apartment showings. This was their first apartment, so I actually emailed them ahead of time to let them know what is generally expected at showings (e.g. a relatively tidy apartment, and that they can leave, for their own convenience).
They do eventually leave, after the boyfriend tells a prospective tenant that he, in fact, ALSO lives there. I carry on with an exhausting scheduling of showings. I have my new tenants all picked out and the lease signed by the next day. Awesome, right? Nope, not at all. The next night, I get a voicemail from the husband (who is NOT my tenant).
I saved it and just listen to it again, because it still gives me that same delightful shiver of malice. In his voicemail, he told me how awful it was that MY children touched HIS infant's things. By the way, they didn't, because I keep my kids entertained with magical mommy toys, but prospective tenants also brought children.
He said how they had to sterilize everything to keep their infant from being sick, and how inconvenient it was to have showings with only two days’ notice, and how very unprofessional I was to bring my children, and he asked if I could just be more professional in the future. You can hear it, can't you? The deep shiver vibrating through my offended being. They had no idea what was coming.
The next morning, I started issuing professional Lease Breach Notices. One for the extra residents of the unit (hubby and boyfriend). One for the extra dog. And a few additional ones for building concerns I noted during the showings. They ignored the breach notice, which I sent by certified mail and, thoughtfully, also by email.
I decided to be even more professional 30 days later and issue a five-day notice to vacate. And I called their mom, who is their emergency contact, as an eviction notice IS an emergency. Did I mention that their lease was due to end just a few weeks later? But it would be unprofessional of me to let these violations slide until then…
Three days later, they'd magically sent me all the information I'd requested, removed the other dog, licensed the first dog, gotten the required pet insurance...They moved out on their lease termination date. And skipped out on their last electric bill, and left the unit in damaged condition. Despite my professional security deposit disposition statement and request for payment, they ignored those notices, until I stated I would proceed to small claims court by X date for the total due BEYOND their security deposit.
On X date, they replied stating they "didn't think it was fair" that they should have to cover damages to the unit, or "pay any more money" toward their utility bill. Yep. They got what they deserved in the end. Two months later, there we were in the lobby of the courthouse, sitting across from each other on uncomfortable waiting-room benches.
They're laughing among themselves about how they're going to get their full security deposit back. And I'm quietly reviewing my presentation notes to the judge and my sizable stack of evidence, photographs, videos....this was my first time in court, but I wasn't laughing. I was preparing. One hour later, we're back in the lobby and their mom is trying to write me a check for the full amount of the judgment.
She doesn't have a pen. Her kids don't have a pen. I, however, have a pen. I cheerfully offer my pen. She writes the check and hands it to me, and...wait...I hold out my hand again. Got my pen back too. I was so proud of myself for not saying any of the sassy things in my head at that moment. You know why? Because I was being professional, as I'd been from the moment he'd left that voicemail.
As a last note, I do acknowledge that it would have been better if I hadn't brought my children. However, if you have kids, you'll understand that sometimes, they simply have to go where you go.
49. No Parting Gift Like One Last Miff
Lawyer here. I thought I'd seen it all, but this vicious will proved me wrong: "To my wife I leave her lover and the knowledge that I was never the fool she thought me. To my son I leave the pleasure of working for a living—for 25 years, he thought the pleasure was all mine". Best diss ever.
50. Buyer Beware
My dad gave me the silent treatment because he thought I crashed the car he had just bought for me and I wouldn't own up. Why? because it had red marks on either side of the window. He thought I must have hit a barrier or something, despite me pointing out that this would have almost certainly smashed the screen into smithereens.
After a week of racking my brain, I asked if there was a red “for sale” banner across it...he replied yes, then slowly began talking to me again.
51. Have Your Cake And Eat It Too
My old college roommate didn't know how to cook or do dishes and didn't go food shopping much. This led to him eating my food, especially my leftovers as those were prepared meals. Now, I would use my leftovers to meal prep for the week and told him to stop as it was expensive as well as inconvenient. The behavior did not stop and he actually seemed to be eating more of my food out of spite.
To punish him, I baked a chocolate cake with habanero peppers and mixed the frosting with wasabi. I labeled it with my name and a bold "Do Not Eat" and waited. This guy has a very low tolerance for spicy foods, so I thought he would take one bite and quickly realize the error of his ways. About two days later, him and a couple of his friends got to drinking while I was at work and decided to dig into my food.
Somehow, they ate about a third of it before realizing it, and when they inevitably went to throw up from over drinking and eating spicy foods, the cake hit them a second time. I don't know for sure, but it couldn't have felt good coming out the backend either. When he asked me why I made this monstrosity, I told him I found a chocolate habanero recipe online that I wanted to try. He stopped eating my cooking after that.
52. 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.
53. For The Love Of Shrimp
I was the petty adult in this one. Last week, I was at this fancy lunch to celebrate my parents' anniversary. There was a lot of food and stuff, but because of problems with assigned seats, I ended up next to a seven-year-old spoiled kid that I can't stand. So, the little brat was being annoying during the whole meal, but I kept calm.
Now, for the important part. You have to know that I LOVE shrimp, but since it was a big lunch with a lot of appetizers, every dish had just a few things in it. I had been there since 12am and it was now 5pm. The shrimp arrived and, God, what a beautiful vision it was for my eyes. I could already taste all that goodness.
But wait! There was only one shrimp per person. Well, no big deal, each person eats their own shrimp, and I was saving mine for last since there was other stuff on the plate. As I started eating, the little brat said: "I WANT MORE SHRIMP". Everyone else said, "Well, Little Brat, there was only one per plate, and you ate yours".
You know what was about to happen. Yes, Little Brat looked at me like the solution was obvious all along: "HE STILL HAS ONE”! My brain took a few seconds to realize what was happening. Everyone was staring at me, and everyone expected me to do what everyone else would have done. I thought to myself, “No way, kid. You sat at the wrong freaking table. I waited almost six hours for this shrimp. You're not getting any more of it, especially since you ate yours already”.
So, I opened the shrimp with my utensils, carefully cleaned it, then took my fork and slowly raising the ready-to-be-eaten shrimp in the air. Then, without saying a word, I looked Little Brat right in the eyes and ate the whole thing in one smooth motion, slowly chewing it in his face. Nobody said a word, not even him.
It was probably the first time he couldn't get something by crying or because he was a kid. Everyone silently resumed eating. Even though they didn't say anything, I am pretty sure they were quite mad at me. But, in my defense: sometimes adults are petty for a reason.
54. Heavy Lifting
I worked in construction right after high school and was harassed daily for the first two weeks by this older guy. He carried an old metal lunch box daily to work and would leave it on the cement in a corner of the building till lunchtime. After having had enough, I used the nailer to nail the darn thing to the cement floor.
