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People Break Down The One Book That Completely Changed Their Life

People Break Down The One Book That Completely Changed Their Life

Storytelling is one of the most advanced technologies human beings have. For centuries we have been sharing these stories with each other. We have created whole worlds and people that exist solely in our creative brains.


Those stories have the power to teach us lessons. We can carry those lessons with us throughout our entire lives.

u/VAMPCLAW asked:

What is that one book, that absolutely changed your life?

Here were those answers.

Just One Book To Start

I remember when I read Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel. I was about 10 years old and I had seen the movie a dozen times before I found out it was a book.

I devoured it in 2 days. I was hooked on the whole series for decades and it started my obsession with books. I will read anything but historical fiction is my favorite and it started with the Earth's Children series.

vettechrockstar86

A 4th Grade Standard

My side of the mountain. I was young and have always camped and loved the outdoors (still do) but this book had such an exciting story!

Its about a boy who runs away from home and plans to live in the wild on his own. He goes to a library and checks out a bunch of books on survival and lives in the forest. He even burns the base of a large tree and hollows it out and makes a living space inside. its a super easy read but I loved every page.

mumbling_87

A Mystic Power

The Easy way to stop smoking by Allen Carr.

I had zero intention to stop smoking when I started reading that book. To say I was skeptical about it would be an understatement. I was a heavy chain smoker. Smoked more than anyone I knew.

But I went cold turkey after I read it. 3 years strong. I have not had a single puff since finishing that book.

If you smoke. You want to read this book now. I wish I read it earlier.

madcunt2250

It's not just fiction that has the power to change people: non-fiction and self help does too.

Lil Grover

There is a Monster at the End of this Book. It really led me on a journey to overcome my fears and deeply examine what it means to be a monster.

Also, pulling really hard against Grover to turn the pages helped me get buff. Really I was helping Grover face fears he was not ready to face. But we faced them together.

Ethandrul

An Unconventional Method Of Change

The End of Mr Y.

My ex partner threw it at my face during an argument and knocked down and burst my forehead. So I left her and totally changed my ambitions in life.

Kinda funny. Sometimes I see that book and scowl, and wonder what people think is going on.

NovaCasanova

Parables

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler; an incredible sci-fi book that was written in the 80s and is a mix of apocalypse fiction, socio-political critique & resilience.

Completely changed my world view & put me on the path to sustainable off-grid living, which I'm really grateful for.

brownanddownn

Travel Far, Pay No Fare

When I was 13 years old I had a long school bus ride home from school almost an hour long, and would pass the time by reading. One day I was in the library frantic for something because I had no book and picked out an astronomy one that was called From the Big Bang to Planet X by Terrence Dickinson, and had a fetching picture of the Andromeda Galaxy on its cover.

That book, wow. I was completely enchanted about outer space, and by the time I was done reading it I knew I wanted to be an astronomer. I remember thinking at the time how fantastical it was that people could have that job, but anyone who was an astronomer was 13 once and this was a thing you could do, even if you lived in Pittsburgh.

Anyway, that was over 20 years ago, and there were many twists and turns along the way, but I'm now two years into working as a professional astronomer at Harvard.

I just submitted a paper last week on a black hole that ripped apart a star, which was super fun to work on and I couldn't help but think a lot about how excited 13 year old me would be to see how it's going! I don't know if she would have believed it. :)

Andromeda321

It is because of our superpower of empathy as humans that we are able to vibe so heavily with books.

Truly effective metaphor

Maus; the first and only graphic novel to win a pulitzer prize

It is a book about a second generation survivor of the Holocaust retelling his father memoirs of the event. This semi-biographic book puts into perspective the whole feeling of absolute terror and give us an insight on the before-after situation.

The jews are portrayed as mice and the nazis as cats, elaborating on the whole cat and mouse chase premise which demonstrates the horrors the jewish felt. Although it is a graphic novel, its images do really say more than words.

It is to this day, the only book which has made me cry and feel hurt; it makes the whole subject feel very personal.

Eithanol

It Ain't No Jack Kerouac

The Road. I read it before and after becoming a father. Drastically different experiences.

And the world according to garp. I read it when I was a kid and it was the first novel that made me laugh outloud and come close to crying in the same book.

zjustice11

When Your Brain Becomes A Movie

Terry Pratchett's I Shall Wear Midnight. It's a book from his famous Discworld series. I had no intention to read anything before I started a summer job with hell of a lot of free time, had a sh*tty phone back then so the Internet was out of the question.

I couldn't possibly BELIEVE a book can be so entertaining. The mixture of fantasy, light text with a great plot and story, one of the best humoristic dialogues I have never seen even in a movie and simply enticing environment got me soooo into his writing style.

And the best moment was when I realized he had at least thirty books from the Discworld. Highly recommending for... like... everyone who loves fantasy and a good laugh.

Letcherinium

What are the books that absolutely changed your life?

Things That Scream 'A Single Male Lives Here'

Reddit user hamsterdumbster asked: 'What screams "single male lives here"?'

Single guy sitting in t-shirt
Photo by James Barr on Unsplash

Whether we realize it or not, we have certain "tells" that will signal to other people what life is like at home, whether we're hard workers or parents or travelers.

Even single men, despite their age, have certain characteristics that can be spotted from a mile away.

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A crown
Pro Church Media/Unsplash

Drag icon RuPaul endorses love but insists on loving yourself first.

Otherwise, "how the hell you gonna love somebody else?"

It's true. It's an age-old adage suggesting that you have to genuinely love yourself first in order to have healthy relationships with others and have a much happier life in general.

But sometimes, it's not about you.

Unfortunately, some people take the concept too far and are convinced the world revolves around them and that they are the key player in the drama of life.

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These Rich People Are Outrageous
Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

Thoreau may have said that “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life”, but what he should have added is that it is also the ability to fully experience the crazy. From mind-blowing bridezillas to caviar-eating kids, these shocking Reddit stories reveal how the ultra rich really are different from the rest of us. And not in a good way.

1. New Bed, Who Dis?

white bed linen with throw pillowsPhoto by Vojtech Bruzek on Unsplash

I work as a wedding planner, and one of my honeymoon clients insisted that they would not sleep on a mattress that someone else had slept on. So, to make this happen, we had to buy this couple a brand-new mattress for each and every hotel they stayed in. Each mattress cost more than $5,000 and they stayed at five hotels in total.

They would use each mattress for a couple of nights at the most. But here's the worst part. I would then have to make sure each mattress was removed from the hotel and properly disposed of.

0---------------0

2. Best Seat In The House

a man wearing a face mask standing in front of two paintingsPhoto by Diane Picchiottino on Unsplash

I am an art student working as a gardener in one of the wealthiest areas in my country. When I start chatting with my customers about my studies, some of them are really eager to show me their art collections. One time I was standing in someone’s bathroom in my dirty gardening clothes while they proudly showed me their 100% authentic Picasso painting hanging above the toilet.

Useroftheinternet999

3. Hogwarts And All

clear wine glass lot on tablePhoto by Photos by Lanty on Unsplash

One of my colleagues had a daughter who had chosen to get married at a local venue. About three months before her wedding was to take place, this venue happened to appear in a very well-known movie about a certain boy wizard. This set off a bizarre chain of reactions. About a month before the wedding, the daughter had a call from the venue.

Incredibly, they were asking her if she’d move her wedding back a month. Naturally, she said no—all of the invites had been sent, family members were coming from various international locations, and everyone had booked flights and accommodations. It would have been a logistical nightmare to change it all.

But for all that, she eventually did end up moving her wedding back a month. The reason why was mind-boggling. It was because the person who wanted the venue had a child who was besotted with said boy wizard, and their family was extremely rich. This person was willing to do whatever it took to celebrate this child’s birthday, which happened to fall on the original wedding weekend, at this venue.

My colleague’s daughter only agreed to move her wedding after the rich person offered to pay for not only the wedding, the new flights and accommodations, the florists, and the photographers, but also the mortgage on their recently purchased house! The costs ran to several hundred thousand dollars, but to the rich people, it was apparently water off a duck’s back.

Sorbicol

4. Literal Helicopter Parents

white and black drone flying under blue sky during daytimePhoto by SPACEDEZERT on Unsplash

I worked at a summer camp where a lot of the children attending came from very wealthy families. At the request of some of the parents, the camp installed a helicopter pad nearby so that the parents didn’t have to drive the two hours to pick up their kids at the end of camp. Additionally, many of these parents would give huge tips to the counselors who looked after their kids for the summer.

While I never got any tips because my kids were on scholarship, some of my coworkers were given hundreds of dollars, a Macbook Air, and even plane tickets to come to visit and stay with the families whenever they wanted—sometimes from crazy distances, like flying an Australian to LA.

hi2colin

5. A Fine Mess

man wearing watch with black suitPhoto by Ruthson Zimmerman on Unsplash

During my divorce trial, parking at the local courthouse was a massive pain. Not only was it crazy expensive, but there was also a two-hour limit. I assumed my lawyer must have had special parking privileges. But when I asked him about it, his answer blew my mind. He told me the parking situation was actually just a big racket for the city, and he found a way around it...of sorts.

Because parking was the same for lawyers, his firm decided to just eat the cost of the daily parking tickets instead of having the lawyers go and move their cars to a new spot every two hours. He also said that when the city first enacted “two-hour only” parking, the lawyers tried to comply and move their cars, but they found it to be impossible.

Court is court, things get delayed, and a judge doesn’t give a hoot if you need to move your car. So now the law firm spends thousands every month on parking fines and the city rakes in the dough.

ronsinblush

6. All You Have To Do Is Ask

man playing tennisPhoto by Moises Alex on Unsplash

My friend’s dad got a summer tennis membership at this fancy country club because his kid played on the club’s traveling team. The dad got invited to play poker with the other club members on a random Wednesday, and they sat down and decided to order some drinks. The waiter handed the wine list over to one of the old guys and the guy said, “No, show us the real list”.

Sure enough, there was a very bougie list that was only available by special request. Ever since my friend told me that story, I have always wondered what other special privileges exist for these people who know to ask.

TNI92

7. A Very Particular Set Of Skills

girl in blue denim dungaree pants holding blue and white polka dot handbagPhoto by krakenimages on Unsplash

I went to interview for a nanny job at a fancy downtown high-rise building. I was interviewed by the executive assistant of a divorced dad of two school-age kids whose current nanny had given notice. The job required four overnights a week (when the dad had custody), and I wasn’t super interested, since that meant being away from my cats for half the week and generally disrupting my life.

However, my recruiter really wanted to give them some candidates and I wasn’t completely opposed to the idea, so I figured, what the heck. The executive assistant who interviewed me was a very proper lady in her early 60s. She also clearly had a very close, motherly relationship with her executive boss. But as time went on, it got weirder and weirder.

Among the questions I was asked in the interview was how bothered I would be if I had been told to pack for a trip to Florida, but then had to change at the last minute for a trip to Aspen instead. Apparently, the family had a private jet. One charming anecdote I was told also related to the helplessness of this "poor" executive man.

One time he was actually left to care for HIS CHILDREN overnight when they had the stomach flu. He had called his executive assistant the next morning to say that it was tough, but he got through it—somehow he got through it. The woman interviewing me seemed to find this quite endearing, since she told me the story with the smiling fondness of a proud mother.

However, she was also simultaneously driving home how very important it was that he had support at all times, and this is why the job required so many overnights. At the end of the interview, as she was walking me to the elevator, it somehow got more uncomfortable. She made a snide comment about the fact that I had worn jeans to an interview.

She said decided to overlook it because of the weather. So yes, we had had a snowstorm the night before and the streets and sidewalks were still slick. I was also wearing new, dark skinny jeans, a cashmere sweater, jewelry, makeup, and boots that would keep me from slipping but still looked nice. BUT I also always wear clothes I can play in to nanny interviews.

You never know when they are going to spring children on you for an impromptu audition. Also, it is a nanny job, not an office job. One where you are expected to cook, clean, and most importantly play, so you really shouldn't be dressing up in an executive suit. But whatever. In the end, they interviewed many candidates from multiple agencies across the city.

The only one who got called back was a girl who actually got to meet The Man. He liked her and asked her back for a second interview, and then a lunch interview. They strung her along for weeks and she turned down at least one other job she was offered, hoping for that one. After all that, their current nanny decided she’d do one more year after all and that was that.

I was so glad I didn’t make it to the next round of interviews.

mallorn_hugger

8. More Dollars Than Sense

the united states of america quarter dollarPhoto by Chris Briggs on Unsplash

There was a bar I used to go to that did quarter nights where you would order something from the bartender and then you would flip a quarter for it. If it came up heads, you only paid 25 cents. If it was tails, you paid the actual cost of the drink you ordered. Anyway, I met these guys who would keep ordering whole bottles just for the fun of flipping a coin.

When they got tails they would all stomp their feet and pay up. When it was heads, they would all cheer, pay the quarter, and then tip the amount of the original bottle. These bottles were well over a few hundred dollars and they did it over and over all night. They just liked the thrill of flipping the coin. The bartenders loved them.

