When someone does us wrong in any way, one of the first things we do is look for a way to get even. This desire for revenge is something that all of us experience, but it isn’t always the right choice.

We have compiled some of the top revenge stories for your reading pleasure below. Even if you aren’t able to get away with getting even, you can enjoy the revenge these people got and nobody will ever know.

They sometimes say that revenge is a dish best served cold. I say it’s a dish that is best served with a bit of an evil twist.

18. THINK YOUR WAY IS RIGHT? WATCH YOUR CAREER BURN

“I’m a factory automation engineer with companies like Tesla on my resume.

At my current factory job, shortly after I joined the company, I solved a problem that one of our processes had been having for literally the entire 20 years this factory has been standing, because my specific educational focus in engineering school was centered around exactly the kind of problem this process was having.

I had permission from my direct supervisor and production management to implement the fix for this specific factory line. The other lines were running well enough without it that I didn’t feel it was necessary to apply it across the factory.

It was just this one line that ran like trash for whatever reason. So I fixed the problem I saw.

I did this for about 6 months and managed to fix problems with literally dozens of different processes across the factory.

All the while, I had no idea that there was a rule determined by our corporate engineering manager, that all factory processes had to run on the same set of control parameters, and that we were forbidden from changing the parameters that I had been running around changing.

I didn’t know this was a rule, and I never thought to consider that it might be a rule, because it’s an absolutely stupid rule, because process controls are supposed to be tuned individually to the equipment they are controlling.

Every piece of industrial hardware is slightly different, even when the equipment is ostensibly identical. Without getting too technical, things like electric motors have subtle variations in the windings that make them respond differently to current flowing through them. Heating units have slightly different thermal mass and other properties that make them heat up a little faster or slower.

The automated controls for those processes have to use slightly different control parameters to account for these subtle differences in equipment.

But apparently, this manager read about corporate standardization in a book somewhere and decided that every line across all of our factories needed to run the same controller constants.

He had spent years in his own factory forcing his technicians to find a single set of parameters that worked across all his lines. Apparently, he managed to find a set of parameters that didn’t cause the equipment to catch fire, so in his infinite wisdom, he had spent the last 5 or 6 years shoving that mandate up the butt of all his technicians and subordinate engineers, so that he could report to his bosses that he had been putting the hammer down standardizing our processes.

So in his eyes, I was messing up the whole factory by tuning those controller constants to match the hardware they were running on.

After trying to explain, ‘That’s not how any of this works,’ and getting about as far as that old lady in the commercial, I acquiesced to the manager’s very explicit and stern demands to put everything back exactly the way it was ‘supposed to be.’ I barely managed to avoid being fired on the spot by apologizing profusely for my mistake because I didn’t realize that there was a standard in place.

So when scrap and quality rejects at our factory doubled in a single week, and we lost about 70 hours of up-time because of jammed up processes (at a cost of about $10,000/hr in lost productivity), there was suddenly a big meeting demanded by corporate, to come yell at us for costing the company about two million bucks in one week between all the increased scrap and down-time.

At that meeting, I explained exactly the changes that I had been making to the processes over the course of the previous six months. I had charts from our historian for every single process before I made my original changes, after I made the changes, and after I was compelled under threat of losing my job to revert all the changes I made back to the original parameters.

I got the opportunity to explain to that engineering manager’s boss that homogenizing code and standardizing processes is a good idea on the whole, but that there are specific equipment parameters that need to be tuned individually for each process they are running on, and that these parameters often need to be re-tuned if something about the process changes in a way that affects the performance of that process, such as changes in materials, or natural wear and tear on components.

And I explained that while one factory was able to find a set of parameters that ‘worked’ across all their lines without causing catastrophic failures, most of those lines were actually performing quite sluggishly, and I demonstrated using our own plant’s data how similarly performing lines at our factory before my changes dramatically improved yield and up-time when the processes were tuned individually.

The corporate engineering manager got fired, and I got 40% of my annual salary as a bonus this year, along with everyone at my plant getting maxed out bonuses because of how well the plant performed this year.”

17. YOU TOLD ME TO GET MY PRIORITIES STRAIGHT SO I DID

“A little background. I (29F) own a home with my fiancé (30M) and we split expenses and housework 50/50.

I like to think we contribute equally to the household, but one area we differ in is our work schedules and I am a night owl/have insomnia. He works the typical 9-5 and I bartend during the evenings four nights a week with one morning brunch shift.

My sleep schedule is very wonky and lately, I have been sleeping from about 9/10-2 and have had a sleepless night or two per week (before you judge, we have no kids and this works for me.) I do my best to stay quiet and want to get things done while I’m awake at night, but don’t want to wake him up.

Now to the malicious compliance. One day this week we spent the evening tidying up the house together and I thought we both contributed equally and all was well and good, but there were so many dishes that there were some piled up in the sink after we loaded the dishwasher and then they continued to pile up again (this is also a constant issue for us, as he also tends to leave dishes in the sink even when the dishwasher has plenty of space.) Last night I had a sleepless night and I spent it quietly in the living room working on a paint by numbers.

Tonight I came home and was told, ‘your painting looks good, but you really need to get your priorities straight,’ and mentioned the dishes in the sink. Now, this really ticked me off, because most of the dishes were his, I am his partner, not his maid, and I had shoveled our enormous driveway the night prior.

ADVERTISEMENT
Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ Has Best Streaming Week Ever
Keep Watching

Skip Ad

I decided he was right. So at 4 in the morning, I went to the kitchen and did all the dishes. Loudly.

He came to the kitchen and asked me what the heck I was doing. I told him that I was getting my priorities straight and doing the dishes like he asked.

Little update: He just got up for work, we both apologized, and he said ‘good job on the kitchen, it looks very nice.’”

16. BULLY ME INTO SELLING YOU MY CAR? YOU MESSED WITH THE WRONG MAMA BEAR

“So, about 8 years ago I’m selling a used car. Engine light was on, the AC needed recharging, and the fuel pump or something was out. So I go to my local trusted sales site. Ad goes up with a few pictures and the words: ‘I work weird hours so I may not be able to accept a phone call.

Please only text me.’ Yay for working Swings and Midnights, right? It was actually college classes, but same thing for me.

So a few days in, I get a pretty standard text, ‘Hi, I’m Matt. Is your car still for sale?’

Matt isn’t his real name, but you get the idea. So I text back that it is. A few standard texts about price, why is the engine light on, who did you get the quote from (I listed an approximate price on the repairs as quoted from my trusted mechanic), and whatnot, we go back and forth.

The next day I get a text from him saying ‘Are you gonna take all your crap out of the car before you sell it to me or is that my job?’ Unwarranted hostility? Really? WHAT THE HECK MAN!

He’s not the only interested party, so I text him back, ‘I’m not selling the car to you, so don’t worry about it.’

I never said I would sell it to him, he never asked if he was the only interested party, and others were arranging test drives already.

I didn’t need him and his less than full price, partial-commitment. And the crap he was complaining about is three textbooks and a bag I keep clothes in. FOUR THINGS!

This guy didn’t like to take no for an answer and starts calling and texting about how my car’s paint is peeling (true, but the pics and description said so), and how dare I ask so much ($1000) for a piece of crap car.

I started replying for a time, telling him he wasn’t going to get the car, that I had other interested buyers, so he didn’t need to worry about it, etc. Then things got PERSONAL.

This site gave you the option to link to social media so you could post at both places at the same time.

So I had. I didn’t have my privacy settings turned down as it was still early into social media’s absolute reign, and I actually trusted them at the time. Silly me, I know. I hadn’t anticipated that he would be able to find my info through the website’s post and find my name, my location, pictures of my kid, my mother-in-law’s obit, etc. Surprise me, he did.

He starts texting me about how I should be ashamed of myself for saying no to him, a muscular dude, and me being a quite round female. He included a picture in one text, and he wasn’t the ‘muscular, built’ man he claimed to be.

He looked like a bean pole with 2 ab muscles, so… what the heck, dude? He asked me if I even knew everything about cars or if I made the post while on my period so I didn’t know what I was talking about.

He texted that I should be lucky I was already married or else he would come to my house and ‘show me how a real man handles a little witch.’ (he got close but didn’t have an address and the way my address pulls up on GPS, he never would find my apartment—thankfully!)

Small side info: Since I was in college at the time and needed a more flexible schedule, I worked as a school crossing guard. Every 2 weeks or so, we’d go in to sign our time cards in order to get paid.

This crossing guard gig was hired through my local PD. Not all crossing guard gigs are the same, but this one was.

During one of these visits to the office, I was using my phone while I was waiting for my boss to get to me, my name being low in the alphabet.

I hadn’t yet blocked the dude as it hadn’t been long since this started and I was hoping it would fizzle on its own. I didn’t check my phone in class, choosing to turn it off to avoid ADHD-ing on it the entire day, and I was often flooded with several hours of texts all at once.

