We spend most of our lives at work. Sometimes, it can be like a family. Of course, like family, there are always people you'd rather not be around. People that may have done you wrong or people that are just really annoying. That's when a great revenge plot is most satisfying.
We culled Reddit for some amazing examples of people at work that reached a breaking point and brought the hammer down in the pettiest ways. Sometimes it was obvious that they did it, sometimes it was far more subtle. Customers took some of the revenge, but co-workers took a whole lor more in these crazy stories of revenge and retribution!
Here’s How To Butter Up Your Boss
“I had a boss 7-8 years ago whom I hated. She was the fakest and most entitled person I had ever met.
One day, she decided that she didn’t like the smell of microwave popcorn, so she waved her magic office wand and had it banned.
Fast forward a month or so. I was browsing Amazon and found a USB stick that emits a smell when plugged in. This one emitted the smell of buttered popcorn.
I bought it, plugged it into the back of her computer, and she had the sweet smell of PopSecret in her office for six freaking months. She complained almost every day. It’s the sweetest revenge I’ve ever tasted.”
Coming Back HARD
“When I was in boot camp, the drill instructors would make us chug a full canteen of water from these nasty canteens to force us to hydrate. I was the last one to finish drinking mine and so one of the squad leaders (another recruit in a meaningless leadership position) came up to me and kicked me in the shin for being so slow. He kicked me so hard that I started bleeding through my cammies and left a knot on my shin that didn’t go away for months.
So a couple days after he did that I was on fire watch, which is basically guard duty while everyone else is sleeping. The next morning we had the crucible which was 3 days of field activities and ended in a 10-mile hike with full gear up a steep mountain.
That night, while he was asleep, I took my canteen and filled both of his boots up with water. He had to wear them and was practically in tears about the terrible next few days he was about to have. When we did the hike up the mountain he couldn’t finish it and had to ride in the safety vehicle in shame with one of the drill instructors.
He went to medical afterward and got dropped from the platoon and (presumably) graduated with another company. He messed up my shin but I gave him trenchfoot and nobody ever found out that it was me. Eff that guy.”
Driving Them Crazy With Bad Music
MichaelJayBerlin/Shutterstock.com
“I got fired from my job at a bar that has a nice fancy jukebox. If you have the app you can just pick songs on your credit card and they’ll play. If you hit play next on a song, even if they turn the jukebox off, it’ll play when it starts back up. It’s also unskippable. They lost the master remote which lets you skip songs, so if someone chooses a song everyone else hates, there’s nothing at all you can do.
The owner does inventory every Tuesday night. It also happens to be a busy night because they do pool tournaments and it usually gets packed. I got 20 bucks in credits and that usually gives you about 18 unskippable songs, plus more, if the app gifts you credits. I picked a remix of ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ that comes in at around 7 minutes a pop.
Two hours of hearing the same song has killed their business on Tuesdays. Even if they unplug it, it’ll still play when they plugged it back in.
I’ve been doing it for two months so far.”
Poop Ninja
“I worked with a woman who liked to say bad things about the various people in our office in an effort to advance herself. She was also an undiagnosed hypochondriac.
I learned she was very uncomfortable hearing people using any of the other bathroom stalls at the same time she was. So, I started eating a protein-rich diet. I pooped at work. A lot. She complained. So I did it more. She complained more. Our coworkers thought this was hilarious after a couple weeks, as they got hip to what I was doing. They also hated her as much as me, so they never clued her in that I was the guilty pooper.
I became known as the Poop Ninja after a really nice tantrum she threw, saying the stink being created was causing her to have ‘asthma attacks.’ She even tried to ask our boss if she could work from home, as it was creating a mental health issue for her. Boss laughed her out of the office. She started using the bathroom one floor below our work center around the same time I recruited several other women into my little army. She had no escape from the smell, and sweet Jeebus, it was nasty.
The five of us ended up losing about 20 lbs each on our new diets, while she gave herself three kidney infections and gained 30 pounds trying to hold it till she got to the BX food court.”
The Manager Made A Huge Mistake
cheapbooks/Shutterstock.com
“I worked at Radio Shack briefly.