61508

9. A Deck Too Far

man in yellow jacket standing beside white carPhoto by Caspar Rae on Unsplash

There was this guy at my university who was super rich and had a new car pretty much every semester. During his final semester, he went in to dispute a $30 parking ticket for parking in a spot reserved for faculty. He did this because he wanted to park right next to the building instead of at one of the big parking decks, which were a 10-minute walk away.

Anyway, this student’s defense was: “I park in faculty spots all the time and pay the fine, I know how it works. This time I actually wasn’t in a faculty spot”. So the admin looked up his record. This is when the bottom dropped out. Apparently, over the past four years, he had been given more than 300 tickets for parking in faculty spots.

More than that, all of them had been paid immediately. The guy’s philosophy was basically just like, “Nah, screw it. I’m not walking. I’ll just park in a professor’s spot and pay the fine every day”. Strangely enough, they did end up waiving the single fine that he had gone in to dispute, and I think he probably was right that it wasn't a faculty spot.

basics

10. Where There’s A Will…

last will and testament white printer paperPhoto by Melinda Gimpel on Unsplash

My grandfather perished with a $20 million portfolio. He lived in a one-bedroom condo that was built in the 1950s, drove a rusted-out Honda, and his entire wardrobe was over 10 years old and came from Walmart. At the reading of his will, a bunch of distant relatives showed up hoping to get something. I couldn’t believe it when we read it.

First, he ended up roasting them all in his will. Then after he made fun of all of them, he spent 10 pages detailing all of the charities and foundations he was leaving his money to. Some of the info was really surprising, as nobody besides him knew that he casually owned 160 acres of forest in Vermont. The land was donated to a land trust and turned into hiking trails.

ndisa44

11. Calling All Cars

a building with a car parked in frontPhoto by Robby McCullough on Unsplash

I was at a rich guy’s house to service his not one, but two generators. I rolled up to the call box to let him know I was there, and he buzzed me in. As I was heading up the cobblestone driveway, I passed by his garage. I couldn't believe my eyes. This garage was unique in that it had a basketball and tennis court on top of it. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was basically a mini parking garage.

The dude had 13 cars in there: a Chevy Suburban, Mini Cooper, Subaru Outback, and some other "simple" grocery getters. Then, on the second level down, there were two Bentleys, a Rolls Royce, and a Lincoln stretch limo. This guy took me through four mechanical rooms to get to his generators. We then went back up to where my truck was parked.

While wearing sandals and a Rolling Stones T-shirt, this guy pointed to the right. Then he said something I’ll never forget. “If you need to use the bathroom, it’s behind the Bentley”. It was the most nonchalant thing I’ve heard.

leatherrecliner

12. He Broke The Bank

white and black printer paperPhoto by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

One of the owners of the company I used to work for was looking at his bank statement one day and saw a bunch of extra fees that he thought were excessive. He called the bank to find out what was going on, but I guess the person at the bank couldn’t explain the fees or was short with him and wouldn’t waive any of them.

In retaliation, he decided to close all his accounts with that bank. This involved paying off the rest of his multi-million dollar mortgage in cash. I was so shocked that he basically had enough cash sitting in his checking account to pay off his full mortgage, but preferred to take out a mortgage rather than pay for his house in cash.

When the mortgage department at the bank realized what had happened and how much interest income they were going to lose out on, they begged him to come back and refinance, but he gave them a hard no.

HalfAgony_HalfHope

13. Who Pays The Bills Around Here?

a group of people walk by a storefrontPhoto by marina liu on Unsplash

My boss accidentally received a neighbor’s Bloomingdale’s bill in the mail because the store had the address wrong. My neighbor didn’t pay attention to the name on the bill and assumed it was his wife’s. He paid that bill for years. He was actually paying thousands of dollars toward his next-door neighbor’s Bloomingdale’s bill without anyone realizing.

When they eventually figured it out, his response was jaw-dropping. My boss was super, super rich, and he simply told the neighbor to consider it a Christmas present.

HalfAgony_HalfHope

14. A True Baller

white and black ship on sea during daytimePhoto by Arno Senoner on Unsplash

I read that Paul Allen, the late co-founder of Microsoft, had a 414-foot-long mega-yacht with a basketball court on one of the decks. Every now and again a basketball would go overboard while they were playing, naturally. So what did he do? He hired a guy to follow the yacht in a smaller boat to pick up all of the basketballs that escaped.

Freeiheit

15. Very Petty Cash

man wearing black and teal dress suit standing near gray wallPhoto by Gregory Hayes on Unsplash

I knew a guy who bought a building just so that he could evict someone who was renting space there. Yes, his money was all inherited, and, yes, everybody really hated that guy. He came from generations of wealth and thought that it made him superior to everybody else. I never met the person who was evicted, but apparently he wasn’t “respectful enough” and had to be taught a lesson.

Saarlak

16. One Rich Son Of A Beach

plane parked beside the trees on seashorePhoto by Shifaaz shamoon on Unsplash

I worked at one of the top resorts in the Maldives as a personal concierge for the elite guests. The ultra-rich and famous would come here for their holidays. Some arrived in private jets, and one family had this super yacht that they kept parked there year-round just so they could use it for the one time a year they visited. But nothing compares to my most ridiculous story.

Once I was told I’d be looking after Mr. Sergei Popov— he’s on Forbes' rich list and lives in Switzerland with his wife and kids. However, the arrival list said he would be coming with a woman who did not have the same name as his wife. So, he arrived in Malé (the capital city of Maldives) by private jet from Geneva. From there, there are several options to get to the resort…

There is a 45-minute speedboat journey for the plebs, a 40-minute yacht transfer for the slightly wealthy, and finally, there’s a seaplane transfer that takes 12 minutes. Popov opted for the latter. So a bit of backstory: I got this job because I speak four languages (Russian, English, Thai, and Mandarin). Anyway, I’m waiting at the seaplane pier for him to arrive for the meet and greet.

They exit the seaplane and I do my usual welcome in Russian. They respond in English. Great. Keeping that distance from us lowlifes. So we get on the golf buggy and I give them the tour of the island and take them to their villa. Even though it’s the second-most luxurious category of villa, they’re not satisfied. So I take them to the only available presidential villa. They like it.

We negotiate an extra $12,000 per night for the upgrade. Their total is now at $27,000 per night. It’s a 10,000-square-foot villa with a lot of bells and whistles, including a private mobile phone with a direct line to me 24/7 until they depart. And so begin the eye-popping requests. His mistress’s 33rd birthday is coming up and he wants me to organize a surprise—money is no object.

Done. He wants a seat at the bar reserved every evening, even though we don’t save seats at the bar. Done. His niece is flying in tomorrow and he needs me to meet her and take her to her detached private villa. When I saw her, I knew immediately what was going on. She gets off the seaplane in a full-length mink coat (even though it’s 100+ degrees) and carrying only a purse and no other luggage.

There is no way this is a "niece". Anyway, his "niece" wants to go directly to the boutique to buy some new clothes. She gets a bunch of bikinis and some other attire that’s more appropriate for a tropical island. I drop her at the villa, but her "uncle" and his mistress are nowhere to be seen. I take her passport and see that she turned 18 just eight days ago.

Nice uncle, I think, getting her a trip to Maldives (just kidding, I was already suspicious). The next day during breakfast, housekeeping calls me to the villa. I walked in and nearly gasped. The master bedroom is a disaster. The sheets were so dirty that they had to be thrown away. Rubbers and bottles were just everywhere.

Anyway, Popov calls me and informs me that his niece is now leaving them. Aww, I was really starting to like this smoking hot bimbo. Now, the mistress’s birthday arrives. I’ve organized a private barbecue at a pavilion overlooking the Indian Ocean that had been specially designed for events like this. I had ordered 100 pounds of rose petals from Sri Lanka.

See, they don’t grow in the Maldives, and I used them to cover all of the sand leading up to the pavilion. Hundreds of candles were floating on the water suspended in transparent fishbowl-type globes. Tchaikovsky was playing. A bottle of grand cru, I forget which, probably Rothschild, was decanting. A personal chef, personal waiter, and waitress were at the ready.

I was on standby. At the end of the dinner, I came to see how it went. He thanked everyone “from the heart”. We thanked him for the $14,000 he forked out for the dinner. Everyone is satisfied. The next day they speak to me in Russian like an old friend. He tells me his departure plan and hands me an envelope containing $2,000—my tip for their seven-day stay.

The total cost of the seven days all in: $230,000.

_mirooo

17. Score!

black and white chess pieces on black and silver gas stovePhoto by Callum Hill on Unsplash

My friend was able to get a brand new, stainless steel six-burner oven on Facebook Marketplace for pennies on the dollar. Apparently, some rich people bought a summer house in a nearby tourist town and didn’t like the appliances because they were the wrong color. They had never even been used since the house had been completely renovated prior to sale.

sai_gunslinger

18. Them’s The Breaks

red Volkswagen Beetle car parked in front of white housePhoto by Adam Griffith on Unsplash

This guy cut me off in traffic and rammed into the right side of my car. I was all ready to get angry, to take down his insurance information. But when I got out of the car, he stopped me in my tracks. As soon as he saw me, this guy just handed me a $6,500 check without discussing anything. The damage he caused was only $200!

RegularGermanDude

19. Free Gift With Purchase

person holding white plastic casePhoto by Amy Humphries on Unsplash

I worked at a luxury brand jewelry store, and one time this grumpy woman came in with her husband. They ignored me and walked right past when I greeted them. Undeterred, I followed them and continued to try to make conversation. The woman started asking questions about things in the cabinet. She bought everything I pointed to without looking at the price tag or batting an eyelid.

In less than 10 minutes, she spent more than $33,000. However, once I started gift wrapping everything, she and her husband sat there demanding free things and threatening not to give us business again unless we produced the best, most expensive freebies we could find. The management team literally scrambled to give her a bunch of free stuff—even though $33K isn’t much in luxury retail.

Apparently, every single one of her visits over the years has been big ticket, though, so I guess it all adds up.

Throwthrowawayway_

20. Breaker High Meets Contagion

a large ship in the oceanPhoto by Annie Lang on Unsplash

At the beginning of the pandemic shutdowns, my friend, who teaches at a private school in DC, had a small group of parents approach her and ask her if she’d be interested in tutoring their children while they all isolated themselves on their yacht in the Caribbean. They wanted her to join them on the yacht and teach their kids five days a week.

Too bad she didn’t end up doing it, but that right there was definitely one of the most lavish ways to spend money I have ever seen to date.

Permalink

21. Mazel Tov!

body of waterPhoto by fer gomez on Unsplash

When I was in high school (circa 2005), I was invited to the most extreme bat mitzvah I’ve ever been to. I couldn't believe my eyes. I mean, this was a 13-year-old girl’s birthday party but it had a budget of $3.5 million. They had an actual circus tent with seating for 500+ people, and there was a magic show with real elephants and tigers.

They had these animals shipped from Las Vegas to Westchester, New York. There was also a state-of-the-art arcade tent that made Dave and Buster’s look like a joke, full valet parking and limo shuttle service from your car to the main gate of their estate. There was also a gift bag for every guest that included, among other fancy things, an iPod mini. And that was how I got my first iPod.

BarbarianSpaceOpera

22. It’s Been A Slice!

close up photo of pizza with cheesePhoto by Pablo Pacheco on Unsplash

I work for a fancy pizza shop and I thought I’d seen it all: orders that cost hundreds of dollars, people coming in from different cities who want it ready when they arrive, etc. Once, I watched a man eat one small slice from each of the 12 pizzas he ordered. He then proceeded to throw the rest of the pizzas out in our garbage bin.

At first, we assumed he was taking it to a party or to his employees. Nope. He just wanted to try every topping combination. He did leave a $100 tip, though, so that was nice.

alomusic

23. Someone In Cambodia Loves Me

brown wooden dock on body of water during daytimePhoto by Ben Stern on Unsplash

I had this wealthy friend who was kidnapped during his vacation to Cambodia. He had been there for several months and spent most of his time drinking and going to clubs. Inevitably, someone got the idea to kidnap him, and he ended up locked in a dirty shack sobering up while the kidnappers demanded ransom money. It ended with a twist.

Luckily for him, whoever managed his trust was well-connected enough to make a few important calls. When a local dignitary showed up with what was basically an army of personal security, the kidnappers let him go.

mike_d85

24. It’s A Small World After All

File:Garbage at Osheaga music festival Montreal 2012-08-04.jpg ...commons.wikimedia.org

An international student from my partner’s university bought a plane ticket from Spain to Canada to go to a music festival with some of her friends. She bought it on a Thursday, the festival was the next day, and she would be back home on Sunday. It was a first-class ticket, of course, and there were definitely a lot of digits in that purchase.

“Oh, don’t mind me, I’m just casually crossing the Atlantic to see some friends this weekend”.

Larariara

25. Spoiled Rotten?

strawberry ice cream on conePhoto by ian dooley on Unsplash

I was working at a luxury hotel and this guy came to stay there with his daughter, who was about six or seven, and her babysitter or cousin who was about 14 years old. Anyway, this guy would stay out all day sightseeing while the two girls were left alone in the room. Did I mention they had lots and lots of cash at their disposal?