What I saw on my phone drove me over the cliff! He started texting about pictures I had posted on social media about my 8 (or 7) year old son! He had just majorly crossed the line!

The cleanest version of his texts included things like, ‘Your kid is just as ugly as you are.

I hope you don’t plan on him leaving home to get a wife anytime soon.’ And how a smudge of dirt on his face from a day at the zoo looked like I beat him. I didn’t sell you a car and you’re taking out your rage by threatening to assault me and accusing me of beating my kid?

‘Oh HECK NO!”

Apparently, I was loud when I said what I did because my boss stepped right over to me next and asked what was wrong. Great person. 10/10. Would boss again. I told her that I was getting these horrible texts from a rando that tried to buy my car.

I told her I was about to erase the texts and block him, but she’s like, ‘No, wait don’t do that. Let me see your phone.’ So happy I didn’t delete them because this next part still makes my heart soar!

I offer and she takes my phone, reading all the sick and vile things he texted to me. She tells me to wait until she’s cleared the lobby of the other crossing guards, so I do. She then tells me to follow her behind the security doors at the PD Station, still having my phone.

I don’t know what’s happening, but I liked and trusted her, so I do. I follow her back to her office where she works on her computer, referring to my phone on occasion. She asks if all I have is the phone number or if I got his name too?

I tell her I only got a first name, and scroll to the text where he introduced himself. A semi-uncomfortable amount of time later, she hands back my phone.

Something to mention, my boss isn’t just administrative. I didn’t know it at the time, but she’s a full-on Lieutenant in the local PD.

She came up the ranks from patrol, moving to a position where she exclusively investigated child/elder/disabled complaints before moving into her current desk position. Needless to say, she didn’t take people threatening harm to kids lightly. Because I hadn’t blocked the number, I still had the text messages with the dude’s name, and she had used it to cross-search him and the phone number.

Long story short, she knew exactly who he was. She says not to worry, but don’t delete or respond to his texts anymore; she had it. If it got worse, I should call her or 911 as appropriate right away. Unconcerned and happy she had the situation in hand, I leave and go to class.

When I’m back to the office to sign my next timecard 2 weeks later, I had several unread texts from the guy. I had filtered them so I didn’t see them pop up and hadn’t read them. I had sold the car (for full asking price), and all but forgotten the entire situation.

My boss tells me to wait for her again as she had something else for me to sign, and I again return to her office. She briefly explains what she had for me was an actionable complaint that she needed me to sign from my issue 2 weeks ago.

I remember everything all over again. She must see my face because she tells me not to worry and that she can tell me what’s going on more after I actually sign the form. So I do. This is the best situation anyone could have asked for.

The phone number was tied to many people as the provider was known for cheap cell service for those that were desperate for a way to contact people/services/employment. But with the name Matt (again, fake name), she was able to find out who was messing with me.

She then got a Drivers’ License, which led to an address, which led to a police report for possible domestic violence. Fall down the rabbit hole some more, and you find out that this dude had 5 kids by 4 women, and he was in arrears on his child support to them all.

Hadn’t been paying for 10+ years, and it was in the neighborhood of 30-50k if memory serves. But he somehow, just 2 weeks ago, requested a title transfer for a new-to-him, quite fancy old car. I don’t remember the kind, but think ‘high-end car show and massive insurance premiums.’

Being so far in arrears meant that my boss was able to place a seizure order on the car so it could be sold to pay back the child support. One of the baby mamas lives in a state where fleeing child support meant you could have a warrant issued for your arrest. When she called the interested parties in that state to see if they wanted her to execute the arrest warrant, they said ‘Yes, with much haste!’ (That was a funny turn of phrase, so I always remembered it).

One conversation later, my boss was able to determine that he was using the brother’s social security number on his employment forms to avoid child support garnishments. This is all sorts of illegal, so she notified the guy’s HR department so it could be corrected. They informed her he would be fired for fraudulently submitting false documents.

She then told me that about 4 days ago, she had executed the warrant on the dude for Felony Child Abandonment and that the state he was to be held for was already on route to pick him up! It carried an 8-12 year sentence, and he still had to pay his back child support!

I could have dealt with the comment, I could have dealt with the not taking no for an answer, even dealt with the cyberstalking… a little. BUT, when your twisted mind okays you to bring my kid into the picture, you done crossed the line!

If you would have stopped at no, you wouldn’t be in jail right now!”

15. WON’T GET US NEW BOOTS? I HAVE JUST THE FLASHY SOLUTION

“Many years ago I was an elected union president at a Fortune 500 company, but I was only in charge of one contracted group.

As such the bargaining power of the main company was much higher than my own, but even they couldn’t intervene too much. My group’s contract switched from company A to company B in 2012, but the contract remained unchanged. Company B inherited all of the contract requirements of company A and agreed to meet them, but opted to fight me on several minor clauses when it came down to it.

Most were solved without much conflict, but the major sticking point was in regard to uniforms.

Our contract ensured that we were given an allowance to pay for new uniforms and vouchers for steel toe boots every year. When it came time for our new vouchers, they refused, citing that they’d given us a slight raise which should offset the cost of boots.

I informed them that a cost of living raise didn’t void the portion of the contract requiring them to provide vouchers for shoes, to which they responded they just hadn’t figured out how to provide vouchers yet. After assurances they would provide the vouchers as soon as they could work it out, I dropped the issue.

Unsurprisingly, months later they still hadn’t provided vouchers for replacement shoes. It should be noted that this was a very large campus and many of us walked several miles a day in these shoes, and the shoes were caked with chemicals and dirt and started to look pretty vile within a year.

We had to wear the same work shoes in office areas and we had started to get complaints. I decided to lean into this. This is where malicious compliance begins.

No new shoes? Fine. I’ll rig them up to last longer.

I went out and bought several rolls of the flashiest and most obnoxious duct tape I could find. I began to ‘repair’ holes in my shoes with duct tape and extra fabric to the point that my hot pink shoes became easily recognizable.

The safety team for the main company was so amused they gifted me hot pink safety glasses and gloves to match. I also lent out my gaudy duct tape collection to any employee needing to ‘upgrade’ their shoes.

Suddenly the complaints about our dirty shoes were replaced by complaints about obviously duct-taped shoes.

Whenever we were asked we’d tell both union and nonunion coworkers that it was a small protest against the refusal to honor the shoe vouchers in the contract.

The next year rolls around and still no shoe vouchers, but suddenly our uniform allowance was increased ~$150 to allow for new steel-toed shoes to be purchased. After speaking to the union members, I agreed to allow that in place of the vouchers.

I kept my duct tape collection permanently on display as a threat and would use it any time safety equipment wasn’t being replaced and required ‘repair.’”

14. FIRE ME WITHOUT A LEGITIMATE REASON? THAT WON’T TURN OUT WELL FOR YOUR COMPANY

“So my life has been in the crapper for a while now, but a tiny bit of revenge can feel really good. It does not end what I’m going through and is only a small chapter but still.

I was working some small jobs just to stay working. Namely, I was working at a Walmart and also at Lowes. Well as things eased up a bit, more job opportunities opened up and I interviewed for Warehouse Manager at a company I will call Neurotic Co to protect the identity of those involved. I was immediately offered the job, though at a pay rate I thought was a joke for a manager.

Still, it was much better than Walmart. They put me on an hourly rate of pay and gave me a 50 hours a week schedule to meet my minimum income expectations. The pay was insulting in some ways because of the range of things the owners wanted me to be able to do, including: welding, plumbing, electrical, and carpentry all on top of managing.

The warehouse had gone through a short shut down and was ramping back up slowly. I managed a day crew of 2 that had been there forever, a night crew that at the moment had 1 person and 4 drivers that had been there a while.

My hours aligned mostly with the night crew as they needed the most help and the daytime guys could handle it well enough. So I managed at this warehouse for 8 months, that was all I could take. During that time the owner slowly eroded my power.

I watched him tell countless lies, change his mind on things at random and change our working hours at the drop of a hat. He was a jerk. Also, the whole place was covered in cameras and he would come in to talk to us about very specific things he had watched us do on camera while he was sitting at home.

It was disturbing.

Turnover was huge as the owner would simply tick people off and they would leave. It made my job impossible. But the other managers would tell me to hang in there, he will be gone soon. Eventually, I had a crew that was loyal and worked for me.

The only problem was if I was not in, they would call out to avoid working with the owner. Then finally it came, the owner was supposed to move to Florida to be near his grandson. His wife was making him, I think he wanted to stick around and just run the business into the ground.

A couple of days before he left the owner took me aside and gave me a huge write up for all sorts of dumb crap that was untrue and then yelled at me for an hour saying things like ‘I bet you are sitting there thinking how can this place make anything without me.

Well, I was successful before you all by myself.’ And so forth. This of course was a lie, he had been given the company by his father and it survived largely on loyalty from the customer base and a single product they were the exclusive distributor for in the region.

As he left for Florida he sent an E-mail naming out the management team and excluding me. So I told the other managers I felt like I was being treated like a supervisor rather than a manager and I would therefore act as a supervisor rather than a manager.

