“Cops Were Holding Back Laughter”: 59 Times People Got Revenge And Made It Clear They Aren’t To Be Messed With

Many years ago (early 1980's) I worked for a company that did what I called "Mall Molesting", they did market research surveys in a mall and were always stopping people to ask questions, etc.

The company was run by three Older women who had started it in their kitchen. They were opinionated, and had no care about anything but money. Part of this included paying employees not by the hour but by the survey. Which was against Labor rules as it never matched the basic hourly wage. This is important...

Christmas came, and we were planning our employee party when one of the owners called and told us that in order to avoid paying bonuses, we were to fire everyone at the party and then hire back the ones that we liked after the new year.

We (the other managers and I) talked about it, and then I called the Federal Bureau of Labor, who had been trying to get the information for the employee pay for several years but had always been turned away. I had them come to the back door and let them into the file room, and showed them the boxes. I then said I had things to do in the front and would be back later and went to the front desk to finish the paperwork I needed. Said paperwork? A blow up of Santa going down the chimney with "Merry Freaking Christmas" typed across it, all of the management resignations and the Fed-Ex envelope that would hold our keys and said paperwork.

Labor guy finished what he needed to do, we locked up, sent the package which was timed to arrive at their Christmas party, and walked away. The company ended up spending about 250k in reimbursements and fines for the labor problem.

What’s better than calling the cops on your (sweet little old) neighbor's grandson for stealing your amazon package?

In July, my elderly neighbor had her grandson, and pregnant girlfriend, move in “to help them out”. She is a widowed lady in her seventies. Babbles a lot, but sweet.

I have a soft spot for her. Years ago, she cornered me as I was leaving to take my dog on a walk. My dog was unhappily pacing waiting for the walk while we listened to her stories. He urinated on her during the story; she is so senile she didn’t notice.

Just a few days later, I am mowing my backyard and the grandson walks past my house carrying an amazon envelope. Weird. An hour later, sweet little old lady comes over. With the envelope her grandson had. “This was in my landscaping”.

Totally forgot I ordered my kids the movie “Leap”. (What [an awful] haul for this kid.)

See I am a criminal defense attorney. Probably the only one this lady knows. If I call the cops, my neighbor will try to hire me. It will get weird. She is so sweet. I will be a witness. He is on probation, so he will sit in jail for a while. This will totally make me look like a snitch to my own clients in that same jail who are thieves, addicts, and burglars. It’s bad personally and professionally. And it’s not the biggest deal.

So I filled up an Amazon box with “purple rain powder” that was ordered to my office. A dry dye that gets darker and spreads when it comes into contact with your sweat. That lasts a week on your skin. Think leaking pen, times fifty.

Why? I want to shame him, and it won’t come back on me. He’s not gonna call the cops for stealing. He isn’t gonna tell his grandma he stole from me. And if it makes a mess in her house, it’s still cheaper for her than hiring a lawyer and paying her grandsons court costs and fines.

Yep, package was gone in 20 minutes.

I walk past the home; screams of anger at the pregnant girlfriend “this won’t come off” “it’s all over my grandma's house”. Priceless.

The following day I give him the “head nod” as he smokes a cigarette in a hoody in July. He runs inside.

Then I taught my kids to yell “smurf” when we walk past.

No snitching, just shame.

In 2013, my dad passed away while my brother and I were on our own independent international adventures. I was in Spain and my brother was in Canada and we needed to get back to Australia. My travel insurance was dodgy but eventually paid out after a few complaints - which is pretty standard practice. My brother tried to claim $9k. He could only get one emergency seat on a bunch of connecting flights and with that and his flight back after the funeral etc, and other cancellations, it all added up. Shock horror, his claim was rejected. Back then, there wasn’t an industry body that dealt with travel insurance companies or if there was, we had no idea what it was.

So my bro went through the usual hurdles involved with the appeals and complaints process. Eventually they told him that his claim for $9,326.00 was rejected and their determination was final.

