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I worked for a company for just under 5 years. The company I worked for existed for an additional 10 years prior to me. While I worked at this company, it ballooned to be the number one provider in the region for its unique service with about 75% of the market. It was a small business of about 15 employees.
I loved my job and the skills I learned while working there were quite valuable. I loved my team, and the clients we provided services for. My twice yearly reviews with the owner were always 10/10 with no recommendations for improvement. I was exceptional at my job in every way. I handled company operations, HR/payroll, customer service, marketing, employee management, schedules, employee and client training, and many other things at this company. I was also able to step in and do any of my teammates jobs if they were out sick or on vacation.
The owner of the company was giving out a bonus in fall last year and mine, while being more than previous years, was notably less than my teammates. I asked owner, "Are the bonuses related to performance, and if so, what could I have done to earn more?"
Owner replied, "The bonuses are not performance related, you are just more replaceable than the others."
"Oh, okay," I replied and I proceeded to process each of the bonuses then went to lunch. I called my spouse to gain wisdom and advice. I was pretty lit but didn't want to make a rash decision.
My spouse is very intelligent and, while they are not a fortuneteller, they have an ability to foresee various responses and all the potential outcomes. They are business wise and have been on the executive team of a large company for the past 21 years while also serving on several community boards and business advisory boards.
We decided together to continue forward with our scheduled vacation and use the time away to calm our minds, relax, have fun, and to also determine the best course of action for me. We were leaving after working one more day, so I worked like all was normal the rest of the day and the following day, then left on vacation.
While away we discussed several scenarios, the potential outcomes, consulted with a business advisor and a business attorney. With all the advice I received I determined that upon my return from vacation, I would resign from my role with a two week notice. However, in a fit of rage I was immediately terminated by owner. Which was one of the scenarios we thought would happen, so I was prepared for owner's poor reaction.
During the next couple weeks, I created and opened a competing business offering similar services. However; I offered more customizable options with higher quality service and results. I knew our clients wanted these options and had proposed said options several times at old workplace but was never green lighted to implement the changes for no reason other than owner didn't come up with the idea so it was a stupid idea.
I also maintained communications with a few people from my old team. My old team did not relay the day to day happenings at my previous workplace and I never asked about the company; however, they would vent to me on occasion. I would listen without comment. I knew service, quality, and the work environment in general suffered since my departure. Moral went down and clients were less satisfied. I also read the Google and Facebook reviews for old company. Yikes!
Additionally, two full time and one part time persons were hired to fill my role and a portion of my responsibilities, like HR and payroll, were filled by outside companies.
I quickly built up my business and within 3 months was able to hire several of my old teammates. They were able to jump in on day one with minimal training as they were the best employees at my old workplace. The quality of previous workplace's offerings continued to fall which sent additional business my way and quickly caused incoming work to be nonexistent at old workplace.
My old workplace went from being the number one provider of unique service in the region to nothing in a matter of months.
My previous employer is now searching for gainful employment. I know this because over the weekend they applied for a position at my spouse's company. Side note: I think my spouse's company should bring my previous employer in for an interview but when they arrive, surprise! I'm the interviewer and all I say is, "How replaceable am I now?" My spouse, rightfully so, has said, "No."
Moral of the story, don't tell your employees they are replaceable because they might create a competing business that is better than yours, while taking your best employees and your clients which will leave you with no business to sell (owner's whole retirement plan was to sell business) and starting all over by searching for employment under someone else.
Tried to throw me under the proverbial bus, ran herself over.
I was building an online training module at work that is intended to teach existing users how to work a new process. It has interactive elements, quizzes, segments to work through a few sample scenarios, etc. Now we'd recently got a new Associate Director who from what I can tell advanced through the company by throwing other people under the bus. She gets promoted not for her own merits, but because at the end of the day she has less mud sticking to her than other applicants. It's uncanny to the point that there simply had to be more to it than stupid office politics. I'll get to that in a bit.
So after I have the first draft of the module done it gets sent out for the usual round of testing, and there are of course a couple things that need to be corrected. (I build the module off the notes the subject matter experts leave me, and a few things inevitably get lost in translation). But this new Associate Director just rips it to shreds, complaining that it's completely incomprehensible, needs to go into much greater detail, asking questions about nearly every individual mouse click in the sample scenarios, and overall stating that it's impossible to follow. The thing is, this module is intended for our finance department, for people who have a background in finance, and have already been trained on how to use our internal software. She is a training services Associate Director, with a teaching background. The module isn't supposed to make sense to a former middle school social studies teacher, it's supposed to make sense to people with finance degrees.
I push back and try explaining this to her in a million different ways, but she's having none of it. So I have to go back to the Subject Matter Experts with her ~20 pages worth of criticism. And at first they think I'm joking. I had to forward her email before they finally believed me. So for the next two weeks we're going over every nuance, including re-addressing everything that was covered during their three-week classroom training. How to set up their network drives, how to set up Outlook, including things as nuanced as "If you don't know how to set up your email signature, click here..." I mean really basic, BASIC stuff that has nothing to do with what the module was originally supposed to teach. But I now had to include it all because our new Associate Director couldn't find the on switch if you stapled her finger to it. This wastes my time, the Subject Matter Expert's time, and time spent re-recording all the voice work. (If you've done voice work in the past, you know you NEVER get it in one take.) After it's all done, I send it back out for review and approval, and the Associate Director simply doesn't respond.
A week passes.
The finance director takes an interest in why this module is almost a month overdue. I go to forward the Associate Director's email again...except now I can't find it. Odd, seeing as how I have a hoarding problem when it comes to email. I check with one of the Subject Matter Experts I was working with, he can't find it either. Turns out, none of us can find it. It's gone... So I check with a friend of mine in IT who--after a little detective work--discovers that a week ago someone did a compliance delete on the exchange server. This basically is a seek and destroy for messages meeting certain criteria. In this case, a specific phrase she used in her email. I start digging through Outlook trying to find particular emails related to this that might be used to defend my actions...and they're all gone. Inbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items. Every last one of them. Any email containing that particular phrase anywhere in it. This kind of thing is normally used by admins to mass-delete spam or phishing emails from all users at once. Except in this case someone apparently deleted emails that showed evidence of her awful decisions.
My friend in IT can smell a juicy story a mile away and was VERY interested in seeing where this went. She recovered the deleted emails and I promptly saved them to a flash drive. For the next few days, every time I had any email with this Associate Director's name on it (even unrelated stuff, you never know how something might fit together), I saved a copy to the flash drive. I informed the Subject Matter Experts to do the same, and we started building our offline evidence locker. I didn't want to blow the lid on it just yet, I wanted to see if my suspicions were correct. Maybe a lifetime of watching spy movies and cop dramas had corrupted my thinking. Maybe there was another explanation. Who knows, it could happen, I'm not God, I don't know everything. I'll play defense.
So after several weeks in total trying to appease this Associate Director's unquenchable thirst for irrelevant details, and then getting ignored for a week she finally publishes it and sends it to the finance director to approve so it can go live. Woo! Except the module, which was supposed to be a 30 minute online course, now contained THREE HOURS of content, and went down several irrelevant rabbit holes that had been deemed "critical supporting information". As an analogy, imagine designing a training module to teach a nurse how to enter some new CPT codes and being told you have to teach him how to read too, because he might not know what words are. That's how much BS was rammed into this thing.
And the finance director of course hated it, and was surprised that such a rambling mess of a module would come from me of all people. So he calls a meeting with me and the Associate Director on Tuesday to get some answers, and sure enough she immediately tried to distance herself from it. Tried to paint it as she made a couple suggestions and I clearly went way overboard. How I must have sent her a different version that she approved and switched them afterwards (that's not even possible, it would get thrown back into a draft status). She kept trying to talk over me as I voiced my defense, and to his credit the finance director finally just muted her so I could speak. And boy did I. I explained EVERYTHING. I shared my screen, popped in my flash drive, and opened my copies of the emails that had supposedly been deleted. Every email exchange where she complained about the material, I pushed back, and she flat-out ordered me to build the module in the way I did.
She abruptly left the meeting and went offline. The finance director asked if I could send him a copy of all relevant files, and as I did so I told him they might not be there later. And then explained what I had learned about someone in IT using the compliance delete. He assures me he'll look into it, and the shit immediately hit the fan. The Associate Director never logged back on. There was a massive internal audit where people from her previous departments were asked to provide statements. Leadership tried to keep it hush hush but you just can't keep something that big under wraps. I don't know the specific whats and hows, but the Associate Director and one of the IT managers had both "left the company to pursue the next stage of their careers, and we sincerely wish them the best." I don't really do the social media thing, but over the next few days as the rumor mill did what rumor mills do I heard their shit absolutely blew up, and it came out that the Associate Director and that IT manager were having an affair. Now this all went down about a month ago but as I wrote this post I thought to check online court records. Both are now facing divorces, filed by their respective spouses.
So yeah, there's a void in my direct leadership, in IT's leadership, and the entire IT department is getting a shakedown by information security to determine if there were any other leaks. I spent some time reflecting on why this whole series of events happened, and my best guess is she wanted to make a grand entrance by spearheading this masterwork training module that covered every possible scenario, and contained any and all information anyone could possibly want. Then as she started to realize how wasteful, rambling, and unnecessary it was, she realized that her grand entrance would be a grand faceplant. So she tried to erase the evidence and pin all the nonsense on me to save face, but inadvertently set in motion the events that would expose her little "arrangement" with the IT manager. Taking it up the ass in order to cover her ass I guess.
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I've wanted to post this tale here for a long time, I've started the post many times, walking away from the computer and giving up each time.
Note, that like many tales here many 'trivial to the story' details have been changed. What is important to note is that that the way my industry runs is essentially via monthly service contracts with clients. There are 3 major players in the story; myself [Egnards], Old Owner [Lets call him Steve], and New Owner [Lets call him Kyle].
Act 1 - Do What you Love
As an aimless teenager I started working for a small business owned by Steve. It turns out I really enjoyed what I did so slowly over time my life plans shifted to make sure I could continue to work for Steve for the long term - This included transferring to a local college, and because the business was predominantly run on 'part-time' hours making sure that any other jobs I had never conflicted with the hours I was expected to work for Steve.
Steve was flawed, but overall a good boss who [mostly] looked out for me. I certainly think over the years he had taken advantage of me in small ways, but looking back I really have no complaints.
The thing is, that while when I started working for Steve the business 'name recognition' was always directed towards Steve, over the years it eventually became, "Go to Egnards, he's the best!" This got to the point where I do indeed truly believe that if I did not end up working for Steve it's very likely his business would have been nowhere near as successful as it eventually became.
As years when on it was heavily implied that when Steve retired the business would go to me. It was never specifically stated, but Steve did have a way about skirting around those types of issues and giving me hope . . .