The younger girl would order one scoop of ice cream and give the waiter a $50 tip. Then she’d call again 10 minutes later and here we go with another $50 tip. This kept going on and on, so we started rotating the constant room service, and everyone got their share. But still got to the point where it was more than a little embarrassing.

invertedBoy

26. Kids These Days

black and white round cake on brown wooden tablePhoto by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

Since moving to a rich town, it blows my mind how so many kids under the age of 10 order the $300 caviar for dinner at the restaurant where I work. One of my favorite customers is a family who does this—they always tip a grand though.

justthetips0629

27. Smashed Out Of Their Minds

a close up of a textured surfacePhoto by Chris Linnett on Unsplash

When I was a bartender, this douchey-looking guy who was probably in his 30s asked me to sell him and his four friends all the champagne we had in the bar. I said no, but I would sell him two bottles and he could always order more when they were finished. He said fine, so I sold him the bottles and then went for my smoke break. I had no idea what he was about to do.

About 10 minutes later, I saw the main guy and his friends running into the street carrying as many champagne bottles as they could. That wasn't the end of it, either. They started smashing the full bottles on the street while screaming and laughing. It turns out my co-worker agreed to sell them our entire stock in exchange for a nice tip, of course.

So there they were, smashing bottles of champagne in the street and then running back into the bar to get more. We managed to stop them and call the authorities, but they ended up taking off in their car before anyone showed up. The bill was crazy, too. Three of them paid $2,200 with their credit cards and one gave around $5,000 cash.

BatouMediocre

28. Not-So-Fair Play

three brown wooden tablesPhoto by Farzad Mohsenvand on Unsplash

I was a server at a sports bar that showed all the big pay-per-view events. One night, I had this guy at one of my tables pull out a $100 bill and ask if I could break it into 100 one-dollar bills. I said, “Sure, I guess, but I’ll need my manager to open the safe, and it’s a busy night, so it could take a while”. The guy said that was no problem.

So I brought him 100 singles and the match kept going. Finally, the last match of the night, which was probably some kind of title match, ended. After the winner was announced, the guy threw all 100 of his ones into the air and screamed, “There’s your tip!” It was a really weird way to be a jerk to your waitress, and it took a long time to come to fruition.

alie1020

29. Bling The House Down

gold chain necklace on gray textilePhoto by Vishnu Prasad on Unsplash

There’s this politician in our area who also has his own shopping franchise. His son is about three years older than me and he always wears about 30 pounds of gold chains around his neck as well as a bunch of diamond earrings and rings. One time I saw him drinking tea at a cafe with his friends, showing off as usual. That was kind of his thing.

When the waiter gave the bill to his group, Mr. Gold Chains took off one of his smaller rings and handed it to the waiter as payment. Then, to make matters worse, he shooed the waiter away like he was some sort of stray animal. It was so disrespectful that it made me sick to my stomach.

BroJedi42

30. Miami Vice

low angle photography of high rise buildingPhoto by Adam Thomas on Unsplash

When I was in college, the guy across the hall from me in the dorm went away for the weekend and didn’t come back for almost a week. When he finally did get back, his explanation was ridiculous. He said he had been detained by the FBI! Apparently, he had a friend of a friend who was super rich and had flown their group out to Miami to hang out at a suite in the Four Seasons.

It turns out the rich kid, who had a $40K/month allowance, was stealing from his dad’s business to pay for his overages because $40K/month was not enough for him. The FBI had tracked this guy to the Four Seasons and broke up the party.

turkeyburst

31. One Person’s Trash…

File:Wesleyan University - North and South College 02.jpg ...commons.wikimedia.org

I used to live near Wesleyan University, which is the college from How I Met Your Mother. Every year when the children from rich families would go back home, the rest of us would go dumpster diving because students would literally throw away working laptops, iPods, and other good stuff. Must be nice to be so rich that you see a $500+ piece of electronics as disposable.

Dont_touch_my_elbows

32. Bone Appetit!

raw meat on brown wooden tablePhoto by Kyle Mackie on Unsplash

I was at a pretty nice restaurant in Mexico City and a guy walked up with two dogs and nodded at the waiter. The waiter came back with a drink and two massive raw steaks. The guy drank his drink and watched as his two dogs each enjoyed a $50 hunk of raw meat. The guy then walked off into the night. Boss move, if I'm honest.

itdrankprettygood

33. A Friend With Benefits

aerial photography of buildings near body of water during daytimePhoto by Gautier Salles on Unsplash

I have a friend, and she and her family are ridiculously rich. I’ll start by saying that they are incredibly nice people and very generous to those around them. They just do not live in the real world when it comes to money, and they forget that other people don’t live like they do. This girl’s mom redecorates their whole house two or three times a year.

This woman doesn’t just replace a few throw pillows either. She goes to extreme lengths. I’m talking all-new furniture, fresh paint, new flooring, new decorative items, and so on. She really likes to decorate for the holidays and every holiday she buys all new stuff. My friend has basically hooked up everyone she knows with full Christmas setups because her mom gets a new one every year.

This family has a bunch of pets, but they don’t take care of any of them—instead they have people who do it. For example, they have gorgeous fish tanks that are looked after by a guy who comes in multiple times per week. They also have a bird room, which is full of multiple exotic birds who are taken care of by someone who comes in every day. That’s not all, though.

They also have a different person who cares for the dogs and cats. And they have a team of people to look after their horses, even though no one in the family rides. When it comes to food, my friend’s parents will get caterers for any old random night. My friend will open her door to surprise catering and there will be so much food that she will have to call friends to come help her eat it all.

Last week I went over and had dinner with her because they had a full prime rib dinner, complete with appetizers, soup, salad, sides, drinks, and dessert for 15 to 20 people—just because it was Wednesday.

TrueCrimeButterfly

34. The Most Magical Place On Earth

white and blue castle under blue sky and white clouds during daytimePhoto by Kitera Dent on Unsplash

I’m an accountant and one of my worst stories involved a business owner who decided to take his entire family of around 20 people to Walt Disney World—and he booked the entire thing as a business expense. When we caught him, we told him that was a big no-no. Not only would he be charged, but so would we, and we would lose more than our licenses.

He strongly disagreed and so we had to fire him, which, I think, is the only time I can recall having to fire a client.

betterthanamaster

35. Many Unhappy Returns

woman in black coat wearing eyeglassesPhoto by Nickolas Nikolic on Unsplash

I have a female friend, over 50, whose wealthy parents advised her to pick out her birthday gift. The price point they gave her was $1,000. So she went to QVC and started ordering a bunch of clothes, shoes, and gadgets—mostly stupid, unnecessary items. She would order a bunch of things, return some, order more, and then return a portion of that.

I guess she thought she was working her way up to $1,000, but after this cycle of purchasing, returning, and purchasing more items went on for a month, she had racked up $11,000 in charges. It got to the point that she and QVC couldn’t even agree on what she kept, returned, and owed. The consequences were actually hilarious.

QVC finally banned her from shopping with them…forever! Her parents were naturally quite upset and finally had to step in and sort it all out. Her father and QVC eventually settled on an amount somewhere between $5,000 and $11,000. At this point, QVC doubled down on their ban and reiterated to her father that his daughter would never, ever be able to order anything from them again.

gaberax

36. Sometimes You Eat The Bar…

two clear glass cupsPhoto by Cloris Ying on Unsplash

I was going for a meal to discuss a job with my potential boss. He had offered the job to me at this point and was trying to schmooze me, I think. Anyway, we went to a tapas bar and he asked what I wanted to order. As I was trying to decipher the huge menu and determine how much would be enough, but not too much, he said, “Let’s just order one of everything”.

I was dumbfounded. Unfortunately, I had to return to my home country, so I had to miss out on this incredible opportunity. Honestly, working closely with a man of that caliber would’ve changed my life, but there we go.

Permalink

37. Read The Room

gray coupe on parking areaPhoto by Reinhart Julian on Unsplash

In college, among our small group of undergrads, most of us drove cars that were worth less than $2,000. One of the guys was from a very well-off family, though, and he drove a variety of $200,000+ cars. One day he was lecturing us about how so-and-so had bad tires and so-and so-is irresponsible for getting a ticket for a broken window on a car he had to borrow because his dad passed.

This guy then went on about how all of us broke college kids need to fix this and that on our cars because it’s only a grand to do each repair. He acted like these repairs are no big deal because he did six figures of damage to a supercar and got it fixed, no problem. I’m like no, we don’t all have a room full of spare wheels and parts for our cars.

the_frgtn_drgn

38. Champagne In The Butt

yellow fireworks in the sky during nighttimePhoto by Myriam Zilles on Unsplash

I worked at a club in Ibiza, and when you order five bottles of champagne they are brought to you by a bunch of hot girls in bikinis holding sparklers. This meant that people would order massive amounts of champagne just to look good in front of other rich people. Most nights there would come a point where there wasn’t even any more room to put the bottles.

In a lot of cases, they didn’t even drink the champagne.

jakobpirs1

39. Just Plane Evil

white car seat in carPhoto by Yaroslav Muzychenko on Unsplash

I knew a wealthy guy who had the interiors of two jets refurbished, which included recovering the leather seats. He claimed to notice that the pitch of the hand stitching on some of the seats was different. He assumed that this happened because Cessna had two different craftsmen working on the seats, which was totally unacceptable to him. His reaction was outrageous.

He sent the two jets back to Cessna AGAIN to have all of the seats redone by the same person. On a somewhat related note, this jet owner is the same person who bemoaned that the Affordable Care Act was going to mean his company could no longer kick employees off of medical insurance after they reached a lifetime limit. Yep.

And wouldn't you know it? The savings that this person’s company gained by kicking sick people off health insurance was almost identical to the cost of the refurbishment of the interior of the two jets—nearly seven figures. It was on this day that the cracks began to appear in the conservative rhetoric I had been steeped in my entire life.

mechtonia

40. Sick Burn

people watching at a roomPhoto by Antenna on Unsplash

I had an adjunct professor for my film class and he always had the best stories. A few of us would often hang out after class and listen to his stories about being a director for many years. When this prof was in college, he had a friend who was a big-time executive. Once or twice per year they would get together for dinner and to reminisce.

His executive friend would always book a really nice restaurant and always paid for everything even though my professor tried to protest. After a particularly good year, the professor insisted that he pay for dinner this time. His friend agreed and when the bill came, it was $12,000. The professor swallowed his pride and went to pay the bill reluctantly.

He was a successful director, but work was not always consistent. Just as he was about to pay, his friend laughed and took the booklet away from him and told him he had already taken care of it. My professor said he would have needed to save an entire year’s worth of pay to afford one day of his friend’s life. Absolutely ridiculous.

DigiQuip

41. Insufficient Memory

three drinks on gray surfacePhoto by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

I used to work at the smoothie counter at an Equinox gym, and there was a man who came in nearly every day. He had the weirdest complaint. He would literally always whine about how he was too busy to remember to pack a gym bag...to the gym. So he would always buy a full set of workout clothes—with shoes—from our retail section.

At that place, a full outfit would run more than my monthly rent. I checked in with the folks in the retail section often and apparently he never returned anything.

leiladobadoba

42. Money Can’t Buy Poverty

student sitting on chairs in front of chalkboardPhoto by Shubham Sharan on Unsplash

I teach at an international school and we have some incredibly wealthy and well-connected students. Well, during pre-calculus class, we started a topic that is fortunately always relevant: applications of exponential functions and, in particular, compound interest. So I gave my spiel, and one very well-off girl wasn’t impressed at all.

“When are we ever going to use this?” she whined. After I patiently explained why for the second time, she asked incredulously, “But why would I ever need to borrow money?” I sighed inwardly and reiterated my explanation of the power of compound interest with another, exaggerated example. I told her that I could give her $50 now or $100 one week from now.

“Of course I’ll take the money now,” she scoffed. “Why would I wait a whole week for only $50?” Strangely enough, this was also the student who ended up with a UN internship working to combat poverty. This was also the same student who would insult the one student in the class who was on scholarship for being poor. You can’t make this up.

nerbovig

43. Insanely Practical

red Honda vehiclePhoto by João Melo on Unsplash

I had a friend who was living downtown in a major city and needed to buy a car because she got an internship in the suburbs. She’d never bought or owned a car before, but her rich dad wired her some money to cover the purchase. After a few days of finagling with her bank, she ended up filling a bag with $30,000 cash and hopping on the subway.

She ended up at the local Honda dealership. This girl wasn’t a snob, she just wasn’t experienced in these things. She paid cash for the car on the spot, and because of this, she also left the dealership with a new boyfriend.

advisor_throwaway181

44. You Had Me At $800 Eyelashes

woman wearing white wedding dress with veilPhoto by Samantha Gades on Unsplash

I had a client who rented out one of the most expensive wedding venues in the city, had designer everything, and generally just spent more money on this wedding than what was necessary. I mean, who cares if your fake eyelashes were $800, seriously. But none of that mattered on the morning of the wedding. That's the moment the disaster began.