I put his food back in afterward, of course. At lunchtime, he bent over to pick up the box and injured his back. Weeks went by and he finally came back one day. He could no longer work and ended up retiring early. I would have felt bad, but the guy was a major jerk, and not just to me.
55. Turning The Rule On Its Head
This happened last week. I was swimming laps at an indoor pool near my house. I’m a woman who has had a double mastectomy without reconstruction. My chest is flat. I’m totally comfortable with how I look, but prefer for my scars to be covered in public. As far as swimming goes, women’s suits have extra material to accommodate typical chests so when I wear them they’re baggy.
For backyard swimming, I just use a couple of safety pins to keep it in place. For lap swimming, it balloons open like a parachute full of water and creates so much drag that it’s difficult to swim. Tight competition swimsuits, meanwhile, don’t have enough coverage for the way the scars wrap around my sides under my arms.
To get around this, I wear running shorts and a tight-fitting full coverage synthetic fabric dark-colored tank top. It works great. Last week, I was approached as I left the pool facility by a worker. He said that they had received a complaint that a woman in the pool was wearing a shirt, which is allowed, but no sports bra underneath.
He then said their policy requires women who are not in swimsuits to have sports bras under their shirt. He told me that the policy started when they had a problem where a woman would come in to swim and only wear a thin white shirt and no bra in the pool during family swim hours. I explained politely that I’ve had a double mastectomy and do not need a bra.
I said that swimsuits don’t fit me and my top is very dark and not see-through, plus even if it was see-through, all anyone would see are scars. He said he understood and felt bad but the management requires that the dress code be followed. I explained how I was much more covered up than anyone else in the pool and in fact was wearing exactly what he was minus the whistle—he was in shorts and a tank top.
There were guys in there with just tight-fitting swim bottoms on and women in bikinis. I look Amish next to them. He again said he was sorry but couldn’t make an exception to the rules. I asked for the rules in writing and he gave me a printout, which did say what he was telling me. This brings us to yesterday, and my comeback.
I dug a sports bra out of a bin of old clothes and brought it with me. I wore the same shorts and top otherwise. When I got in the water, I put the band of the bra around my head with the straps sticking up like bunny ears. People in the other lanes got a kick out of it once I explained what I was doing. I started warming up with my kickboard, thinking the guy would come over and we would sort this nonsense out.
Well, a lady in business clothes comes over and tells me I need to take the bra off my head. I would like to say here that this was adult lap swim, there were no kids in the pool area. I explained it all to her and said I was following the rule to the letter. I was wearing a bra, which is all that is required. We went back and forth, with her saying I knew it had to be worn “normally.”
I said I couldn’t wear it the way others do because I don’t have anything to fill it and it would ride up to my chin while swimming without anything to hold it in place. She said I could use skin-safe glue! Yeah, no. I’m not going to glue unnecessary garments to my body and I told her as much. I finally said that unless she could state the rule I was breaking, that I would like to continue with my workout so I could get home to my kids and let the babysitter go home.
She walked away. I swam for an hour with that bra perched on my head (lots of readjusting it and once retrieving it from the bottom of the pool) then showered and went home. This morning I checked my email, which is linked to my membership at the aquatic center, to find a message from her. They will not be changing their policies but I have been granted a special exception to the rule, provided I wear continue to wear non-see-through tops.
I wish they would have just gotten rid of the silly bra rule, but I’ll take this and if I ever see another woman struggling with their swimsuit over a flat chest I’ll let them know they can wear something more comfortable.
56. Nothing Koi About It
A soon-to-be ex-husband left his wife's prized koi to die on the doorstep of their house. Apparently, the value of these six fish was over $100,000. She was, according to her lawyer, so distraught that she couldn't be in court—only in LA.
57. Contaminating The Well
My oldest sister, who is not mentally well, went on a bit of a contaminating streak several years back, and we pretty much told her that either she needs to stop, or she's officially kicked out of the family. But yeah, so my sister apparently would be spreading salmonella and E. coli into our drinks and food whenever she could.
Me and my dad went into her apartment, and her fridge was full of uncovered raw chicken and it wasn't even cold. The whole fridge was unplugged. All the chicken had that slimy grey film on top of it and I would have blown chunks right then and there if I hadn't splattered the toilet bowl two or three times over just earlier that day.
She admitted to us later that before she'd come to hang out with us, she'd rub the slimy, rotting chicken all over her hands and face and then spray on perfume to mask the odor. I always thought her perfume just smelled bad, but I guess it was always because she had the putrid scent of rotten meat all over her skin. Sadly, it gets more horrifying.
Then, for whatever reason, a reason that she couldn't or wouldn't explain, she'd take her disgusting hands and rub the rims of our cups or glasses and lick and spittle on our food when we weren't looking. Who does that? Of course, there was tons and tons of mold growing everywhere in her place as well. Every little crack and nook had something growing in it. I left her place fully willing to just cut her out of my life.
58. Two Green Thumbs Down
Now, we all like the occasional garden party with noise. However, my neighbor seems to be “an entertainer.” That is, every weekend evening they like to host a party, often in the garden, and have friends and several families with kids over. This family and their guests, rather than having civilized discussions, like to shout over each other, and generally whoever shouts the loudest gets to talk for a while.
Let alone the kids who start screaming for attention. I used to let this go at first, but after a whole summer of them being louder than my TV or stereo in my own home, I had to do something about it. So now I wait until they serve up the food and everyone’s plated up…before I crank up the lawnmower and drown them out so they can no longer hear each other.
They then scuttle off inside, having to carry everything in and relay the table. Sometimes they come out after I’m done and set up and continue. It just so happens that I’ll then find a bush or tree that needs tending to with the hedge trimmer. Petty as heck, but it does make me feel better.
59. 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.
60. Prove It
I had a creative writing teacher in high school who, for whatever reason, hated me. One time, she accused me of plagiarizing a paper on the grounds that I had used words she didn't think a high school student would know. Being poor, I always had to handwrite my papers and bring them to school to type because we didn't have a computer.
So, I showed her my handwritten copy. End of story, right? Nope. She “just knew” I plagiarized it. There was no proof, but she wasn’t budging. I said, "This is bull". Her reply was seriously disturbing. She told me "It really shows that you don't have a mother". I'd had enough, so I got up and left. She followed me out and started attacking the way I looked and dressed.
I went to the principal’s office in tears. He was a friend of my dad’s and had known me since I was a kid. He knew I didn't cry easily. The teacher’s story was that I was swearing at her, and she kicked me out of class. I went home and a friend stopped by and told me that the teacher had been talking badly about me during a play practice—and she had an ace up her sleeve.