I started looking for a new job. I planned to give a normal 2 weeks’ notice and leave peacefully.

Then one night, I had a funny feeling and it made me take most of my personal stuff home for whatever reason (Had a lot of my own tools in my desk and such).

The next morning the stated management team took me into the office and fired me. The notice they gave me simply said you are terminated for insubordination and they refused to cite an incident. To this day I am convinced that the owner watched me take my personal tools home on camera from Florida and then called them and said fire him first thing.

Then the revenge. On my drive home after being fired (My shift started 2 hours before my night workers) I called my workers one at a time and told them what happened, said I had enjoyed working with them and if they ever needed a reference I would be happy to help.

I had a fantastic crew at this point, all good people, in spite of hating the owner. A few hours later the calls started coming in. The entire crew had called out for the night. I had a good giggle about it.

But 2 days later I started to get more calls. To the man, the entire warehouse night crew had quit in loyalty to me. I was told they had been offered $4/hour raises to stay and all refused them. After the warehouse workers quit I got a call from my favorite driver (I had mixed feelings about my drivers as a whole).

He told me that none of the drivers had certifications for driving the trucks we had (air breaks) and suggested I report it to the DOT.

Let’s just say that from what I heard: the owner had to come back from Florida at his wife’s protest to take back over.

The only people they could get for the night shift were an addict who they fired previously and a guy who they previously fired for making far too many mistakes. Deliveries were truncated for some time because they could only use the van instead of the 30’ box trucks they have while the drivers got certified. Oh, and as I understand it, there was a hefty fine.”

13. MY FATHER’S THINGS WENT MISSING, SO HE OUTSMARTED THE THIEF

“My father was a welder at a pulp and paper mill on maintenance with a union. There were around 500 people who worked here at the time (mid to late ’80s). On my dad’s crew, there was a man they called ‘Squirrel’ because he would take anything small enough to carry and take it home.

Some of the things were specialized tools made for a certain machine and they would have to be ordered again at the company’s expense.

I guess there wasn’t much the mill could do because somehow the union backed him. It wasn’t long before my father’s tools started going missing.

He knew where to look and found them in Squirrel’s toolbox and some scattered on his workbench. Squirrel was an average-sized man. Around 5’9 to 5’10 but my father was a huge man standing at 6’5 and around 250 pounds so Squirrel didn’t say a word.

He was too scared to.

My father reported this to the union rep and the main office and was told they will investigate. Squirrel was given a one-week paid suspension while the investigation went on. They found many of the missing things in his locker, lunch box, toolbox, etc. Somehow he got the union to back him again and was allowed to come back to work at the end of his suspension.

My father grabbed his mobile welder and went into Squirrel’s area and welded together a giant metal box. He took everything he could identify as Squirrel’s and put it in the box and welded a top on it. He said he used 5/8 stainless to make it.

He then got the help of one of his work buddies to lift the box and dad welded it to the bottom of the I-beam on the ceiling. About 20 feet in the air.

The day Squirrel came back he was looking for all his things but couldn’t find them at all.

He asked everyone he could but no one said a word except, ‘I take care of my tools. Maybe you should take better care of yours.’

This went on for a couple of hours until Squirrel went into the main office to complain saying someone stole everything of his.

The shop steward and Squirrel walked into the maintenance shop to ask the people in there where his things were. Dad stood up and walked up close, and knowing him he was towering over Squirrel and said something along the lines of ‘Squirrels like to climb to store their stuff.

Are you sure you didn’t climb the I-beam and put your stuff up there?’

I guess the look of ‘oh, shoot’ on the shop steward’s face was almost too good but the look of pure horror on Squirrel’s face was my dad’s favorite part of this story.

He would laugh just as hard at every telling when he got to this part. Squirrel went into his work area and looked up. He saw the box up there. He tried to get anyone’s help to get it down but everyone seemed to have ‘important’ things to do and couldn’t at the moment.

Squirrel took a day and a half working alone to get his things from the box and to remove the box from where it was welded.

My father said not a thing ever went missing again and Squirrel worked there another 10 years or more until the mill was shut down.

I can say I believe him because one night staying at his place I got intoxicated and was thinking about going home. He went to the basement and made a little box and welded my keys in it. I got them back the next day.

I miss my father and his stories.”

12. MY OUTFIT ISN’T PROFESSIONAL ENOUGH? I’LL JUST WEAR WHAT MY DAD DOES

“Years ago in the 90s, I worked at a trash hole of a call center. It was my first ‘office’ job and I tried really hard to be professional. What I didn’t know was that a call center is basically the same as a restaurant.

Everyone was sleeping with each other, on substances/booze, and the managers were idiots.

There was a guy who worked in a different pod who was always hitting on me. I was not interested. I did my job and went home and didn’t socialize.

I didn’t even eat lunch in the break room because I lived about 5 min away. Well, there was a manager who had been sleeping with the guy and thought I was coming between them. She would make up excuses to harass me – I wasn’t taking enough calls, I didn’t clock in and out of the system exactly on the minute, etc.

One day, she really went off the rails and started publicly shaming my outfit. I had on a dress and cardigan which she insisted was too revealing. It was to my knees and I had on tights. She wrote me up and sent me home to change.

I was really upset and started digging through my closet looking for something she couldn’t pick apart.

Then inspiration struck. My dad is a textbook accountant. Khakis, short-sleeved button-ups, and ties. So I borrowed an outfit from him – I was swimming in it, you couldn’t see a single curve.

I went back to work and headed straight for my desk. Don’t you know, the manager spotted me and made a beeline directly for me. She pulled me into HR complaining that I looked unprofessional. I told HR that this is what my dad wore every day and he is a consummate professional. HR agreed that my outfit was acceptable but the manager wouldn’t let it go.

The dress code was gender-specific and she argued that I wasn’t dressed like a woman. I ended up just going home for the day rather than deal with it anymore.

A few days later, the dress code policy had been updated with vague language about ‘looking professional’ and didn’t even give examples of what was appropriate.

The memo was posted in several places. This meant that EVERYONE in the call center could now basically wear whatever they liked as long as it wasn’t ripped jeans or a tube top. The manager was fuming because HR had taken away one of the things she could lord over people.

I didn’t last much longer there but hopefully, no one ever changed the dress code back.”

11. THINK YOU’RE SMARTER THAN ME? THINK AGAIN

“When I (F) was 17 at the time, I had a partner who was VERY pretentious.

I personally always found that funny, so I didn’t mind. However, he was bent on proving how much more intelligent he was than me.

One day, he was bragging about an online IQ test he did and how smart he was.

He begged me to do one as well. However, I had just smoked so I refused. After some more begging, I decided why not? It could be fun.

I scored higher on the IQ test. He was so angry it was hilarious!

He never bragged about his IQ test again.

Another time, he really wanted to show off by playing chess against me. I’m really bad at the game and told him so. But I knew people who were good and they gave me the advice to never have a pawn that was not protected by another.

So I did just that. Halfway through I had captured most of his pawn and he raged quit!!!! AT CHESS!!! He flipped the board and broke some of his pieces.

Needless to say, a week or two after we were no longer together.

I made him too insecure and he went back to his ex who he called extremely stupid…

At least he gave me A LOT of laughing materials for years to come.”

10. BELITTLE YOUR EMPLOYEES? BEWARE THE REVENGE OF THE CONSTRUCTION WORKERS

“I am a teacher, and when I was younger, I would take summer jobs to supplement my income. One summer, I worked for a bricklayer named Jerry and heard an amazing story! I worked for Jerry in the mid-’90s, so the story either happened in the early 90s or in the 80s.

The setting for the story was a community of small rural towns which had only one brick contractor. Jerry began his career as a bricklayer working for this contractor, a real jerk. Jerk and Jerk’s son (an adult working the business with his father) would harass, belittle, and humiliate all their employees on a regular basis.

No work was ever good enough and employees were told they weren’t worth what they were paid. Not only did Jerk mistreat his employees; but, he was equally rude to other subcontractors and to the general contractors who hired him.

Since he was the only bricklayer in the community, there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Needless to say, the turnover rate for the brick business was very high. The only person that stuck with Jerk and Company was Jerry.

Jerry told me that his father had instilled self-confidence in him that Jerry could do anything he set his mind to and that he should not evaluate himself according to what others said, but, rather, by the facts. Although Jerry was belittled by Jerk and Son as were all other employees, Jerry was becoming a very good bricklayer.

Jerry knew he was good; Jerk knew Jerry was good; but, Jerk didn’t know that Jerry knew he was good. Not only was Jerry a good bricklayer, but he was also very respectful to the boss who disrespected him.

Jerk thought that Jerry was a naïve pushover who was buying his head games. That would prove to be a HUGE mistake on his part.

One day, Jerry was doing an exceptionally good job of laying brick. Not only was his craftsmanship amazing, but he was also laying brick at a high rate of speed so that he was making his boss lots of money.