So, back then companies didn’t really have Twitter handles, especially not insurance companies. So my bro, ever the troll, created a Twitter handle in this insurance company’s name, complete with their official logo. He quickly set about gaining thousands of followers and legitimately began answering their questions with truthful albeit, quite negative responses. Things like:
Q- my daughter and I want to travel to Paris. What insurance cover would you recommend?
A- we would recommend you take the premium for our comprehensive cover and burn it. We don’t like to pay out on for any insurable event because it upsets our shareholders. Have fun in Paris. Etc etc
The insurance company got wind of this and sent him a cease and desist letter. My brother counter-offered with a contract for the company to purchase the Twitter account (and 2500 potential customers) for the very reasonable price of $9,326.
They agreed.

Shortly after my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, my formally estranged half-brother quit his job and moved in to help take care of my dad. Though there really wasn’t enough money, it was agreed to pay him around $300 a week to make up for his missing income.

Durning this time, my half brother abruptly acquired durable power of attorney and usurped medical and financial (my mother and father had separate financial lives) decisions.

Several documents relating to my dads pension (which were now my half brothers responsibility) were not turned in on time resulting in my dad missing out on a one time payout of $8,000 and lowering his pension payout by $300/mo.

My half brother them cleaned out my dads remaining savings (about $3,000, not discover until about a month later). 6 days later, our father [took his own life]

My dad left all of his insurance money, and belongings to my mother. Us children were left with only sentimental items. My half brother was visibly upset and shaking when the will was read. He acknowledged that my mother was receiving “everything” and left.

About a month later we discovered the missing money. Though he broke no laws because he had power of attorney, we insisted he pay it back, even offered to let him make payments over a two year period. He refused and we have been no contact for two years now.

Little did he know that he was in my mom’s (his stepmother’s) will. He would receive half of what is currently a $250,000 estate. I suggested to my mother that she remove him from the will. She did and I am now the sole beneficiary.

He stole $3,000 now only to lose out on $125,000 later.

TL:DR. Half brother stole $3,000 from sick father only to be removed from the will and miss out on $125,000 later.

I met this girl(22 at the time) while I(30m at the time) was working in a national park, and she was a housekeeper on a work visa. We instantly hit it off, and within a month we were in a relationship. We even had a solid long-distance arrangement, where we would visit each other on recreational visas in our respective off seasons - I'd spend a few months in Romania or meet her at some vacation destination, then she'd spend a few months in the states.

This went on for about two years, and eventually the conversation came up with her family about possibly moving her to the states permanently - Romania never really recovered from the Ceausescu regime, and political/economic corruption makes life pretty unpleasant for a lot of people. Her marrying and moving to the US meant that her mom wouldn't have to worry about her daughter having a good life. I arranged for sponsorship, and proposed to her. It seemed like my dreams were coming true.

Then, about a month after she's all settled in, I get a message from her best friend back home - what followed were a year's worth of screenshots wherein she bragged about conning me into paying for her residency, while she cheated on me with 8 different men. In her friend's words, "You are a good man and you don't deserve this".

So, over the following two weeks, I reported her to ICE and homeland security for a conversation her brother and I had over a bottle at one point - he bragged about how he had done time in prison for smuggling weapons to Turkish terrorists, and how she had been his lookout on several occasions.

As you might imagine in the "War on Terror" days, this was not taken lightly. She was immediately arrested and deported, and put on a permanent no-entry terror watchlist.

Want to take advantage of me and cheat? Have fun never being able to come back to the states.

This happened when I was young, heard it secondhand from my grandmother, who the main character of the cast lived with at the time.

My uncle's ex-girlfriend was an all around horrible person. [Horrible] babysitter, got my uncle into bad crowds and legal trouble, and dabbled in so many substances from A to Z. She was also heavily tatted.

There was an artist, the star of the story, who was a family friend. Great dude, insane work. She asks him to do a piece for her. Huge, intricate angel wings (oh, the irony) across her back. He agrees.