Act 2: Enter Kyle
About 3 years before Covid, Steve decided to retire and sell his business. He did indeed 'fulfill his promise' by making a half assed attempted to sell it to me at an unreasonable price, but it was very clear he already had another buyer in mind, Kyle.
Kyle owned another local business just outside of our market area in the same industry; because of the way the industry worked there really was much, if any, overlap in potential customers, but Kyle had a very large amount of money and was willing to buy - What is important to note here is that, again, I do truly believe that if I didn't play ball and agree to work for Kyle, my role was so integral to operation at our business, that there as no possible way a sale could go through.
Over the course of negotiations Kyle ended up buying the business and putting me in charge of running the day to day - Something I was mostly already doing, but with a few more administrative tasks tacked onto it. The thing is, my name was still "the name" in town, and Kyle made zero effort to ever be on location, so nobody that did business with us ever really knew who Kyle was.
Act 3: Kyle's Kind of a Dick, and how I learned to stand up for myself
All was well for awhile. Kyle would openly talk about me being the head honcho at my location and mostly left me alone to deal with my clients in the professional and personable nature that I had learned from Steve.
Things first came to a head a year before Covid when Kyle sent me to an industry conference for 4 days - I would need to take off time from my other job, which I was fine with - At the conclusion of the conference I put in an hours request for the hours I spent at the conference [And I was super nice about it, actually I should have clocked all hours at the convention each day, but instead did not account for hours for seminars that would help my boss but were ones I had wanted to attend] - The request was denied and I was told, "Industry Conferences are enriching activities, we pay for your admission but they're on your own time,' this took 2 weeks to resolve but ended with me essentially saying, "Look I'll still work for you because I love what I do, however, if I don't get paid I will never go to another one of these conferences again to get new ideas for you," I was immediately paid.
I will spare similar smaller stories of that nature, but that slowly started to become the relationship between Kyle and I.
Act 4: Covid hits
When Covid hit our locations were shut down, and for 3 weeks we weren't able to do anything, meanwhile our clients were still paying for services, and because Kyle had recently moved to a new client payment portal that I hadn't been trained on yet, I wasn't able to help any clients get their money back. At one point I messaged Kyle about going virtual and being able to still assist clients and got a very angry text back, full of curses, that essentially said, "Look, you're not the boss, go fuck yourself, you had your chance to be the owner and turned it down. I'm in charge." [we did eventually go virtual about a week later]. The big problem of course being that I would receive daily texts/e-mails/calls from clients about their memberships/bills, and there was nothing I could do to help them.
It was at this point that I knew shit was hitting the fan and I needed to start doing something.
So over the course of the next 2 months I did a couple things:
Spent an inordinate amount of time studying the best business structures
Communicated with all of the other staff at my location about my intentions
Continued to give 110% to my clients in a virtual capacity
Built a website and social media presence from the ground up
I don't think Kyle was expecting any of this, and he probably didn't also realize that because I often had to do backend stuff from home, I also had what was "essentially," a little black book of every client, their e-mail addresses and phone numbers.
Act 5: Surgical Strikes
When everything was ready I waited very patiently only the end of a service month, as I mentioned, all of our clients had monthly costs, and I didn't want to put anyone out of any part of their costs. On the last weekday of the month I instructed the staff who would be helping clients that day to tell them to check their e-mails at the end of the day.
At the end of the day I sent out an e-mail to all active [and some non-active] clients, as well as a texting service to text everybody. I launched our social media accounts, our website; and had even enlisted a very small amount of trusted clients to spread the word via social media once I gave them the signal.
Within 15 minutes of everything my phone was ringing off the hook, I had 50+ e-mails in my inbox from different people, and my Facebook accounts were completely blowing up with local chatter. I also heard from many of these people that they were calling Kyle to cancel their service.
Within an hour of everything Kyle sent out a text blast to every client that they would be shutting their doors effective immediately.
At the start of Covid we had roughly 50 active "clients" at the business. On my first day of business I had signed up 75 active "clients," many inactive ones telling me, "Yea we stopped doing business with you guys because Kyle was kind of a dick."
What is really important to keep in mind here is that I never wanted to, nor cared to be, a business owner. I was very happy working for somebody else as long as I wasn't treated like shit. Had Kyle treated me even remotely better the location would have continued to thrive and be a stable in our local community. Kyle chose to be a dick to try and get quick money and cheat people, and Kyle lost out.
We've been in business now almost 2 years, have nearly tripled Kyle's "active numbers," and continue to be a stable in our community.
tl;dr old boss sold his business to someone who was kind of a dick. New guy didn't realize I was the face of the business and ended up losing out on everything.
Take my tips and pay me below minimum wage. See what happens!
Apologize in advance for the walls of text, but this has layers.
So this all happened years ago when I was still in college. I worked for a delivery joint. The company seemed super cool, because they provided vehicles instead of forcing you to beat down your own car. Huge perk right? Well in this case no. The owner of the company used this as justification to take a percentage of the drivers tips. Often this would result in an employee making below minimum wage. If you made below minimum wage, you would have to come and pick up your check in person and sign a document attesting that "you did make minimum wage, due to undocumented cash tips". Or some such nonsense.
Now this was a problem for two reasons. Number one, in the state I was in, employee tips belonged to the employee unless part of an employee tip pooling agreement. This was plain as day on the Department of labor website. So that 20% gouge was already crossing a line. Number two, you cannot just hand wave and or force employees to say they made above minimum wage. So pretty shady shit right?
Now most people would see this situation and run for the hills (which probably explained the delivery driver turnover being so high). I on the other hand saw the potential. See I am pretty well versed in labor law, and decided that I was gonna ride it out. I wanted to see how long they would keep this shit up.
Here and there I would make comments to the managers about the legality of their practices, and was often told "Our lawyers said it's ok, so it's ok" (would love to meet these lawyers one day). So I patiently waited for a year, documenting every red cent they took from me and encouraging the other drivers to do so. Every new driver that came through that door got a little pow wow with me, and I would give them the skinny. Unfortunately my plan must have leaked because sooner than later the joint decided to fire me after making up three bogus infractions. If you're interested in those ask and ill explain in an edit. This wasn't a problem though, as my plan was already in action. See in this state, unpaid wages collect interest. So What was 20-40 dollars a night, 5 nights a week, over one year; quickly became a decent sum.
So I began collecting the names of current and previous employees whom had been screwed over by the company and collected their documented data then sent it off to the department of labor. At the end of the day it took a couple months, but the company was eventually required to pay a decent chunk of change to all parties and a pretty hefty fine on top. Overall I believe it came out to a little under 100k. I wasn't done though. See those shady little documents they had us sign claiming we made over minimum wage effected how the company was reporting it's payroll tax. The IRS eventually came in and hit them for a ton of back taxes, and I received a small portion of the settlement (the irs used to pay people who tipped them off, don't know if they still do). Finally, I was increasingly aware of the companies under the table agreement with their health inspector. Which I decided to go ahead and tip off to the health department. This resulted in even more fines and a temporary closure for the joint.
All together it ended up costing this dumb little delivery joint a ton of money just to stay open, all cause they wanted 20 percent of their drivers tips. The moral here is this. Know your labor laws, it's degenerates like these whom profit off the ignorance or fear of a work force. The more you know about your rights, the less idiots like these will be able to survive in the wild. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
TL;DR- I quit a job I otherwise adore to escape a toxic manager. Coworkers reorganized the chain of command to get me to stay. Manager ended up demoted.
CONTEXT
Names and some details changed for privacy, Iâm on mobile, etc. My husband disagrees that this is pro-revenge, so please let me know if it should go elsewhere?
Players- Me = me (NB31, but Iâm AFAB at work) Manager = Lady Catherine (F60s) Managing partner = Bennet (M50s?) âMyâ partner = Gardner (M47) Partner Iâm babysitting = Bingley (M44) My friend/coworker = Charlotte (F30s)
I am a professional attorney wrangler for a big legal firm. If youâve watched Suits, Iâm Donna if she was wound tighter than a childâs music box. As a legal admin, I have to keep a tremendous amount of information straight. Every county in every US state has their own court system, their own rules, and their own idiosyncrasies.
I have five attorneys on my team. Despite the TV shows, itâs pretty unusual for a lawyer to have a special secretary all their own unless they are Very Important, so five is a solid number. Because of The Nameless Death that took over the world last year, a secretary that left in January 2020 has not been replaced yet, and Iâve been babysitting one of the partners (Bingley) in the meantime. Itâs been a fun learning opportunity, as Bingley works for an entirely different region and type of law than the rest of my team. Also he has a case where a truck EXPLODED (was empty), which is AWESOME.
STORY
My manager (Lady Catherine) is the worst. You know the type- she plays favorites, her best-loved word is no, she MUST be involved in every conversation because she is just that important and necessary. We donât get along, because I am a stubborn know-it-all whoâs been proven right a few too many times. Highlights include forbidding me from using the same resources other admins had access to, on her orders, including backup admins when my workload was too big and then denying my overtime requests. I literally had no way to do my job some days.
Itâs worth noting that the REASON Bingleyâs secretary left was specifically because of Lady Catherine. In fact, four additional admins quit over the year explicitly because of her.
Anyway, at this point, Iâd been working with Bingley for almost a year. It was November 2020, and weâd settled into a pretty good routine. Iâd gotten used to filing pleadings in a different state, and no longer needed to double check ALL my work for nuance.
Because Law still operates in the stone ages, a few US states still require hard-copy filing. Anything we want the judge to read has to be sent by actual mail, on actual paper, to arrive in the judges actual hands. Itâs a pain, most states let you file electronically, but whatever. Bingley mostly only has cases in one of the hard-copy states.
Lady Catherine, in her excessive wisdom, butted in uninvited and instructed me to include a cover letter when mailing a new filing. This confused me, as I had been filing for almost a year and no one, including the admin who originally trained me, had mentioned a cover letter. I told her this, and she basically told me to suck it up. I called the court admin to make sure I wasnât crazy and that I hadnât ruined a years-worth of filings, and the court admin literally LAUGHED and said to please not include a cover letter ever. So I didnât.
Imagine my surprise when Lady Catherine called me, writing me up for insubordination! Even knowing the court rules and the judge and the court admin explicitly said to NOT SEND A DAMN LETTER, she was right because she is ALWAYS right and I am, and I quote, âa disrespectful little shit and she was tired of meâ. A warning went into my employee file, pending disciplinary measures. The next day, she emailed my team telling them to reduce my score on my yearly review, as she KNEW I had been rated too highly for what my abilities REALLY are. It felt to me like she was preparing to fire me by creating a history of poor performance.
Well, if youâre so tired of me, Madam Manager, I can leave!
