Getting Even: The Petty Revenge Stories You Need to Hear

12. A Lesson in Company Etiquette

My company had a main building with all the amenities, including a cafeteria. My group was in a smaller building next door. No one wanted to hike across the parking lot to pay for the lousy coffee in the cafeteria, so one of our engineers installed his own Mr. Coffee machine in an empty office. He charged just enough to break even.

Then another group moved into our building. Being good neighbors we told them about our unofficial coffee service and reminded them of the rules. Keep the area clean. When you empty the pot brew a new one and put a quarter into the box for each cup.

One of these new guys ranted about how his college roommate worked for Google and they have this awesome cafeteria where employees enjoyed free meals. Another talked about the startup he had worked at that had a fridge fully stocked with a free soda. Our company should at least be able to afford free coffee.

The guy who ran the coffee service noticed that the money collected didn’t balance with the amount of coffee consumed. So he rigged up a nanny cam. Sure enough, the guys from the new group were helping themselves to coffee without paying.

We moved a classified documents cabinet into the coffee room and got the company to install a badge reader on the door. Access was restricted to our group. The new guys had to walk across the parking and pay twice as much for worse coffee.

13. Blue Hair, Don’t Care

I used to work for a sandwich shop. All the other employees there were Indian women with very long black hair. Mine was sort of similar I suppose? Medium length and brown. But every time a customer would complain about a long black hair in the food, my boss would immediately blame me without any hesitation or investigation, despite the fact that I was the only person who wore my hair up and netted. So one day I dyed my hair blue with the sole purpose of not being blamed for black hair being in the food. You guessed it, it happened. And how huffy and annoyed my boss got when I said it couldn’t be my hair because mine is blue, was beyond amusing.

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14. Getting Even with a Bully

A girl on my softball team bullied me and spread rumors about me to the team and coaches. We were competing for the same position.

She was in my geometry class and tried to buddy up with me because I was good at geometry, and she wasn’t. So for a while I let her copy my homework, then one day I gave her all the wrong answers and turned in the right answers for myself.

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15. Revenge Gets Messy

My little brother and his girlfriend came to stay at my house for the weekend, and the girlfriend was super self-centered and obnoxious. When they left, she forgot her clothes and toiletries because she left them sprawled all over my bathroom.

About a week later, she and my brother moved into an apartment together. After he paid for the moving truck, deposit and utilities, she cheated on him with her ex and kicked him out of the apartment. This left him broke, homeless, and heartbroken.

In the days after the breakup, she kept calling and emailing him several times per day, demanding that he ask me to ship her clothes and toiletries back to her (“I mean, it’s really important. It’s my NORTH FACE.”) My brother called and pleaded with me to ship them to her so she would stop having a reason to contact him.

Being the loving sister that I am, I gathered up the Really Important Northface sweatshirt, shorts, underwear, shampoo, conditioner, soap and razor. I folded everything nicely. I then wrote a nice note apologizing for taking so long to mail them to her and letting her know that I hope all is well. The note was written in permanent marker, and the paper happened to be resting on the Really Important Northface when I wrote it. Unfortunately, the ink bled straight through the paper and onto the shirt. Also unfortunately, the shampoo, soap and conditioner caps were not tightly secured on their bottles, and the contents leaked out all over the clothes, further spreading the ink. The most unfortunate result, though, was that her razor didn’t have any sort of protective cap or container and left little slashes all over the front of the Really Important Northface.

She received the package, and my brother never heard from her again.

16. A Nametag’s Tale

I lived in a cheap crappy apartment with roommates and we all worked in fast food. Money was tight. One roommate ended up unemployed for a few weeks and then got a job as a bank teller, making much better money. However while unemployed she had missed a rent payment, which we had scraped together to cover for her.

Two weeks into the new job she gets her first paycheck, obviously we are expecting immediate payback. On day 1 she says something along the lines of she couldn’t do personal business (cash her check) during work so she could pay us in a couple of days.

The Friday she was supposed to pay us she comes home with a big shopping bag and casually mentions she can’t pay back rent yet because she had to buy new work clothes. When roommates and I got upset she went total b*tch on us that we “didn’t understand how to work a professional job because we were only food service” and basically told us we would get our money when she felt like it.