When I interviewed, they had someone from district management come in to interview me because they wanted to hire me as an assistant manager. They told the store manager that they were looking to hire me as an assistant manager, but would have to put me in another store because his store wasn’t big enough to justify an assistant manager. He told them, ‘No, I want him here, just make him a regular employee.’ I found out and was not happy that he made that choice for me, so I made his life kinda miserable.
He trained me on how to open/close the store and treated me like an assistant manager, I just wasn’t being paid like one. He also apparently had a solar-powered car so he refused to ever work evenings to close the store. There was one other person in the store who was trained to close and allowed to. He decided to fire this person because he didn’t like him, leaving just me and the manager who could open/close the store.
I was a soldier in the National Guard at this time. The manager didn’t realize when he fired the other guy that it would mess up his vacation as there was no one to close the store as I was away for my annual training for three weeks. He basically came to me and complained that because I was gone on training he had to move his vacation. Not my problem. So he rescheduled it to a week or two before my annual training.
I found out it had cost him some money to move it all around and that he was not happy about it. I got a call from my unit asking if I could come in on orders to work for 2 weeks before Annual Training to get some things squared away at the armory. I said, ‘Absolutely, send me the orders and I’ll be happy to.’ Then I went to my manager and told him, ‘Sorry, I have orders for those 2 weeks, have to go in’ and submitted the orders. He was furious about his vacation. I told him he was welcome to call my company commander and tell him that I’m not allowed off work for military orders because he has a vacation scheduled.
He was ticked! I got back from annual training, worked 2 more weeks then quit because a friend offered me a job running a store he owned for better hours/money and a better job.
I wonder if that manager ever did get to take a vacation.”
Fear Of Ketchup
Nagy-Bagoly Arpad/Shutterstock.com
“My coworker sometimes throws out her lunch in the garbage can at my desk instead of her own because she claims she can’t stand the smell of old ketchup that’s been sitting out for a couple hours. She gets french fries in the work cafeteria once or twice a week, and there’s a big ketchup dispenser thing. We get little plastic cups to put the ketchup in, and there are lids available, but she doesn’t use them. She just fills up the cup with way more ketchup than she needs, so there’s always leftover. I’ve asked her several times to stop, but she will then just wait until I get up to go to the bathroom and do it, and hide my garbage can under my desk so she thinks I won’t see it.
Every time she does it, I wait until she goes to the bathroom, take out the little plastic container that she had ketchup in, and put it way in the back of her bottom desk drawer. There’s 6 in there now, the oldest is over a month old. So far, she hasn’t noticed the smell. Gonna keep doing it and see how long it takes her to notice.
I don’t really feel bad. I have taught her everything she knows at this job, but she is a moron, and she always tries to get other people to do her work for her. Sometimes I’m not sure if the stupidity is an act, and she’s secretly a genius for getting other people to give her answers, but then she’ll say something ridiculously stupid that’s non-work related that removes all doubt. Literally, nobody in the office likes her, and a couple of our coworkers know that I’m doing the ketchup thing and fully approve. They were shocked when she threw her lunch away in my garbage the first time. Basically, we all want her to be fired or quit, but it’s unlikely.”
A Crisis Of Conscience Led To Revenge
“Two decades ago, I worked as a telemarketer…the worst of jobs. They had me selling terrible JC Penny life insurance.
I’d just made a rather large sale of said terrible insurance to what was clearly a very old lady. At the end of the sale, I told the lady I was going to cancel her order because she clearly didn’t know what she was getting herself in to. Also, she reminded me of my grandmother. I just couldn’t do it to her. I knew the product was straight garbage.
Well, my manager was listening to the call. He called me into his office and yelled at me for 5 straight minutes for cancelling that sale. I told him I’d rather be fired than do the wrong thing to that lady. He fired me on the spot.
One year later, said the manager was working at a Perkins restaurant as a host/waiter. I sent my order back 3 times (even though it was correct each time) and then asked to speak with his manager, to which I laid into him about his service. I feel bad about it as of this writing, but at the time, it was such sweet revenge.”
Getting Revenge On Everyone
“I used to work at Target.