Within a week of looking, I found a new position. Now, hereâs the issue- I fucking love my team. This is the BEST work team Iâve EVER been on. We take each other seriously and we genuinely love each other. A lot of times admins get pushed around because we donât have fancy degrees, but not here. Calling in to quit, I cried. I cried a lot. I cried to the point that one of the partners (Bennet) asked if I wanted a counter offer. I said no, because that wouldnât solve anything. He asked what I meant.
I told him. I told him about the write up. I told him how she was trying to falsify my employee review after it had been submitted. I told him the reason five admins had left. I told him about how I wasnât allowed to ask for help.
At this point I had given myself hiccups from weeping, and one of the partners on my team (Gardner) was calling him asking if HE and his workload were the reasons I was leaving, so Bennet let me go do other things, like day drink and create a shrine out of legal forms.
I thought it was the end of it, until a friend in another office (Charlotte) called me asking wtf I was doing, she doesnât have TIME to train someone into being the new me, and I was the only admin she actually trusts in my office so WHY was I leaving her all alone??? I told her. And she told Gardner. And together they plotted.
First, Charlotte is the manager in her office, so she is on equal footing with Lady Catherine. They also report to the same person. Charlotte called the district manager and told him that Lady Catherine was driving admins away and that the most recent quitter (me) was the only person who knows how to do a LOT of the work on my teams, and my loss was a serious blow. (Apparently this is true, which is both heart-warming and terrifying)
Meanwhile, Gardner called up a fellow partner and told her that his world would collapse in on itself if I left. He would go to the nearest bridge and jump off it, which would be pretty impressive in a land-locked state. They Had To Do Something.
I got a call the next day from Bennet, saying they had a counter offer they were really hoping Iâd take. Basically, instead of Lady Catherine, I would report directly to Gardner. Lady Catherine would be forbidden from interfering with me without first asking Gardner for his permission. This solved the issue and I got to stay with my team, so I happily accepted. I thought the debacle was over.
The debacle was not over.
Unbeknownst to me, after looking at the evidence (exit interviews, emails, memos), Bennet put Lady Catherine on a performance improvement plan and she did not get an end-of-year bonus OR raise. Turns out I had been absolutely correct- Lady Catherineâs behavior and treatment had been the explicit cause that six secretaries quit in less than a year.
I got a call last week from Charlotte. I figured she wanted to gossip about coworkers or rant about how a shared client is a big olâ headache, but it was actually to give me a heads up.
Lady Catherine had been stripped of her management duties.
I no longer had any contact with her, which was GREAT, but it also meant I didnât see that her behavior had actually doubled down on the admins unfortunate enough to still be under her thumb. She had missed EVERY SINGLE ONE of the benchmarks on her performance improvement plan. Charlotte had called me to ask my opinion on who should be the new manager, as I know everyone and she was helping cover some things as an outside manager.
Now, I know some of you are thinking âYES! Become the manager and fire Lady Catherine!â But I am not a sadist. I want to stay on my team and do what I do best, which is being a cheerfully annoying RESPECTFUL little shit. I told her one of the more senior admins would probably need some guidance, but would be amazing at it.
NO ONE has to deal with Lady Catherine anymore. She is now a mere paralegal and not anyoneâs manager at all. If she had just left me alone and not interfered where she wasnât needed, none of this would have happened. All she had to do was nothing.
This tale was told to me as a warning when I started on my first post-college job. I am relating it exactly as it was told to me. This occurred in the early '80s, so those of you who've grown up with the Internet may not understand how we did things in the olden days. There were no smart-phone apps to show Q-codes for airline tickets. They were paper. With red carbon mess. Reservations were done by phone. It was primitive by today's standards.
Players (names have been changed of course) â Sandra â super-sweet secretary loved by all (true â I worked with her. She was amazing). Fred â Sandra's boss. Tom â local VP. Bigshot â incoming senior manager from back East. Al â lead engineer on the team.
This occurred in Salt Lake City, which if you don't know, family was a HUGE part of culture. Even at work, family matters took precedence, and local management knew this and allowed for it. Well, Bigshot's office minions noticed some slight irregularities in timecards, like days off without pre-approved vacation requests. So he got himself transferred to the Salt Lake City office to 'straighten things out'. Naturally, he was quickly hated.
One morning, Sandra got a call from her daughter was unexpectedly in town and wanted to have lunch. Naturally, Fred and Tom said okay. But then Bigshot stuck his nose in. Rather than just say 'no', he dropped a travel request on Sandra's desk, and it had to be done because he expected to fly out that afternoon. Sandra was heartbroken that she wouldn't get to see her daughter, but she had her work responsibilities.
Stopping by to drop off some paperwork, Al noticed that Sandra looked a little down â a huge change from her normal chipper mood. He naturally asked why, and Sandra explained. Al told her (he had no authority, btw) to go have lunch and "we'll take care of it."
Bigshot got his travel packet, got on the plane that afternoon, and flew off to his meeting. That's when things started to go wrong. The rental car reservation was invalid, and there were no cars available at any of the agencies â all had a 'hold' on them pending confirmation from some big clients. So Bigshot ended up getting a Rent-a-Wreck. (for those too young or not in the US, there really was a discount auto rental agency by that name! Quality was not job 1.) When Bigshot got to the hotel, he found that his reservation was no good. He had to wait around until after the 'tentative' reservations expired â which was after 6 pm. Getting suspicious, Bigshot looked at his tickets â and found they were one-way. He had no flight home.
The next morning, Tom flew in to join him, and to say Bigshot was incensed was probably an understatement. He gave Bigshot a packet that was marked "extremely urgent" that had been left on his desk with a note to take it to Bigshot; it was Bigshot's return ticket.
On the way back, Bigshot stopped by the corporate office and got a very senior exec to come with him because of some 'very serious personnel problems'. The next morning, Bigshot led the senior exec and Tom into a meeting with all of Fred's department and began publicly berating Sandra for incompetence and so on. When he got to the part about the tickets, Fred interrupted and told the senior exec that Sandra couldn't have done that â she was on approved time off having lunch with her daughter. This raised the senior exec's eyebrows and got Bigshot even angrier. The senior exec said if Sandra didn't mess up the tickets, who did? Fred stepped forward. Then Al. And one by one, every single member of Fred's team stepped forward to take responsibility to protect Sandra from Bigshot's wrath.
Tom and the senior exec knew instantly what had happened. Everyone on Fred's team had burned up the phones making 'tentative' reservations for rental cars and hotel rooms â leaving Bigshot stuck with worthless reservations and no alternates. Within the hour, Bigshot's desk was empty and his badge had been turned in. The senior exec stuck around to get to know the team; he was very impressed with how the whole team stuck together and protected their own.
After he finished the tale, the engineer said bluntly, "Don't mess with Sandra. We love her, and we WILL make you pay if you upset her." Message received loud and clear. As I worked with Fred's team, I got to understand why everyone loved Sandra. She was an absolute gem in the organization â efficient, super-friendly, just an all-around wonderful person.
TLDR: Bigshot manager flies in to straighten out a office and becomes hated. When he upsets the secretary, the entire project team schemes to give him a dose of humble pie. Then he tries to get corporate managent to back him, and ends up getting fired himself.
I am a teacher, and when I was younger, I would take summer jobs to supplement my income. One summer, I worked for a bricklayer named Jerry and heard an amazing story! I worked for Jerry in the mid 90âs, so the story either happened in the early 90âs or in the 80âs. Here goes:
The setting for the story was a community of small rural towns which had only only one brick contractor. Jerry began his career as a bricklayer working for this contractor, a real jerk. Jerk and Jerkâs son (adult working the business with his father) would harass, belittle, and humiliate all their employees on a regular basis. No work was ever good enough and employees were told they werenât worth what they were paid. Not only did Jerk mistreat his employees; but, he was equally rude to other subcontractors and to the general contractors who hired him. Since he was the only bricklayer in the community, there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Needless to say, the turnover rate for the brick business was very high. The only person that stuck with Jerk and Company was Jerry. Jerry told me that his father had instilled a self-confidence in him that Jerry could do anything he set his mind to do and that he should not evaluate himself according to what others said; but, rather by the facts. Although Jerry was belittled by Jerk and Son as were all other employees; Jerry was becoming a very good bricklayer. Jerry knew he was good; Jerk knew Jerry was good; but, Jerk didnât know that Jerry knew he was good. Not only was Jerry a good bricklayer; he was very respectful to the boss who disrespected him. Jerk thought that Jerry was a naive pushover who was buying his head games. That would prove to be a HUGE mistake on his part.
One day, Jerry was doing an exceptionally good job of laying brick. Not only was his craftsmanship amazing, he was laying brick at a high rate of speed so that he was making his boss lots of money. Of course, Jerk and Son were belittling his work as though he was doing the very opposite. This scenario was being observed by the general contractor of the project. After work that day, the general contractor asked Jerry to stay behind so he could talk to him. As did every other construction worker in the community, General Contractor hated working with Jerk. General Contractor told Jerry that he had heard Jerk and Son belittling him; and told him that he disagreed with everything Jerk was saying. He asked Jerry if he had ever considered going into business for himself. Jerry said that he would like to do that some day. General Contractor then said that he would loan Jerry the money to buy a mixer (the most expensive piece of equipment needed to start a brick business) if Jerry would indeed start said business. The only hitch was that Jerry would need to pay for the mixer whenever he could and that he would subcontract under General Contractor. Jerry agreed to those terms and prepared to begin his new venture.
Jerry respectfully told Jerk and Son his plans and gave his notice. The two mocked Jerry ruthlessly and laughed him to scorn. Jerk told Jerry, âYouâll be back in two months begging to return to your jobâyouâll never make it as a subcontractor!â Two months later, rather than collapsing as Jerk predicted, Jerry was still in business and going strong. One year later, Jerryâs business was booming and a drunk Jerk showed up at Jerryâs house and begged him to come back to work with Jerk and Son. âJerry, youâre the best employee I ever had.â Jerry replied, âWhy didnât you ever tell me that when I was working for you?â Jerk couldnât answer the question; and, Jerry obviously didnât accept the offer for employment. Two years after beginning his entrepreneurial adventure, Jerry heard that Jerk and Son went out of business.
Jerry said that he never intended to harm Jerk and Son when he accepted General Contractorâs offer. He said that looking back on things he realized that he had become Jerkâs greatest nightmare. I canât say that General Contractor intended no harm!
I thought the most amazing thing about the story was how that Jerry maintained his self-esteem in spite of all the ridicule. I also gained a respect for Jerryâs father who instilled an unshakable self-confidence in Jerry!
Home owner got what was coming to him after daily harassment
I worked an engineering/construction job last year for a home builder and we had to deal with a bunch of 5g anti vaxxer health nuts moving in to one of our neighborhoods. Constant complaints about the construction, the noise, the debris, which made no sense because they chose to move into the neighborhood before construction was completed.