My friend had recorded it. My dad finally got me to tell him what all had happened, and I don't think I've ever seen him so furious. He called the principal and set up a meeting with the principal and the teacher. We went to the meeting. The teacher came in denying everything and my dad just told her to shut up. He played the video for her and the principal.
Afterward, my dad told her that they had established that she was a liar. I ended up finishing out the year with the principal teaching the class for me. Now, as a grown woman, I just can't imagine letting a teenage girl get under my skin to the point that I'd keep thinking about her long after she was out of my sight.
61. Ten Out Of Ten Would Recommend
I worked for a photography company that contracted with the Army. My hours were being cut because work was really slack. It was down to like four hours a week. So, I found a side gig videotaping jury research and making a sweet $20 per hour. I told my boss at the photography company, and he was livid. He said I couldn't work anywhere else.
He said if I didn't show up to a crummy Saturday meeting because I was working at my other job, he would consider that as me quitting. So, I “quit”. Then, I started rating my old company through the Army's vendor rating portal. I gave solid, horrible reviews about all the real stuff they did. My old boss was soon replaced.
62. Lights Out On This Relationship
I was living with my girlfriend and a roommate and we split the cost of every bill evenly, even though each bill was in one person's name. Well, that was the idea, but I naively "helped" my girlfriend pay her part of the bills (i.e. paid completely for most of them). The rent was in my name, the electricity in my girlfriend’s, etc. I eventually got tired of her (arguments, smelly gerbils, not doing chores), and we broke up.
It was messy. She took ages to move out, making sure to mooch every penny she could before leaving. When she left, I immediately started a new electricity account in my name. A week later, I got a letter of confirmation in the mail, but I also received the electricity bill for the last three months my ex was living with us. I opened it without thinking.
We couldn't even pay it if we wanted to because the bill was in her name. I shot her a text: Me: Yo, you got the electricity bill in the mail. It's 120 bucks so come pick up $40 from each of us. Ex: Um where's the other $40? We agreed I wouldn't pay bills after I moved out. (as if she did before) Me: You were still living here for the time period of the bill.
Ex: This is ridiculous, I'm not going to pay a thing. We had an agreement. Me: Well...you can come over to get our part, or you can pay it alone. Ex: The way I see it, you can either bring the $120 to my place or have fun in the dark lol. Me: You got me there! At this point, I realized I had her. She doesn't know I started my own account with the electricity provider.
She thought that by refusing to pay, the provider would cut our lights. Good way to mooch another $40 from us, right? But that's not quite what happened. A few weeks later, I received another letter from the electric company with her name on it. Probably a late payment warning. I sent her a text to tell her and she responded, "lol why are you so desperate to talk to me. You know what you have to do :)"
Another letter came in for her. This one was probably late fees. I have to guess because I never opened them. I messaged her and she said, "I thought I told you to never talk to me again". As you wish, ma'am! More letters arrived, but from a new address. I Googled the new sender's address and found that they were debt collectors. Scary stuff. It's too bad I couldn't say a word to her.
Now about two or three months later, I received a phone call from my ex and I'm greeted by "WHAT THE HECK THESE PEOPLE ARE CALLING MY PARENTS' HOUSE I'VE GOT ALL THESE LATE FEES BAAHHHH DEBT COLLECTORS". I told her if she wants our part of the bill, she knows what to do :) Realizing that she had no other choice, she caved and came for the money.
My roommate and I didn't give her a cent toward late fees, and I probably looked so smug giving her my money for the last time.
63. He Has Got to Go
My parents got divorced about a year ago. My mum didn't want my dad to show up in court because he would contest and then they'd have to split the assets. She phoned me and told me to put laxatives in his food so he wouldn't be able to make it there.
64. The Ones Who Are Left Behind
My brother is the worst. He may be depressed or addicted to his computer or something like that, but he's just terrible with everybody around him. To him, everybody is stupid, nobody cares about him, and the entire world is out to get him and keeping him from achieving anything. He's 28, without a job, living with our father.
Meanwhile, our poor father is doing all he can to help him, but there's nothing to be done. This is, of course, after our mother gave up helping him after many years of putting up with him. In the meantime, my brother has been tormenting everyone who dares talk to him. When visiting my father a few years ago, I saw my brother very briefly.
It was tough for him because I'm getting on with my life. I have my own home, a cool job I love, I'm getting married, money isn't an issue...and he on the other hand is alone, living at his dad's, without a job. We talked, again briefly. He tried and tried again to find ways in which he was better than me or to say that I'm stupid. He got frustrated, called me names, and left.
65. 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.
66. 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.
67. To The Letter
My science teacher demanded that everyone use capital letters on our matching quiz. So, question number one was “M” and so on. At the time, I made many of my capital letters large versions of lowercase letters. They were obviously meant to be uppercase, and I had been doing it that way the entire year. Many of the other girls in my class did it, too, because we all experimented with our handwriting.
My teacher tried to give me a very low grade even though I got all of the answers correct. I sat there and cried. I couldn't understand why he had given me a failing grade when I had correctly answered each question and clearly used capital letters. I guess that day, the letters just didn't look the way he felt they should.
But my letters were always fine before, and he’d never said anything. I think he was just being a jerk that day.
68. Hotkeys
I left my boss a laptop sandwich. How do you make a laptop sandwich? Take a #2 on the keyboard. Close the lid.
69. See No Evil, Speak No Evil
Gramps had just moved into a retirement park with a lot that backed up to county land that was a nature preserve. His backyard was basically non-existent, but he didn’t mind as he got to look out over the preserve. However, he did marvel at how his next-door neighbor’s backyard extended a good eight feet past his, giving the neighbor a nice space back there.
Gramps tried to be friendly with all his new neighbors, exchanging phone numbers and the like, and one day he noticed the next-door neighbor was putting down expensive pavers that extended from his back door all the way to the old fence posts that designated the preserve boundary. Gramps watched the neighbor yank the three rickety fence posts out of the ground and move them back an extra two feet into the preserve before pounding them back in.
He then started to clear the land, intending to gain himself more area for his pavers. Now, Gramps used to work for the national park services as a young lad, so he thought he had better warn his neighbor of the consequences of his actions, and he heads out back for a little chat. Neighbor is immediately defensive and before Gramps says much, the neighbor tells him “You’re new here, I’ve been here 10 years” and to “mind your own business.”
Gramps decides not to press the issue. Nothing happens that year, but the following year when most of the park emptied out to head north for the summer (including the neighbor), the county comes by to check on the preserve. Gramps notices them going back and forth behind his neighbor’s house. The workers are pulling out maps and taking photos and making phone calls and soon more guys show up.