In the break room, we have a fridge which we all use. A couple days in a row, I would buy orange and apple juice to take home and write a note saying ‘please do not drink’ and place it in the fridge.
Of course, by the time I got off and go to get my juice, it would be all gone or half gone. After dealing with this for about 5 days, I bought a large apple and orange juice and the strongest laxative in the store. I mixed them and left the concoction the fridge with the same note as usual.
The next 5 hours of my shift was the best ever. I mean just about everyone was going to the bathroom QUICKLY, from store managers cutting meetings short to cashiers leaving in the middle of transactions.”
He’ll Show You Low Effort!
“I got reviewed at work by a manager I had never met before. I had done everything I was always told to do, and more, but he still marked me low. I know it’s because they wanted to avoid giving me a raise, but at least say you don’t want to/can’t afford to. I’ll at least respect your honesty. Anything else, and you can go eff yourself.
Anyway, he told me I didn’t go the extra mile. I pointed out that I always do. His response? ‘Well, I never see you do it.’
I said ‘Well, maybe if management didn’t always hang out at guest services and went around to the other floors, where I am doing my job, you’d have seen me.’ That got him to yell at me and mark me poorly for attitude but I didn’t care at that point.
Later on, he came up to me and asked me if I could stay late. Given that I’d previously told him I didn’t have anything else to do the next day, he probably thought I’d say yes.
I looked him in the eyes and said: ‘Sorry, but I don’t see that you guys need my help.’
After that review, I only put in effort when in direct view of the managers. If one of them approached me about it, I pointed out that they’d said during my review I never did anything anyway, so what’s the difference between now and before?
That usually shut them up.”
Ruining It For Everyone
“Back in the late ’90s, I worked at Best Buy. One Saturday a month we had to come in 3 hours before the store opened, at 7 am, for a mandatory all-store meeting where we watched the video from corporate, gave out the Employee of the Month award, went over department goals, that kind of stuff.
Well, there was a guy in our department, James, who was a pretty poor worker and showed up to the meeting an hour late, so the manager took him aside and fired him.
The manager didn’t watch him on his way out of the store so James went into the break room and stuck his finger in every single doughnut they brought in for our break so literally the only mild positive of getting up at 6 on Saturday was ruined. 20 years later and I still miss that doughnut.”
Reversing Things
Julia Sanders/Shutterstock.com
“I was a full-time locksmith. Late on a St. Patrick’s day, I had to drive to St. Louis’ Laclede’s Landing, a nightlife district, to open a vehicle.
There were very few places to park. I pulled onto a street that had been blocked off, grabbed tools and walked the two blocks to the car to open it. When I was finished, I returned to my van to find a person had parked their sports car directly behind me, blocking me in. I was trapped, potentially for the evening.
While trying to decide what to do, I discovered that the barricades trapping me were able to be retracted into the cobblestones just by twisting them properly and pushing down. Once I knew I could escape, I did something kind of awful, and I hope if you are out there you prick, I hope it sucked for you.
I went to the sport’s car and reversed his license plates so that the colored, lettered side that is legible was facing inward. I twisted them back down tightly and did this to both the front and rear facing plates. I hope they were wasted and a cop saw them and pulled them over. That was more than ten years ago and I still think about that rude person blocking me in.”
Photoshop Revenge
“At one point, I had to train a new hire who was a pretty attractive woman. That meant that we shared an office for a month or so. I had another coworker who was the slightest bit skeezy, but not in a particularly threatening way. He liked to flirt with girls in the office, but not really overtly. It was a weird beta thing. He was happily married, generally likable, and I think he mostly wanted the affirmation of talking to pretty women.
Anyway, not having a lot of excuses to come to our office, he decided that we were a bit closer than we really were. I liked him, but he decided that we were the kind of friends who pranked each other. That gave him reasons to come to our office when I wasn’t around. He’d get to chat with my office mate and my mouse wouldn’t work when I got back because he put a post-it note under it.
I don’t really like things like that. I don’t have that relationship with any of my friends mostly because I don’t like it, but also because when I am presented with it, I don’t respond with a great sense of proportion.
I decided to stay late that night to retaliate.
He had a digital picture frame in his office that cycled through pictures of his family.
