Getting Even: The Petty Revenge Stories You Need to Hear

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…?

Revolutionary_Ant209

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.

killeroftherose

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.

reddituser

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.

campbellcns

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.