That weekend she misplaced her nametag required at work. She spent hours searching for it. At some point, I came across the nametag in a random spot and said nothing. She kept searching for it all weekend and was panicked that she would look bad to her boss, etc. I never moved or took the nametag but the whole time I knew where it was. She never found it and had to get a new one. She also never paid the back rent and we kicked her out a few weeks later.

17. Karma Strikes Back

I worked at a 50k+ tech company. I worked with a PM, Maggie, who misread my email and got her dates messed up. She scheduled a meeting for Thursday instead of Friday. When I told her she scheduled on a wrong day, she got mad at me, and emailed all my managers up to my vice president (4 levels of management) to say how much of a troublemaker I was … It was her own fault for not being able to read.

2 years later, I have to work with her again, and I pretend like I’m all happy and friends with her.

2 years after that, I quit and move on to a better company. I get an email saying that Maggie is applying to my new company and said I could provide a positive reference for her.

I email the recruiter and blast all my 6 years of sh*t on her and block her from getting hired. Take that Maggie, you. I never forget it.

18. The Scarlet Necklace

This was my best revenge. I went through an awful divorce. My ex-wife cheated on me and told lies about me and all throughout the divorce I took the high road and was there for my kids while she disappeared off the face of the earth. Her birthday was only a couple of weeks after the divorce was final. As the kids were young I was a good guy and purchased several presents from the kids for her. Among the gifts, I bought a necklace with a big red A at the end. Her first name is Ann. I had the kids give that to her and she wore her scarlet letter all around town. Most people in our town knew what she had done and some even were aware of the necklace. Yup, I made my adulterous ex-wife wear the scarlet letter.

19. The Washing Powder Trick

I don’t mind when my roommates borrow my stuff. We’ve all been there. All I ask is that they replace what they take. You drink my milk? Just buy me a new milk. It’s as simple as that.

Unfortunately, my roommate doesn’t seem to get this. She keeps taking my stuff and when I ask her to please replace everything she takes she’ll buy one new thing and “forget” to do it the next time despite having more money than me.

I finally snapped when I wanted to wash my clothes but only found an empty box that used to contain my washing powder. I don’t buy fancy or expensive stuff and I don’t care about brands. After using the last of my powder a week earlier she could literally have bought the cheapest no-brand powder in the world and I would have been fine. I just snapped. I had told her over and over to not use my washing powder if she wasn’t going to replace it and I just had enough.

I bought a new box of washing powder, and some Dylon machine dye, mixed it with a bit of the washing powder and dumped it into the old box. When the dye is dry it looks like washing powder, especially if you’re not expecting it. I took my new box of washing powder to my room and waited.

A week later I came home from work and saw her laundry hanging outside, all with a mysterious pink color. She stomped up to me and demanded to know what I had done. I told her I was going to dye my own clothes and someone had told me the shade would be lighter if I mixed it with powder (lie), then asked her why she had used it when it had clearly been in a box with my name on it when I had told her not to use it because she never replaced it?

I don’t think she believed me but she finally got the message. She almost never takes my stuff and when she does she’s quick to replace it.

20. The Calorie Consequence

At my old workplace, there was a woman who would eat other people’s food without their consent. The food was stored in the company refrigerator.

She ate mine. I caught her. I got pissed.

Other people were pissed when they found she was also eating their food.

Revenge.

So every day after I caught her, some of my co-workers and I would buy a dozen donuts in the morning. We would offer her a donut first.

“Sure, take two. Three. There’s plenty.” She would take two or three.

We brought candy and left them in a bowl close to her desk. She could not help herself.

Her weight ballooned to unhealthy proportions.

21. Failing with Flair

My mom had a fantastic one. She was a language teacher at my high school and years after I had graduated, she called me kind of upset because a group of guys was trying to make her look dumb. The class was supposed to write one of those team dialogues in Spanish, and had a week or so to prepare it, then had to perform it in front of the class. When she called for them to do theirs, they said, “But we already did ours, we’re not doing it again.” She said, “You definitely didn’t do it, I don’t have any record of it here and I would remember it if you had.” They refused to do it, insisting they already performed it and that it was her fault she didn’t take notes/scores down. She was feeling puzzled and questioning herself when one of the good kids came and said, “They didn’t do it – they were bragging about making you look stupid and threatened the whole class if they told you anything. But please don’t tell them I told you this, I don’t want any problems with them.” (These were those stereotypical dumb jock types who everyone was scared of for whatever reason).