Of course, Jerk and Son were belittling his work as though he was doing the very opposite. This scenario was observed by the general contractor of the project. After work that day, the general contractor asked Jerry to stay behind so he could talk to him.

As did every other construction worker in the community, General Contractor hated working with Jerk. General Contractor told Jerry that he had heard Jerk and Son belittling him, and told him that he disagreed with everything Jerk was saying. He asked Jerry if he had ever considered going into business for himself.

Jerry said that he would like to do that someday. General Contractor then said that he would loan Jerry the funds to buy a mixer (the most expensive piece of equipment needed to start a brick business) if Jerry would indeed start said business.

The only hitch was that Jerry would need to pay for the mixer whenever he could and that he would subcontract under General Contractor. Jerry agreed to those terms and prepared to begin his new venture.

Jerry respectfully told Jerk and Son his plans and gave his notice.

The two mocked Jerry ruthlessly and laughed him to scorn. Jerk told Jerry, ‘You’ll be back in two months begging to return to your job—you’ll never make it as a subcontractor!’

Two months later, rather than collapsing as Jerk predicted, Jerry was still in business and going strong.

One year later, Jerry’s business was booming and an intoxicated Jerk showed up at Jerry’s house and begged him to come back to work with Jerk and Son. ‘Jerry, you’re the best employee I ever had.’

Jerry replied, ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me that when I was working for you?’

Jerk couldn’t answer the question; and, Jerry obviously didn’t accept the offer of employment. Two years after beginning his entrepreneurial adventure, Jerry heard that Jerk and Son went out of business.

Jerry said that he never intended to harm Jerk and Son when he accepted General Contractor’s offer. He said that looking back on things he realized that he had become Jerk’s greatest nightmare. I can’t say that General Contractor intended no harm!

I thought the most amazing thing about the story was how Jerry maintained his self-esteem in spite of all the ridicule. I also gained respect for Jerry’s father who instilled an unshakable self-confidence in Jerry!”

9. SCHOOL EXPELLED ME FOR MOM’S ANGER, SO WE SUED THE COUNTY

“So I have a really bad leg, (I’ve had 13 surgeries, long story) and had just started at a new school.

After the first 3 weeks, I had to go in for another procedure on my leg. Not that big a deal to me, I’ve been here before. Upon my return, I had documentation of my restrictions, as well as special amenities that were required. The big three were that I needed extra time to get from class to class, must have someone to escort me, and needed unrestricted access to the elevator.

All of these got me recurring problems such as constant harassment by teachers and security about my being in the halls during class time, and why was my cousin out too (he was filling the role as my escort, as I have anxiety problems and we had the same classes).

These first two were annoying but easy enough to deal with.

The real issue was the elevator, as I was told multiple times that for security issues I couldn’t have a personal key due to it sharing the same functionality with the interior door keys.

I would never have had any issues with this, as I was told there would always be someone on the same floor as my classes to open the elevator for me. This, of course, was untrue about 75% of the time.

The lack of elevator access meant that I was always stuck in the halls when other students were going from class to class and was consistently late due to having to wait for someone to come by and open the door for the elevator.

This also meant that I would sometimes be stuck waiting through the entire lunch period, and due to my absences couldn’t afford to simply go to lunch after the fact. After about 3 weeks of this, I was tired of not getting to eat lunch.

So I did one of the stupidest things I could have attempted and tried to use the stairs.

For context, I was not on crutches, I was on a full-blown walker. About halfway down to the landing, I fell. Hard.

As lunch was letting out one of my friends found me, got someone to help pick me up, and carried me to the office. Another of my friends went to find my other cousin (the one who normally escorted me wasn’t there due to being sick, so I was without an escort because I couldn’t bear the thought of a stranger escorting me), who, when getting to the office, managed to get me to calm down enough to give them my mother’s number.

Now, my mother is quite hot-tempered but can keep a level head normally. When she heard I fell, she was there in record time. When she got there, she immediately asked what happened. I told her I didn’t want to miss lunch again, so I tried to use the stairs.

Big mistake, as that set off an explosive. She immediately turned around and DEMANDED the Principal and VP to get their behinds in here as soon as possible. As soon as the principal and VP walked in, she started berating them in a fashion not suitable for most adults to hear, let alone kids.

When the VP made an off-hand remark about my condition, my mother was swarmed by local sheriffs that provided security for the school’s entrances and office as she physically went after the VP. We were escorted out, and after looking at the file and realizing my cousin and I had the same address they figured out that I didn’t actually live there.

Now, my grandmother’s address was listed as she looked after me after I left school up until around 8 pm. She also was raising my cousin after an issue between her and my aunt. They used this as grounds to expel me, and told her I can be ‘some other school’s problem now.’

I was then enrolled at the school near my house and had to have yet another surgery to repair the damage that was done as a result of my fall and redo the work of the previous procedure. I had gotten multiple statements from teachers as well as my doctors, and my parents were moving forward with a lawsuit naming the VP, Principal, and the county school board.

We were contacted by a lawyer who had won multiple cases against our school board, some of which went to the State Supreme Court, and he told us he would take our case Pro-bono. He was getting tired of going against the Board and thought a case like this would be what it took to try and fix their nonsense.

Fast forward 9 months, and I was walking out of court with a settlement to cover all my procedures, as well as a written confirmation that the school would be going through a complete administrative overhaul, and that the Principal and VP would be let go, and have their administrative credentials revoked in our state.

My new school was let known on day 1 my medical requirements and my need for a personal elevator key by the Superintendent and the head of the State Board of education.”

8. YOU WANT TO BE UNFAITHFUL? I’LL RUIN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE

“My mom has been best friends with Eileen (not her real name) since they were both kids, and Eileen has kind of been like an aunt to me.

About 5 years ago, Eileen’s husband of more than 25 years surprised her by asking for a divorce. Eileen lived about 6 hours away from my mom at the time, and I lived out of state, so I didn’t find out how everything went down until a few months after their divorce was finalized.

Unfortunately Eileen’s life kind of spiraled out of control after the separation/divorce. She developed depression and a drinking problem. But my mom and some other childhood friends were able to convince her to move back to her hometown, and then they convinced her to go to rehab.

I moved back home shortly before Eileen went to rehab and, because my school/work schedule was pretty flexible, I was able to house sit and take care of some stuff while she was in rehab.

The first time I visited her in rehab, I got the whole divorce story, and it was bad.

Eileen’s ex, Jeff (also not his real name), hadn’t talked to Eileen about any problems prior to asking for a divorce, so she just assumed he fell out of love with her. But I was immediately skeptical about the things Eileen told me.

First, Jeff, who was an executive at a pharmaceutical company earning mid-six figures, was fired from his job a year before they split up and decided to take a break before looking for another job. It was weird to me that Jeff decided to take a break from work because he’d always been such a workaholic.

Eileen hasn’t worked in years because of a disability, but she has some property and a trust her parents left her that lets her live a comfortable life without working. Jeff and Eileen lived off of the trust while he was unemployed.

Then, after Jeff said he wanted a divorce, he refused to go to couple’s therapy or talk about why he wanted the divorce. The only thing he would say was that they had grown apart and that he was sick of being with a woman like Eileen.

He said Eileen’s mother was right about her. Eileen’s mother was a classic narcissist, and she bullied Eileen horribly about her attractiveness, weight, intelligence, etc., which caused a lot of psychological problems that Jeff knows about.

Finally, right after the divorce was finalized, Jeff moved out of state, but to a state he didn’t have any family or connections in.

Jeff’s parents are still alive and in their 80s/90s, and Jeff is pretty close to them, so it didn’t make any sense to me why Jeff wouldn’t move to be closer to them if he wanted to move after the divorce.

I didn’t say anything to Eileen because I didn’t want to upset her, but I thought Jeff might have been having an affair, had orchestrated his unemployment to avoid paying alimony, and then moved out of state to be with his mistress.

I just didn’t have a way to confirm it at the time.

Then Eileen asked me to look for a box of Jeff’s stuff he had asked her to hold for him until he moved into his new apartment.

She told me all the info on the box, contents, and his new address were in an email he sent her, and she gave me the password to her computer so I could access the email.

This is where I lucked out.

It turns out Jeff had used her computer and set up his email on the computer. I accidentally clicked on the app for his email when I was searching for Eileen’s email.

I decided to take a peek at his email.

The first thing I noticed was that he had mostly stopped using that email address 3 years before, which was about 1 year before he was fired. In a folder for digital receipts I found a confirmation email for a courtship site (either POF or Match, I can’t remember which), which I think he saved there accidentally.

I also found a verification email for a new email address.

I started to put together a speculative timeline of what happened. I guessed that about 3 years before, Jeff started an affair, and shortly after, he decided to get a new email address to help keep the affair secret.

I wanted to access his ‘courtship’ profile to get more information, so I tried to use the ‘forgot password’ feature to see if I could generate an email that would allow me to reset the password and log in that way.