Turns out the neighbor has moved the posts several times over the years, and in reality, his backyard is supposed to be even smaller than Gramp’s backyard! To make it worse, the neighbor put pavers in the back specifically to park both his golf cart AND a cherry red sports car back there for the summer, so the county will have to move them before they can do anything else.
They tape a notice to the front door and leave. Gramps goes over to read it, and his jaw drops. It states that the neighbor was in breach of encroaching onto protected lands, he has 30 days to move his car, tear up the pavers, and pay a fine of $11,000 (because of damage to endangered species who inhabit the protected lands, as well as trespassing fees).
Failure to do so within 30 days will result in the golf cart and car being towed and impounded, pavers will be dug up and carted off at the neighbor’s expense and the fine will be increased for every additional day past the deadline. 30 days comes and goes, so a week after that Gramps has quite the show as first the car and cart were towed, pavers were dug up and hauled off, and the old fence posts and ropes were replaced with metal posts embedded into buried cement bases, connected by steel cables.
The whole process took several weeks to finish, but the preserve looked a lot more legit when they were done. A few solar cameras were installed so the county could monitor the wildlife (and encroachers) remotely, meanwhile more notices were taped to the front door of the neighbor’s house. By November, the snowbirds were flooding back into the park, including the neighbor.
That was Gramps’ second show of the summer as neighbor reads all the notices, digging down until he reads the first one, then runs out back and starts screaming and cussing up a storm before running back to his car to dig out his cell phone so he can call the county to find out where his car and golf cart were. Gramps stays indoors to avoid the guy as he is frantically trying to unload his car, turn on his water and electricity, get the AC and the toilets going, and all the while trying to get someone at county to pick up the phone and give him some answers.
He finally gets a live person and proceeds to scream at them while on speakerphone about his car and cart, so the call keeps getting kicked to other people because who wants to help a screamer? Basically, the neighbor is told to come to the county office to get this straightened out. Three days later, the neighbor catches Gramps outside and asks if he was here when the county “took his car and destroyed his backyard.”
Gramps said he was, and the neighbor says “Well why didn’t you call me when you saw them putting notices on my door? You had my number up north!” Gramps said he had thought about doing that, but figured the neighbor would prefer him to “mind his own business,” so he decided against it.
70. 100 Pennies in the Wind
My great-grandmother left her daughter "just one dollar and not a single penny more, so help me God". This was before I was born, but my grandmother (not the daughter with the dollar) said that when they all read the will, her sister had a full-blown temper tantrum, and no one has heard from her since. I guess she had it coming.
71. Love Thy Neighbor
My adoptive parents kicked me out my junior year of high school for being gay—they had already known for a while, but my then-boyfriend coming over Christmas morning to exchange gifts made them “deal” with it. They told me to break it off or get out. I declined and came home one day the following January to find out they’d changed the locks.
My boyfriend’s mother found out that I was staying with my aunt and what my parents did, and immediately drove me over to make my parents let me get clothes and items from my room. She then let me stay with their family. A few weeks after that, my parents showed up with officers, claiming they were holding me against my will and brainwashing me.
We told them our side of the story and it ended up in court. I went through the process of getting emancipated while dealing with them and finishing off high school. I haven’t talked to them since I graduated, over a decade ago. I still hear about how crazy and manipulative they are from the stuff they do to my brother when he complains about them, but I won’t see or speak to them under any circumstances.
72. 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.
73. 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?
74. The Intern
During my first internship, I was on a team that did something with real estate and corporate finance side. My dad got me the internship and basically forced me to take it. I was 20, had never taken a finance course or high-level business course, and had never had a white-collar job before. And I was going into an office at a competitive place where everyone on my team was over 10 years older than me.
I was 100% not ready for it, and not interested in going into that field. I probably wouldn't have even gotten the job if my boss was a nice guy. But he wasn't. The dude was, like, 40 years old and did NOT like me. Any attempt at small talk was denied aggressively, and all questions were answered dismissively. Everyone else was really nice to me, though.
I was very "proficient" at Word and Excel but had never used Outlook, so he mess with me constantly for that. He would give me extremely vague instructions and absolutely no guidance, and he forced me to schedule meetings to ask questions. So, learning how to do stuff took forever. I would ask a question, get an answer, figure out how to utilize that answer, and then naturally have another question, but then wait all day for him to be free.
Keep in mind, he was the head of a program that hadn't officially started yet, so his schedule wasn't exactly busy. I once caught him puffing on a Black and Mild while eating a burger on top of the parking garage during one of his "client meetings”. He would give me nothing to do most of the time, and then rip on me for not doing anything.
I would literally go around the cubicles asking for something to help with, do all of my co-workers’ grunt work, and then have four hours between getting that done and my meeting with my boss to ask questions. And he'd come rip on me for not doing anything or "trying" during those four hours. Sometimes, he'd sit at his desk till 7pm, just chilling on his iPhone.
I'd have to sit there staring at a blank screen because he'd stare at me if I took my phone out. During our 360-review process, my coworkers gave me an average score of 3.0 on a 0-4 scale. He gave me an average of 0.75. But it got worse. Later on in the internship, I was a team leader for a charity drive. Out of ten groups, my team was in second place.
I thought I was doing a really good job. The team that was beating us had significantly more members than us. They were also thousands of dollars ahead on the last day, so I figured, "Hey, whatever, we had a good run". Nope. I went in on the last day of the charity drive and that jerk had a janitor’s cart loaded with trays of breakfast tacos.
I tried to plead with him that it wouldn’t make the difference. I even offered to pay him back for the tacos if he’d change his mind. Nope. He made me go office to office, team to team selling tacos. It was my first interaction with 99% of the people I sold tacos to. They laughed at me. I've been a dishwasher. I've been a busboy. I was a pledge and got the snot hazed out of me. But I have never, ever felt so degraded in my life.
I probably would've quit if that wasn't a week or two from the end of the internship. On my last day, I spoke with everyone. Most of my coworkers said something along the lines of "we'll miss you, sorry your boss was a jerk".
And my boss basically ripped me apart. He told me that I should change majors and that this wasn't the right job for me. He said a ton of really hurtful stuff with little to no constructive aspects. At the end of it all, he said something along the lines of "well we'll miss you and I hope you learned a lot". But I’d had enough.
You’ll remember that I got the job through connections. My dad worked for the company and was very close with the head of our entire division. I'm not normally one to play the "do you know who my dad is" card I because 99% of the time, it’s incredibly cheap, insecure, cringy, and unwarranted. I believe it was warranted here.