Apparently, her mother showed up wearing the wrong shade of green. This bride spent more than an hour screaming and crying at her mother, ruining her expensive makeup in the process, and forcing everything to be pushed back for an entire day. I heard she was fined upward of the original cost of renting the venue and every vendor had overtime charges as we were forced to stay past midnight.

After all of this drama, we later found out that the bride actually never had a job and her parents paid for everything. Oh, and the marriage didn’t even last six months.

ReignTX21

45. What A Weirdough

pizza on white ceramic platePhoto by Kajetan Sumila on Unsplash

My dad’s a carpenter and one of his clients hired him to build a fully functioning pizza oven in the kitchen of their house. He did. Afterward, while my dad was getting paid for the job, he asked if the family made a lot of homemade pizza. The client said, “No, my wife just needed somewhere to keep the pizza warm when we order it from Domino’s”.

HowDoIGetToFacebook

46. Gaming The System

selective focus photography of white Sony PS4 console with wireless controllerPhoto by Nikita Kachanovsky on Unsplash

I was talking to this kid and we got into the topic of gaming. He told me his PS4 broke, so I asked him how it happened. He basically said he wasn’t sure, that it just didn’t work when he went to play it. He didn’t seem too bothered by it. But I was about to find out why. He pulled at least $700 cash out of his pocket and told me that his dad gave him money to replace it.

I told him he should at least find out if it could be repaired, to which he said, “Nah, I’m just gonna replace it. I always do”. I realize that it’s not really his fault since he grew up being able to buy what he wanted, but buying a new console on the same day is something my parents definitely wouldn’t do for me. They’d tell me to at least pay $40 to get it checked out first before buying me another.

retrobread_

47. Not A Light-Bulb Moment

man in brown and white plaid dress shirt and yellow hard hat holding black and orangePhoto by Emmanuel Ikwuegbu on Unsplash

I work for an electrical contractor who bills at just over $200 an hour. It’s a union shop that is commercial/industrial certified with journeymen and inside wiremen. The number of customers who call us and pay that price to have somebody come and change their light bulbs is astounding to me. Some people just can't handle real life.

tonderthrowaway

48. That’s Mr. Cheapskate To You

Subway open signagePhoto by Szymon on Unsplash

I used to work for a billionaire. But this rich guy didn't live how you think. We would go to lunch once a week at a Subway near our office. He would always load up on salt and pepper packages, napkins, coffee stirrers, etc. It was like he took joy in getting one over on the restaurant and getting stuff for free and saving his massive amounts of money.

One time he invited me to a college football game and had me come to his house to meet him beforehand. Turns out, the dude had a seven-car garage full of luxury vehicles. Even so, he insisted that I drive us in my 2002 Jetta with a cracked windshield. He then complained nonstop about my car the whole way to the game and once we got there I bought all the snacks for him and his two sons. To top it off, the seats weren’t even that good.

tzip34

49. The Upper Crust

a jet sitting on top of an airport tarmacPhoto by Niklas Jonasson on Unsplash

I attended private school with a bunch of rich kids, so I have a lot of stories. The best one involved my friend’s sister. This girl wanted a very specific type of bread for her breakfast each weekend—and it had to be fresh. This meant that the family’s servant had to take their private plane to Italy every weekend so that he could bring back fresh bread for her.

TheHollowHeaven

50. Queen Of The Machine

photo of game machinesPhoto by Steve Sawusch on Unsplash

When I was in Las Vegas, one of the casinos I went to had a high-rollers area where you could see part of the slot machine section. These slots were $100 a play. I stood there and watched as an otherwise ordinary-looking older lady played one machine the same way my grandmother played the penny slots. In the few minutes I was watching, she dropped enough money to buy my truck and I don’t think she even blinked.

drsameagle

51. Super Rich And Rather Strange

brown wooden house near swimming pool during daytimePhoto by Ranjith Alingal on Unsplash

I work as a personal concierge at a luxury resort and one night I get a call from my manager as I’m sitting at the staff bar getting trashed. He informs me that there’s a last-minute VVIP friend of the CEO of the entire company coming to stay. There was no time to google this guy. I had a couple of shots for the road and went to change back into my uniform and meet him at the pier.

He arrived just after midnight and in a few minutes, I can tell he is a super high energy eccentric straight out of a Hunter S. Thompson book. Right off the bat, he decides that my name is Dimitry (it’s not). He then tells me that he needs to get ready as his friends are boating over from a neighboring island and he wants everything ready for their arrival.

He needs several bottles of Dom Perignon, a bunch of canapés, and an electrician to install floodlights in front of his villa to better show off the view to his friends. He also needs his shirts to be organized by color in the closet. After he freshens up, he calls me and asks for the villa to be cleaned. So I arrive with housekeeping. I am immediately astounded.

In the bathroom, he has used all of the shower gels, all of the shampoos, all of the conditioners, and there are two entire rolls of dental floss in the trash. Yeah, this man is a mutant for sure. He then tells me to meet his friends when they arrive and take them to the bar to book their spa treatments for the next day. Ok, fine. I go.

His friends consist of three smoking hot babes accompanied by some guy who looks like a cross between Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt, and Sawyer from Lost. Apparently, he is some big-time Hollywood director’s son. I take them to the bar as requested. Shortly after that, he calls me to say he’s ready for me to bring them to his villa, which is now floodlit and all Dom’d up.

He starts telling the girls about his private jet and joking around that they should fly to Paris Fashion Week on his plane instead of the director’s, har, har. They finish the fun at around 4:00 am. I go to sleep. At 8:00 am I woke up to him calling me with his breakfast order. He asks for an omelet with the works, eggs sunny side up and scrambled, cappuccino, tea, all the fruit juices we have available, bread baskets, fruit platters, cereal, and a newspaper.

I was pretty sure I had already dropped his friends off at their boat, which meant he was ordering all of that food for himself. He tells me to stay and keep him company. Then he proceeds to call who I assume is his personal secretary on speakerphone and starts reciting numbers from a report from memory. He asks why there’s a discrepancy in one of the reports and she throws some guy named Peter under the bus.

Then his friends arrive for their massages and afterward, he tells me that he needs to settle his bill as he will be leaving that evening. I come to his villa to take payment and transport him to the pier. Of course, there are about four housekeepers waiting like vultures for their handouts. He pays for the villa and then looks each of them in the eye, one after the other. I will remember his reaction forever.

He stuffs his hand into his pocket and throws a bunch of bills on the bed. “Dimitry this is only for you”. Then off to the pier we went. Safe travels you weird, weird man.

_mirooo

52. Meat Me Halfway

cooked meat on trayPhoto by Loija Nguyen on Unsplash

When I was a waitress, I had a woman and her much younger male companion come into the restaurant where I worked. She ordered a steak with a baked potato. I delivered it to her table and asked if she needed anything else. I was shocked by her reply. She said, “Yes, please cut the steak into bite-sized pieces and put the butter and sour cream on the potato with a bit of salt and pepper, and then you can cut it up, too”.

As I began to realize that she was serious, my smile faded and my jaw started to slowly drop to my chest. Her companion noticed that some not-so-kind words were beginning to form in my brain and he quickly insisted that he would take care of it for her. To this day, I still can't believe that lady had the audacity to ask that.

hairofthedutchboy

53. Embrace The Suck

black Mercedes-Benz carPhoto by Dhiva Krishna on Unsplash

One of my army buddies was a trust fund baby. He actually only served so that he could have the line on his resume since he was planning to go the political route. I’m fine with that as I also served for a line on my resume. However, the amount of care he put into his work was abysmally bad. He would often pay dudes $1,000 to take his duty.

Every few months, he had a brand new Mercedes, BMW, or other fancy European cars. I remember once he ran out of gas on base and just left his car there and went to the car rental place. He then drove the rented car off base to buy a new one. Everyone on our team hated him. So much so that my team leader stuck him in a cave in the middle of Afghanistan.

This was just so he didn’t make fool of himself or get anyone hurt. Last I heard, he was working at the Pentagon. When I went there for work, I saw him and he looked like he was just a secretary. Of course, he tried to make it seem like he was a bigger deal than he was. He literally had people saying, “Hey, guy” because no one cared to learn his name.

But, as I said, everything is for resume points. He doesn’t care about money. He cares about power. He’s a narcissistic jerk whom I imagine will be a very successful politician someday soon because most politicians seem to have the exact personality as him.

Permalink

54. Hold The Phone

I once worked in the cell phone department at a retail store, and we were supposed to sell a certain amount of phone insurance plans every day to meet our quota. There was this one woman who had just bought four of the latest iPhones for herself and her family. I offered her insurance plans. Her answer sent a chill down my spine.

This woman was so rich, she basically said there’s no point because she would just buy new phones if anything happened. This was in 2018, so four new top-of-the-line iPhones were about a grand each. I tried to push the insurance plans a bit because $4,000 in sales with no insurance or add-ons would hurt my numbers and $4,000 is a huge investment.

So my pitch went along the lines of, “What would you do if the phone broke or you cracked the screen”? That's when it went from weird to terrifying. She got so irritated that she bought four more phones as replacements just to prove she didn’t need insurance. Then she proceeded to berate my selling skills and laughed in my face about being a broke college student working to pay tuition.

I guess she knew this because she must have been eavesdropping on my conversation with a co-worker. I wouldn’t have been upset about any of it up until this point. However, after I finished setting up one of her new phones, she took it to the next level. She went over to a non-carpeted section of the store and purposely dropped it, shattering the glass screen.

She then came up to me and told me to set up her new one. I felt really disrespected, but I had no choice. I couldn’t refuse the request of a customer who just spent $8,000 at our store.

Curlybengali

55. Dude Needs To Off-Gas

white and yellow textiles on brown wooden shelfPhoto by Henry & Co. on Unsplash

I knew someone who had a very rich roommate. This roommate would wear a brand new pair of socks every day and then throw them away instead of washing them. You'd think this would make him extra clean or something, but it actually had the opposite effect. Eventually, he developed a rash on his feet from all the chemicals on the brand new socks.

Permalink

When horrible bosses cross the line, they leave their employees no other choice but to get even.

These Redditors tell their stories of times when work became so frustrating, they couldn’t help but enact vengeance on the other people in the company. In some cases, the revenge was tame; in others, things got messy.


1. It’s Just Not Working Out

man wearing suit jacket and crossing armsPhoto by Aslan Kumarov on Unsplash

I had a boss from the underworld back when I worked for a logistics company (we will call him ”David”). This particular company did not hire directly for dock workers—you had to go through a temp-to-hire service—and it had a 90-day window in which the dock super (who in this case was David) could call your temp agency and tell them your stint at the company was over. The temp would be called into the office where David would look at him or her and say with a large, smug grin: “IT’S JUST NOT WORKING OUT”.

This prick would ridicule new temps about the way they dressed, the way they talked, and their mannerisms in front of everyone at shift meetings. When a new batch of temps would start, he would pick an unlucky one out and ride him or her until they quit or made some minor mistake. Then, he would tell the temp agency that person was just not working out for the company.

David was married to some big shot at a hospital in town. She was the breadwinner, so he had no problems with keeping some low-level super job. To top it all off, David was also the only minority with a supervisory position, so the Logistics Company didn’t want to fire him. David was simply a shift super for the dock and he had no desire to be promoted because he had absolutely no responsibilities except to post an end-of-shift report, which he had one of the receivers do for him (that was my job). For two years, I typed this jerk’s nightly reports, knowing full well he never witnessed any of it going on—he just sat in his office eating or riding the dock on a golf cart looking for reasons to fire new people. I knew something had to change.

Anyway, I was hired in as a temp, kept my head down through David’s nonsense, and eventually, I got promoted to head of a different department away from him. Three years later, the company decided that receiving (David’s department) was lacking direction, and decided to hire a department head for them. I got the job. I was now David’s boss.

He turned pale when it was announced the next day at work. I thought he was going to expire on the spot. He knew that for years I witnessed every bit of the terrible things he had said and done to the temps. I showed up nightly for three months on his shifts to “monitor” how David ran his shifts, watching him make stupid mistakes one after another; any one of these things I could have easily terminated him, but I held out and documented everything.

When it finally came time, I called him into my office, armed with months (years, really) of reasons to fire him, but I simply looked at him and told him, “David, it’s just not working out”.

BakedPotatoTattooo

2. Overseas Exit Plan

smiling woman standing while holding orange folderPhoto by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

I had a bunch of jerk-face bosses who were looking all school year for reasons to fire me. It got to the point where I was turning in three times the number of lesson plans despite already having less freedom to do my job than any other teacher at that school. It was all personal too. Very unprofessional stuff like “my son is in this guy’s class and he does it this way, so you should do it that way also”. Meanwhile, I'd walk by that same teacher’s class and he'd be showing the Peanuts Christmas Special.

They said my lesson plans weren’t detailed enough, so I asked for their best lesson plan from any other teacher to compare, and mine were clearly more detailed, a fact that shocked even me. They spent so much time telling me I was a bad teacher that I actually began to believe it. Now, this school had a free year’s license to Rosetta Stone, so I switched my language to Korean and learned Hangul. Almost weekly, there would be someone who would say, “Korean!? Who the hell knows Korean!? What would you ever do with that”?