It takes several sessions across weeks. She repeatedly has to postpone payment, but he's chill, family friend, Yada Yada. Until it comes to the last session, when it slips that she still doesn't have the money, and more importantly, WON'T have the money. Like, ever.

Now, the pro revenge.

No collection agency, no refusal to continue. He smiles, waves it off, says he'll finish up. No charge. It's gonna be a great piece. Legendary. One for the history books, he guarantees. She's stoked.

So right between those gorgeous wings, right up her spine, this idiot now has a massive veiny male appendage proudly standing at attention up her spine. She saw it in the mirror when he finished and she was LIVID.

But hey, what's she gonna do? She didn't pay him, and wasn't going to pay him, and expected hours and hours of work. You give a lot of trust to someone when they take a needle to your skin to lay down something permanent.

Don't stiff your artists.

Not sure if this is "Pro" quality but some have asked me to post this here since they think it is.

10 years ago I moved for my job. I had forgot about one of my TV's back home and asked my dad to ship it to me (on my companies account since they paid for my move). A couple days later the delivery driver from Shipping Company A drops it off. The box was heavily damaged so I didn't sign for it. He waited while I plugged it in and, to no ones surprise, was damaged. He said that he could take it back if I didn't want to sign for it and the shipper could file the claim. I informed him I was the shipper and would file it here. This was a small mistake but I've shipped thousands of parts through this company so I figured it would't be a problem.

Claim denied a month later. This goes back and forth for a couple months with multiple emails to this old lady and she did't care at all. She was also very rude to me via email and phone.

Now this Shipping Company A has two separate entities. Parcel and Freight. We solely used this freight company for all of our warehouses across the US. I cut them off at my new store and started using Company B. It only took a month before the salesman from Shipping Company A stopped by. When he showed up and asked why he was losing $20k worth of freight a month I informed him of the $600 broken TV from his sister company a couple months back. He said that he couldn't do anything about it since it was a separate side of their company and begged for the business back. No dice. This goes back and forth for several months. Our average was about $20-$25k/month they would bill us for and it was a small town so they were very upset that it was only over a $600 TV. I got a check in the mail about a year after I shipped the TV along with a letter from their Vice President.

So I guess this is the "Pro" part. Fast forward a couple years and I've been promoted within the company to make certain decisions and one happens to be logistics. NONE of our locations use Shipping Company A. Some months we spend well over $100k but most are around $80k company wide and this has been going on for several years now. We also inform customers to use Shipping Company B since Shipping Company B is awesome and treat us very well. Since about 2011 we have used them country wide. No telling how much Shipping Company A lost over a $600 TV.

TL/DR: Shipping company broke $600 TV, didn't want to pay me, changed companies, they lost millions.

I work in an office with a guy I’ll call “Seth.” Seth is that coworker everyone knows: lazy, always passing his work onto someone else, and somehow always getting away with it. He’ll sit around on his phone or go to the bathroom every 10 minutes. He’s the kind of guy who will show up late, make some lame excuse about traffic, and then disappear for “lunch” for two hours.

For the past six months, Seth’s favorite target has been me. He’ll send emails asking if I can “help out” with a project, but what he really means is, “do all the work while I take the credit.” I complained to my boss a couple of times, but somehow Seth always managed to weasel his way out of trouble. The final straw came when he passed off a major report that was due to a client in two days, dumping it on me last minute.

One day I casually asked him if he was good with Excel, and he admitted he didn’t know much about it. Perfect. The next time Seth tried to dump a bunch of spreadsheets on me to organize for his next report, I agreed. But this time, I embedded a series of hidden formulas into the documents. These formulas didn’t do anything important, just enough to mess with the numbers if someone didn’t know how to check for hidden cells. It took me a little time, but I was careful not to make it too obvious. The kicker? Every time Seth tried to copy and paste the data into his report, it would scramble everything just enough to be completely useless.