Nobody at the internship knew who my dad was and that was by design—I’d wanted to be treated without bias so I knew who I could trust and where I stood. I responded, with tears in my eyes, "Yeah, I had a great time. I can't wait to tell my dad about it". My boss asked, "Who’s your dad”? I tried not to sound to smug as I said, "Oh, he did such and such really important thing for the company for a while, but he's retired now. He's really good friends with your boss's boss's boss".
The dude went white in the face. He said, "Oh, I almost forgot your present". He went to his desk and got an extra company water bottle that he’d definitely just had sitting there. It was a complete change in his demeanor. All of a sudden, it was all smiles and chit-chat and "Well, if you ever come back, you'll always have a place to stay". But the story didn’t end there.
He ended up dying in a car accident five days later. Due to the optics, I couldn't really say anything to the company about how much of an absolute jerk and lazy employee he was. So, in the end, he got the last word. That really frustrated me.
75. A Sticky Situation
My revenge was simple yet effective: I put his stapler in Jell-O.
76. Some Definite Food For Thought
This happened about a year ago now when I was in high school. My calculus class was very chill. About 20 kids who were all friendly with each other, a laid-back but enthusiastic teacher, and a light enough workload that we could afford to goof off in class but still learn and do well. At some point in the year, I got really into cooking. It's my stress reliever.
My family couldn't possibly eat the amount of food I made, so I started bringing it in to school and "hosting" Friday parties in my calc class, with my teacher's approval of course. Now, I'm Vietnamese and I live in a predominately white town. This is only important because it meant that most kids from town only ate American or European foods, and weren't used to eating other ethnic foods.
Last year around Lunar New Year, I wanted to bring in some Vietnamese foods to celebrate. It is a very important time of year for my family. I ended up making a bunch of Bánh Da Lợn, a steamed layer cake, and a traditional Vietnamese dessert. Some of my friends from class found out I was going to bring in a traditional dish and brought in their own traditional dishes from their own cultures, whether they celebrated Lunar New year or not.
We had different Indian, Korean, Filipino, and Spanish desserts. It was great and I was really excited that my friends wanted to celebrate with me. Apparently, this was an issue for one girl in my class. I would say Bánh Da Lợn is an acquired taste, so when not a lot of people ate it I wasn't offended. I knew not everybody would like it. There was a lot of other food anyways.
During our lunch period, one of my friends (who wasn't in our class but knew I brought food in) overheard a girl from my class complaining about the food while on the lunch line. Apparently, she was saying really negative things about how I "forced everyone to eat weird Chinese foods". Later that day, I texted her just saying I heard she didn't like the food and wanted to know why.
I don't really care when people don't like the food (I make it for myself and bring it in when I have extra anyways), but her calling it "weird Chinese foods" (when she knows I'm Vietnamese) didn't sit right with me. Welp, she texted back something worse. She said that it was rude of me to bring in “weird ethnic foods” that nobody would have liked except for me and said I should know better since most of the class was white.
I told her that I bring in food to share because I feel like it and that I don't have an obligation to cater to her tastes. If she has an issue with it, she literally does not have to eat it, and other people can bring in food too, so if she wanted to, she could bring in something more to her tastes. After that, she just told me that I shouldn't bring in ethnic and foreign foods and stick with American foods, "because we're in America".
Excuse me??? Like??? How much you wanna bet if I brought in jambalaya, which originated in Louisiana, she would call it a "weird foreign food". But fine. She only wants to eat American foods? Then she can eat American foods. The next week I brought in a bunch of Oliebol, a Dutch doughnut, and started passing them out at the beginning of class.
When I got to her desk, though, I pulled out a loaf of Wonder Bread and plopped it on her desk, saying, "Sorry but these are Dutch, too ethnic. Here you go, all American cuisine". Later she texted me asking what my problem was, so I told her that almost every single food I brought in this year was ethnic and that it made me angry she only had an issue when it wasn't European.
She's entitled to not liking Asian foods but if you're going to complain about it being ethnic, then you better have that same attitude when the ethnic food is white. And especially don't call another person's culture weird. She didn't complain about the food again.
77. The Last Rose
A husband and a wife were having a very acrimonious separation. If I remember correctly, he was very successful and she was going after him for an immense amount of money. She happened to be a multi-prize-winning gardener. We're talking about an absolutely exceptional collection of rare and gorgeous flowers, shrubs, the works. After an unsatisfactory development in their divorce proceedings, she came home to find that her husband had ridden their lawn mower over her entire garden, shredding every last stem and leaf into bits.
78. About Face
My aunt has always been difficult. She could be very nice and caring, but then, for no obvious reason, she suddenly turned into a screaming monster. Once, my mom, who has a key to her apartment, left her a present and a card in her bedroom for my aunt on her birthday, and all my aunt did was scream and yell about "How dare we break into her place.”
A few months later, she was detained for throwing a chair at her co-worker. This led to her being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. She had to get into therapy and was on probation for many months. She’s doing much better now, and her therapist helped her a lot. It turned out that my aunt is the sweetest, most caring person in the world. I'm looking forward to seeing her next week.
79. 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.
80. 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.
81. The Green-Eyed Monster
When I was young, my mum was best friends with one of the neighbors down the street, who also had a boy the same age as me. As a result, I played a lot with said boy and was encouraged to be best friends with him. Whenever my mum wasn't around, though, his mum became a terror. She would come out to where we were playing together and shout at me for some minor, trivial thing.
If we were both doing something a little mischievous, she would blame it all on me and never reprimand her son at all. This was all when I was around seven to 10 years old, so I couldn't process it at all and had no idea how to react. It really got to me. Years later, I found out the disturbing truth. It turns out that she was basically jealous because I was doing much better at school than her son and she wanted to “take me down a peg”.
Ultimately, her son and I ended up going to different secondary schools and drifted apart. Fortunately, that meant that I stopped having to interact with her. Our mums are still good friends, and she has always been pleasant to me as an adult. But even 30 years later, I still keep her at arm’s length because of how unfairly she treated me as a child.
Freepik, master1305
82. Credit Where Credit’s Due
I had a co-worker who kept taking my work, taking credit for things he didn't do, and was a general jerk towards me. I knew he was going to take something I was working on, so I made sure he got his karma by purposely messing up...hard. I mean very, very hard. As in, I indirectly bad-mouthed the CEO and higher-ups in a report going to a customer and sat back and waited.
He got fired without severance pay, he lost his house, and his wife left him. He lived on the street for three months before he was given a tiny government home. I send him a Christmas card every year.
83. Hitching A Ride
I was a medic in Salt Lake for a few years. One rainy day, my partner and I got dispatched to a fairly upscale neighborhood on a call of “chest pain.” Chest pain means flashing lights and sirens. We quickly arrive in front of a pretty nice house and find a woman standing at the curb with two suitcases packed. It’s already a red flag. I shut down the siren but kept the lights going for safety.