At the end of the year, they told me not to come back, but all I could do was smile. I said, “Thank you, but I just got a job in Korea”. They had the dean in there to make sure I didn’t make a scene, and I think even he was surprised that I was almost laughing as I walked out of the office and shook hands with everyone with a big sly grin on my face. Right now, I am sitting here at my desk in Korea, the only native English teacher at my school, and they love me. To tell you the truth, I might have stayed at that job another five or 10 years. Getting asked to not come back was the best thing that ever happened to me.

BiblicalMC

3. An Eye For An Eye

couple dining outPhoto by Wiktor Karkocha on Unsplash

I had a picture of my mom and me on my desktop (I know, corny). This guy, Pat, kept commenting on how attractive my mom was (he was about the same age). After about a month of this, I asked my mom to jokingly call him and tell him he was sexist and a bad influence and whatnot. She did this, but they ended up talking for 30 minutes, and after that, Pat told everyone at the office that my mom was trying to pick him up. For the next year, every time he saw me he asked how my mom was. At my five-year pinning ceremony, he told the story to a bunch of strangers and my bosses.

Fast forward a year later—I had just gone through a bad breakup with my long-time girlfriend and this Pat guy kept coming into my office and telling me that I need to get out and start playing the field. He did this for about a month, so then I asked a guy at work what his daughter’s name was (she was around the same age as me). I found her on Facebook and asked her if she would help play a prank on her dad. When she agreed, I set my devious plan into motion.

I went out on a “date” with his daughter and took a picture of the two of us drinking out of the same drink with two straws then proceeded to put it in a heart-shaped frame on my desk. Then I got another manager to tell Pat that I got a new girl and that I was head over heels for her. He came straight to my office and I didn’t say a word—all I heard from behind me was, “What are you doing with my daughter”? To this day, he hasn’t asked when my mom is calling next!

JCurry2

4. Who Called The Fire Brigade?

red firetruck on garagePhoto by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash

I used to work as a developer for a company that makes EDI software. My boss was a paranoid, penny-pinching, micromanaging knob. For example, he'd say things like: “I know your contract says you can take an hour for lunch, but most people take just 15 minutes and I think you should too”, or “I don’t see any reason why you should not make a habit of coming in 30 minutes early and leaving 30 minutes later”.

My main beef with him was that he refused to give me time off to be with my wife when her mother had only a few days left to live. Our office was in a converted factory that was split into several units. My boss’s brother owned the building. Within that building, there was our company, a karate studio, and a creche. I noticed that the fire alarm panel at the main door to the building never had any lights lit on it. It looked like there was no power going into it.

So I called the fire brigade. The surprise inspection came 30 minutes later due to the fact that there was a creche in the building. The building owner got himself a conviction and a $10K fine (I had hoped it would be bigger). He had to pay a load to get a new fire alarm system installed. A few months later, when I was made redundant under questionable circumstances, I told my boss who called the fire brigade. The color drained from his face. I then launched a legal claim against him for unfair dismissal and my case. I have enjoyed punishing him for the unfair way he treated me.

I should point out just how beautiful it was to watch the inspection. The fire brigade sent around two young ladies, who looked more like salespeople and nothing like fire safety inspectors. They came into our office and asked to speak to the building manager. My boss came out of his room with a big Terry-Thomas grin on his face to greet them. “Hi, I manage the building for my brother”. “Great, we’re from the fire brigade and we are here to have a look at your fire safety systems”. His jaw dropped.

MmmmBisto

5. NYC Comes First

woman sings while playing guitarPhoto by Blake Guidry on Unsplash

I used to work at a sandwich shop and bakery in Nashville, and my shift started at 6 am. The horrible, uptight manager would call at 6:01 if I wasn't there and he'd flip out. I had taken a weekend off to travel to New York to play a show, and when she realized she forgot to take me off the schedule, she tried to get me to cancel my trip. When I said we had already booked a show, she told me my music sucked and that the girl singer of our band was “too ugly for country”. Firstly, she’s hot and secondly, we didn't even play country music. Inside I raged, but I kept cool on the outside. I eventually decided that enough was enough.

I told her I would cancel my plans so I could work that Saturday for her. Little did she know that while I sent her that message, I was already on my way to New York, and I put my phone on silent mode when I went to bed. The next morning, I had six new messages. The first three were her freaking out, the fourth was just silent, the fifth was my shift leader saying, “I think he's trying to tell you to take a hint”, and the sixth was my boss telling me I was fired. I just shrugged and carried on with my life.

theshinepolicy

6. Failed Sabotage

red and black flash drive on white printer paperPhoto by Arun Prakash on Unsplash

I had a jerk-wad boss who was out to get me. Within his first week at the company, he decided he wanted to fire me even though he had no idea what I did. I was actually the only IT person and I was probably one of the more productive people in the entire building. He told me I had a week to “turn things around” or I was gone. There was no explanation as to what needed to be “turned around” or what in particular was wrong.

My assumption is that he had his own guy who he wanted to bring in. I basically told him to shove it up his rear and if he didn’t like it, I’d walk right there. He was a bit taken aback by that and after another nine months of being there, he continued being a jerk toward me. Fast forward another three months, and the tables had turned—the company had decided it was going to fire him. The decision was based on information I had provided to them in regard to his lack of performance and waste of company resources. The irony, right? The owners (against my recommendation) gave him advanced notice of their decision and let him stay for an entire day in his office without any supervision.

As I didn’t trust him, I started monitoring his activity very closely. That's when I discovered his secret operation—he was copying a large amount of data from our servers and deleting it. Additionally, he was cleaning out his contacts and other client-related information. He was copying all of this to a USB drive. On the final day, the owners took him to lunch right before he was going to leave. I took the opportunity to “return” all of the data he took. I had backups, which I was going to restore; however, I didn’t want him to walk away with stuff that didn’t belong to him.

Finally, a couple of very incriminating emails "accidentally" got forwarded to his wife. Turns out, he was cheating on her for months—he had been talking to this other woman about ditching her and screwing her out of the house, then leaving her with the kids...I'm not sure how that worked out, but I hope the wife got him good.

beyerch

7. Lazy Boss At The Bookstore

library photographPhoto by Norbert Tóth on Unsplash

The best way I’ve gotten back at a boss? Brutal honesty. I worked at a bookstore. I used to be on the overnight shift, shelving books, but they did away with that to try and save some money and brought us all into the daytime shift. When they enforced that change, I was doomed to eight-hour shifts—usually by myself—at the registers.

Now, our store manager at the time was totally useless. He’d lock himself in his office filled with pictures of his ballerina boyfriend and do absolutely nothing during his shifts. One morning, in particular, I was at the register, and I had a line. I tried paging for backup, and no one came. I assumed everyone was busy, so I just did my best to bust out the line.

Meanwhile, our phone started ringing. No one went to get it because everyone was busy helping customers...or so I thought. After three rings, our intercom system beeped and the manager started saying: “Backup to phones...back up to the phones”. The brilliant part was that you had to pick up the phone to even use the paging system.

Meanwhile, I was nearly through my line, and a sweet old lady tottered up and told me she ordered a book and got a phone call about it being in. I got her details and went hunting through our order shelves. I couldn’t find it. I verified that I had all the info right and tried again. The order just wasn’t up there. So I paged for a supervisor or manager, and then the store manager paged for me to call him at his office extension.

So I called the manager’s office and explained the situation to him. He told me to look at the hold shelves again. I tried to tell him I’d already done that, but he just hung up on me. The lady was looking unhappier by the second, and I was worried I was going to get yelled at. So I paged the manager again, asking him to come to the front register.

He paged me back, telling me to call him at his office extension. I do. He asked me what I wanted from him. I told him I still couldn’t find the lady's order and that I could really use some help—but he cut me off mid-sentence and told me he’d check in the office to see if there were any additional orders back there. Meanwhile, I kept telling the woman how sorry I was, and I asked her if she can move aside while we kept looking and I continued ringing up other people.

I was nearly done, there were maybe two people left in line. I’d handled three more pages from the incompetent manager—all of which were to tell me he couldn’t find this book—and I was forced to tell the lady we can’t find it. She still looks annoyed, but she patted my hand and told me she knew I did all I could. She called the manager a useless piece of trash for not getting off his behind and coming out to help like a good manager should do, and then she breezed out of the store.

Two minutes after that happened, the line was gone, and I was alone. Three people come up to the registers, claiming that the manager sent them up there to “help me out” and he told one of them to have me go into the back “to talk” when I had a free moment. When I got back there, he was all buddy-buddy. “Hey what’s wrong, you sounded stressed...everything okay”?

And I remembered that old lady. And I told him that no, it wasn’t okay. So he asked me what was going on—and I told him exactly what frustrated me. I told him it was the first time ever that I felt a manager didn’t have my back. I said he was unprofessional and complete nonsense. I also told him—word for word—what the old woman said. He just stood there and stared at me. I asked him if I could go back out there and do my job since it was awfully busy out there (I sort of expected him to fire me)…He didn’t speak, just nodded. So I flounced back out.

Apparently, he locked himself in his office and cried for the rest of the day.

Narmie

8. Lecturing About Light Switches

man in black and white polo shirt playing guitarPhoto by Bhuwan Bansal on Unsplash

I worked at an independently-owned coffee shop and wine bar. Most of the people working there were young women because my boss was a class-A pig who liked to yell at them and periodically make them cry. Every few weeks, he would find some minor little detail that someone did or didn’t do (grinding flavored beans in the non-flavored grinder, for example) and literally yell at that employee, sometimes in front of customers, calling her stupid, empty-headed, etc. I witnessed these little tantrums on my shifts and I’d always try to help console the poor girl.

One night, I was working with a girl who had just gotten torn apart by him the day prior and she was trying her absolute hardest not to mess anything up to the point where I was actually doing most of the work. It was an evening shift and we “turn into” a wine bar in the evenings, so there were certain things we had to do to prepare for that. Heidi, my coworker, had turned the lights down and we were busy doing other prep work when the phone rang. I answered and the boss said he was watching us over the cameras. He sternly told us to turn the lights down.

I informed him that we’d already done that, but that I’d turn them down even more. I did so and then went on with my work. An hour went by and he suddenly walked through the back door. My stomach sank–he never showed up to the shop later than 2 pm unless something was wrong. He said, “Who turned these lights down”? I told him that I did. He started lecturing me on how to turn the lights down, what the place needed to look like, etc. I just stood there and let him finish his rant. When he was done I said, “I’m sorry that I didn’t turn them down enough. Could we maybe put a line on the light switch, so we know where they should be every night”?

Well, that started another rant! This went on for a good 20 minutes. Customers started watching, and Heidi did her best to stay behind him so as not to somehow evoke his wrath upon her. I, on the other hand, just stood there, letting him yell at me. Each time he would finish one rant, I’d just say something like, “Well, if I’m not doing it right, then there should probably be some regulation”. And it would start him up again, yelling about how there shouldn’t be any regulation because we should be smart enough to figure it out ourselves.

Finally, I just walked away from him. This caused him to blow up: "What do you think you're doing?!" he yelled at me. Very calmly, I said, “You’ve repeated yourself plenty of times. I know what I did wrong and I know how to fix it. I think you just want to yell at me in hopes that I’ll cry so you can feel good about yourself. That’s not going to happen, so there’s no point in me standing here taking this abuse when I could be getting work done”. Surprisingly enough, he actually left the store and never bothered me about stupid stuff again.

anotherworkingstiff

9. Heart-Shaped Box Of Chocolates

red heart shaped and yellow and red heart shaped candies in boxPhoto by Amy Shamblen on Unsplash

I had a manager at a clothing store who just went on a power trip anytime the boss was around. On Valentine’s Day came, I bought one of those huge boxes of chocolate shaped like a heart and put it in the backroom with a note from the boss (who was married), telling her how much he cared for her and how he wished they could spend more time together. I ended the note with his number, and a prompt to call him if she felt the same.

And you know what happened? She did call him. Turns out they had an affair, and the wife found out and left the boss, who in turn fired the manager. I don't know what happened after that since I quit shortly after Valentine's Day, but it still made my day.

permalink

10. Oh Snap

I started work in a new IT role on the same team as another guy who instantly decided he wanted to make me out to be a pathetic, worthless excuse for a man. This was despite the fact that, while we were both in our mid-20s, I had outranked him in the profession and was happily married while he was single and living with his parents.

He used to try to bait me into arguments, so he could rattle off his well-rehearsed right-wing cliches and boast about how I wasn’t a “real man” because I didn’t drink $80 scotch or have a knife collection or whatever. I just ignored it since I already figured I was winning the game of life. One day, he sent me one of his emails to the whole team saying, “If you don’t drink this, you can kiss your manhood goodbye” with a picture of some expensive scotch or something. At that point, I knew exactly how to make him eat his words.

So I replied to all, saying: “You know what else kisses my manhood goodbye? Your mom”. “Oh snap” replies all around. Six months later, I was promoted to head of the team and he was fired.