One man in particular would harass us daily, complaining about the streetlights being too bright (they weren't) and complaining about a generator we had running about a block away from him to power the site temporarily until we had the infrastructure in. The complaints ranged from the generator was damaging his hearing (thing was almost completely silent) or that the fumes from the generator were coming into his house and causing him and his kids to have stunted development. They would come up with stuff that made little to no sense. It escalated to the point where he got the city and the mayor involved, and we got sued so we gave in to his requests and moved to generator to an inconvenient location & had to take the time and money to rewire to be able to power the areas needed (this was including important stuff like the streetlights, we had to leave off for a couple nights until the move was complete, and you guessed it, he would call to complain. The nerve of this man.)
So, here comes the revenge. We received an order from the city to install a 5g tower on site to improve cellular connection because the area we were in had pretty bad service. Since my team and I were in charge of creating the plans to install the infrastructure, guess where we all simultaneously agreed to put the tower: right smack dab in front of the angry mans house. We thought this was incredibly hilarious and couldn't stop laughing every time he would call freaking out while the tower was being constructed. Got to the point he tried to file another lawsuit, got laughed away, and within a week we never heard from them again. Moved out faster than the wind.
Look at this giant hole you dug for yourself. Now watch as I bury you in it.
This occurred back in the late 90âs in Australia, so Aussie terms will be used. Please do not share/use this in your YouTube without my explicit permission first. Names will be changed to protect those involved. This is a very long one, so the TL;DR is at the bottom.
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I was in my third and final year at uni, studying archaeology. Due to recurring and severe illness in the second semester of my second year, I had been unable to complete several core subjects, and had to repeat them. This included an archaeological field school, held in the mid-year holidays, where you would implement the techniques you had already learned. This field school was compulsory IF you wished to enrol in a particular subject, but not everyone studying was headed in that direction. I had successfully completed the previous yearâs field school, but due to my illness, was unable to complete the associated course, so had to retake them both again.
This university has a number of campuses dotted around the country (and some overseas). The field school is offered to students on 2 campuses â the main campus, located North of Capricorn, and one of its offshoots, located even further North of Capricorn. The field schools are held in the area of the main campus, so those participating are required to travel to attend â for some, itâs across town. For others, itâs several hours in a car. Needless to say, those attending from the sister campus do not do so lightly, or cheaply.
My lecturer, whom we shall call Matt, was a bloody legend. He was a brilliant lecturer, has authored 2 books, and is still working in his field, albeit at a different university than the one in this story. He knew his shit, was easy-going, friendly, would sit and share a jug of beer with you on a Friday arvo, and I only ever saw him angry once. This is important for later.
Also note that grading went as follows, in descending order:HD (Pass with High Distinction): 85-100%
D (Pass with Distinction): 75-84%
C (Pass with Credit): 65-74%
P (Pass): 50-64%
PC (Pass Conceded): 48-49%
N (Fail): <50%
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The Event:
Matt and his counterpart at the sister campus had been granted permission to conduct this particular yearâs field school in a gully adjacent to an historic (and protected/listed) cemetery. This gully actually split the cemetery in two, and was used basically as a garbage midden. Due to the nature of the gully, there was only space permitted for a specified number of dig sites. Groups were to be allocated a site once they arrived on the first day, after they had decided on their members. As I was living on-campus and had no car, I knew Iâd be unable to arrive at the field school at the specified beginning times. Iâd be half an hour late on the Friday and Monday mornings, and a full hour late on the weekend. Iâd spoken to Matt about this, and as we knew each other quite well (and had shared jugs of beer quite often), he agreed that I would not be penalised for arriving late, but that Iâd most likely be allocated a group to make up numbers, rather than choose my own. It couldnât be helped, so I agreed. This is also important for later.
Friday rolls around, I arrive at the site a half hour late, all good, and Iâm introduced to my group. There are 4 of us; myself, the only female in the group, but experienced in how the field school is run due to my previous year; Gazza, an older, grizzled male geology student who was taking the course just as a matter of interest; Bazza, a young male geology student who, by all other indications, was heading towards a lucrative career in the mining sector; and Dazza, another young male geology student, good friends with Bazza, also heading towards a lucrative career in the mining sector. All 3 of my counterparts were from the sister campus, so had travelled at some expense to attend. Theyâd already been allocated a dig-site, and when introduced, Matt tells them Iâve got field school experience, so to utilise my knowledge. Bazza and Dazza smile and nod, giving me a friendly wave. Gazza grunts, but a little later, while surveying our area, we get to chatting. Heâs a nice enough bloke, just a bit miffed heâs been put in a group with a bunch of âyoung shitsâ, and was worried heâd be carrying us or keeping us in line. Nah mate, Iâm here to get shit done, get the data Iâll need for next semester, and hopefully enjoy myself as much as I had the previous year.
Now, let me tell you, Lara Croft and Indiana Jones have royally fucked the perception of the greater public when it comes to archaeology (no, Jurassic Park doesnât count, as theyâre palaeontologists, dealing with animal remains; archaeology/archaeologists deal with human remains). A lot of what happens on an archaeological dig is repetitive and monotonous; you survey your area using surveying equipment, sketch and take photos of your allocated site before measuring out your 1 metre by 1 metre dig pit. You take more pictures/sketches of the as-yet untouched pit, as well as taking an initial soil sample. You scrape off a âspitâ of earth (this is a layer of a predetermined depth; in this case, 5cm), and once done, you test the pH levels of the soil youâve removed, documenting EVERYTHING that youâve scraped up (yep, more photos and sketches), before taking more photos/sketches of the pit and anything that may be lodged in there before scraping off another âspitâ. If you hit an object, you remove the soil from around it, but donât actually remove the object until you are removing the layer of soil from beneath it. It must remain in-situ to preserve the data. Boring, I know, but is also very important for later. Also important to note is soil composition in relation to how deep you can safely dig your pit before extending the boundaries to prevent soil contamination or the walls collapsing. Our dig site had quite loose, sandy soil, so it was announced that every 50cm down, we would have to extend the sides of the pit by 50cm on each side. It wasnât anticipated that weâd get much beyond 1 metre down, definitely not further than 1.5 metres, so weâd only need to expand once, possibly twice. This was how they had divvied up the entire site to fit us all in.
It became very clear very quickly that neither Bazza or Dazza had anticipated how monotonous the next 4 days were going to be. Both Gazza and I had to repeatedly call them over to assist us with surveying, and when it came to the soil scraping, they were excited at first, but then became bored as we had to yet again record every minute detail. As I was the only one who had thought to bring my camera along (one that require actual film, as this was before inexpensive digital cameras, smart phones were at least 10 years away, and I was a povvo uni student), I was the one responsible for taking photos. This included âcandidâ shots of the entire field school, other groups, the lecturers, and our dig site.
Day One of the field school ends, and we all head back to wherever for the night, to kick back, relax, and prepare for another day of toil. The next morning (Saturday), I arrive at the field school 1 hour late (so at 10am), as per the bus schedule. Seeing as how Iâd already had this okayed by Matt, Iâm not anticipating any issue with my tardiness. I get to the cemetery, and seeing Matt, give him a cheery âMorning Matt, all good, yeah?â Matt turns and GLOWERS at me. I mean, if looks could kill, Iâd be right at home in that cemetery with all the other dead people. You know how I mentioned earlier how easy-going and laid back Matt is, and Iâve only ever seen him angry once? Well, this was that time. Matt was pacing, teeth grinding, fists clenched. He. Was. PISSED.âJust get to your group and get to work.â Matt practically snarled at me. Iâm worried now, that heâs angry with me for being late, even though weâd previously squared it. Iâm nervous and worried, because weâd had a really good rapport in the past, and now Iâm thinking that Iâve done something thatâs going to make my last semester at uni Hell on Earth.âHave I done something wrong? I know I was late, but like I told you before the field school, this was the first bus I could get out here. Iâm really sorry if thatâs a problem.âMatt sighs and shook his head.âNo Wraeccaniht, itâs not you, youâve done nothing wrong. I just canât deal with it right now, so just go to your dig-site and get on with it. Iâll talk to you later.âI head to my dig-site, and what I find there almost has me in tears. When weâd packed up the previous day, our pit was 1 metre by 1 metre square, with a depth of 30cm. I now stand before a 1 metre by 1 metre hole in the ground, dug down to a depth of approximately 3 metres. There are mounds of sandy dirt surrounding our pit, and I can see a multitude of objects that have been excavated just sitting there. Other groups are staring at us, but trying to look as though they arenât staring. Nobody will speak to us either. Gazza is livid, the dude is almost apoplectic. Bazza and Gazza are both looking VERY pale, and like they want to puke. Iâm all âWhat the ever loving fuck has happened here? Who the fuck did this?â
It turns out that after everyone had left the site on the Friday night, Bazza and Dazza, and another mate of theirs in another group, weâll call him Kezza, got together and got on the piss. It was during this that they decided to âcontinueâ digging our pit, so they broke into the cemetery with a shovel, and proceeded to dig down until one of them passed out shitfaced at the bottom. Of a 1 metre by 1 metre hole, in loose, sandy soil. The fact that the dude managed to wake up and make it out of the hole without the entire thing collapsing in on him is a miracle in itself. Matt had been called out to the site at 3am by the police, who had been called because one of the residents in the area saw something dodgy going on. Needless to say, Bazza, Dazza, and Kezza were all up shit creek in a barbed wire canoe with a rusty teaspoon for a paddle. They couldnât leave until theyâd sobered up, but had been told that, in no uncertain terms, after the field school finished that day, they were to pack up and fuck off. Matt and his counterpart would deal with booting them from the archaeological programme on the Tuesday, after the field school ended. This left Gazza and I in a FUBAR situation. Luckily for him, Gazza was able to join the group that Kezza had been part of, especially since the group were all from the sister campus. I, on the other hand, was left hanging like an unwanted tampon string out of the gusset of a bikini. There were no other groups that could take me, and besides, something had to be done about the clusterfuck that was my dig-site. So, Saturday ended up with me trying to document whatever I could, and to keep Bazza and Dazza out of my hair, I gave them my camera and told them to take photographic documentation of every. Single. Piece. Of evidence that they had dug up. They had to use the scale measurement and a title board that was supposed to identify the item by date, location, spit level, etc., so off they went with a miniature whiteboard, whiteboard marker, scale measurement, and my camera. This kept them occupied for most of the day, as there were in excess of 200 items that theyâd unearthed in their drunken dig for buried whateverthefucktheywerelookingfor. I ended up filling in that hole wishing with every shovelful of soil that Bazza and Dazza were still passed out drunk at the bottom, but such is life. Matt ended up tacking me onto another group in an âobservationalâ role, as the members of that group were all from my campus and would be in the same second semester class as me.