My mom was really into yoga at the time and got a great idea while meditating. She went in the next day and said, “Boys, I owe you an apology. I found my notes on your presentation and I do remember it, I don’t know how I forgot!” She went on to describe all the grammatical mistakes they made, that their dialogue hadn’t been as long as required, that they didn’t include the necessary vocabulary, etc. All made up. She failed them all on the project and they couldn’t do a thing about it without admitting they’d made it all up.

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22. The Risk of Discount Deals

Back in college, I used to write papers on the side. I charged $50 a pop. I wrote the paper, they paid me then I gave it to them. This one chick needed me to write a quick research essay due in a week. No problem.

She gave me the paper she had started, so I could match her writing style. And we went our separate ways. Over the week, she kept asking for the price to be dropped. She was a friend and I’m a nice person. No problem. $30. Then $20. Fine. Easy 3-page paper. It’s cool.

She tells a buddy of ours that she wasn’t going to pay my dumb a** at all but was going to fake a “running late, I’ll pay you after class” deal so I’d give her the paper. Now I’m not one to believe a rumor, but this is a source of income for me. So I wrote a 2nd paper just in case.

Sure enough, the next morning, two minutes before class, she comes running into class and is all “I’ll pay you after.” So I handed her the second paper.

The first page and the work cited page were 100%. 2nd and 3rd page? Sheer gibberish of paragraphs clearly lifted out of random Internet sites that I so helpfully added a work cited page with the links to the sites I lifted them from.

You get what you pay for.

23. Mother-in-Law Strikes Again

My mother-in-law has a habit of showing up a day earlier than agreed upon. We’ve had to cancel plans because of her shenanigans.

When our kids were younger one day my husband made plans with MIL and told her repeatedly that he and I were busy the day before. Two days before the agreed visit she messages saying she’s excited to see us “tomorrow”, her hubby reminds her “Saturday, we’re busy tomorrow”.

Anyway, Friday happens. Hubby goes to work events and is unable to be contacted most of the day. My plans are cancelled due to one of the kids throwing up. Nap time rolls around, I settle the kids down and go to enjoy some quiet internet time when there’s a knock at the door. We don’t open the lounge blinds a lot because of nosy apartment neighbours, so I was safe from sight. I checked the peephole in case it was the postie, but nah, MIL I’m all her annoying glory.

I silently deadbolt the door, sneak to the back door and check the locks. Then I snuggled into my bed with my kids, to keep them calm in case the knocking woke them. I checked the peephole after an hour and saw her sulking on the front step clearly trying to reach hubby on the phone.

Except I had messaged him “your mum is here, I’m ignoring her.” So he knew why she was calling and ignored her completely. She finally left just before the kids woke from their nap.

The next day when she arrived she asked what I did the day before and I said: “nothing. I was home all day”.

24. Honesty Goes Out the Window

I got reviewed at work by a manager I had never met before. I had done everything I was always told to do, and more, but he still marked me low. I know it’s because they wanted to avoid giving me a raise, but at least say you don’t want to/can’t afford to. I’ll at least respect your honesty. Anything else, and you can go f*ck yourself.

Anyway, he told me I didn’t go the extra mile. I pointed out that I always do. His response? “Well, I never see you do it”. I said, “Well, maybe if management didn’t always hang out at guest services and went around to the other floors, where I am doing my job, you’d have seen me”. That got him to yell at me and mark me poorly for attitude, but idgaf.

Later on, he came up to me and asked me if I could stay late. Given that I’d previously told him I didn’t have anything else to do the next day, he probably thought I’d say yes.

I looked him in the eyes and said “Sorry, but I don’t see that you guys need my help.”

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25. “Smile” Becomes a Demand

Last week, I was out and about, making a start on some errands I had. As I was walking, I was going through my long to-do list in my head. So I wasn’t frowning, I wasn’t smiling. My face was just in neutral.

A man starts heading towards me. As we pass, he tells me, “Smile, it could be worse.”

I stop, stare at him for a moment, and then I say, “My parents were in an accident. My mum died on impact. We’re turning off my dad’s life support tomorrow.”

The guy looked like a robot being suddenly shut down. His face fell. He looked like a deer in headlights. He stuttered and stammered. He was obviously trying to think of something to say, and when he couldn’t, he turned around and speed-walked away.