Unfortunately, the courtship site didn’t recognize Jeff’s old email address.

I thought I might be able to get into Jeff’s new email using his old email to reset the password, and then, maybe, I could use the new email to get into the website.

But I didn’t want to risk locking Jeff out of his new email and alerting him until I knew more about what he’d done. And here’s where I totally lucked out—the email app Jeff downloaded to Eileen’s MacBook had a note feature, and super genius Jeff saved some passwords on notes.

Most of the passwords weren’t helpful, but I did get the password to the site and his Twitter and Netflix accounts.

I logged into the site using his new email address and the password. I was able to read messages Jeff sent to another woman before he broke up with Eileen.

The new mistress sent Jeff her email address in one of the messages.

I searched social media for the mistress’s email address and found her profile. I couldn’t read the mistress’s posts, but she left her photos public.

She had recent photos of her and Jeff, so I knew they were still together. She also posted a photo of a construction crew breaking ground on a new home for her and Jeff, which was interesting because I got the impression from Eileen that Jeff didn’t have a lot of money after the divorce.

Here’s where my background is important. At the time, I was attending law school (I moved back to my hometown for one semester for a legal residency), and I had access to Lexis’ database. Specifically, their public records database.

I had spent a good portion of one of my summer internships tracking down property records and other assets to help recover judgments for clients, so I knew how to search for public records.

The mistress had purchased several acres in a wealthy suburb several months before Jeff filed for divorce, and there was no mortgage listed on the record.

I’d already found the mistress’s LinkedIn page, so I knew she worked as an executive assistant before she moved out of state with Jeff. She didn’t advertise her salary, but I doubted she could have afforded the property with her salary alone.

It’s possible she had money outside her salary, but I suspected Jeff gave her funds to purchase the land before he filed for divorce.

I also found an updated record in Lexis showing Jeff and the mistress as joint owners of the property.

I called the county recorder’s office to confirm ownership of the property, dates, etc. The mistress had filed a quitclaim just 5 weeks after Jeff’s divorce was finalized.

I was still hesitant to try to log into Jeff’s new email, so I decided to check his old email again to see if there was anything else I should investigate before moving to the new email.

I didn’t find anything, but I noticed that several passwords in his notes were the same. I decided to try to log into his new email using the same password he used for the site. I figured the two accounts were created around the same time, so if he had recycled a password, that was the most likely candidate.

It worked.

His new email was a gold mine. Because this story is already getting ridiculously long, I’ll list some of the relevant stuff I found:

Jeff hadn’t been fired from his old job. He quit and lied to Eileen.
I found an email from his admin asking where to have payroll send his last check and details about a goodbye party for him.

Some emails between Jeff and a boat repair person mentioned a leak somewhere on one side of the sailboat near the engine compartment.
The repair guy couldn’t find the source of the leak but he talked about current and future problems with mold and the engine on that side.

Emails between Jeff and a boat broker, which included the email address of buyers farther down in the string.
An emailed report from the boat inspector which didn’t include the leak or any mold damage or potential damage to the engine.
Emails between Jeff and his contractor about changes made to the new house’s sunroom (something about a 3 season sunroom vs a 4 season sunroom and the construction needing to be modified to deal with the weight of snow).
Emails between Jeff and the mistress. They had married.
The mistress/Jeff shared a calendar.
Some flirty emails between Jeff and another woman.
Emails with info on Jeff’s new employer.
I downloaded all the important emails and their attachments and started thinking about a revenge plan.

To my mind, everything was fair game. He lied about being fired, so I wanted him fired from his new job. I suspected he hid his assets before his separation from Eileen to help pay for his new house, so I wanted him to lose his house.

He was unfaithful, so I wanted to destroy his new relationship. Anything I could do about the boat was a bonus.

The easiest place to start was the boat. I had no idea if the source of the leak was found and repaired or if the leak was verbally disclosed to the buyer, but I figured Jeff was a lying jerk so odds were fair he hid the info from the new buyer.

I sent the emails between Jeff and the repairman and another copy of the inspection to the buyer. I searched Jeff’s county court website 5/6 months later and found out the buyers filed a suit against Jeff (and the broker and inspector).

Ha!

I couldn’t figure out how to take or destroy Jeff’s house, so I settled for contacting the county inspector’s office to complain about the sunroom not being up to code.

This is actually what prompted me to write this post because I just found out some details about what happened with the county inspectors.

(Keep in mind, I heard about this from a 3rd party years after the fact, so I don’t know all the details). It turns out the sunroom was code compliant, but the inspector did find a workshop/workroom attached to the detached garage that wasn’t on the original permit/plans.

The workshop had a bathroom that the contractor attached to the property’s septic system after the initial inspection. A mutual friend of Eileen and Jeff told Eileen and me, and he guessed this was a big deal because the size of the septic system they installed wasn’t sized to handle the additional…

input, but I don’t know for sure. Jeff had to pay a fine and the workshop had to be removed. This ended up causing construction delays, which will become relevant below.

As for destroying Jeff’s marriage, my first impulse was to send the new wife the flirty emails between Jeff and the other woman, but when I searched for that woman on social media, I couldn’t find anything.

I had no way of knowing if the new wife knew the other woman and would think that the emails weren’t important or evidence of an affair. Then, I played around with the idea of updating Jeff’s profile and sending stuff to his wife.

But it would take too long to manufacture a fake relationship with real dates and times, and I was worried that Jeff might get an email alert from the site that would clue him in.

I ended up just risking that the new wife wouldn’t know the other woman.

I pretended to be someone concerned about an affair between Jeff and the new woman. Overall, I kept the accusation vague, but I did say Jeff and the new girl went out to eat and to the movies on a few dates Jeff’s shared calendar said the new wife was out of town.

I couldn’t come up with a way to get Jeff fired. I rechecked his email and calendar over several weeks looking for something I could use to get him fired. Eventually, my legal residency got too busy to devote much time to revenge, so I decided to just let it go.

Eileen recently reconnected with a friend she shared with Jeff, and that friend gave Eileen an update on Jeff. Eileen shared the details with me, and that’s what reminded me of what I did and prompted this story.

It turned out that I didn’t need to worry about sabotaging Jeff’s career.

By luck, the woman Jeff had been emailing was actually his assistant at his new job, and Jeff’s new boss was his brother-in-law. Jeff and his new wife actually moved to her hometown so she could be close to her family and so Jeff could go to work for his new brother-in-law.

I have no idea if Jeff actually was being unfaithful. He told the mutual friend that passed this story onto Eileen that they hadn’t been having an affair. It didn’t matter to new wife, though. Because she and Jeff got together when Jeff was already married, she didn’t have a lot of trust in Jeff.

She didn’t believe Jeff’s denials when I sent the email about him having an affair. She filed for divorce. And Jeff’s brother-in-law boss fired him.

And since the construction was delayed the new house wasn’t finished when Jeff and new wife divorced. They had to sell an unfinished home, and Jeff took a big financial hit.

Finally, these weren’t part of my larger revenge plan, but I am pretty petty, so I took the box of Jeff’s stuff (mostly photographs) and threw them away. I told Eileen they must have been lost in the move.

Then, I signed both of Jeff’s email addresses for a bunch of spam, newsletters, mailing lists, etc. I deleted his Netflix watchlist. And lastly, I posted, retweeted, and liked a bunch of adult content on his Twitter account and deleted all the accounts he was following.

I never told Eileen what I did because I wanted her to have plausible deniability and I didn’t want to interfere with her recovery. She doesn’t know about the boat lawsuit or the Netflix/Twitter stuff, but she did take satisfaction from his divorce and job loss.

I probably would have let it all go if Jeff had just been unfaithful because I had always really liked Jeff. I always thought he was nice, but I was obviously wrong about him. Nice people don’t weaponize childhood trauma to mentally torture their wives.

As far as I’m concerned, Jeff deserved everything I did to him.”

7. BULLY MY BROTHER? HAVE FUN GETTING TOILET WATER ALL OVER YOU

“The other day we were talking about our school times and the differences between being educators and students when my educational advisor started telling this story.

She used to be the model student, getting along with all the teachers and getting the best grades in her classroom, but there was that one teacher she could not get along with.

It was her chemistry teacher and she described her as ‘All teachers have that breaking point where they just start screaming, but hers was incredibly easy to find.’

Until the point of the start of the story, she was just a very disliked teacher and someone my advisor just dealt with.

But one day, she reached her breaking point when her brother told her this teacher (which I’m gonna be calling her Rude Teacher) was calling him stupid and screaming at him for not knowing an answer she hadn’t even explained properly yet.

That was when she got involved in a plan: the famous toilet bomb. Because of the shared gender with the teacher, she knew where and when Rude Teacher would use the restroom (she had a strange routine with the exact time and stall she used to use) and because she was a model student, she could come and go without even being noticed since no one would assume she was up to no good.

Thing is: the whole class was in on it.

Before she got involved with the plan though, there was a single condition: no one would rat or blame someone else. No one was supposed to say anything. She had a plan.