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The Revenge:
Now, as I previously mentioned, the field school was linked to another class held during the second semester. This class essentially took all of the data and evidence that had been unearthed during the field school, and you examined, tested, collated, and then submitted a report based on those findings as your final assessment piece. Seeing as how I only had 1 dayâs worth of actual data and evidence, I could not submit the field school report as required. As this was a core class, and I didnât want to have to retake it for a third year, I approached Matt to talk about how we could rectify this into a situation where I would be able to pass and continue with my studies. After some discussion, Matt agreed to allow me to do a field school critique, using what had happened to me as, essentially, a how-to on how NOT to conduct/participate in a field school. I had the data from the first day to use in the class, and then the photos and sketches taken by myself and the Dodgy Brothers (Bazza and Dazza) of the objects weâd âexcavatedâ.
After developing the film of the field school, I noticed some interesting things. The candid photos I took on the Friday included shots of Bazza and Dazza not only behaving inappropriately, but interfering with the equipment we were using, and therefore possibly contaminating the data we had legitimately acquired. They were also shown to be in areas that we werenât allowed to be in, touching things that didnât belong to them, and also damaging ornaments left on some of the historic graves closest to the dig-site. Then, there were the photos that they had taken on the Saturday. They had apparently decided that, because I wasnât overjoyed by the fact that theyâd completely screwed me over by digging that hole, theyâd make the only photographs of the artefacts theyâd unearthed unusable by writing inappropriate comments and cursing/slurs towards me on the title board. One of the ones that has stuck in my head was a large clay/ceramic clam decoration, on which theyâd written âOh I do love a day beside the sea side â WITH A HAIRY CLAMâ. This was the only photo of the clam that had been taken (when we filled the pits back in, we had to re-inter the artefacts, so I couldnât just take a new picture. Also, over 200 pieces had been unearthed, remember?), and Matt had told me to use everything Iâd gathered to write my report. So I used every. Single. Photo. Including the ones that said I was a cunt (not in the friendly way most Aussies use the term), and that alluded to wishing sexual violence on me. At the end of the semester, I submitted my report, knowing full well that the best I could hope for was a Pass, but that was enough to get me through to my final year.
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The Fallout:
I found this out from Matt at the beginning of my final year at uni.So, it turns out that when Matt had booted the Dodgy Brothers from the archaeological programme, they had been allowed to continue on with their degree studying Geology, but that they were not allowed to have anything to do with archaeology, and were on very thin ice. When I submitted my report, and Matt saw the extent of what they had done (kindly documented by themselves on the most part), and just how badly they had screwed me over (Gazza was fine, as the group heâd been moved to had all the appropriate data, and had been able to submit a proper field report), he went ballistic. He called a meeting with the Deans from both campuses, the Department of Tropical Environments and Societies (Geology Department), and the Department of Anthropology, Archaeology, and Society (Archaeology Department) for both campuses. He presented to them my field report, told them about how heâd been teaching me for the past 3 years, and had it not been for the illness affecting me during my second year, how I would have likely completed my degree at this point. He also spoke about my previous field school, my behaviour, and had I not been forced to withdraw due to my health, and based on previous work Iâd submitted, I would have likely received a D or HD on my work. The fact that I averaged C and D during the time I was ill showed my academic prowess. The fact that the only grade he was able to give me for the report he currently had in his possession was a PC was a blow to my academic record that was wholly undeserved. He said a lot of other things, but the end result was that Bazza and Dazza were not only expelled from the archaeological programme, they were now booted from the geological one as well. Furthermore, they were expelled and black-banned/blacklisted from the university itself, which meant they could never re-enrol, and any other universities they applied to would be able to see this and the reasons why. Essentially, they were blocked from being able to obtain any university degree in that area, and to enrol in any university for a different career, they would have to wade through oceans of bureaucratic red tape and jump through so many hoops theyâd make the Duracell Bunny jealous.
Unfortunately, this experience soured me on archaeology as a career path. Luckily for me, I was able to pick up a couple of extra courses in History and English, that I graduated with a BA with a Major in English Literature, and a minor in History and Archaeology. I went back to uni after a gap year and obtained my Grad. Dip. in Secondary Education.
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TL;DR â Immature twats decide to screw over my entire second semester course load during a group project by getting shitfaced and contaminating evidence and data needed. I write a final report on what they did (with evidence) which results in them getting kicked out of uni and blacklisted, screwing up their career prospects.
HOA member doesnât know the rules as well as he thinks
This story primarily take place between me and my shitty neighbor (SN) who is a member of my communities HOA. Sorry if itâs a bit long.
As a bit of background me and my three roommates moved into a housing community that is basically just a bunch of cookie cutter townhomes. All of these homes have garages that open onto streets that wind through the community (this is important later) with your front door opening to a path on the other side of your house. There are also some free parking spots on the edge of the community where there are no houses.
When we first moved in we quickly found out that parking could be a bit of a pain during the day, especially when people had guests during the weekend. Now my roommates and I admittedly have more cars than the average family. Because we usually have to commute for work we each have one. We try to make parking easier by using the garage but we all have tons of sporting equipment so we can usually only get one car in the garage. When all the parking in all the free spots is full weâd just park our cars right up against the garage and leave them there during the day or over night. Weâd seen other neighbors do it and it still left ample room for people driving on the street to get by.
Well one day SN come up while my roommates and I are in the garage organizing some stuff and tells us that we canât park there overnight as itâs against community rules. Before we had a chance to respond he added âand if you do it again I will personally make sure youâre towed.â His first comment was pretty reasonable. Weâd just moved in and didnât know that rule. But his second comment really just made him sound like an ass and wasnât necessary. One of my roommates simply responded that we didnât know as weâd just moved in and we wouldnât park there overnight anymore. Well SN, clearly trying to assert his dominance, responded with âGood. You better not because Iâll be watching.â
Well from then on we did follow those rules. If we parked in front of our garage during the day we would make sure to move before we went to sleep. This worked out for a while until one faithful day. One of my roommates stopped by quickly after work to grab some dinner and clothes before heading to his girlfriends. This was around 7PM so he just parked up against the garage as it would be quicker than the parking spaces. Plus it was early enough that he didnât think heâd get towed.
Around 8PM he went to head out and his car was gone. Guess who was there though? SN standing right outside. Immediately he said to my roommates âtold you you were going to get towed if you parked here againâ. SN and my roommate argued for a bit before my roommate came back inside and calls the car lot. Well it ends up their closed so heâll have to get his car in the morning. The kicker? Theyâre going to charge him an overnight fee. All in all it comes out to $500 which isnât a small amount of money for us.
This neighbor has been an ass to us since we moved in and even though it wasnât my car that was towed, I took this personally. To make sure we didnât get towed again we decided to read the community rules and low and behold we found out that the street in front of the garage is actually considered a fire lane and no one is suppose to park there at any point during the day. Between SN treating us like shit and the fact that we could get him yelling at his wife every night (not a big detail to the story but just wanted to say to add to my point that this guy just sucked) I start to plan my revenge.
Since quarantine started Iâve been able to work from home and my desk conveniently looks out onto the street between the houses. This means that I can clearly see SNâs garage. I start to take notice of when he parks his car out in front of his garage. For about two weeks I noticed that he would come home around 1PM and leave again at 2PM. On the third week I decided I would begin the revenge.
On Monday, true to his schedule, he stopped by around 1. After about 10 minutes I gave the tow company a call and said that he was parked in the fire lane and if they could come and remove his car. 20 minutes later a tow truck rolled up, hooked his car up, and towed it off. About 15 minutes later SN came out and I could hear him start to yell back into his house, presumably at his wife. He then left and didnât come back until later that evening after heâd gotten his car. Now it was funny to do this and I made sure to send snaps to my roommates who donât work from home, but I wasnât done yet.
See this jack ass apparently didnât learn the first time because literally the next day he parks in front of his garage again. What do I do? Well the exact same thing as the day before of course. Again, SN come out, realizes his car is gone, yells at his wife and then goes to get it.
Now after this time he is a bit smarter and parks in an actual spot before going in to get his lunch or whatever it is he does there mid day. He does this for about two weeks before he decides that itâs okay to park in front of his garage again. Well who is still sitting at their desk every day and notices this immediately? Well me of course. And being the concerned resident that I am, I immediately call the tow company and off his car goes again. And again this is met with yelling.
I wish that this had a more satisfying ending but after this third time I decided I would stop because I genuinely felt bad for his wife who he seemed to do most of the yelling at as if it was her fault that he was a dumbass. What I can tell you is that it it definitely cost him over $1k.
If he hadnât gotten my roommates car towed then we wouldnât have ever found that fun little rule. The best part was that a number of my neighbors would have their cars parked there at the same time and theyâd never have their cars towed which made it all the better when his was. We have had a number of other encounters that with him in the time since this happened and I have another story that involves the actual HOA that Iâll probably write later. That one is still ongoing though so weâll see how it ends up.
Tldr: asshole neighbor gets my friends car towed, so I get his towed three times.
Terror neighbors make our lives hell, returned the favor by getting them raided.
As we found out that weâd be expecting, not one but 2 kids, we knew we had to move to a real house with more space. At the time we were still living in a one bedroom studio 1 up from the groundfloor. With itâs only entrance being a metal fire escape (stairs). Not ideal for a pregnant woman, let alone to live with 2 small babies. So, we found a privately leased house that was newly renovated and had all the room and a large garden we were looking for. Signed the lease and Immediately collected the keys. As the owner drove off, the woman nextdoor comes up to me, immediately demanding we not make noise before noon as her bf works nights and sleeps in and a whole bunch of other doâs and dontâs. So right of the bat knew, trouble incoming. As the house was fully renovated and not much had to be done we were like donât poke the bear, weâll do the things that make noise after noon. We moved in after 2 weeks and the whole street was warm and welcoming, my wife was almost due giving birth to my twindaughters and some offer help with anything we needed, real kind people.
They also told us about our neighbors. Nobody liked them, he was a big bully and got into arguments with everybody. Also were known as radio pirates(as in illegal broadcasting on radio with all Dutch bangers (this music is just terror on your ears and possibly used on terrorists on blacksites) ) which went alongside them partying Thursday- Sunday till 5 in the morning. Loud music, constant yelling, always drunken etc.
Really something to look forward to when moving in, certainly with 2 babies on the way. The partying began immediately, full blast. Real classy for someone demanding to be quiet when douchebag needs his beautysleep. Then one day my FIL came to put new grass in, he has his trailer parked at the back of our houses which is public space. Not according to him though, no that exact spot where the trailer(full with grass sods, quite heavy stuff) was parked was his spot and we had to move the trailer. Not going to happen as I was not planning to walk all the way around the house with the sods. He gets angry right away and demanded me to move it, I told him to go fuck himself. I was done with him already then and there, Iâm also a ginger so besides having no soul I do have a temper which is always in check until you provoke me repeatedly. (Anyone who knows me will tell you that you really had to make an effort for that to happen) We went on working and end of day comes when my FIL wants to leave. Hooks up the trailer and bam, there was douchebag, telling him off, yelling itâs his spot and he better does not do this again or else.