We ask if she called 91-1-1 and she confirms. She steps into the ambulance, sits on the bench, and asks us to get going. I tell her we need to do a full work-up before we leave, so we can provide care en route and take her to the right facility. She says she doesn’t really have chest pain, she just has a procedure scheduled at the hospital, and she wants me to turn off the flashing lights so her neighbors don’t notice and ask her questions.
Obviously, this is EMS mistreatment, and I tell her so. Suddenly her chest pain is back! So I say I need to get vitals and start an ECG. She protests again, mentioning the start time for her appointment in less than 30 minutes, and so I ask her point-blank: Do you need medical attention or do we need the authorities? I proceeded to do a full workup, in front of her house, taking my sweet time, asking enough questions to make her eyes roll, and leaving the strobe lights on the whole time so the neighbors would certainly see.
And she was late to her appointment because we admitted her to the hospital through the ER instead of the front doors.
84. Is It Hot in Here, or Is It You?
I had a client who had a pretty vicious relationship with his uncle. So when his uncle passed, he was surprised to find he was in the will. We got together for the will reading, where I gave him a devastating handwritten note from his deceased relative. It read, “I’m leaving you 15k BUT you have to come get it from me. I’ll see you in other side!” My client laughed.
85. Reverse Psychology
My father and his wife spent years convincing me I was a bad son, and I believed it. Genuinely, from when I was around 3-4 until I was 23, I thought I was a bad son and felt so guilty. It wasn't until I was 23 that I realized that they were the ones canceling seeing me and then calling me up to reprimand me for not seeing them. It was them. They were bad parents, I wasn't a bad son. Their friendly facade to me and my friends was so thick that I never saw it, and a lot of my friends still don't see it.
I cut contact with them three years ago and have refused to acknowledge their existence since. I just tell people I don't have a dad.
86. Splash Back
I was on a transatlantic flight and was sitting on the first row of the plane. The woman next to me had a baby in a carrier and a small child. She sat on the opposite end of the row from me and sat her toddler right next to me leaving an empty seat between her and her kid; I had no issue with any of it until food arrived and the child started moving around a lot and kicking my computer and was making it impossible for me to eat.
I asked her politely to do something about this and her reply was that it is known that those seats are for people with children. I was so angry I couldn’t eat. I took my tiny drink bottle to the bathroom and filled it up with water. Then I waited. When she took the kid to the toilet I proceeded to pour the water on the seat next to me.
They came back and after 10 minutes the kid said to the mother that he is wet. She sat the child in the other seat and put a towel on the wet seat and sat there. Didn’t say a word to me. I think I slept the rest of the flight.
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87. 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.
88. Bottom Of The Food Chain
My second-grade science teacher taught us there was no food we eat that doesn't come from plants. He gave the example of a cow: it eats grass, so it comes from plants. He offered five dollars to anyone who could find anything that people eat that didn't come from plants. He said no one had ever claimed it. So, we all went home and thought about it.
In class the next day, kids were saying things like marshmallows, ice cream, candy...I put my hand up and said, "salt". My teacher was quiet for a moment and admitted that I was correct. He also said no one had ever thought about that before, not even him, and that millions of people around the world eat salt every day.
He still refused to give me the five dollars. It was so petty.
89. Brain Drain
My grandma and I are very close. I live a few hours away from her, and she is not very tech-savvy, so it’s difficult to phone her sometimes. I went home a few weekends ago and we got some time alone to talk. She told me that her sister, my great aunt, is getting pretty sick. She is having problems with her kidneys and it’s affecting her mind.
My aunt and grandma took her to the doctor, and then to get some medications that were about $7. Her card got declined. She hadn’t been checking her accounts, and after calling the bank, she found out they were drained of over $10k in checking and were overdrawn on top of all that. That’s when she discovered a horrific truth.
They called her daughter and granddaughter, and they both admitted to taking the money from her account. My great aunt has been paying their rent for three years and has given them two vehicles. She pays the insurance on them both. This was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, and she is cutting them off. Best of all, the latest update on her health is positive.
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90. If It Ain’t Broke…
I worked at a company that gave out exorbitant amounts of vacation. Anyone who worked there for 25+ years received 8 weeks of vacation and 2 weeks of personal time. This was a family-owned company, but rather large. We ran three shifts totaling 250+ people. Enter Jimmy. Jimmy was a grizzled old man. He started at the company when he was just 20; now he was 63 and gave absolutely zero cares.
Jimmy also knew how to make a specific part for our product, just him and one other higher up in the office. One day, the plant owner comes out and announces he's selling to a corporation. He's older and ready to retire, but he promises that there will be very little change and wishes us all well. Nope, wrong. The new company comes in and immediately goes after many of the great benefits we had.
The first thing they do is cut everyone's max vacation down to 4 weeks, and do completely away with personal time. Anyone who's maxed out had until December 31st of that year to use it up, and they wouldn't pay it out. They then go into the office and clean house, firing anyone who's close to retirement. Including Jimmy's back-up guy for the part he makes.
But they also do away with one very important rule: You no longer have to get vacation approved, you can just call in and take it. Jimmy is furious, and they know it. They also realize he's the only one in the building who can do his job now. So they hire a new kid for him to train, most likely to permanently replace Jimmy when the time comes. So Jimmy does what anyone would do.
He calls in the first training day for the new hire and lets us know he's going to use all of his PTO at once, and promptly takes 10 weeks off. We had a back stock of parts he had made, so it wasn't too unnerving. But for 10 weeks, Jimmy went and applied to other jobs, found one, and started. Fast forward 10 weeks, and it’s the day Jimmy is supposed to return.
He doesn't. For two days they try calling him, and even go to his house. He's nowhere to be found. Finally on day three, he calls and resigns, and they lose their minds. The parts he makes are specialized and patented by the original founder, so you can't just hire someone off the street to make them. What eventually happened was they had to contract the original owner to come in and teach some new hires how to make them.
When the original owner found out what they had done, he got furious. The last I heard he charged them a seven-figure contract to teach them how to produce the parts, and they had to pony up or close down. Moral of the story: don’t mess with people's vacation time or retirement funds.
91. Have a Lemon!
My mom showed up to the final meeting for my parent’s divorce and her last request was to “trade cars.” My dad had a car about a year newer that she had never driven and my dad drove the other car 30 miles for work while she drove three. It was such an odd request, especially since he had given up on most of it.
Her lawyer acted off during the conversation and my dad’s lawyer said definitely not. A few days later, my dad gets home to a message from his lawyer that said he found out that mom’s car had broke down. It needed a new transmission and she failed to mention that when she offered up the trade.