And to the toilet the bomb went. My advisor went to the stall, installed the toilet bomb, and went back to class at the exact time Rude Teacher had her restroom break. When she came back from doing the deed, she sits down at her desk and hears the explosion, followed by Rude Teacher screaming bloody murder and coming back to class to scream at them.

The only classroom that was on break for teacher transition was my advisor’s class, so Rude Teacher beelined straight to them and started demanding to know who did this. Of course, radio silence. She jumped in anger like a toddler, made all the threats she could legally do and made the biggest tantrum you could imagine while being absolutely soaked in toilet water.

Radio. Silence.

The next logical step for Rude Teacher was to call the principal, that arrived at class with a box filled with pieces of paper. She explained that everyone was to write the name of someone involved in the toilet bomb and put it there to be taken and read by her by the end of class.

That was when my advisor stepped in. The second the principal was out of the class, she told everyone to just write ‘It was me’ in capital letters and put the paper back in the box. Which everyone did.

When the principal came back and started looking at the papers (in front of the class) she slowly turned from a normal color to a deep, fiery red and started throwing her own tantrum (guess they found out her breaking point) and did the only thing she could do at that point.

She suspended the whole gosh darn class for 3 days.

In the end, my advisor did everything: blew up the toilet, led the class to not snitch on anyone, and earned 3 days at home without anyone suspecting anything.”

6. WANT TO BE EVIL AND CONNIVING? NEVER MESS WITH A PROGRAMMER

“I’ve worked as an independent contractor in the IT field for over 20 years, doing all manner of things from creating simple HTML sites to managing a big hotel’s complete IT infrastructure.

One of the many clients I had back in the day I was coding big-ish custom websites for was a rental company. Now I had heard a lot of warnings about not working with this guy that owned it. He had a reputation that he was sharp as a tack, backstabbing, and conniving.

He was a lawyer after all.

So, I went into the partnership with that in mind.

He wanted a new website for his renting gig, where people would list their homes for rent, renters would sign up and pay a subscription to the site and he would get the whole lot.

Nothing out of the ordinary there.

So we make a pretty good deal on paper, we sign it and I get started on the project.

Coding everything in PHP goes well, but he demands suddenly that I show him progress only a week into the progress.

He wants to see the website front now. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I tried explaining to him that the front-end work isn’t scheduled to start until after 6 weeks of backend programming and that I only had pure code to show right now, the contract we signed clearly states this.

He then gets on his high horse and demands that I put everything on hold to do the frontend first, design, and then program. I, being really young at the time and fairly naive, agree to this without asking for it to be added to the contract as an addendum and start working on the design now.

Now, the contract stated that I was given free rein over the design decisions as long as I maintained the same color scheme and used the same logo on the site.

So I make a fast draft in Fireworks (this was back when it was a Macromedia product, before the Adobe acquisition) and within two days I show him.

He’s not impressed and demands a different direction and sets up a list of demands. I, as always, aim to please the customer and do just what he wants. I design a new layout, with his list of demands but he doesn‘t like that either.

That’s how the next 3 months go. A never-ending circle where he is never happy with anything.

Now close to 4 months into the project, he demands to see a working showcase of the backend, I point out that he changed the order in how the project was being done and had demanded that I do the frontend design first instead of the backend as stated in the contract, which he now turns on me and says: ‘Yes, the contract we both signed says you will have a working backend to show me at the end of the month!

If you don’t honor that I will have to take my business elsewhere and seek compensation for your lack of professionalism!’

Ok, I now have 12 days to do a backend for the site. So I get a friend to help me and we work tirelessly through the weekend and I have a good base to work from in 9 days.

Mind you, at this point, he has only paid the security on the contract (about 5% of the total price) and has shielded himself from paying by hiding behind: ‘Well if you can’t honor the contract, why should I? Finish XX work and then I’ll pay as per the contract!’

Remembering now, all the warnings I had heard about this guy, I decide to add a special function to the code just to be safe, more on that later.

So, now it’s the end of the month, we have a frontend design he is OK with, a backend that has been finished to about 85% of what is required according to the contract and I still have 1 month left to finish everything else.

Time for show and tell. Since I was working on this development I was running it on my dev server and showed him this in a browser on his computer. I mentioned to him that since I only had 512Kbit/s upstream from the server it might lag a little, but it wouldn’t when it would be put on the production server he has his website on at his hosting company.

He says that’s OK and the demonstration goes on.

As I’m showing him the site, both frontend, and backend, I can see he’s immensely happy with it (although he would never say so out loud). He is trying to hide his smile that pops up regularly and his eyes gleam with all the added ways he can now start earning.

Anyway, he now says that it’s way too slow, this is wrong, that is wrong.. blah blah blah.

Client: ‘I want you to put it up on my prod server and see how the speed is!’

Me: ‘OK, no problem, I can make that happen.

Please pay 50% of the contract and I’ll get right on it.’

OK, I wait a few days and then I get an email from him where he includes a forwarded message from the bank detailing a transaction from him to me to the amount of the 50% I asked for.

So I push the system to his prod server so he can take a look at it (under beta.his-domain.tld), I then send him an email stating that he can try the system with the supplied credentials.

What he doesn’t know is that I knew he had been fishing around for another programmer to do this project, to ‘pick up from a lazy deadbeat who couldn‘t do anything right.’ So I knew he would most likely try to screw me.

What I also suspected was that the email he sent me with the transaction proof was fake, which it ended up being.

Remember that small function I mentioned? Well, what it did was if user X (his user) tries to remove user Y (my admin) from the system without one setting being changed in the config first, the system will first delete and purge the database and then remove all the documents in the webroot.

Well, not 5 minutes after he reads the email from me, he does just that. He tries to delete my admin user from the system to lock me out.

Guess who has nothing of the project left? He does!

Since it is considered forgery to spoof an email, especially from a bank, I sent the information to the authorities and he goes under investigation by both the police and the bank lawyers.

I sold the system to a competitor of his for a better price than originally contracted to him and last I knew he was now blacklisted from owning a company as well as lost his right to work as a lawyer.

I only got that 5% he paid at the beginning and for working for just over 5 months on this project that is hardly anything. But the knowledge of his demise will keep my heart warm for the rest of my life.”

5. STEAL MY RECIPES? REST IN PEACE, MIXER

“I’m a Professional Baker and have worked for various companies developing recipes and the like. I found a job at a local grocery store, working super early mornings on their pastries for the day. There were usually a few other people there, one of whom was a Mixer.

Mixers typically follow a spec sheet with the weights of all the ingredients they need to batch mix. It’s kind of mindless work and doesn’t require much thought. He was a young guy, fresh out of his teens.

We became fast coworker friends and enjoyed chatting it up about baking, and I’d help him put our supply order away. Good times.

One day, a woman with a thick Russian accent came in and handed us business cards.

She told us whatever we’re getting paid, her company would double it if we came to work for them. I scheduled an interview, thinking this would be a great opportunity for me. It was a ‘new’ grocery store concept, like a glitzy-glammy European-style Costco, whatever that means.

When I went in for the interview, the place was literally still under construction. I met their Lead Baker and we hit it off right away. He warned me that the Big Boss had ‘interesting tastes’ and we’d need to work with that.

No biggie. More income, let’s go.

They hired us both and, over the next several months, it was a really interesting and fun experience. The Big Boss (thick, burly Russian man, to the point and perpetually angry) wanted this place to be like Costco — mass production of quality pastries.

They were bringing in crazy amounts of new equipment, including folders, shapers, and injectors that were easily worth millions. We didn’t have much equipment to start, and we were doing a lot of mixing in trash cans. Remember my Mixer buddy?

Well, he was working on the bread dough, using spec sheets provided by our Lead Baker.

Over time they were bringing on more staff, and it was a lot of fun developing new recipes, experimenting with ratios, and figuring out how to get over constraints for the types of products that Boss wanted. Did I mention he was a jerk?

Oh yeah. When he was reviewing some cheesecake I had made, he said ‘Good job, sweetie.’ I came back with ‘Miss, ma’am, or my name is fine.’ He scowled at me, and from that point on he treated me like garbage.

We brought other women on staff. I watched him hit on them. Some of the others were cool with being harassed, I guess. This place was paying top dollar and had to get in good with the Big Boss, right?

So, the stage is set here. Boss quickly turned his business into a game of Survivor. He’d fire people on the spot for whatever reason. One day, one of the people he sacked was our Lead Baker. It came as a surprise since he was developing all the recipes we’d be using.

I inherited a lot of his notes, and his development work was divided between me and the Mixer. So, this whole time Mixer was kissing Big Boss’ butt pretty hard. He was seeing an open position with the Lead Baker gone and quickly became invested in the idea of him running the Bakery show and making some serious bank.

At the same time, my relationship with Big Boss was quickly declining. For example, I had him sample some cinnamon rolls I had made, and he came back with ‘I hate these, they’re terrible.’ ‘What do you not like?