Mess with me all you want, I can handle it, but what you donât do is threaten my family. I ran outside and told him in no uncertain terms to back off or heâll be the sorry one. (Total bluff on my side, yes I have that temper but Iâm not impressively built and have no hidden fighting skills, I do fight dirty). He backs off, FIL leaves and I go inside where I find my wife crying. She got scared of him maybe doing something to her father and/or me and this is something we donât need right now. Combined with hormones from being pregnant and you can paint that picture. So Iâm even more pissed but had to promise not to act on anything. I wonât, dear, not yet anyway.
Time went on without any real incident and then came the time my wife goes into labor. Didnât go smooth and ended up having to deliver with c-section( or whatever itâs called) because daughter 2 was almost strangled by the umbilical cord. We had to stay 3 nights, excruciating nights due to a lot of things. Finally we get to go home, family had put a giant sign in our frontyard welcoming the babies. The sign was already up for a few days prior to coming home so our friendly neighbors definitely knew about it.
But did they give a flying fuck? No, they did not. From the first night on they started to party and broadblasted their terror music, they started at noon and continued to untill 5 or 6 in the morning. Classy. They also kept going for days, so it wasnât just Thursday- Sunday, it was all week long and the next. So we were broken, hardly slept, one of our daughters suffered from heavy cramps combined with all the noise and her parents at the end of their witts so she cried a lot. And then I just had it. I researched some things on radio pirates, the laws and regulations and on his large, 5mtr+ antenna in his backyard which was illegal in itself, but he used it to illegally broadcast on radio which meant he had a lot of equipment to do so, which was even more illegal and can even get you jailed, but at the very least they could seize it all and fine him bigtime. In the 10-45k area.
Now, I did not immediately turn him in but instead were looking for another house to lease first. This because I figured it wouldnât sit well with him and having a wife and 2 babies in the house alone during the day because I had to go to work. I hear you guys thinking, why not involve the police? Well they are utterly useless in cases like this. We called once and what they did disturbs me to this day. They rang at their doorbell and immediately started off by saying we called them about noise complaints. Yes, you read that right. No protection or whatsoever, just blatantly told them we were the reason theyâre there, told them to keep it down and that was it. They didnât even follow up with us or anything. As you can guess douchebag now was even more pissed and told me the next day, or yelled over the fence that separates our backyards that I really should not do that again, a threat yet again of which I told the police. (I didnât report it the first time as I chalked that up to alpha male and heat of the moment). But without witnesses to corroborate, nothing could be done yet again.
Some days later I walked out the front door and he just stepped out of his car. Came up to me demanding I cut back some of our ivy that grew on our side of the fence because it tangled in with his bigass antenna, he would be gone for some hours and I could come into his garden to cut back the ivy that grew through on their side. And then a lightbulb went on above my head! I told him politely that I would do that immediately. Why? Because that gave me the opportunity to find out the make and model of this antenna to ascertain itâs signal strength, where the cables go exactly and what kind of cables they were, again to know the signal strength it handled. Also, it gave me a good view on the equipment he had, through the window so I could snap some photographs of it. This was the icing on the cake. Because in the meantime we did manage to find a new home and already had signed the lease so we would be gone in 2 weeks. Luckily we only had to paint some walls for the girls room and furthermore just pack up our things and move them to the other house.
So after I trimmed the ivy and collected my evidence I went online that night to find out the proper channels to report a broadcast pirate and which entity was tasked with catching said pirate. Turned out I had to call the telecom agency but also the police. Wasnât too happy with the latter but I remembered I have a nephew that works for the police, officially his area was immigration but knew enough colleagues that could help us and we could trust not to confront them again saying I was the one that sent them. That was extremely important for our safety when doing what I was doing.
So I gave both the agency and the police all evidence I collected, pointed them to the frequencies he pirated so they could listen in. Then they started a neighborhood investigation, which wasnât really necessary but this was to cover our asses to make it look like he got caught âby accidentâ because they had an active investigation in our area. You never know what he can learn from legal documents and such. We asked them to wait with the raid(yes they raid pirates houses, preferably in the early hours of the day because of his beauty sleep rendering him incapable of fleeing or hide evidence etc. )
We moved 2 weeks later and they raided him 2 days after we moved. All of his equipment, computers , radioâs, cellphones and his car were seized. He left in cuffs, his wife/gf did too, for making a big scene and tried to interfere. All of which was live reported to me by one of my ex neighbors who were equally ecstatic about this.
It turned out, this wasnât the first time he got caught but his third time, his car had no insurance on it and his MOT failed. This would normally have no big consequence because he didnât drive it while raided, but they had the guy surveilled on for a week and that definitely meant he was seen driving it while not having insurance and valid MOT. He was fined somewhere around 30k euros, went to jail for 12 weeks and everything seized was destroyed except the car. His gf had I do 40 some hours community service. They had to sell the house, which made for very happy neighbors as they too were over and done with them.
Like I said, I do fight, but very dirty. You have to really make an effort for me to get to that point, they did and suffered. Over a year later when shopping groceries I encountered them. With the foulest of looks, if looks could kill Iâd be a smoldering heap of ash. But nothing more than that.
I attended first grade at a super conservative private school. I'm only 5 days older than the cut-off for being in Kindergarten, so I'm the smallest kid in class, smaller than even all of the girls. My parents thought about waiting a year to send me, but I'm told I was "super smart and bored at home" which pretty much condemned me to never having a chance to compete for most sports teams. More good background info: I'm the byproduct of a teenage pregnancy. My parents got married to "do the right thing," but because of that my Dad works a factory job and money is super tight. I'm pretty sure in retrospect my Grandparents were paying for the private school tuition. We lived in what would be considered a rough neighborhood and they didn't want me in the public schools. All of my clothes come from garage sales. I'm the stereotype of the kid who gets picked on in school. Little, poor, poorly dressed, nerdy. Despite that fact, most of the kids in my class were actually very nice to me. Like any school though, there are a couple of little sociopath bullies, even at 6yrs old.
The ringleader is "Charlie." Charlie is big. Charlie is dumb. Charlie picks on me all the time at recess and during lunch. Lunch is in our classroom at our desks, but our normal teacher gets break time and some ancient old lady comes in to supervise. She never notices anything. Charlie has like every Transformer ever. I have two GoBots. Charlie pushes me down at recess. He teases me relentlessly. He has a toadie or two and they're smart enough not to tease me when teachers are looking. Charlie makes my life sort of miserable. The one time I told on him I got some BS from the teacher on the playground about turning the other cheek and the bullying just got worse.
A few months into the school year, Charlie starts taking and eating things from my lunch. At this point in time, my favorite food in the entire world is spicy beef sticks (like a slim jim). Mom gets them from the little grocery store and butcher up on the corner. I know treats like that are a financial sacrifice for the family, but Mom loves me and puts one in my lunch every day. Charlie learns he likes beef sticks too and starts taking just that out of my lunch.
Finally one day I tell my Mom I don't want beef sticks in my lunch anymore. I can't tell her I'm being picked on, but she sees through me. Grilling ensues. I cry like a baby and tell her everything. I don't want her buying them so that SOB can just take and eat them.
At this point most parents would call the school or Charlie's parents. My Mom had to grow up quickly when I came along, and in some ways she just stopped growing up altogether. No way in hell she's going to call the school. Get in the car. Drive to the store. Pet food aisle. These will do nicely.
Mom has a plan. We replace the beef sticks in my lunch with dog treats. Don't tell Charlie what he's eating. Not on the first day, not on the second day. Act normal. Act upset. Wait until he's eaten almost all of them. Day 1, it worked! Day 2, keep eating that horsey goodness Charlie. Like a week goes by. Finally it's Friday, today is the day. I put the bag of dog treats in my desk and make sure Charlie doesn't see it. Lunch rolls around. I wait until Charlie steals my "beef stick" and goes back to his desk. I wait until he's chewing on it. I pull the bag out of my desk and show everyone. I point and yell, "Charlie's eating dog treats!" The plan goes off perfectly like it's Mission Impossible.
Charlie spits the half-eaten dog treat out on the desk and starts gagging like he's going to throw up. Some other boys start barking at him. The entire class is yelling and laughing and barking. Charlie gets up crying and runs out of the classroom.
The old lady lunch monitor has no clue what just happened. She's only concerned some kid just ran out of the classroom and heads off to find him. The rest of us finish eating and go off to recess. I'm like a hero. I share the details of my heroic plan with other kids. No sign of Charlie all recess. Back to class. Teacher returns. Math or something. Vice Principal comes in. The disciplinarian, the guy with the wooden paddle on the wall who will spank your ass for acting up. I have to go to his office. I'm about to burst out crying already I'm so scared. My Mom is already there. Charlie is sitting in a chair crying. Charlie's Mom is there. It looks like he wet his pants and has thrown up on himself. Moms go into the office with the Vice Principle. Lots of yelling. I figure I'm done for. Mom comes out, tells me to go back to class. Charlie's mom comes out and tells him he's grounded for stealing and picking on me. Then she tells my Mom it will never happen again. From then on Charlie is nice. Super nice. He even invites me to his birthday party. I gave him a GoBot.
I recruited an unwitting army to annoy an asshole.
Back in the early 90's, my friend (I'll call him "Lou", because that's his name) was selling his RX-7 via an ad in the old print Auto Trader. It came out every Thursday, so that first weekend was critical for sales. The very first guy that came to see it on Saturday said he wanted to buy after driving it. Of course, he had to finance, so they couldn't finish the sale during the weekend.
Lou was worried about losing all the bites from the new ad, so he asked for a deposit of $500. The guy wrote a check. Lou told the rest of the callers that weekend that it was sold and, unfortunately, didn't ask for their numbers in case it fell through; this story predates callerid availability in my area by a couple years, so those leads were gone. As you surely expect by now, the guy flakes on Monday and Lou deposits the check. Payment stopped. Big surprise.
Sitting around my apartment, we schemed revenge, but all we had to go on was the check. Lucky for karma, there was a phone number printed on it. Our first idea was to write a little program to dial his number repeatedly from my modem, but that would be easily stopped and probably get us in direct trouble. Then Lou got a page from his work: this was back in the one-way pager days. You call the pager's dedicated phone number, it sounds a tone, then you punch digits for the number you want to be sent to the pager. The person with pager receives the number you entered and, presumably, calls it. Everyone with a pager made sure that people who needed to get a hold of them had the number for their pager. You'd see pager numbers in print and TV ads all the time for various services.
Boom: angelic choir sings, heavenly light goes off. Lou's pager number and my pager number had the same prefix (middle 3 digits). What if we randomly dial numbers with that prefix and page them all to this guy's number? So we order a pizza, open some beers, and start looking through the yellow pages at locksmiths and tow truck services to find more pager prefixes. We wind up with a dozen or so.