On the day the report was due, Seth slacked off like usual, assuming I had handled it like always. When the client called, furious because the report was filled with nonsense numbers, Seth panicked. He rushed to fix it, but every time he tried to fix one part of the report, something else would break. He came to me, frantic, and asked for help. I acted confused and said, “Oh, I don’t know what happened! Maybe it’s a glitch?” I gave him some vague advice and watched as he spent the entire day trying to salvage his mess.

Our boss found out, and for once, Seth couldn’t talk his way out of it. He got lambasted for screwing up such an important project and was put on temporary leave without pay. I guess he’ll be doing his own work from now on.

My dad told me this story a few years back.

My Grandfather lived in a really rual area in Georgia. This was around the late 1930s early 1940.

My grandfather owned a farm and had a garden. He had planted various veggies.

Well the only neighbors were about a mile away. And for some reason the neighbors would drive their Model T through the garden, tearing up the veggies. My grandpa would have to replant the garden.

The neighbors kept doing this.

So here comes the revenge part.

My grandfather dug holes around the garden and stuck metal poles into the holes. He covered up the holes with leaves.

A few days later the neighbors drove through again. My dad said they tore the undercarriage out and had parts strewn all over the place.

He couldn't remember what happened after that. But I don't think they did that again.

When I got divorced -- my alcoholic wife of 18 years had started another affair, this time with her counselor -- my lawyer and I laid a trap for them. Just in case you don't know, intimate relations between a counselor and patient are very frowned upon by the regulatory bodies. And I was more than pissed after putting her through rehab ($25k which I didn't have to do) only to have her fall back into her old behavior.

Shortly before the divorce was finalized I filed a complaint with the State body licensing health professions. Knowing they were in some peril because of their unprofessional relationship ( I had already gotten him fired from a major teaching hospital), she had backed off her exorbitant demands. I paid her a very modest settlement, kept the house, got custody of the three tweenage kids, plus got child support. Her lawyer naturally included a clause in the divorce where I had to agree to not say anything negative about her lover and their relationship. But the lawyer messed up and never asked if I had already filed charges and thus didn't require me to rescind them. Her lawyer had assumed I was just bad mouthing them to neighbors and friends, and it never occurred to the lawyer that we were doing much more.

When the Board of Health Professions responded to my complaint shortly after the divorce was finalized I told them that it would take a subpoena to get me to testify (a subpoena trumps an agreement in a divorce settlement). They were happy to oblige.

They stripped his license, and placed him on a register of sanctioned health professionals. He never worked again. They were broke in a handful of years and she divorced him when the money ran out (in the interim his mother had died leaving a fair sized estate, so it took longer than I expected). Oh, and the frosting on the cake was that his wife and I traded notes (notably hotel receipts from the time of their affair) that helped each of us in our respective divorces.

Justice was served.

My sister was bullied relentlessly in high school for something she had literally zero control over; a certain part of her anatomy. Without going into details, she felt terrible about it and it more or less ruined her life as an insecure fifteen-year-old girl. The girl responsible for most of the cruel bullying and the one who gave her a particularly cruel nickname related to her physical issue, was called Nadia. Nadia was a foreign exchange student at our school.

Nadia was beautiful. She was cruel. And she didn’t care about what anyone but herself. I wasn’t Miss Popularity myself but I had to protect my sister from having her life ruined and I felt a very strong urge to get back at her tormentors. They say to end a dragon with many heads, you got to cut off the main head. So that’s what I did.