We can change anything about them. The dough? The filling? The icing?’ ‘I don’t know, I just don’t like them.’ On a hunch, I gave some cinnamon rolls from the same batch to another lady there he had eyes for and asked her if she’d present them to him as her own.

She offered him the same product I had given him minutes before, and he loved it.

Uhuh.

Anyway, I noticed that my notes were out of place one day, and a coworker informed me my Mixer buddy was stealing my work and presenting it as his own.

He was also approaching me and asking a lot of baking questions, which was fine, but I knew that his knowledge of industrial ratio baking was mediocre at best. He was a Mixer. Following a recipe is all he knew how to do.

Knowing this, I made a decoy copy of my notes, but this time I put awful recipes, with huge amounts of salt or yeast. Anyone who knew how to build a recipe could probably look at it and go ‘whoa, that’s a lot.’ Not Mixer buddy.

My original plan was to leave this in an obvious spot as bait and let him steal the awful recipes, but Big Boss had other plans. We sat down for a pre-launch meeting and he informed me I wasn’t going to be working in the Bakery anymore, and being relegated to store setup.

The mixer was going to be taking over as the Lead Baker (guess all that butt-kissing really paid off) and I was to give him all my notes so far.

NO PROBLEM BOSS.

A day later was when the fun really began.

Mixer mixed up a huge batch of super-salty cake batter, and I heard Big Boss screaming at him about ‘way too much salt.’ That’s not even where the fun begins. As we were setting up an industrial quantity of baking equipment, we had to test the larger quantity mixing machines, and did a test run for some bread dough… with my decoy recipe that had triple the yeast and sugar.

As it didn’t come out right, Mixer had to throw it away. His choice? The dumpster is out back in the dead heat of summer. Hundreds of pounds of dough. The fun thing about massive amounts of bread dough is that it doesn’t magically stop rising if you throw it away, especially in a hot dumpster.

A few hours later, I spied out back to see Mixer buddy shoveling this massive blob of dough into trash bags that had exploded from the dumpster like an uncovered blender spewing out a yeast-laden smoothie. Sweet revenge. Now, about the Mafia thing… this store was really strange.

They had been ordering doubles of all the crazy industrial baking equipment and storing them in the back. We had nowhere to put any of this. I also looked up the company they were subcontracted under, and it was to a dead address in Russia.

Big Boss also had armed security guards everywhere. This was a grocery store, mind you. I had a feeling that this company was more of a front for laundering funds. I eventually was fired by Big Boss, which was great because I had been job hunting, full-well knowing this business was a sinking ship.

I had a new job lined up already. They had their grand opening, did business for three months, then closed. RIP Mixer.”

4. SCREW ME OVER? I’LL TAKE AWAY YOUR PROMOTION

“For 18 months I’d been working from home (as most of us had). From a work perspective, this has been great; I’ve been more productive than when I’m in the office, been able to work more flexible hours, and have saved a ton by not commuting.

My workplace had an agreement that those working from home can do what hours they want, so long as we are able to answer urgent calls in core hours and we get all our work done. Fair enough as far as I’m concerned. For 16 months this worked great, as above.

Then over a few weekends, I had a clear out of the house and took pictures of all the items that are in good condition but we no longer want, with the idea to give them away to whoever wants it.

One day while I’m working from home I take my lunch break, make a quick sandwich and post the items that I’m giving away on one of those local social media free pages.

I didn’t know it at the time but one of the managers – called Shambles henceforth – from my work was also signed up to that page and he saw my post. He then took it upon himself to go to the owner of the company and tell him that I was slacking off and posting on social media during work hours.

For context, this wasn’t my boss (who was super-chill so long as everything was done on time), nor was the complaint to my boss, but the OWNER of the company. We’re a big business so there’s a lot of people in the chain of command between me and the owner.

And to top it off I’d been doing a lot of work for Shambles, he’d outsourced the running of entire projects to me over the last 18 months (all of which I’d executed well and he’d taken ample credit for) and this was the only time in 18 months I’d posted ANYTHING on social media (because I never post).

So the owner contacted me, and to be fair he’s a decent guy, the conversation went like this:

Owner – ‘I’ve been told you’re posting on social media during work hours. Just be smart about it, it doesn’t look good when colleagues see it.’

Me – ‘Completely understand, just so you know I posted that during my lunch break.’

Owner – ‘I was told you were posting at noon.’ (the company lunch break is usually 1-2)

Me – ‘I did but that’s because when I’m home working I always take my lunch 12-1.’

Owner – ‘Okay, I don’t have an issue with that, just keep your head down.’

Like I said, a decent guy. I wasn’t really in trouble and the owner didn’t seem to care, but then I started to think ‘wait, who has gone to the owner with this in the first place?!’

Long story short, a coworker (who was working on-site that day) heard that Shambles had been ranting to the owner about me and how I’m always on social media when I should be working. (I only have one social media account and I only use that for messenger 99% of the time).

As I said before, Shambles likes to outsource work to me, I never minded this, the work was varied and it broke the week up, plus my boss didn’t mind as I always had my work for him done on time.

However, I never got recognition for this extra work. For 2 years I managed a sub-department completely on my own because he ‘didn’t have time to do it’. I didn’t get a penny more for it, but it was a good group of people and I enjoyed getting experience in management.

Well, after this every time Shambles came to me with an issue I would say I was super swamped but that I’d try to deal with it if I had time. The projects he tried to outsource to me I immediately rejected, saying that I had a full plate from my actual job.

And that sub-department I ran… We’ll get to that. Over the next couple of months Shambles starts missing his deadlines, issues come up with existing projects that he hasn’t fixed and employees are complaining that every time they go to him with an issue it doesn’t get resolved. It dawns on me at this point that I’ve basically been doing this guy’s job for him for years.

I set up a meeting with my boss and put forward my arguments for why I should be promoted (or really, why I should’ve been ages ago). I point to all the projects I’ve successfully run as well as the sub-department I’ve managed for 2 years.

He completely agrees and says he’ll take it to his boss. Now somehow, I don’t know how, but when I go to the next meeting with my boss’s boss, Shambles is there too. He’s on the same level in the company as my boss’s boss.

A little phased, but not willing to give up, I put my arguments forward to them. Shambles lets me finish then proceeds to tell me that I don’t know enough about our work to manage, I don’t have the required people skills and then he tells me, and this is verbatim… ‘besides, people here don’t respect you.

They respect me. I know I’m a good manager. If you really think about it, you know you wouldn’t be.’ I forget what else was said after that, but I was completely destroyed. Boss’s boss comes up to me afterward and tells me that Shambles is a jerk, but unfortunately he’s got the approval of the higher-ups so what he says has too much sway for him to go against him.

I tell boss’s boss that if that’s the way it is, I’m going to look for other employment. He sighs and says ‘I don’t blame you.’

During the time it took me to look for and apply to other jobs I have time to think about how I can get back at Shambles.

He’s used me for years and is now blocking my promotion. I’d already stopped working on his stuff and his projects were going from bad to worse, but I needed something more.

I’m an accredited internal auditor for our quality systems.

I ask if I can be assigned a couple of last audits before I leave ‘to help them out.’

I carry out these audits, and using my intimate knowledge of Shambles’ projects find every single issue I can.

A number of people also hate Shambles and give me more dirt on him.

Someone gives me breakthrough information that Shambles has been forging signatures and bypassing multiple company procedures to make his KPIs look better.

I write up the report, with tons of evidence attached, and send it off.

The report gets flagged at the highest level because of what it shows.

Shambles get dragged over the coals.

I wish I could say this story ends with the Shambles getting fired but (obviously using all the connections he has) he keeps his job. I later found out though that he was due a massive promotion (as in, catapulted to the top of the company, running whole divisions kind of thing).

That never happened though, with his declining numbers as well as an audit showing all the shortcomings he’s basically told he’ll never progress beyond where he is and that he’s lucky to have a job at all.

He still works there and I’m told his ego has been taken down a whole washing-line worth of pegs.

As for me, I’d love to say I got a better job with a massive raise. That’s half true.

I decided to pursue my dream job (literally, since I’ve been a kid dream job) in a totally different industry. All the experience I had counted in my favor and although I took a bit of a pay cut I’ve never enjoyed work more.

Oh, and that sub-department I was running. They knew that when I left Shambles would take over running them again, so in my last month at the company, I gave them all tutorials on how to search for jobs and pass interviews (I’d worked in recruitment previously).

I’ve heard from a number of them since that they’d landed better jobs and thanked me in part for it.

Not the perfect ending, but I’m very happy with it.”

3. REFUSE TO TAKE DIRECTIONS FROM A GIRL? HAVE FUN GOING THE WRONG WAY

“I (F19 at the time) worked at a gas station off the highway. Two men, I’d guess mid-50s, come in and ask for directions (pre-smartphone era) to a popular sporting goods store about 5 minutes away.

I ask which direction they came from and they say the east. So I told them they’d actually passed the correct exit, they needed to turn around and go back the other direction, gave them the correct exit number and the appropriate turns after to reach the store.