After that, it's half an hour of coding in Ye Olde Borland C++. I put together a program that would cycle through our list of known prefixes and add a random final four digits to get a random pager. It calls the pager's number, pauses, then dials this asshole's number and throws a *911 suffix on there for good measure, which is something people with pagers understood to indicate an emergency of some kind. The whole thing was just generating a string like "ATDT602XXXYYYY,,<asshole number>*911#", where XXX is the pager prefix and YYYY is random. Commas make pauses, since you need to connect to the paging service before you can enter the message. Make string, send to modem, wait for "NO CARRIER", hang up, repeat.
We start eating the pizza and let it fly. I was very picky about my devices, so my modem was a USRobotics Courier. You could set an S register to control how long it would sound each tone when dialing. Uber-nerds like myself would keep tinkering with that to get it as fast as possible while still being recognized by the phone service. It was very fast. I swag it could run through 4 pages per minute, so this guy would get 240 calls/hour. We just watched it run and laughed our asses off.
We realized pretty early on that we didn't really know if it was working, so we wandered down to the 7-11 and called him from a payphone, just in case he could somehow trace it or the po-po were on the case and watching. A man answered and I said, "hello, I got a page at this number". I heard an audible sigh and then he just hung up. Gold!
We ended up running it for a few hours, then let it go quiet for a few days. Then we scheduled it to start dialing in the middle of the night every few days, plus we'd fire it up by hand randomly whenever we had a party. We checked again from the 7-11 after a week and it went to an answering machine, which did the rapid-tone at the end of the greeting to indicate the tape was full. We reasoned that the line was still ringing, anyway, so we kept at it for another month or so. Eventually, we got the disconnected warning when we made one of our regular checkups. I'm sure he just changed the number.
I like to think about that guy answering the phone after a few days of silence when we started it up. I can vividly imagine his response at the "did someone page me to this number?" as he slams the phone down and then it rings again a few seconds later. Or, of course, coming home from work and having an answering machine full of random people asking about being paged.
And, yeah, we annoyed several thousand people into calling this guy by the end. But each of those people was only put out for a single call. A cost, yes, but a necessary one for justice.
This slow burn starts a full year and a half before my plan came into effect. Earlier in the year, my Dad quite sensibly suggested that with the size of our family Christmas party, we skip a generation with gifts to ease the financial strain as the extended family grew. At the time I was struggling with my business and athletic career and my wife (then GF) was working on her second masters degree, so I suggested names from a hat, but he wanted to spoil all his grandchildren. I said fair enough, I'll chip in for Oma's cruise and buy gifts for my step-siblings, but don't expect anything grand.
Dramatis Personae for that Christmas party
Me - 28 year old (at the time) heavyweight mixed martial artist and strength coach AKA small time athlete working a day job to barely make rent in addition to training full time.
Stepsis - 40ish, an aging mombie who's only assets are starting to sag too much for them to be assets anymore, leaving her with no other definable personality traits
Thing 1 - My oldest Niece 12, Stepsister's Daughter, imagine the most vapid tweenager stereotype you can and multiply it by 1000
Thing 2 - My Oldest Nephew 9, Stepsister's Son, living proof that you're never to young to be an asshole
Stepbro - 36 Formerly cool dude who gave up on life when his kids were born, years later would gain back enough willpower and gumption to physically assault his wife
Spawn 1 - 6 Bro's daughter - Sweet and shy girl, terrified by my mere presence, the wisest of the bunch IMHO
Spawn 2 - 7 Bro's son - A generally nice kid who at this time was partway into evolving into an asshole after being constantly told to look up too and emulate thing 2.
Spawn 1 has brought a Nintendo DS and all the kids are struggling to see/play it together, so I foolishly offer to loan them mine to lighten the load. Spawn 1 agrees to share with Thing 1, and Spawn 2 agrees to share with thing 2. Having stupidly deprived myself of my means to escape social obligations, I go to the living room to acquire that much older cure for not wanting to deal with other people; alcohol.
Not even having had time to pour a dram, my trained ear picks up from the kids room the unmistakable sound of one human being pummeling another. I politely suggest to Stepbro that he might want to go have a look, but Bro hasn't given two shits about anything in about 7 years, so he waves it off and I go to investigate.
I walk in to see that Thing 2 may be an asshole, but is not untalented, and is managing to strike, shove into a wall and kick Spawn 2 all at the same time, while attempting to play my DS with his other hand, having decided his turn began the moment I left the room. Thing 1 has simply wrested the DS from Spawn 1, who is now sitting in the corner crying.
I shout for the stepsis, informing her that if she doesn't get in here to break things up before I count to 10, I would have a stern conversation with them. She turns up and separates the kids and I retrieve my DS. Instead of giving Thing 2 a lesson on sharing and not hitting people, she proceeds to berate Spawn 2 (the kid who was beaten) for not simply giving up the DS to her little piece of shit and making her son look bad. Thing 1 simply lets out a tweenage sigh for the ages, and tosses the other DS into the crying spawn 2.
I then excuse myself from the party, thanking whatever gods may be that I don't have to provide gifts for any of those little shits.
6 Months later, my firm believe in atheism is confirmed as Bro calls me and this conversation ensues.
Stepbro - Hey Elbowsmash, while I really appreciated the gifts last year, you should really get something for the kids this year instead, Christmas is all about the chiiiillllllllllldrrreeeeen after all.
Me - No, I turn up to chat with you and dad and Oma, I really don't give two shits about the kids.
Stepbro - That's a mean thing to say about my kids, don't you care about them?
Me - You cared about them so much that at the last party, you couldn't be bothered to break up a fight where your son was being beaten bloody.
Stepbro - Thing 1 is a good kid, Stepsis said he just had a bad day.
Me - He was literally beating your child. You didn't put pics on social media for a week because of the bruises. If thing 1 were an adult and had that kind of bad day, I'd have had a stern conversation with him and convinced him peacefully to lay on the floor until the police arrived.
Bro - Well Stepsis and I were talking and we think you should buy stuff for the kids next year instead of us.
Me - Well I'm happy not to buy you anything, but I'm not getting crap for the Stepsis's little shits, especially when she encourages that behavior.
Bro - Well if you aren't going to get something for all the kids, you shouldn't get anything at all. It's not right if you don't treat them equally.
Me - Done
Now I'm sure they wish it has been this simple, but unfortunately it wasn't and I certainly wouldn't have written such a long winded story if that were the payoff. Thanks for bearing with me so far, we're almost at the end.
A few months later, about 2 weeks before xmas, I get an email form my dad with links to various toys (mostly from toys r us, which still existed at the time). When I call him back to ask what that's all about, this conversation ensues.
Me: Hey whatsup? I got your email, what's that all about
Dad: Those are gifts for the things and spawn for Christmas.
Me: That's cool if you're getting them that, I'll see them when the kids open them.
Dad: No that's for you to get them
Me: I don't buy for that generation remember? And I already sent you my contribution to Oma's cruise
Dad: You need to get stuff for the kids, don't you want them to look up to you as an uncle?
Me: Not really. Also what part of my life suggests to you that they ought to look up to me as any sort of role model? You'd be better of telling them to grow up to be rockstars.
Dad: Not the point, christmas is about the chiiiiiiiiilllldreeeeennnnnnn, if you don't get them this stuff, I won't put your name on the card for Oma.
Me: That's a shitty thing to do, considering I already paid into that.
Dad: Will you get the stuff or not?
Me: Well guess my name isn't going on the card then, this will cost me more than a month's rent, so you can take this list and grease it up real nice...
Dad (Interrupting): Calm your jets, this is what they want.
Me: I'll get them a token something but I'm not taking out a loan.
Dad: Fine, just make it something they enjoy
Me: If what I get doesn't put a giant smile on each and every one of their faces, I'll buy you dinner at a steakhouse of your choosing
Dad: That's the spirit, talk to you later.
So, Christmas rolls around and my wife and I have bought not just 1, but 4 gifts for each of the little ones, and wrapped them all beautifully. My dad (correctly) assumes its all probably from the dollar store, but it's nicely wrapped and he gives me a look of approval as I place it under the tree. My wife and I schmooze for a bit and then suggest that since we brought a several gifts for each of the kids, why don't they open one each before dinner so they have something to do while they wait.
Their parents of course agree as it gives them more of a reason to ignore their kids and talk about them instead, so they send us off to hand out gifts to their kids, Stepsis is looking especially smug. As they begin to unwrap them, I prepare the camera as my wife goes for our coats, and I stick around just long enough to immortalize on film the big shit-eating grin on each of the kids faces as they see what their gift is.
Less than 1 minute later, the first blast from the airhorn (Thing 2's gift) can be heard in the hallway clearly be my wife and I as we make our way to the elevator. I have no idea how much of the bulk pack of silly string (Spawn 1's gift) or the 36 rainbow pack of off brand sharpies (Spawn 2's gift) ended up on he walls, but I do know they repainted the place the next month. Whether or not the pile of slap on bracelets we got for Thing 1 ended up on the wrists and legs of the parents as they tried to contain the other three will be left to the imagination, but I like to think they all ended up in the height of 80's fashion before boxing day.
I may never know if they opened the rest of their presents (everyone got a copy of each of the other's gifts, you know, for fairness, plus a bunch of gross and mildly inappropriate temporary tattoos). In the confusion none of them noticed either me or my wife leaving. I'm certain at some point they did notice the pretty gold envelope addressed to "The parents" on the tree. Inside was a very pretty card, blank but for the following note:
"This was a warning shot from off the top of my head, I've got a whole year to get creative for next time. Merry Christmas, E."
I never bought anyone steak dinner, however I enjoyed several more Christmas's with my Oma and Dad until they passed and I stopped seeing that side of the family at all. No mention of this incident, or gifts for the kids was ever made again.
TL:DR - Entitled stepsister and stepbro manipulate my dad into coercing me into buying each of their crotch goblins gifts even though I'm not supposed to buy for that generation. They get what they fucking deserve (what they deserve being airhorns, a 36 multicolor pack of sharpies, silly string, slap on bracelets and a lifetime supply of mostly inappropriate temporary tattoos. Each.)
Edit: Thanks so much for the awards everyone, especially for my first gold! But remember your local food bank and it's recipients need help more than my post needs icons beside it. So if you enjoyed my festive tale of revenge, you'll put a much bigger grin on my face by helping out those in need then sending money to reddit.
It is 2020, unfortunately. Itâs the day after my two younger sisters and I flew out to Pennsylvania to see my dad, who lives there after getting divorced by my mom for fifteen years of not being a good husband or dad. He lives with his mom, Cranky Grandma, and her devil cat, as well as my amazing aunt and her angel kitten.