I learned that the father of Nadia was very conservative. Her whole family back home was. So, I started spreading rumors about her being very promiscuous and ensured these rumors reached the family she was staying with. This apparently caused her some trouble, but I wasn’t done… I threw a party one night when my parents were gone. I invited Nadia, who gladly came as I was a “cooler older girl” somehow and she never said no to a chance to get hammered. Because yes, there was a LOT of liquor. I made sure of that. Took pictures of everyone drinking and having fun. That same night when everyone left, I put it on my Facebook. Tagged Nadia on it, she was my FB friend. She had this option turned on where everything she is tagged in is automatically allowed on her timeline… so a picture of her, drunk and very skimpily dressed, made its way to her page. Because of it being the middle of the night, she must not have noticed until the next day in the morning so it stayed on for hours. But due to her parent’s time zone being vastly different, I was sure they would see it before she had a chance to take it down…

They did. I wasn’t there to see the fallout, obviously, but she was gone the next week from school and flown back to her home country. Apparently, her parents had to “save her from being corrupted” or something. So, she was gone. And my sister safe from ridicule as word of my involvement spread and lets just say people didn’t really want to mess with her after seeing how far I was willing to go to protect my little sister.

My friend inherited his parents house a few years back and has been slowly renovating it. The house is nothing special and not in the best area but its his. No banks no mortgage. It also happens to be next door to a restaurant.

The restaurant had been a neighborhood fixture for decades but has slowly declined with the neighborhood. Cue the old owners walking away and selling it to a real sleazeball. New owner wants to buy my freinds house to demo it so he can expand the restaurants parking lot. Instead of offering a fair price, sleazeball tries to lowball my friend assuming he doesn't know the properties potential value. Sleazeball gets offended when my friend counters with fair market value and begins to bully him with passive aggressive [nonsense]: delivery trucks blocking his sidewalk, new superbright security lights that shine into the house, etc. On top of that, sleazball is openly racist and refers to my friend as all sorts of epithets. Sleazeball even tries to turn the neighbors against my friend by telling them that he's a drunk, has anger issues, etc. All the while sleazeball is doing major renovations/expansions to his restaurant...

The revenge: my friend does contracting work for the city and is on a first name basis with the local boards. Turns out sleazeball didn't file for the proper permits... After an 'anonymous' report to the inspectors he's ordered to demolish the new expansion. You'd think that'd be it, but oh no... The restaurant hasn't been properly inspected for years and the city orders further inspections. Another anonymous report stated that the restaurant was unsanitary. No suprise, it fails the health & safety inspection and is condemned as structurally defecient. Between the fines repair costs and loss of business the owner files for bankruptcy and the old restaurant is demolished.

This happened a while back, actually before Reddit was even thought of and no one had their own portable phone. A local business (auto repair shop) changed their phone number for some reason, and a few months later when my family added a second phone line to the house, guess which number we were given?. It wasn't that much of a pain since most of the customer base had the new number but about 6 months later we start getting calls for this business several times a day so I finally ask one of the callers where he got the number from. He tells me it's on top of the business's building in 3 foot high letters. really?

So I drive by that way the next day and sure enough, there it is in big blue letters. I look up the current number when I get home and give them a call. "Hey...I've noticed that you still have your old number on top of your building and we've been getting a lot of your calls, would it be possible for someone to correct the sign or just paint over it?" This is where I get told that's it's MY problem, and they don't have the time to deal with it" Click. Oh, Ok..now I see.... So I figure it won't take long to sort this out. I start taking appointments.

I tell a lady we're having a special on tires, I can get her a complete set for $75 ($200 was average). I get a guy that needs a complete rebuild on his transmission, and how soon can we do it. I tell him that since we aren't very busy right now if he can get it in the shop by noon, I have a guy that can have it done by 6p the same day, and It'll only cost him $750 (super cheap by the way). I do this maybe 20-30 times over the course of a week or so. The calls become less frequent and as I drive by the following week, I noticed that the sign is now just plain white. I'm pretty sure that all in all I probably cost this guy about $10,000 or so in pissed off customers who showed up thinking they had an appointment and a great deal.

I work in music production. i charge $125/hr to edit/mix/master recordings from bands (which is about 1/2 the average rate). i had a band come to me, i mixed their album, it took me 10 hours. 10x125=$1,250. well, at the end, they said (and im not even joking, but this is SOOOOO ridiculous) "well, an hour only has 60 minutes in it, not 100, so your math is wrong and unfair" (i was stunned because how can people in their 30s be THIS uneducated?!?)