There was a picture of his wife wearing a Texas Longhorns cowboy hat, which I photoshopped some balls into a cowboy hat.
There was a picture of his eldest daughter, who was maybe 5, that I photoshopped in a lazy eye.
There was a picture of his younger daughter, who was maybe 2 or 3 at the time, after very messily eating a piece of chocolate. This one is a little hard to describe. She was looking up to the left, and there happened to be a big, pink out-of-focus flower in the background of the direction she was looking, with an almost Jack Nicholson-like smile. I decided that the best thing for that was to Photoshop Hitler into the flower so he was like a little devil talking to her and she was joyously listening.
Then in the last one, a profile picture of his wife, I dialed down the opacity of a poop-eating-grin picture of myself and put my face in her cheek.
Everyone on my team knew what I was doing and called in a bunch of people on his team and we all had a good laugh. Then I put the pictures on his frame and waited. We all waited. It took three weeks for him to notice.
He sent company-wide props to ‘whoever did this,’ and HR made a half-hearted inquiry.
I thought it was pretty cool that he didn’t rat me out.”
Pay Your Bills!
“I used to work doing stucco in east Texas. One guy just never paid us, so we spent a day tearing down everything we worked on.
Another time, while working for a small machine shop, a customer kept leading us on about paying for some work we did. Was all a walk-in job. Paid half up front and would pay the rest at pick up. Well, he needed his part NOW and would pay us the remainder in a month or so. So, we cut his part in half and said we’ll give him the other half in a month or so.
The lesson of the story? Don’t mess around with contractors.”
“So Petty, So Cathartic”
“I was working on a fruit picking farm with other backpackers in rural Queensland. I’d had a boyfriend when I arrived there, and I decided to leave because he dumped me and immediately shacked up with the girl next door (who had been my friend too).
The morning I left I was up really early to catch the bus out of that dump and I noticed that they had been up late drinking and left their room keys in the communal kitchen. I took those keys and hurled them into the fields in front of camp. Then I took some soy sauce and poured it into the shoes they had left in front of their room.
So petty, so cathartic. You know he actually walked me to the bus stop? I was still all cut up about him obviously. I just imagine him getting back to camp and his new girlfriend freaking out about her shoes being wet and umami flavored.”
Playing It Off As A Joke
“I found the perfect gift for my annoying cubicle neighbor who just so happens to be my Secret Santa this year. If I were Michael Scott, he would be Toby. He’s just awful.
For Christmas, he is going to get a real present (because I’m not that mean spirited) and a joke gift.
The joke gift is going to be hilarious. It’s a coffee mug that is black until it heats up, then it reveals a big middle finger. He’s got enough of a sense of humor to find it funny, but I’m sure he wouldn’t use it, so I plan on hiding the mug he uses now so he’ll be forced to use my gift.”
Don’t Mess With The Call Center!
“I was working at a call center. My coworker, who has a very southern accent, gets a call in. The woman on the other line detects her accent and gives her a hard time. She then requests someone ‘intelligent’ with ‘better English.’ My coworker tells the woman her English is fine and she can assist her. The lady says something to the effect of ‘just transfer me to someone else, loser’
My coworker then sent her to the SPANISH line. I about died from the laughter.”
Inundating Them With Freebies
“I’m a hairstylist and I got fired from a salon job over some nepotistic nonsense.
Luckily I had about 60 free haircut cards lying around my apartment. So I donated them all to a charity that helps recent parolees get back on their feet.
On one hand, it’s nice to help people. On the other, it’s also nice to know that they’ll probably use the free haircut card, never come back, and not tip the stylists.”
Three Star Review Seems Nice
“I used to drive for Uber. One night, I picked up this obnoxious wasted moron.
He was a totally terrible customer from the beginning, calling to see where I was (literally one block away, moron). He was annoying and snobbish from the moment I picked him up.
A few minutes into the ride, he tells me that he’s the CEO of Uber. Keeps telling me his name, keeps telling me, ‘Google me.’ Literally those words. ‘Google me.’
Turns out, he was the CEO of Uber. After I dropped His Royal Jerkiness off, I gave him 3 stars.”