They refused to believe they’d been wrong and said I must have had no idea what I was talking about, being a young girl and all. They argued with me for several minutes and the line behind them was growing.

So I said you know, you’re right and I was wrong. You just keep going west and get off at the next exit, you’ll see it on your right. They agreed that must be right and they knew all along they were headed in the correct direction and left.

The next exit was 18 miles down the road, in the middle of nowhere, and had no re-entry eastbound for them to turn around. I still wonder if they ever found the store and realized what I had done.”

2. MY EX LIED TO ME ABOUT BEING DIVORCED, SO I RUINED HIS REPUTATION

“When I was a naïve 24-year-old I met a charming and very smart and way older man.

Jake was 42, recently divorced (or so he told me), and had a kid that he would see on the weekends. We met online through a poetry website where both of us used to write. He was very aloof and stern on his comments and not very popular on the website because he used to always come off like an arrogant jerk but I really liked his poems regardless of his personality and that’s how it began.

I commented on one and he instantly private messaged me back, praising my writing and asking me if we could collaborate on a duet together. I’d already done it a thousand times with a few friends and people on the site that I respected so I said sure.

So long story short we met on Hotmail messenger (this was nearly 11 years ago, kids, so no WhatsApp, although we did chat on social media, too. This will become relevant later.)

Long story short, we instantly connected. He was funny, handsome, and really sweet underneath all his bravado.

And his dark sense of humor was right up my alley. We spent months pulling all-nighters just talking and writing together.

Not humble-bragging but I was pretty popular on the site because I won a few awards so, by association he became popular too.

People started reading Jake’s poems and commenting and obviously, he got a huge head about it, but I digress.

Our relationship became more serious after he confessed that he was falling for me and I was smitten. So I went along with it.

We talked about my recent breakup and he assured me that he would never lie to me because of the (of course he used that) ‘witch of his ex-wife’ that started seeing someone else while they were still together and he was devastated until he met me.

I was shocked at how bad his ex was but assured him that I was all in. And I meant that.

One important detail about our turbulent romance is that he was in South America (he’s from there) and I was still living in Italy, in my hometown.

So, after almost 2 years of excuses for how tied up on work he was, I decided to surprise him with a visit.

I bought my ticket and it literally was like a dream. He picked me up, we kissed, hugged and he took me to his beach house (which would have been my first red flag but I was dumb, young, and in love).

Saying that it would be so much easier and fun for me doing touristy stuff on a beach port than staying in his suburbs house with no car. Because I told him on such a short notice that he didn’t have the time nor the means to take time off (which again blatant lie because he was one of the partners of the company) but again, I bought it, and off I went on my own almost for the entire week that I was there.

He only spent one night with me and the rest of the week just picked me up from wherever it was that I ended up wandering and we hung out for a few hours, hooked up, and then he just dropped me off at the house.

I know that most of you are thinking, ‘Come on, OP, just get your head out off your rear end and realize what a bunch of bull that is!’

And believe me, now writing this I realized how much of an idiot I was.

But it gets better… The day before I have to get back to Italy, he took me to dinner… With his 6-year-old son and his sister.

I was super happy to meet his family and son but got caught off guard when he just introduced me as his ‘friend from Italy dropping in town for tourism’.

His sister was super sweet albeit a bit awkward and his son was adorable. We ate, talked, and off we went.

He picked me up first thing in the morning and dropped me off at the airport.

Now, that you got the full story, I’ll get to the good part.

Two days later and still a bit jet-lagged I got a very interesting email. FROM HIS SISTER DANA.

Her email was short and very simple. ‘Dear OP, I know that you might think I was weird and maybe a bit rude when we met but it was only because I was tricked by Jake to join the dinner with his kid.

He never mentioned that you guys were seeing each other but after confronting Jake, he confessed and begged not to tell anyone or his marriage will be ruined. But you’re such a sweet and young girl that doesn’t deserve his deceit.

Jake IS STILL MARRIED AND NEVER LEFT THEIR HOME. Don’t take just my word for it.’

And Dana sent me pictures of his REAL social media profile and surprise! The perfect little family.

I thanked her and shut down my computer.

I was devastated. I really thought Jake was the love of my life and was seriously considering moving there! I spent all night crying and drinking wine until I gave myself the worst migraine.

But, the heartbreak lasted about 12 hours.

At 4 AM I got up, showered, made a pot of fresh coffee, and started planning my revenge. I was hurt, yes, but also so angry that he not only deceived me but dragged his sister and his innocent child in his lie.

I was on the other side of the world and I didn’t have the means to pay someone to kick his rear end or egg his car.

But as my Sicilian father would say to me: ‘If someone slaps you, don’t turn the other cheek… Cut off their hand!’

And so I did.

Cue my sweet revenge.

I sat down at my desk and turned on the computer and logged in to his Hotmail. I didn’t have the password but I knew him well enough to answer his 3 security questions in the section ‘forgot password’.

One, two, three. I’m in and holy crap, this arrogant piece of human crap was not only seeing me but 2 other girls. I quickly logged onto his social media too because he had everything linked (the naivety), so I quickly changed all his passwords to ‘I’M A JERK’ and discovered that his personal email was also connected to his work account.

I dug through his emails for two hours (this idiot never erased anything so he had more than 5,000 emails). Until I found something very interesting, the girls he was also seeing and their very steamy email exchanges. Inappropriate pictures included.

So WHAT did I do? You guessed.

I crafted a very lengthy and explicit email with pictures and chat logs attached confessing to Jake’s wife (posing as him obviously). Begging for forgiveness and declaring how much of a crappy person I was and as proof of my willingness to change and transparency was sending this email to the girls too.

But that I did it only because I was a closeted gay and thought that being a player would help me forget how much I really loved guys. That I was sick of pretending and hoped she could move on and maybe be friends.

But not only to them… I copied his entire list of contacts (including the CEO and partners of the company he worked for, his parents, and his sister of course). This email was perfection. All the pictures and chats (myself included) he ever exchanged with any other woman.

I copied myself on the list obviously as a countermeasure and moved on to part 2 of my plan.

I changed ALL of his social media and declared that I was so relieved that people finally knew who I was. The Pride flag was his new wall picture and his profile picture was a photoshopped picture of two guys kissing.

I created 5 different accounts on gay websites with ALL his info, including his phone number, and started to chat with a bunch of guys until out of nowhere, this guy sent me, or better yet, he sent Jake a message.

Tony was his old Uni friend that had always been secretly lusting for him for years and although I felt bad for this later, I set up a meeting.

Part 3 of my plan.

A week after this massive Internet blowout, his family and friends were all angrily calling him all sorts of names (and getting him fired because his bosses didn’t want the bad press).

So Jake, trying to make amends with his family and friends makes a barbecue for his bday.

I would have paid one year’s worth of salary just to see his face and his guests when in the middle of their celebration, Tony appeared with a bottle of champagne to ‘celebrate’ privately as I asked.

Apparently, there was a huge fight and everyone left. Jake was flustered and angry. Crying because ‘some psycho wanted to ruin his life.’

I blocked him and forgot about everything until 6 months ago when he out of the blue sent me a message on social media asking me why I disappeared and didn’t support him when he was at his lowest.

And oh boy the satisfaction I felt when I only replied back: ‘Sorry Jake, but I think everything you got was Karma for all the lies you fed me and time wasted… Good luck! Oh and by the way… IT WAS ALWAYS ME.’

I then blocked him and made my account private.

Jake did try to call a few mutual friends to try to get them to give him my number but they ignored him. They also got the infamous email.

So, yeah… I got my revenge and it was worth every single hour.

I know. I’m super petty.”

1. NOT SATISFIED WITH YOUR MEAL? ONE BURNT STEAK COMING RIGHT UP!

“I was a chef at a very nice restaurant. One of the top things on our menu is A5 Olive Wagyu – in non-geek terms it’s an $800 steak.

I get an order for 4 of them at a table. I cook all 4 of them the way they should be which is rare due to the nature of the steak and I do that every time unless instructed otherwise. We use a special unit for cooking called a salamander.

It cooks hi our steak at 900 degrees Fahrenheit so we only put it in 30 seconds per side.

One of my waiters comes to me in tears saying that a table wanted me. So I go out, put my ‘customer face’ on, and walk up to the table.

Before I can even walk up and ask if there was a problem some lady barks at me that it’s raw. I apologize and ask if she would like me to cook it more. She says she wants it done for another 10 minutes.

I try to explain that it would be incinerated but she barks at me, ‘You heard what I said, go do it.’

I was tired of this nonsense so I just smile and say no problem. I take it back and I toss it back in for 10 minutes.

It honestly hurt to ruin such a good steak but it’s what she asked for. So when I take it out it literally falls apart into ash.

I personally brought her it with a huge smile on my face. She asks what the heck is this.

That she didn’t want this. I cut her off and say I heard what you wanted and I did it.”