I said "it doesnt matter how many minutes are in an hour, i charge BY THE HOUR, and you agreed to it"(they had signed a contract.)

Well, they left, and refused to pay. this was their 'debut' album/EP, and little did they know, because they didnt read the damn contract, that i saved backups of allllll the work i did, and there was a clause that says my studio retains ownership of 100% of the music that i work on until i am paid and sign the rights back off to the band (again, this is very boilerplate contract stuff in music industry)

They had planned on selling their CD at concerts for $20 each.

I released their music free online, every site i could find, and i also knew the venues they were playing at, so i made 1,500 CDs (it cost me like $200, but worth it for spitelol), and every gig they had, i would set up a booth with their CDs juuuust outside of the property line of the venue, and give their CDs away for free, acting like an agent of the band.

One thing they also never planned on- Imade the vocals on the CDs off-pitch with autotune.

The band broke up about 6 months later, after people stopped going to see them.

I love absolutely-legal revenge :)

Me and my 2 friends who helped me had a hell of a laugh. like, we were gitty all the time while this was going on. It was great.

Not about me, but about a guy I used to work with. He was a mountain of a guy, a huge Turk, but the kindest guy I ever met. He'd do anything for people he liked. Nobody ever saw anybody get on this bad side until that fateful day.

As it happens, he was also our delivery driver, and he spent most days on the road in his semi, leaving before dawn and returning quite late, if at all that day. Our warehouse had a driveway large enough for him to pull the semi into, and load/unload.

The supermarket next door decided to do some renovations, and expand. When they started construction, they started tearing out their brick parking lot, and getting close to tearing out our driveway. Boss runs out, tells them where our property line is, and is assured they won't cross onto our property. Everybody goes back inside, nobody worries, until there's suddenly a raging bear-Turk standing in the break room, shouting about how the driveway has been torn up and he can't get his lorry in. We go out, and indeed, the driveway is half missing, and there's a concrete building foundation poured in. Construction workers are nowhere in sight, boss sends the supermarket manager an e-mail message, and everybody goes home.

Next day we arrive to the sight of very angry construction workers. Apparently, the delivery driver went back in the middle of the night with some bolt-cutters, 'liberated' about 30 of their shopping carts, and stuck them into the drying concrete in various comical positions. Overnight, the concrete hardened, and the carts became quite difficult to remove. Construction crew brings in the jackhammers, and four days later, most of the concrete is gone, and they start preparing for another pour, this time leaving our driveway intact. Foundation comes out fine, everything is looking good. At that time, my boss shows up with the announcement that he had a survey done, and while they didn't tear open our driveway the second time, they were still closer to our property line than allowed, and he'd already filed a complaint to get the concrete removed. Took them another week of jack-hammering to get it out.

TL;DR: Construction crew tore open our driveway and poured concrete on our property. Gave them a physical reason to dig it out one time, and a legal reason to dig it out a second time.

This isn't my story. It happened to my ex classmates dad but it's too sweet of a story to not share.

His dad is a pretty wealthy guy and owns his own construction business. My classmate always showed up in fancy clothes and cars. One day, dad walks into a car dealership. He was interested in buying a Mercedes G Wagon. He went inside and was ignored for almost an hour while other cuts were treated. Eventually a couple of salesmen approach dad and ask him what he's doing here.

Sad starts asking about the cars. The Salesmen were very dismissive and sarcastic in response to him. It's clear they aren't taking him seriously and begin to leave. Dad becomes irritated and asks what their problem was. They argue for a minute when the manager comes and tells dad to leave. Dad had just come from work and was wearing slightly dirty jeans, boots and a Tshirt. He's also a dark skinned individual. Both of these factors probably made him look lower class in their eyes.

Little did they know. A few weeks later Dad ends up purchasing the car at another dealership. He negotiated free car washes for "life" as he traded in one of his luxury cars. Apparently he was able to go to other Dealerships in the area who Authorized the same thing regarding car washes.