My parents are both fine. There was no accident. But it annoys me when people think they have the right to dictate how people are feeling and what expressions they make, especially when they don’t know what is going on in their lives. It’s unhelpful and patronizing. Imagine telling somebody who was just been given a terminal diagnosis, “Smile, it could be worse.” Or somebody who has lost a child, been laid off, or is otherwise struggling and in a terrible situation…?

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26. Let There Be Lights

I own a big house. I am talking old Victorian type that I restored. An older couple moved in across the street this summer and started b*tching about everything I did. They didn’t like the siding I was having put on, my front door color was ugly, and they hated all the different colored flowers I planted. They didn’t like the idea of a young, single woman living in a house I clearly couldn’t afford. They actually told me that.

I tried to ignore them until Christmas. I put up lights and a few blow-ups but nothing the other neighbors don’t do. This couple started b*tching right off. Christmas offended them. I just smiled and added more. At this moment my house can be seen on Mars. To add to the petty I told the neighbor next to me and he told another and then another. You get the picture.

27. Don’t Mess with Taco Workers

I was working at a taco place in the drive-thru, and this one customer was being so rude!

He ordered some things, and I repeated back his order, and he said I was completely wrong and wasn’t listening. Then he kept yelling at me through the speaker. Then when he got to the window, he didn’t even look at me and gave me his money.

Of course, I was just angry. One of the things he ordered was 10 crunchy tacos with mild sauce. The food was ready. Before I gave him his tacos, I ‘checked’ his 10 tacos and crushed 7/10 tacos. Then gave him 12 packets of diablo sauce and 2 packets of mild sauce. I happily gave him the food.

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28. Double Check the URL

We recently launched a project to a select group of beta testers. Late on a Sunday evening (I’m not paid to be on call or work on weekends), I get an email from the boss, cc’ing everyone involved in the project, that the entire site is down, please can I get it sorted urgently, as this makes the company look bad. Complete with a screenshot of the problem.

I’m really glad for the screenshot. I didn’t even need to open my laptop to see what the problem was. I’m mildly peeved at the tone of the email and I don’t think including everyone plus the janitor was really necessary. So I reply-all to all, saying that the reason the boss is getting that error is because he has typed the wrong website into his browser.

I get a sheepish mail from him the next day saying that no, it was actually one of the beta testers that had sent him the message about the website not working and a screenshot, and he had just forwarded it and wasn’t glad it wasn’t actually a problem. Suuuuurrrre, buddy.

Very petty, but I got a kick out of it.

29. Rise and Shine

My roommate enjoys nice long showers in the morning using all of the hot water. 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 silence for a while and this was working well enough but I still missed my morning shower several times because of their unreasonable long showers. So I just started moving to two alarms 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 run the hot water out and be out with enough time for it to be warm again. Small victories are nice.

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30. Pressing All the Right Buttons

My apartment building only has one elevator. I was coming in with my dog and this group of guys had been barking at my dog to try to get her worked up. I scurried into the building and got onto the elevator before they got there. Got to my floor and pressed every single floor button I could so they had to wait.

31. Dog Days Are Over

I had a neighbor that had a dog that I sh*t you not, barked from bout 7 pm til 5 am NON STOP. They worked nights I believe. They kept it outside. I knocked numerous times, and they said: “Dogs bark, what do you expect?”

Their house was directly behind mine, we shared a divided wall. I recorded their dog for a full day. The minute they brought him in, and felt like they were sleeping, I popped my phone into the dock and played it on my stereo full blast facing their yard at 9 am.

They came over raving mad to my wall by about 12, asking me to shut my dog up. I said “It’s your dog, I recorded him since you miss out on what dogs do. I’m just playing the radio at normal allowable city time and I will do this every day.”

They started bringing the dog in at night after that.

32. When Vegetarianism Is Not Respected

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.

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.

33. Playing Both Sides

My significant other had a double life. He had a girlfriend that thought she was in a full-blown relationship when he practically lived with me. She thought I was getting in the way of their love story so she contacted me to give me the what’s up. For context, I knew nothing about her. Unfortunately, she was the side chick who believed that coming to his place for 1-2 hours once a week to give him sexual favors was a legit relationship. When she contacted me to try to tell me to stay away from her man I called him and he freaked out.