Dad gets home from work. âWhereâs Emi?â he asks my Cranky Grandma.
âSheâs in the basement,â Cranky Grandma says, probably throwing in a snide comment or two about the newly-dyed purple hair adorning my head or the leather fingerless gloves that have joined my black wardrobe. âLookinâ for some Christmas ornaments.â
Dad goes down the basement stairs and finds me rummaging through cardboard boxes. âWhat are you looking for?â he says.
âHi, Dad,â I say. âWell, I noticed that you decorated for Christmas, but youâre missing a few things! Where are The Mooses?â
The Mooses are a pair of stuffed mooses that have been put up every Christmas since I can remember. Theyâre brown, about two feet tall, and soft as a marshmallow. Thereâs Mama Moose, who is named Merry, holding Baby Moose, who is named Christmas and is in a red velvet sack reading âMerry Christmasâ on it in gold embroidery. The Mooses always go on the couch to watch over the living room and all the decorations and presents in it while weâre asleep.
The problem with The Mooses is that when my mom divorced Dad, she was so scared of him that she let him have almost everything. This included The Mooses and quite a few more of her treasured ornaments. And since Iâve always been the one to set The Mooses on the couch, that first Christmas with a divorced dad just didnât feel right without them.
Dad helps me look for The Mooses for awhile. âSorry, sweetie, they must have gotten lost in the move,â he says.
I smile and donât tell him that I hate being called sweetie. âItâs okay,â I say, and pull out a cardboard box. âHey, look! Itâs your What God Wants For Christmas box! I love that tradition!â
We go set up What God Wants For Christmas in the living room. I say, âI think Iâm going to go take a nap.â
Dad says, âOkay.â
I go upstairs and into my room and shut the door. I walk over to the window seat/storage chest under the window. I open it.
âHello, Mooses,â I say.
The Mooses lay on top of my stuffed animal collection, looking dusty. Several other ornaments I recognize as Momâs are keeping them company. I grin and shut the chest.
It is the day we fly back to my home state. I have The Mooses packed away in my suitcase, and the other ornaments tucked beside them, wrapped in my fluffiest (but still black) hoodie to protect them.
I roll my suitcase out to the hallway. Dad is weighing Youngest Sisterâs bag to make sure itâs under fifty pounds. âOkay, now I need to check it to make sure youâre not stealing any of my stuff!â he tells her.
My mind says, Oh no.
My brain gives me uncomfortable memories of how Dad raged when he thought one of us had stolen his coffee mug.
My voice says, âPrivacy invaded in three...twoâŠâ in a joking tone. Dad and Youngest Sister laugh. Dad does not check anyoneâs suitcase.
We are at the airport. Younger Sisterâs suitcase is somehow three pounds over the weight limit.
Dad says, âEmi, grab one of the suitcases that already went through and open it up. Weâll put some of Younger Sisterâs stuff in there.â He gestures to my suitcase.
My mind makes an earsplitting screeching noise that sounds like someone slammed their brakes to avoid hitting a pterodactyl and hit the pterodactyl anyway.
My brain imagines Dad opening the suitcase and going into a rage at the sight of The Mooses.
My voice says, âSure, Dad.â My hands grab Youngest Sisterâs suitcase instead of mine and pass it over. Dad opens it. Her suitcase contains no smuggled goods. We transfer the stuff and the very nice airport lady sends all the bags down the conveyor belt. Dad asks me why I wave to mine. I shrug. âJust being weird,â I say. Good luck, Mooses, my mind says.
We are back home. My family- my Older Sister, who didnât go with us, Mom, my other grandma, who we call Maga, and my Boppa, or grandpa, are all sitting in the living room catching up.
I say, âIâm disappointed you took the tree down already.â
Older Sister laughs. âItâs past New Yearâs!â
âI know,â I say, âbut I brought some stuff to put on it.â
I open my suitcase. I show around the ornaments I smuggled back- three tiny stuffed snowmen, our catâs catnip-stuffed cat ornament, a white clay angel, a wooden rocking horse, a wooden mouse king, a clay snowman, my older sisterâs stuffed dog. When I unveil the rocking horse, Maga gasps. âI bought that for your mother when she was little!â she exclaims. âHow did your dad get it?â
âThatâs not everything,â I say. I unzip the flap hiding The Mooses from view.
I pull out The Mooses.
Older Sister and Boppa clap. âHow did you get those back here right under Dadâs nose?â Older Sister asks. Maga laughs so hard she has tears in her eyes.
The tears in Momâs eyes are not from laughter.
Slowly, she reaches out and takes The Mooses, hugging them to her chest. Over their antlers, she mouths âThank you.â
And then, she gets up, and she sets The Mooses down. On the couch.
Racist Karen calls the cops on my cousin, so I get her business closed down
Background
My cousin (23,F) recently opened up her own salon. From a young age, she taught herself how to thread/wax eyebrows and developed an interest in makeup and hair. Everyone in our extended family would go to her before events and on a monthly basis for their threading, waxing, hair and makeup needs. In 2020, she had a full-time job (non-salon related) but decided to renovate the basement of her home to create a small salon space. She now spends her free time taking clients in her at-home salon and there's nothing but great reviews! Her sister helped with the renovations and now helps her with marketing the business (social media, community pages) and I help with the finances (budgeting, price-setting). We all support her and are really proud of her! The salon is our baby.
We're now in the middle of a pandemic and this greatly affected her salon business. As a result, she implemented safety measures and our small team made sure to keep up with covid regulations in our city. This included having one customer inside at a time, doing temperature checks, making masks/face shields and gloves mandatory, wiping down the salon after each client...etc. Also, when our city was in lockdown, the salon was closed as it is not an essential service.
Incident
Our city is once again in lockdown since the end of December to the end of January. The salon has been closed since the lockdown began. The salon's social media pages had been updated to let the current clientele know that the salon is closed.
Now comes the Karen. Karen sees a community post from OCTOBER detailing a discount that the salon was having on a certain package we offer. She comments on the post saying that she can't believe the salon is open in the middle of a lockdown when her salon has to be closed. This is important for later. Karen fails to notice that this post was made in October, when salons were allowed to operate as long as they followed safety regulations. Karen doesn't bother checking more recent posts indicating that the salon was closed. My cousin doesn't see her reply at this time.
The next day, two police officers show up at my cousin's door while she's at a doctor's appointment. The officers ask for my cousin and my aunt lets them know that she's not home right now. My aunt does not speak English very well and lets the officers know that she would call my cousin and ask her to come home. Maybe the officers didn't believe her but they insisted on coming inside the home. My aunt had already called my cousin as she was worried. My cousin asked what it was about, but my aunt didn't know. My cousin then asked if they had a warrant for anything. When she found out they didn't, she told her mom not to let them come inside and that she would be there in about 20 minutes. My cousin began driving home when my aunt called her to let her know that they simply left. Hearing this my cousin was less worried and decided to go grocery shopping as planned before heading home. Turns out, the officers came back half an hour later and once again demanded to see my cousin. My aunt called my cousin again and asked her to come home but in the 20 minutes she took to come home, the officers were gone. They had left a card and asked her to call back.
My cousin managed to get a hold of the officers and was told that someone had reported her business. They claimed that she was operating during the lockdown and they had proof. My cousin knew this wasn't true as the salon had been closed for quite a while. By now, my cousin had seen the comment from earlier and mentioned that she knew exactly what their so called proof was but the post in question was from October. My cousin was very upset as this post was not even close to being actual evidence of her operating now, in January. She was also very upset that they insisted on coming inside the house with no cause or warrant when they could clearly see that my aunt does not understand the language very well. At the end of the conversation, the police officer apologized to my cousin and we thought it was the end of it.
You must be wondering how we know that Karen was the one who called the cops. Well, she told us! The next day, my cousin received a message she realized was from the woman who commented on the post. Karen decided to pretend like she's a customer.
Karen: Can I book an appointment?
My cousin: Hey love, we are currently closed due to the lockdown. Once the lockdown is over, we will be more than happy to book you in.
Karen: Oh my gf was there yesterday, my apologies
My cousin: You must have gotten the date wrong. The salon is not taking clients until the lockdown is over. Thank you.
Karen: Np but I didn't get the date wrong lol I also know the police came due to you being open. Take care
My cousin: I'm not going to sit here and entertain your boring life. Maybe for a change you can find another hobby rather than spreading lies and wasting people's time, including the police's time. Or even better, find an actual job. Have a good night.
Karen: I own my own spa that's closed as should yours be. My mom is the one who called the cops. You are not entertaining me at all. Go back to your own country instead of fucking with ours.
My cousin decided to block her at this point. My cousin was happy this was all over. Her sister and I were still outraged at the racist comment and how someone could make up lies about a small business that led to the cops terrifying my aunt. When my cousin told me about Karen, the fact that she had her own spa really stood out. I did some digging.
Revenge
Turns out Karen runs her own spa out of her house. Doing some more snooping, I found reviews from her clients on her business page that were posted on days that the city was under lockdown. The reviews could be from clients who received services before the lockdown and only now had a chance to write a review. To be sure, I found Karen's Instagram page. I decided to use her own trick against her! I created a new account with a generic name and followed her page so she couldn't see that I was related to my cousin. I then messaged her to ask about the prices for her services.
Me: Hey, I love your pics! I was wondering how much you charge.
Karen: Hey girl, thank you so much! What service are you after?
Me: I'm really interested in the BB glow facial.
Karen: That's awesome. My biggest seller for sure. Normally it's 125 but it's on bogo so you pay for one session and get 2!
Me: That's such a great deal compared to others! When is your next available date?
Karen: Where are you located? I can't have people come to me in lockdown but I travel to my clients.
Karen was not operating from her home location due to lockdown restrictions but was travelling to her clients' homes which is still against regulations! I then made up a lie about my home not having adequate space and asked for her address so we could meet up at my friend's place somewhere between her and I's locations. She foolishly told me her address.
During this time, I also tried joining other community groups that she was a part of. In one particular group, people in the community were promoting their small businesses. She had recently made a post about discounts on her services for the month of January! I immediately went online and submitted a report about her business still operating including screenshots, her address, full name...etc.
A few days passed by and I had forgotten to check up on it as I was busy with life again. I saw the incident report number on a sticky note I had on my desk and decided to check in. Apparently, this was not Karen's first offence! Karen had already been fined $750 for having a client in her home during the first lockdown in my city. After being fined, she decided to change her business model and go to the client's home instead. Now, she was fined $10,000!
I was still following her on Instagram so I decided to check it out. She had gone on a rant about how she was going to do very bad things to the person who reported her. She also mentioned that she was no longer allowed to run her business! I'm not sure what type of ban the regional police put on her but I immediately deleted the account and exited the groups I had joined earlier. At the end of the day, Karen got was she deserved and I fulfilled my dream of pretending to be Sherlock Holmes.