Scully1981

11. You’re Not The Boss Of Me Anymore

woman in black crew neck shirtPhoto by OSPAN ALI on Unsplash

I was hired on contract by a small three-man start-up to do a particular job. By a year later, after they’d hired a few extras—including a product manager who was technically my boss. I was scratching around for things to do and thinking about moving on. One day, my “boss” (I didn’t like him at all) sat me down and proceeded to explain my next task.

Now I had absolutely no interest at all in this new work—it was mundane, boring work and not at all related to what I was originally hired to do (and since completed). When I tactfully explained that it really wasn’t my area of expertise and I didn’t really have any interest in that type of work, I was taken aback by his response. He told me that I “simply have no choice but to do what I’m told”.

Now, to be clear, it was more of a “How dare you defy me? You’re my property!!!” type of attitude, rather than an “If you want to continue working here, then you will have to work on this” situation, which, by the way, I would not have had any problem with at all. Well, I all but laughed in his face and told him I had no interest in doing it. I could tell he was pissed, and no doubt he was deciding how to get back at me.

But before he had time to engineer his revenge, I had cheerfully informed the CEO that, given I wasn’t actually working on anything, it was my last day. And he was good about it. It felt so good to then inform my “boss” that I was finishing up that day. The look on his face was priceless! I somehow refrained from remarking that I “actually didn’t have to do what he told me after all”...

xev105

12. No Drama, No Fuss

a man sitting at a table in front of a laptopPhoto by Microsoft 365 on Unsplash

I quit. No drama, no fuss. The first time was at my first job out of college where I got some experience. It was a great place to work until a new owner came in and basically gutted all fringe benefits and insisted everyone start working 60+ hours a week. I stayed for around nine weeks while I found a job and then bailed, leaving all my projects for the next guy to pick up.

The next time was at my next job. I had been there several years and a new CEO came in, informing us that he was moving the company to where his family lived. As a result, we were all fired, but he expected us to stay on to close his company. With that one, I just got up and walked out immediately. Some workers criticized me and said I was being irresponsible and “not a team player” by walking out, so I just looked at them and gave them the biggest reality check ever: “You’re continuing to work for a man who just fired you, is expecting you to basically dig your own grave, and who will then throw you to the wolves looking for work when he’s done”.

permalink

13. Boss Caught In A Lie

woman and man sitting in front of monitorPhoto by Desola Lanre-Ologun on Unsplash

I worked in the IT department of a rather large firm. A guy I was sort of friends with who worked a couple of desks down from me had kind of a bad attitude and he ended up getting into a long feud with the tech support manager. In his defense, the tech support manager was, admittedly, a stupid cow. He ended up getting fired over the feud. He called to tell me about it the night it happened (I was working on a project after hours, so I wasn’t there when it happened). The next day, my boss called the department into a meeting to tell us that my pseudo-friend had quit, but because he was in IT and had access to all the passwords, they were not allowed to give him two weeks’ notice.

This was, of course, complete bollocks. Everyone knew that he got fired and that our boss was lying through his teeth. So, fast forward about six months later—I had just come through being scapegoated big time for some stuff I wasn’t even remotely responsible for, and I could see the writing on the wall that they were working on building a case to get me canned. Little did they know that I was prepared to deal with their nonsense. It just so happened that I got a job offer through a referral from a friend that worked at another company. So, when the offer came through for about $6K more, I did a little dance, and then I shut the heck up.

My girlfriend was a flight attendant at the time, so we planned a little last-minute getaway between jobs. The day before we were scheduled to leave for EUROPE, I came into work, did my best to close out all my issues, put out any fires I could (for the sake of my coworkers), and then marched in and handed my boss my letter of resignation, effective immediately. He read the letter and there was a long pause—then he asked me when I wanted my last day to be. I looked at him for a minute, savoring the trap, and reminded him that “because I had access to all the sensitive system passwords, I wasn’t allowed to give or take two weeks’ notice”.

His jaw hit the ground. He muttered some sentence fragments, and it was pretty clear I caught him in a lie. The best part was, while we were living it up in Italy a few weeks later, I checked in on my bank account at a cyber cafe and saw that my direct deposit had cleared a check for the pay period for two weeks after I left. So, even though I didn’t work it, I was given my two weeks’ notice in salary. That extra paycheck essentially paid for an extra week in Europe. And that extra week was by far the best part of the trip.

Ikarian

14. I’ll Do More Than You Asked

woman in white dress shirt and black bowtiePhoto by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

A million years ago, I was waiting tables at my first job. Enter ye old standard awful boss—I could easily talk about what a dumb prick he was, but I’ll skip to the straw that broke the camel’s back. We were short-handed one day, and I was pulling double closing work for my shift (remember, as a waiter, you make $2.63 hourly plus tips, so anything that doesn’t involve tips is essentially just free labor that they can get away with).

After I finished up my work, I ordered and paid for lunch (something I would often do, since half-off is a decent deal). My horrible boss came charging into the side room that employees would use to eat and relax in before and after work and he just effing exploded on me with an off-duty cook watching. I was shocked when he pointed a finger at me—apparently, another employee had simply bailed on their work, and he was blaming me for not having done TRIPLE duty before punching out. Essentially, he told me that if I didn’t do the cleanup and restock before I went home, I would be fired.

I wanted to keep my job, so I did the task, but when it was done, I felt that it could be better. I opened up the ice bin and got another bucket of ice. Then another. And another. I filled the ice bin up to the ceiling, then I went home. I had a message from him waiting for me when I got home, but laughed and went about my day. When I went in to work the next day, I had been fired, then an investigation had taken place and I was rehired. That horrible boss’s hiring and firing privileges were revoked, and he subsequently gave his two weeks’ notice.

sarcastic_cynicism

15. Follow The Clues

background patternPhoto by Taylor Rooney on Unsplash

Back in 2005, I was leaving my job as the night auditor of a hotel to go to school in Arizona. The whole staff, with the exception of the manager and assistant manager, were pretty bummed out because I’d made it my mission in the year and a half that I was there to treat them all like people and not like paid slaves as a lot of the guests and management did.

The day before my flight, I went to Walmart and bought a big bag of Tootsie Pops. I went to the hotel at about 6 o’clock that night and got the set of master keys from my friend working the front desk. Starting with the comments section of a guest reservation for the following day, I left a trail of little riddles all over the grounds of the hotel. The back office, several guest rooms, a closet by the pool, in a bush, you name it. It would require pretty much everyone working to get the game finished before most of the staff went home at 5 pm.

The very last clue led to the maintenance tunnel that bisected nearly the entire building. And at the very end of the tunnel was my piece de resistance—taped to the wall, was a heartfelt goodbye letter and a bag of Tootsie Pops. The letter specifically ended with, “In this bag, I’ve put one Tootsie Pop for every single person that works at this hotel...except for the manager and the assistant manager, because screw them”.

A week later, I called up the hotel when I knew my friend who’d given me the keys that allowed me to set up the game would be working again. She told me that the game was a huge hit. Thanks to the walkie-talkies that we used every day to communicate back and forth, the entire staff (front desk, maintenance, housekeeping, and even the breakfast hostess) had gotten in on it and were following my clues to the prize.

I also called my mom, who worked at the hotel next door (which, funnily enough, was where Assistant Manager had started as a desk clerk). I told her about what I’d done and, after she stopped laughing, she revealed to me that Assistant Manager had been trying for a week to get my new number because “they wanted to talk to me about something”.

TheDemonClown

16. Small Changes Lead To Big Problems

person in black suit jacket holding white tablet computerPhoto by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

My father is a project manager working on financial programs for banks and financial companies. A lot of the stuff he does is projects for programs that basically do the accounting and back-end management of money for large companies. We're talking about programs that manage and account for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Basically, as is standard in the financial industry, his bosses were complete idiots with no understanding of coding and the amount of effort it takes. My dad found out his job was getting outsourced as he was finishing up a huge project; from what he told me, it was something like $100K+ lines of code. He saw the perfect opportunity to exact his revenge—he went in and added three lines of code that messed up the whole program, and told them that they could figure out what was wrong with it themselves. I hope to one day live up to such awesomeness.

longhorn617

17. I Don’t Know

laptop computers on top of tablePhoto by Jason Leung on Unsplash

I had worked for a family-owned computer reseller for five years when greener corporate pastures called. I gave the required two weeks’ notice and the owner of the reseller called the CEO of the company for which I was going to work and got my departure delayed by two weeks. They got everyone in the company to take me aside and tell me how big of a mistake I was making, blah blah blah, generally making my life miserable for those two weeks. When I left, I got even with them, making sure they got a taste of their own medicine. changed the entire internal networks’ passwords to “I don't know”. When they called to ask me what the passwords were, I told them the truth.

niblet01

18. Nothing Fancy

orange and white medication pillPhoto by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

I worked with a supreme jerk for a few months in my early 20s. He's one of those guys that tells stories to try and impress other people, but really he just ends up making himself look like a villain (cheating on his girlfriend, beating people up for fun, selling substances). It was a boring, mindless job, so I took it all in stride; in one ear, out the other...until the night I discovered his secret side hustle.

He was selling pills right in the middle of the store, amongst the eight to 12 security cameras. I didn’t pull any superhero moves to get him busted, just reported to the owner (whose son is a sheriff), who watched the tapes. The jerk was gone within hours. Felt okay.

PuffyTaco

19. No Key

three person holding beverage cupsPhoto by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Before you ask, I was dealing with a crippling inferiority complex and some pretty bad depression, which is why I didn’t do anything sooner. I used to work for this local coffee and sandwich place down in Florida. There were multiple locations and the one I worked at was in a library. We would regularly be short on supplies or change or something, but it was the only job I had been able to find and it could have been worse, so I dealt with it.

Then they moved all of my hours to a different location, half an hour away from my home, in a hospital. It was the only source of food for hospital employees (they only had kitchens for the patients). I thought it would be fine, but it turned out to be an even bigger nightmare. I routinely had to go to the grocery store to make sure we had something to feed the people in the hospital. I’d be reimbursed for the cost of the groceries, but never gas, and usually I would be yelled at for getting “the wrong thing” no matter how often I tried to compare it to what we had on hand.

They had always ignored lots of labor laws, but it got way out of hand here. I would be literally the only person on shift for eight or more hours, so no breaks. Ever. Bathroom breaks had to be fast and I had to run because the cash register was stuck open and the owner refused to give me a key to lock up or to fix it. He would even have me open and would scream at me for being “late” even though he knew I had no key. For a while, he made me have security let me in until security put their foot down and pointed out that it wasn’t their job. He had to come himself, and he didn’t like that, so eventually, he give me a key.

I worked way more than 40 hours a week and never saw a dime of overtime, but I couldn’t find any other jobs, so I toughed it out. Then, suddenly, out of the blue, he cut my hours. At first, I was glad to only work 20ish hours for a little while, but then it kept on going. Eventually, he had me working about 5 hours every other week. So I told a coworker who worked before me that I wasn’t showing up on a certain day and then I didn’t. I found out much later that he does this regularly to people to drive them to quit, so he doesn’t have to fire them and pay unemployment.

Disgusting.

Matriss

20. Centralized IT Department

grayscale photo of person using laptop computerPhoto by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

I used to do IT work for a large university. A few years back, they decided that having specific IT people assigned to specific departments, and being paid by those departments, was a bad idea. Everything would be better if IT were centralized, then parsed back out to the departments (I argued that it was better to be paid and accountable to the people you were supposed to be helping, but that wasn’t really the goal in hindsight). In many places, that might work. At this place, it was going to be a disaster for reasons that aren’t relevant to the story.

I knew it was going to be a mess and didn’t want to work someplace where a user was required to fill out a ticket before I could even look at their problem, so I decided to leave. I found another job and gave my two weeks’ notice. As I was cleaning out my office on my last day, a professor came running down the hallway in a panic. I could feel my heartbeat getting faster.

This guy had been a huge pain in my behind for years. He was a jerk, he was condescending, he thought he knew anything that mattered about computers, etc. The standard blow-hard. I also knew he had been one of the biggest proponents of switching up how IT worked, and that on at least two occasions, he’d suggested that the best way to save money for the department would be to cut my position.

He always claimed that a central system would lead to faster response times, etc., so while I had always been professional with him, there really was no love lost (although I don’t think he knew I was aware of all the stuff he’d said in faculty meetings). Anyway, back to the story. He was huffing and puffing down the hallway, and when he got to me he said, “Oh, Derp, I’m so glad I caught you before you left. I’m giving a big presentation in 30 minutes to the administration! My computer won’t turn on, and my only copy of my presentation is on there!” I told him, “I’m sure if you fill out a ticket with the central IT desk, someone will be with you shortly”.

He just stopped in his tracks, and I think he suddenly pieced together that I knew exactly what things he’d been saying when I wasn’t around. He turned beet red and walked down the hall back to his lab and slammed the door shut. His computer wasn’t fixed in time.

alcimedes

21. Firing The Hardest Worker

person in red and white long sleeve shirt slicing meatPhoto by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash

I was a right-hand girl at a small local grocery store. He fired me for a lot of poor reasons, none being the one that was offered to me (“not living up to expectations”, expectations which he never bothered to share with me—it had more to do with the up-and-coming required pay raise). So I let myself get fired and left him to deal with the fact that the other employee did nothing but talk with customers all day. But that's not all—I was the only one who could deal with the many substance users, not to mention the fridge and freezer cleaning, and his wife—a skinny woman who worked with her mouth rather than her body—was to take over where I left off. Good luck, and good riddance!