92. The Great Deceiver
When I was six years old, my aunt, who was my guardian, faked my grandmother’s passing. She lied to all of us—local churches, her friends, and strangers—for sympathy and money. She wrote to multiple people asking for support. She needed money for a headstone and the funeral, etc. People bought into it hook, line, and sinker.
So you can imagine our surprise a year later when we received a letter from our grandma saying she was coming to see us.
93. Burning In The Bathroom
Several coworkers and I noticed that our lunches and drinks would constantly go missing, even when clearly marked. One of my coworkers was a diabetic and it ended up causing him to have a hypoglycaemic incident due to having his food taken. So after that, things got serious. He brought in a lunch that was laced with laxatives and a Carolina reaper extract oil.
The previous diabetic incident was well documented and HR at this point was now aware of the food bandit. Luckily, that day, he hit the jackpot. Turns out it was someone from HR who was taking people’s food. We heard a blood-curdling scream when the guy took his first bite and he was caught red-handed. It only got better from there.
He stayed in the office the remainder of the day as things were sorted out. However, he ended up in the bathroom suffering even more. So not only did he get his mouth burned, he was pooping his brains out at the same time.
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. The Name Game
My aunt was unpleasant or weird with everyone—but I got the worst of it. One day, I found out the ridiculous reason why. When I was about 14, she took me aside and said she'd held a grudge against me because of my name. She had wanted to call her first daughter that name, but my parents had a child first and used it—they had no idea she wanted the name and aren't the kind of people who would have done it on purpose.
My aunt said that she had tried really hard to get past it and had just about forgiven me for it. I just remember being baffled by it and then feeling sorry for her for being that spiteful. It was weird but, to be honest, it later paled in comparison with all the other crazy, horrible things she did to her own family.
96. It’s Company Policy
I worked in the IT department of a rather large advocate firm. A guy I was sort of friends with worked a couple of desks down from me, and he had a bad attitude. He ended up getting into a long feud with the tech support manager, who was, admittedly, a stupid cow. He ended up getting fired over the feud, and I think just his general attitude.
He called to tell me about it the night it happened since I was working on a project after hours and wasn't there at the time. The next day, my boss calls the department into a meeting to tell us that my pseudo-friend had quit, but that because he was in IT and had access to all the passwords, they were not allowed to give him two weeks' notice.
This was, of course, complete nonsense. Everyone knew that he got fired, and everyone knew our boss was lying through his teeth. So, fast forward about six months later, and I had just survived being scapegoated big time for some stuff I wasn't even remotely responsible for. I could see the writing on the wall that they were working on building a case to get me canned. But they had no idea who they were messing with.
It just so happened that I got a job offer through a referral from a friend that worked at another company. So, when the offer came through and was way more than I’d expected, I did a little dance and then I shut up about it. My girlfriend was a flight attendant at the time, so we planned a little last-minute getaway between jobs.
The day before we were scheduled to leave for EUROPE, I went to work, did my best to close out all my issues, and, for the sake of my coworkers, put out any fires I could. Then, I marched in and handed my boss my letter of resignation, effective immediately. He read the letter. There was a long pause, and then he asked me when I wanted my last day to be.
I looked at him for a minute, savoring the trap. Then, I reminded him that "because I had access to all the sensitive system passwords, I wasn't allowed to give or take two weeks' notice". His jaw hit the ground, he muttered some sentence fragments, and it was pretty clear that I’d caught him in a lie. And the best part?
While we were living it up in Italy a few weeks later, I checked in on my bank account at a cyber cafe and saw that my direct deposit had cleared a check. It was for the pay period of the two weeks after I left. So, even though I didn't work it, I was given my two weeks' notice in salary. That extra paycheck essentially paid for an extra week in Europe. And that extra week was by far the best part of the trip.
97. The Most Stylish Kid On The Block
November last year, I gave birth to our first baby. It's the first in my family and the 6th in my husband’s family. It's important to say that all the six kids are boys and my mother-in-law is in some sick baby girl rabies danger zone. Ever since we made the announcement, my mother-in-law convinced herself that I was pregnant with a girl. I told her that once we knew the gender she would be the first one to know.
We told her it was a boy, but she still was convinced it was a girl. She told the whole side of the family it was a girl. I corrected her, but she told them I was just annoyed because I wanted a boy first. She also told them we are naming the girl after her mom, which we will never do because my husband hates his grandma. When the baby shower gifts started to come, I noticed a lot of things that weren’t in the register.
Embroidered things with grandma's name. And it didn't matter that we told them the gender and the name and make clear we are not lying about it being a boy, everyone believed her. Well, the baby was born. And imagine the surprise...It was a boy, just LIKE WE HAVE BEEN TELLING EVERYONE. The problem (for them) was that now the baby has plenty of "girly" clothes, pink onesies etc.
So we are dressing our baby with them. Especially for his family video calls and for pictures for them. After the last Saturday call, my mother-in-law called us to scream at us because we are making the elders uncomfortable for not sticking to a masculine color scheme for the baby clothes. And we have to stop being this childish, she said, since she just thought my belly shape was more like for girl than a boy.
We told her we will not change the baby's clothes, and to just wait until the dresses fit. He will look adorable.
98. Messed Around, Found Out
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 stolen. I was absolutely, totally devastated.
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 stations 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 this ignition and into my pocket.
They paid for the gas, and argued amongst each other who had the keys last. The delay was enough for law enforcement 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.
99. The Mother Of All Pettiness
I had my graduation from engineering on the same day as my mother's birthday. I, of course, had nothing to do with choosing the date. But you couldn’t convince my mom of that. My mother said I "ruined her birthday"—and then she got a cruel revenge. She scheduled her birthday party to be on my actual birthday. Her birthday is in March, mine is in August.
100. 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.
101. 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.
102. Be Careful What You Wish For
This was a long time ago, but I remember it clearly. We moved into a community with tight space in between our house and our neighbors, and we didn't like them being able to see into our kitchen. We put up a bunch of plants, costing thousands, but my parents thought it would be worth it. A week later, my parents awoke to the shock of their lives. The plants were completely chopped down.
My father was furious and marched down to our neighbor’s house. He told my father the plants were on his property line, therefore he had total right to take them down. He warned that if anything were to go on his property again, he would report us to the authorities immediately. Later that day, my father called the company that put in the plants, and with the warranty we could have them replanted next week for no charge.
We made sure there was no way it was on our neighbor’s property. However, a few days later we caught him chopping them down at 2 am. We called the authorities about the issue, and after a chat with my neighbor he decided to call a professional and mark his property line. My father agreed. A few days later, I got home to find orange tape in my neighbor’s yard. Apparently, his fence was 11 FEET over our property line! We watched as he took down his fence, completely furious.