I told him it was either her or me. He cried and pleaded and told me he can’t live without me. I made him dump her on the phone in front of me. I then turned around and dumped him. That was 100% always my plan LOL

34. Passenger vs. Passenger

I was riding on an Uber Pool this morning when an incredibly inconsiderate individual got in the passenger seat.

He pulled out his phone and started watching videos at full volume and blasting music.

“Do you happen to have headphones?” I asked

“No, why would I need headphones?” he responded

“Because you’re in a car with other people and it’s a considerate thing to do not to force everyone else to listen to your videos and music?”

“That sounds like a you problem” he replies going back to watching his video.

So I pulled out my phone and blasted Baby Shark from the backseat for the remainder of the ride. If he turned around or got upset, well that’s a you problem.

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35. The Sparkly Truth

I mailed my sh*tty ex-best friend an envelope double stuffed with glitter and a note saying “I know what you did”. I wasn’t referring to anything in particular, but she lies about practically everything so it was enough to mess with her for a while.

36. Counting out Revenge

I had a falling out with a housemate and decided to move out. He informed me that he would not take a check for the balance of money I owed him (final month’s rent, my share of the utilities, etc.). So I paid him the $300 or so in cash. A big pile of $1 bills, all crumpled and dumped on his counter during the lunch rush at the deli he owned. Made him count it out and write me a receipt.

37. Taking Out the Trash

My roommate in college was disgustingly messy and a raging b*tch. When I had the flu once, I left a blanket and sweatshirt in the living room to keep warm.

Woke up to a text along the lines of “You’re a disgusting pig. The apartment is a disaster. Get all of your belongings out of the living area or we’re going to have a problem.”

And honestly, if she had nicely asked then fine. And if she weren’t insanely messy then fine. But she had to go full-out b*tch.

She had forgotten that I had provided all of the furniture for our apartment. Couch, table, TV etc. All “my belongings”.

So, while she was in class, I called up some friends on the football team that occasionally helped people move for spare cash. We loaded up every single piece of furniture onto their truck and just parked it a few blocks away on the street.

Cue my roommate coming home to an empty f*cking apartment. Screaming at me and calling me names. I just told her I was following her orders and I moved out “all of my belongings”. She was dumbfounded and really had nothing to say.

Obviously brought the furniture back hours later. But certainly proved my point.

38. Do It Anyway

My boss sent me an email where she said my performance of a task was incomplete. I politely replied that, according to my notes of our discussion of the task, I had done all the things we discussed but please let me know what I missed so I could complete the task.

We went back and forth 2 or 3 times, her hinting that I’d missed something, me replying to please just let me know what it was.

She finally replied with the missed expectation (which I’d inadvertently omitted from my notes) and accused me of “trying to create a paper trail to establish that you’d completed the task.”

Rather than responding that I’d literally asked her for guidance in completing the task in every interaction regarding the task (thus admitting I hadn’t completed the task), the next morning, I got in early and took an index card and created a little paper trail between her parking spot and her office.

39. Singing My Way to Silence

I was at the gym today, minding my own business with my AirPods in, music up loud, so I could drown out the sound of the television which they keep very loud. My gym is very tiny, the cardio room has 8 machines in it. The older guy on the machine next to me was on the phone talking louder than the television, so I could hear him even with my music playing. I was trying to be nice thinking maybe he had an emergency or something, but after about 15 minutes, I was really annoyed. Other people even started leaving because it was so obnoxious. So, completely out of character for me, I started singing at the top of my lungs, purposely out of key. The song on my playlist at that moment was “She Wants to Move” by NERD. I think the guy got the point as he hung up shortly after I started “singing”. Don’t mess with an introvert.

40. Spicing Up Their Pizza

Years ago when I was 17, my loser boyfriend, sisters and their boyfriends were hanging out at our house on a hot summer evening.

My mom and dad were out of town so we were hungry and called up Pizza Hut for a couple of big pizzas which had to be picked up because there wasn’t delivery back in the day. Pizza Hut was about 6 miles, through major tourist traffic, and not one of those a**h*l*s would come with me to pick it up. And, they were mean about it to my face. They stayed home while I drove through insane traffic for their stupid dinner.

So. I got the pizza, sat down and ate two pieces, doused the rest in parmesan and crushed red peppers and drove home and delivered their now uncomfortably spicy pizza. Them yelling at me was pretty funny.