GreenGlassDrgn

22. Taxes Not Reported

woman sits on the barPhoto by Alex Voulgaris on Unsplash

I was the manager of a nightclub. One morning, I got a phone call from the assistant manager saying my services were no longer required and that he was taking over my position at the request of the owner. So, I rang repeatedly to ask why I’d lost my job and I couldn’t get through. The owner was always unavailable. I rang every hour for 2 days. In the end, after coming to the realization that I’d been screwed over, I rang the inland revenue and asked if I was due a rebate.

They had no knowledge of me working in the place despite the owners telling me I was paying tax and national insurance that was taken from my wages each week. I was also issued a wage slip each week. So I reported him—and he got exactly what he deserved. I told the inland revenue his name, how many bars he owned including the names, what car he drove, how many staff he had working for him, and a description. Two months later, he had to sell up and move on. A few of his other bars closed down not long after that.

Marble-Boy

23. A Series Of Small Pranks

woman holding clear drinking glassPhoto by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

I worked in a coffee shop and my manager was a scumbag. He had two open cases against him for harassing my coworkers, constantly making people work 10- to 12-hour shifts, making me close at 11 pm and open the next day at 3:30 am, giving us no breaks, serving spoiled food to customers, changing our temperature logs so we wouldn’t get in trouble with corporate, serving burnt hours-old coffee, and so on.

I started doing all sorts of pranks to feel like a little bit of vengeance was taken. They were little victories, but they were oh-so-good. When he would go into the office, I would put salt in his coffee, smear jelly, and sometimes put jelly donuts under his car door handles. I asked friends who stopped in to park extremely close to his driver-side door if I knew he was leaving soon so he’d have to crawl in the back, I changed the password on the office computer so he couldn’t play solitaire when he was supposed to be helping us during rushes.

We were forced to fill out receipt surveys pretending we were customers, so I would put really negative ones about him specifically. In my last month, I stopped caring and I would yell at him to stop screwing around. He was from India and wasn’t used to women, especially a 19-year-old girl, being so aggressive and not taking his nonsense.

permalink

24. Pizza Delivery Boy

sliced pizza on white ceramic platePhoto by The Nix Company on Unsplash

Not too long ago, I was a delivery boy for an Italian restaurant. My boss paid us under the table with table scraps; $6 an hour to be exact. We had to use our own cars, we weren’t given mileage, and he decided when he wanted to pay us. The people who worked there were all jerks and insulted me on a regular basis, yet they demanded I do favors for them while on deliveries. The boss had some of the most broken English ever and he got frustrated when you didn’t understand him. He would flip out when little things went wrong. He “bag-tagged” the staff on random occasions and spoke to us like children. He was a loose cannon with no remorse.

Finally, one day after taking up an offer on a new job where I currently work as a Tech Support Analyst, I was threatened because I wasn’t focusing on my work (I busted my rear for them, constantly, this being the one exception). That's when I put my foot down. I looked at the cook and asked him if he knew how much I cared about this job.

I told him I was doing them a favor by staying there because I didn’t need the job, the harassment, or to put up with being berated by a bunch of ignorant losers who think they’re hot stuff even though they’ve worked in a pizza shop for the last 20 years of their lives. I’ve never seen anyone’s jaw drop so low. Oh, and the boss? He was in Italy on vacation, so he got to find out about losing his fastest/best driver when he got back.

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25. A Grand Exit Speech

File:Walmart-supercentre-canada 129858013133613481.JPG - Wikimedia ...commons.wikimedia.org

I worked at Walmart as a cart pusher. You know how in Office Space, the guy has eight bosses who all curse him out for one mistake? Well, I was scapegoated for mistakes done by others, which I would have to then solve. They were primarily maintenance issues. Surprisingly, I loved the customers. Being a cart pusher, I mostly dealt with old people asking for electric carts. I’ve always been polite and I always smile when dealing with customers. We had a few regulars who took the time to learn my name, and I had a fun time working there for them. Sadly, my boss would put an end to all that happiness.

Fast forward a month, and my bosses were all awful to me. I was only going to be there for the summer due to leaving for college. I think a few of the people immediately above me resented me because they had wasted their lives away, and now worked full-time at Walmart. Suddenly, after being treated like just an instrument rather than a person, they cut my hours severely. I decided enough was enough. My pride was worth more than the minimum wage they were giving me. I quit when I was the only person working on the 1st of the month, just before a holiday. My exit speech was a little bit plagiarized from The Cask of Amontillado. It felt great.

permalink

26. The Worst Option

grey flat screen computer monitorPhoto by Eftakher Alam on Unsplash

For a while, I worked as a web designer in a small ad agency serving a very niche industry. Previously, the design team had no creative lead and were all sort of operating independently across varying clients. We decided to hire a creative director to fill that gap, and I was given the task of sorting through and giving first-round interviews to find the person who would later become my supervisor.

Two candidates in particular stood out from the rest for very different reasons. One was exceptionally talented, an all-around nice guy, and somebody who generally would have been great for the role. The other (let’s call him John) had mediocre talent and came across as an insufferable and arrogant prick, but he had previous experience working within the niche industry that we serviced. He also had contacts within that industry that could lead to new business. Despite my strong recommendation to not hire John, his relationships in the industry were too compelling for our agency’s leadership to pass up, so they hired him.

It didn’t take long before the company realized he was a nightmare. He had virtually zero experience in anything related to digital design. Design for apps, websites, mobile, etc. was all completely and utterly beyond his grasp, but he used his position of relative power to make decisions on those projects that the entire design team refused to support, most of which came back to bite the company in the rear end later.

The design team hated him because fixing and working around his screw-ups became part of our daily routine. The sales team hated him because he’d claim it took him unbelievably exaggerated amounts of time to complete even the most trivial of tasks (for example, four days to design a business card template), so they wouldn’t even assign him projects anymore.

Work that was clearly his responsibility started to rapidly trickle down to the rest of the design team. We’d be working late nights four out of five days a week because all of his projects that were in danger of missing deadlines would be reassigned to us. Meanwhile, he’d be the first to walk out the door every day, right at 5 pm, without fail. On top of all that, the guy was, without a doubt, the biggest tool I’ve ever met. Always right about everything, completely unbending on his idiotic opinions, and completely clueless that literally, every person in the building wished he would get hit by a truck.

I genuinely tried to work with him for about a year, until I decided that the job had become intolerable because of him and it wasn’t going to change any time soon, so I turned in my two weeks’ notice. About a month after I left, I was informed of a shocking new development—he had been let go from the job. Shortly after that, I noticed that he had changed his LinkedIn status to show that he was working for a new agency I had never heard of, also servicing that same niche industry.

I looked them up, and quickly figured out that he had started his own agency... a primarily digital agency... when he had NO experience in digital or interactive design and had literally messed up every digital/interactive project he’d ever been on (I know because most of them were reassigned to me when he proved incapable of doing them himself). I looked at the portfolio on his website and found literally project after project of my work. He was using my work from the ad agency as an example of the work his agency could produce.

I briefly considered contacting him and requesting he remove my work from his portfolio for ethical reasons. But I could already hear his reply in my head: “As creative lead, all work done by my team is an extension of my creative direction”. He’d used similar lines in the past to insert himself into receiving credit on successful projects he’d had zero involvement on.

So instead I sent an email to one of the partners of the agency we both had worked for, saying something along the lines of, “Hey, not sure if you’ve noticed this, but it looks like John is using your company’s intellectual property to directly compete against you... If I had to guess, I’d assume his next step would be to make a move at your client list”.

The reply was short and sweet: “Thanks for bringing this to my attention. He’ll be hearing from our attorney in the morning”. John’s website was brought down less than 24 hours later.

dr_tantis_moboggan

27. Not Lying In Court

man in black shirt sitting beside woman in white shirtPhoto by Saúl Bucio on Unsplash

I had a six-month school internship at a mobile phone store. The boss was a total jerk that treated his school interns like full-paid workers (even gave me some concerning money responsibilities). A while after the internship, he called to tell me I would have to give a statement in court. He had a problem with some customer and a shipment and he planned to tell the court that he explained everything to me concerning shipping precisely.

Of course, he didn’t. And of course, I didn’t lie in front of the judge. My boss’s attorney gave me a look I will never forget when he realized his stupid plans didn’t work out. A few weeks later, my now ex-boss tried to call me again. I didn’t pick up. Screw this guy.

overbread

28. Crushed Lunches

fruit saladsPhoto by Ella Olsson on Unsplash

Someone in my office would always crush lunches with his gigantic lunch box. Either he ate bricks or lead, I don’t know, but I always came to the office fridge and found that my lunch was in pieces. So, after three bouts of this, and numerous notes from myself and other colleagues, I decided to teach him a lesson—I carefully removed his lunch box, emptied the contents (a gigantic sandwich, a Twinkie, chips, some vegetable pieces, and a few other bits), and ran over them with my car. I carefully packed it back in and put it back.

He kept his lunch in a cooler by his cube from then on.

AR3Leatherworks

29. Can’t Take Credit For That Work

black corded electronic devicePhoto by Stephen Phillips - Hostreviews.co.uk on Unsplash

My coworker was always complaining and always lazy with his work, yet he got recognition for the simplest things he would actually do. He also took credit for a full day’s work that was pretty much all me. I always got ignored. So one day, I came in early and exacted my revenge—I unplugged his ethernet jack just barely to the point it looked like it was still plugged into his computer.

For four hours, he couldn’t do any work. Meanwhile, I got my work done, and he couldn’t take any credit for it since everyone knew he didn’t have internet access. Halfway through the day, he left on the break. I plugged his internet back in and bam, just like that, it was working. By then, he couldn’t claim my work, and I began to get noticed more.

sippistar

30. Rigging The Toilet

white toilet bowl with cisternPhoto by Jan Antonin Kolar on Unsplash

I worked as a mechanic at Pep Boys several years ago. The service manager was a complete menace that regularly cost me money because he would give all of the good jobs to mechanics that he liked better. While I worked there, some of us discovered that if the drainage pipes in the shop were pressurized, the toilet would shoot water out of the bowl. That's when I had my eureka moment.

The day that I quit, I waited until he went into the bathroom to take a dump. I filled up a Cheetah (a device used to seat a tire onto a wheel) and released about 200psi all at once into the drainage pipe. The toilet spewed water and poop everywhere, the manager screamed and then comes storming out of the bathroom COVERED in excrement.

Zappiticas

31. The One-Upper

2 women sitting at tablePhoto by LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash

A woman I work with literally copied this great story that I tell about me being in the same hospital at the same time that my niece was born. She tells it as if it was her husband and she was in the hospital giving birth. She’s a known one-upper; everything you do she did it better, faster, it was worse for her, etc.—so it didn’t surprise me when a coworker told me she regularly tells clients that story. She likes to play games—but I do too.

Every single day as I get in, I pour a tiny bit of my water bottle out on her desk, chair, or on the carpet somewhere in her office. In my mind, mold is slowly growing in her office, her skirt gets wet when she sits down, and any fresh documents she sits on her desk get sat right in a small puddle of water.

b8le

32. Truth Prevails

File:Chipotle Brandon.jpeg - Wikimedia Commonscommons.wikimedia.org

Last year when I was working at Chipotle, one of the assistant managers got on my last nerve. He would just sit in the office on his phone gossiping or screaming in Spanish all day, and if something needed to be done, he’d always make one of us do it, no matter how long the line was. He’d take breaks for over an hour when we were allowed 30 minutes, and he would blame other people for things that went wrong.

One night AFTER I left for work, disaster apparently struck and we got lots of bad reviews. I came back to work the next day and my manager sat me down to discuss all of the things I did wrong. The assistant manager told me, “I don’t want you to lose your job, but you need to do better” and that was a wrap.

I find out he somehow blamed me for everything HE did wrong. At that point, I was done taking his nonsense. So instead of making a scene, since I’m the quiet one who just listens instead of causing drama, I took my assistant manager aside and told her how it really happened, getting other coworkers that hated him to back me up. They reviewed the security cameras and he got fired the next day. I saw him about a week later at the neighborhood grocery store and it was mad awkward because I don’t think he realized quiet little me was the one that got him fired.

Bid325

33. The Power Of Caterers

dumplings platterPhoto by Saile Ilyas on Unsplash

One time, I was working a small event at the convention center as a banquet server. After we had loaded in and set up, I was one of three servers working the event of about 100 people. There was a buffet. The local weatherman was there, but he demanded I bring him a plate. Pretty rude, but I went and got one for him anyway. Then he demanded that I fill his coffee. There was one on the table—it was a self-serve event—but I poured his coffee anyway. He was still being very rude.