Within the next month, we were enjoying our new space and privacy in our backyard, and my neighbor ended up losing 1/4th of his backyard. My neighbor ended up having to pay almost 10k for the destruction of our property, and we got to plant our plants again.
103. Finders Keepers
I was at an Easter egg hunt when I was around six years old. It was in a big park area with lots of rocks to hide the eggs. I saw a little chocolate egg foil glisten and ran over to pick it up. As I reached my hand out to pick it up, a man trod on my hand to stop me from getting it. Then, he called his kid over to come "find" it.
104. Third Time’s The Charm
I worked in a place where the management structure in each store was a manager and three assistant managers. I was one of the assistants. One of the others was a guy and the third assistant was a thin, blonde girl. All of us, including the manager, were in our early 20s. The manager had his little "boy’s club" going on with the guy—and they were up to some fishy stuff.
The girl was pretty and flirty and was treated very differently from me. The two guys were definitely out to get me fired. I was constantly getting written up by both of them without being told anything. Then, my manager scheduled a surprise meeting with the area manager to confront me and let me know that if I was written up just once more, I would be fired.
I am positive that my job performance was better than most people there and in no way did I deserve the treatment I was receiving. We were not unionized. So, at this point, there was no recourse for me but to quit, which I couldn't do because I was finishing college and had living expenses to pay. Soon after the ultimatum, I applied for a position in corporate and ended up getting the job.
I let my boss know that I would be out of there in two weeks and told him about the new position I had gotten. Come to find out, this was the third time the position had been available. The best part? My boss had applied for it twice and failed to get it both times. The company had called him to let him know it was being posted for the third time.
They had even asked him if he wanted to interview again. He didn't because he was ticked off that he kept getting passed over. It was totally awesome to find out that I got the job on my first interview, and he couldn't get it at all. He left the company shortly after I left. The other two assistants are still assistants.
105. Sign Your Work
My ex cheated on me while I was deployed. She wound up getting engaged to the guy. Before I changed duty stations, she reached out to say goodbye. We hooked up. While she was asleep, I found his underwear drawer and left a note that said, “Cheaters cheat. By the way, I didn’t use protection.” I signed it. Hard not to think fondly on that memory…
106. A Shocking Turn of Events
This is the story of how I learned to always, ALWAYS watch DVDs before playing them in front of clients. I'm a lawyer who specializes in wills. For one case, a man who passed fairly young left absolutely everything to his 26-year-old stepdaughter, which was quite a lot of money and property. The two ex-wives and his children from the first marriage got nothing, nor did siblings, nieces, nephews, etc.
The will specified that a DVD be played to explain why the stepdaughter was getting everything. Like everyone else, I thought it'd be the guy explaining the big "screw you" to the rest of the family. What followed was completely unexpected. It was a hidden camera recording of the guy and his stepdaughter going wild in bed together.
The video started in mid-action, with her screaming "yes oh god yes!" It had obviously been edited to start with maximum shock value, and it worked, because it took about 30 seconds for me to recover enough to turn the thing off. It was definitely the biggest "holy moly" moment of my career. I later learned that the guy and his stepdaughter had a relationship since she was a teen, all the way to when he passed (when she was 26).
Apparently, though this is second-hand and I can't confirm, there were multiple clips of various video bits through the ages on the DVD. At the end of the DVD, the guy explains that the stepdaughter gets everything because she'd been "the best lay of his life". The worst part was that the will specified that I was to give every single family member their own copy of the DVD.
The copies had been kept in a box and had been distributed prior to the showing, so everyone had "The Best Moments Of" in their hands, at the time the DVD was playing.
Epilogue: the family sued and lost, believe it or not. The girl got to keep everything.
107. 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.
108. The Proof Isn’t In The Pudding
My father passed on Father’s Day 2012. He was divorced and living alone, and I am an only child. So that means that I had to wrap up all of his affairs. This story centers around us trying to get his utilities canceled. I called in to see what we had to do to get them to cancel. The lady I spoke with on the phone said to send in his passing certificate. I sent in the certified copy of it the next day.
The next month, I got another bill. I called again and a new woman answered. She said that because I wasn’t on the account that she had to speak with the account holder. I informed her that the account holder was deceased …and then it got bizarre. She simply wouldn’t budge. I had to make an appointment with a supervisor so she could speak to “him” herself in person.
I showed up at the board of public utilities with another certificate and HIS ASHES IN THE CLEAR BAG that they returned his remains in. I plopped them down on the center of her desk and said when she talked to him to tell him that I loved him for me. The woman went pale, and then she committed a supremely stupid act. She flew out of her chair and called the authorities.
When they showed up, she claimed that I had her. And yes, my dad’s remains were still sitting in the middle of her desk with the certificate. The officers questioned me as to why I would do that, and I told them the story. The supervisor’s boss was called in and they all stepped away from the desk for a private talk. While they were talking, the officers came over to talk to me.
They said that I shouldn’t take human remains out in public, but there were no laws that were broken. I said that I agreed with them that it was extreme, but she insisted on speaking with him in person. By then they were done talking between themselves. The supervisor’s boss kissed up to me and got it taken care of. But the story wasn’t over yet!
I had to call back a few days later to get utilities back to the house in my name. When the person on the phone saw the address and my name, I was immediately put on hold. The supervisor’s boss that finally helped me got on the phone. She sucked up to me and waived all of the fees that come with setting up utilities. Just as the call was ending, she informed me that she was again so sorry for the employee’s lack of compassion. She said that the employee was terminated and again she is so very sorry.
109. Chef’s Surprise
A new guy was working with me in catering. A vegetarian customer gave him an undeserved earful. So, I gave the customer a free bowl of "vegetable soup". He had no idea what he was actually eating. It was actually beef barley. He had the runs for a week.
110. Third Time’s The Charm
The day of my mom’s third wedding was the worst day of my life. I sat in my room alone crying because it was hard to accept. I didn’t want to upset my mom, so I made sure to remove myself. When my aunt came to check in on me and saw that I was crying, she went and told my mom. My mom went out of her way to stop hair and makeup so she could come into my room and yell at me.
She accused me of being selfish and trying to ruin her happy day, even though I had purposefully tried to not look upset in front of her in the first place. That wedding was rough to get through—but luckily, there was a happy ending. I’m grateful for it now because my mom’s husband ended up being great for her even though he had quite a rocky start with me.
My mom also finally went to therapy and was diagnosed properly and given the help she needs. I don’t live at home anymore but now we have a solid relationship, and she still regularly apologizes for the things she did while I was growing up. While I still have some childhood baggage, I’ve built a very happy life for myself and will definitely use what I learned from my childhood to be a better mom to my kids, if I ever have any.
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