Then this weirdo demanded that I cut his chicken for him. That was the final straw. So I asked how old he was, exactly who he thought he was, and who he thought I must be to take his mistreatment. I then took his plate and announced to the entire room that if I see this man-child eating or drinking ANYTHING, I would take all the coffee, and all the food back, and end the event. He left hungry. Don’t mess with catering.

stagehand473

34. Stacy, not STACEY

woman in black long sleeve shirt covering her face with her handsPhoto by Elisa Ventur on Unsplash

My first name is Stacy with no E. One of my biggest pet peeves is having people spell it wrong. I worked with a woman named Lesa. Not the normal Lisa, but Lesa. We worked on a project together and she had to email me several times a day. Each time she spelled my name STACEY.

It didn’t seem to matter that my signature was spelled without an E or that Outlook had it spelled without an E. She ALWAYS put the E in it and it drove me nuts. I finally admitted to her that it bothered me. She apologized. I figured with an oddly spelled name, she’d be extra sensitive to it. Nope. The very next email she sent, less than an hour later, she spelled it wrong again. So, I gave her the exact same courtesy—from that moment on, any time I wrote her an email or referred to her in a group email, I typed Lisa. It still gives me great satisfaction that I did that.

gonewildecat

35. Mysterious Moving Filing Cabinet

a library with a circular seating area and lots of booksPhoto by Harry Cunningham on Unsplash

I was a work-study student in my college’s IT department for four years, including summers. I did just about everything in the department, and I had a great relationship with my coworkers. But in my last year, they hired a full-time basic support guy, who immediately started acting like he knew everything. He also acted like was in charge of me, when I spent literally all of my time training him and doing damage control on his attempts to help.

We shared a desk, which infuriated me because even outside of work, I would not have liked this guy. He was a Grade-A misogynist, a complete loser...basically, every bad IT stereotype rolled into one annoying package. I wanted him to feel pain, and pain he felt indeed. Under our desk, we shared a filing cabinet. Every time he did something to bother me, which was pretty much every day, I’d inch the filing cabinet over so when he’d sit down and roll his chair forward, he’d bang his left knee off the sharp corner. He never figured it out. He’d just swear and slide it over a little. Dumb as a post, that one.

carlyrosey

36. He Needed His Caffeine

clear glass cup on saucerPhoto by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

When I was working as a barista, we had a regular who would come in a couple of times a week and act like an entitled jerk to all the employees. His sense of entitlement was really something else—would always order a double espresso with his meal, claiming he was “very busy and needed his caffeine” and insist we serve it to him after his meal. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but he would never tell us when he was finished eating; he would expect us to keep an eye on him and bring it as soon as he was finished (this was not a café with table service, by the way).

He would obnoxiously clear his throat and make snide comments at us until we noticed and brought it to him, where he would complain about the terrible service and not tip.

I always gave him decaf.

UncomfortablyDumb31

37. The Deli Worker’s Trick

man in black t-shirt standing in front of counterPhoto by Ceyda Çiftci on Unsplash

I work in the deli and when we weigh food on the scale, it usually takes a bit off because of cup weight (usually .04lbs). Anyway, if you put the lid on, it won’t take the weight of it off, so it adds .01lbs to it. If people are being rude to me, I use this to my advantage—I just put the lid on and then print the price tag out so they have to pay a slightly extra amount of money. A very small screw you.

PM_ME_YURI_PLS

38. Accidental Victory

person holding baby's index fingerPhoto by Aditya Romansa on Unsplash

I quit a job in a place I liked because of disgust for the new management (they were dishonest, judged people by brown-nosing instead of competence, etc.). I resigned seven days after my first child was born—that should show you how desperate I was. By total coincidence, my new employer was in the same building, one floor above. Within four years, a total of eight people have moved from the old to the new company—basically bleeding them dry of talent.

The dumb boss of the old place gets very nervous when he sees us talking to any of his remaining employees in the elevator. But the best part of it all, karma-wise: I didn’t do this on purpose/out of spite—it just happened.

sphere23

39. A Different Kind Of Windows Start-Up Noise

File:Windows logo - 2012 derivative.svg - Wikimedia Commonscommons.wikimedia.org

I once channeled my inner 12-year-old and set a coworker’s (good friend) Windows start-up sound to a sound file of the juiciest flatulence I could find then cranked his speaker up before he got to work. The results were oh-so-satisfying. Once he got in, the dead silence in the office was abruptly broken with a giant PFFFFFFFTTTT, which was quickly followed by fellow officemates yelling at him for being nasty. I was crying from laughing so hard.

sweatlizard

40. Mr. Sci-Fi

grayscale photo of books on shelvesPhoto by Sean Benesh on Unsplash

I used to work at a video store in the '80s, and there was a guy who worked with us who was the biggest leech. He was so lazy—he couldn’t do anything, he ignored the customers, etc. He was into sci-fi, so he’d show up for his shift, pop in Star Trek or Star Wars, and then literally just lean against the counter and watch TV the whole time and not do one bit of work.

Finally, the assistant manager and I devised an ingenious scheme. When we saw that he was scheduled with one (or both) of us, we’d grab either The Sound of Music (running time: 2 hours, 54 minutes) or Gone With The Wind (running time: 3 hours, 58 minutes), depending on how long his shift was. Five minutes before he’d arrive and clock in, we’d pop in one of those movies, and boom—three to four hours of uninterrupted work from Mr. Sci-Fi. He’d finally pull his weight out of sheer boredom.

emergencycat17

41. Restricted Cheez-Its

File:Cheez-It-Crackers.jpg - Wikimedia Commonscommons.wikimedia.org

I was the coworker who had his revenge upon me. I had played a few pranks on a couple of friendly coworkers over the past month or so. They really got me good—I came to work one day to find they had convinced the vending machine guy to put my favorite coffee cup on top of my favorite snack in the machine. Thus, I couldn’t have my favorite snack (Cheez-Its) for two weeks and had to keep an eye on the machine constantly to make sure no one else got them, for fear of breaking my favorite mug.

It was well played.

JRKORA

42. Computer Crashing

man using IP phone inside roomPhoto by Berkeley Communications on Unsplash

I worked at a company that did phone surveys. Probably 250 employees worked there at any given time. During one shift, my prick boss pushed and then tripped me—a practical joke gone awry. I was frustrated, but I collected myself and came up with the sweetest revenge. I had worked there for many years and ran system backups on the weekend. Nothing fancy, just babysit the computers after typing in a few lines of Unix commands. Thanks in part to this, I had just enough access to the system to crash the entire dialing floor for three hours. 250 employees just sitting, doing nothing, being paid on crunch day.

I didn’t get in trouble. Felt good, man.

316nuts

43. Using Their Words Against Them

people sitting on chairPhoto by Redd F on Unsplash

Our company was giving us employees an appreciation lunch and had requested a small group of employees to plan and execute the event. On the day of the event, upper management got a stick up their behinds and decided that the planning committee was using up too much company time. They told us that any of us who worked during the luncheon (serving and cleaning up) would have to do it on our lunch breaks or stay late to make up the time. We, of course, found this unacceptable.

Prior to the luncheon, we had a huge meeting where all the managers and bigwigs praised all the workers for a job well done, etc.—and at the end, asked if anyone had any questions or comments. That's when I took my shot. I stood up and in a very friendly manner said that we needed managers to volunteer to serve the luncheon. All you heard were crickets for about ten seconds and then a lot of whispering and scrambling as upper management made lowermanagement raise their hands. It was so awesome to see them all using their lunch hour to serve us!

thatgirl153

44. Only A Small Adjustment

graphs of performance analytics on a laptop screenPhoto by Luke Chesser on Unsplash

I used to have to report website usage, ROI, and all sorts of statistics for a bunch of different sites. I built an elaborate beast of a spreadsheet in which you only put a few numbers and it would calculate just about everything the company would need. It was a bit too complicated for my idiot boss to understand, yet he would take it to clients and brag he made it, which infuriated me.

Then, after a while, he realized that the spreadsheet was all he needed and that could use my paycheck to buy a new house. So he laid me off. I told him he might need help with the spreadsheet, but he said he was smart enough. Before I took off, I made sure his life without me would be a nightmare...by changing a single formula in the spreadsheet and had a good laugh about the reports it spat out, which made no sense at all anymore.

ihatetowait

45. 60 Days

three women sitting beside tablePhoto by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

The company I worked at for many years fired me without warning. My boss was a strange guy, and I had seen him fire other people without warning as well. He always offered to let people stay on for 60 days until they could find new work. But they would have to sign a document stating that they were “voluntarily” walking off the job and waiving all rights to unemployment.

When he fired me, he also gave me the option. I did not accept, as it seemed a lot better of a deal to have unemployment in case I could not find work within the 60 days. The company tried to appeal my unemployment, but my case was foolproof—after several years of loyal service, the only black marks on my record were being less than 15 minutes late to work three times. I let the judge in the unemployment hearing know that they offered to keep me on if I had signed away my right to unemployment. She let me know that it was against the law to do so, and ruled in my favor.

Every weekly unemployment deposit was like a tiny victory until I found a new job.

camfunction

46. Computer Company In The '60s

black and white ip desk phone on brown wooden deskPhoto by Ugi K. on Unsplash

This is not my story, but my father’s. He was working hard in an early IT company (back in the late-'60s). This was back when IBM was still known as International Business Machines. He was the only one who knew how to support and manage some of the large microcomputers that some of the customers had. His boss was giving him grief over him wanting personal leave; but my mother was just about to give birth to her first child, my eldest brother.

He didn’t even want to allow my father to leave when my mother went into labor. So naturally, my father lost his temper. He told him how incompetent he was, how he was riding on other people’s talent, and then he quit right there and then and left for the hospital. I still remember my mother telling me that my father came in, congratulated her on the birth, and told her he had just quit his job. She laughs about it now, but you can imagine how she felt!

A day later, the owner of the company called my father and offered him his old boss’s job. The kicker? The old boss now had to report to my dad. That’s got to hurt.

omaca

47. A Sandwich You’ll Regret Eating

blue and white plastic bottlePhoto by 莎莉 彭 on Unsplash

Someone kept taking my lunch at work, and me being the pacifist that I am, I decided to just mention it casually to my wife. I didn’t think it was a big deal, but these were the sandwiches that SHE made for me every day. So, she decided to make a very special sandwich for me...which consisted of bread and toothpaste. I put it in the fridge and after lunch, it was gone. I don’t know if the sandwich was actually consumed, but I told HR about it and they thought it was so awesome, they gave me a $20 gift card to Outback Steakhouse.

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48. You Were Warned

silver and blue click penPhoto by Liviu C. on Unsplash

A coworker chewed on everything from pens and pencils to safety goggles. I warned him to stop, but he just made a joke out of it by chewing even more. Little did he know that I'd soon have the last laugh. Everyone except him watched as I rubbed the pen all over a particular area of my rear end and then handed it to him and said “DO NOT CHEW ON THIS PEN”. Straight into his mouth, it went. The whole shop erupted in laughter and he began spitting like crazy. Notice was served and the chewing immediately stopped. If you mess with the bull, you may get the horns...

Doodle1959

49. Getting Off The Roof

a man standing on the roof of a housePhoto by Zohair Mirza on Unsplash

I was about 18 and working doing residential roofing for a summer job. I had never installed clay or tile shingles before, so my boss told me to watch one of the other guys for a few minutes to get the hang of it. No less than two minutes later, he started screaming (literally screaming; the guy had anger issues) asking why I was standing around and not working. So I grabbed some tiles and started shooting them down.

Since I still had really no idea of what I was doing, I, of course, shattered the first two tiles I tried to shoot down. My boss came over and started screaming at me again for breaking tiles. But that's not even the worst thing he did—he then proceeded to PUSH ME OFF THE ROOF! Granted the fall was only about 10 feet, but it still could’ve finished me. At that point, I was fuming mad and decided I was done with that jerk. As I was packing up my gear, I could hear him cursing me at the other guys on the roof.

As I was walking off of the job, I noticed this moron standing on one of the air hoses running from his nail gun to the air compressor on the ground. In one swift movement, I grabbed the air hose and yanked it hard toward the ground. He came tumbling down off of the roof and landed in a pile.

As I was getting into my Jeep, I heard him threatening to call the cops on me. The foreman came up to him and pointed out how foolish he would look when all of the guys on the crew clearly saw him stumble and fall off on his own. It was glorious to hear that freak ranting and screaming at all of us as I rode off. I realize that I probably committed assault, but turnabout is fair play as far as I am concerned.

Arkitekt4040

50. Desktop Shortcut For Solitaire

white and blue floral framePhoto by micheile henderson on Unsplash

A lady on our team never did any work. Instead, she would whine her way out of stuff or go on endless lunch breaks where she just played solitaire. Eventually, it got to the point where we were uninstalling the games from her computer accounts via the local admin accounts. One day, I noticed she STILL had one game on her PC, even after we removed the default ones.

That same day, she left the office and left her PC logged in—a rookie mistake that I planned on exploiting. I got on her PC and found the game linked on the desktop. I went to the shortcut properties and changed everything so that when she clicked on the game, it would open the Wikipedia page on work ethic instead of the game. She doesn’t play games in the office anymore.

Rasalom