Dad ends up going to first dealership and throws the keys on the front counter. He demanded a car wash. The same manager eventually came by to object but dad showed him all the paperwork. He looked a bit shocked and begrudgingly got the process started. Dad has been going back almost every day for car washes. He always cheekily smiles at all the staff members with a grin as a greeting, especially the two salesmen. They now just hang their head in shame and walk away whenever they see him.

I (35m) have a young brother "Todd" (29m) who had a complicated birth and had to stay a month in the ICU and because of that my parents have always doted on him and almost denied him nothing, even if it was to the detriment of my sister "Abby" (32f) and I. My brother drinks in on the attention and has on more than one occasion made himself the center of attention at either my, my sister's, or a cousin's special event.

Because of this Abby and I have a strained relationship with Todd and our parents. Unfortunately, Todd met and fell in love with "Lucy" (24f) who announced her own pregnancy at the baby shower my mom held for Abby.

When I proposed to my wife "Michelle" (30f) I just wanted to elope but she really wanted her family to be there so I invited my family out of obligation. While out my best man "Jim" (35m) noticed a receipt from a jewelry store slipped out of Todd's pocket. Jim confronted Todd about this which led to an argument. Jim told me everything and I told Todd that he was no longer going to be a groomsman because I knew he was going to propose at my wedding. Todd cried to our parents and which led to a blow out.

In my parents' eyes, since Todd never admitted that he was going to propose to Lucy at my wedding I was unfairly judging him. I refused and brought up Todd's past behavior. My parents couldn't refute this and got Todd to agree to not try anything at my wedding. This wasn't enough to convince me to let him be a groomsman but I warned him that if, as a guest, he'd try anything I would make him regret it. Fast forward to the wedding and surprise surprise Todd walked over to Lucy and proposed to her during Michelle's father-daughter dance and did it in a way so that EVERYONE would notice.

Cue my revenge, Jim and I had hired a woman to pretend to be Todd's side piece who cornered Todd and Lucy and claimed that she was pregnant with his baby. Todd denied this but when she called his phone, I gave her his number and messed with Todd's phone to incriminate him, it didn't look good. Lucy threw the ring back at Todd and left in tears.

When Todd saw the smile on my face he knew that it was me and I didn't respond to a single call/text from him or my parents until after the honeymoon. Lucy has thrown Todd's stuff out and has been denying access to their kid. Todd is furious and is demanding that I clear his name. I sent him a text saying that I had no idea what he was talking about as well as a screenshot of a bill for the wedding and gave a vague message demanding reimbursement for half of the wedding costs. Michelle knew the whole time what I was planning and gave me the green light after Todd ruined her moment with her dad, so I felt pretty good but now even Abby thinks I went too far.

Back in the day, I worked as an independent IT consultant, and was hired on along with another independent to subcontract on a team for a major consulting house, we'll call it CH. Everyone else on the team was a CH employee. The two of us were not supposed to tell the client that we weren't part of CH, but the client figured it out pretty fast, because we independents were doing most of the work while CH's code monkeys were busy filling out spreadsheets all day and going on team-building exercises. But I digress.

The project ran past its initial deadline, and my contract expired. I stayed on a week-to-week basis, as a professional courtesy to get the project finished, because I liked the client if not the team. Unfortunately the CH project manager was booked somewhere else for his next gig, and they brought in a new guy to replace him. Let's call him David Stress.

David flew in on a Monday morning to get the project handed off to him, and immediately started pissing on everything to mark his territory. He was derogatory and belittling to the team, and liked to raise his voice. I was working in my office (well, actually a closet with folding tables that I shared with three other team members) and didn't hear what he was saying out in the main room, but I could sure hear his tone. Then he burst in to the "office" and demanded, "How are we doing [specific payroll-related conversion task]?" I said, "We're using [program X]." He waved his hand dismissively and scoffed. "That's stupid. [Program X] won't work for this. You need to do something else." The other indie was in the room at the time, and she saw me coming up out of my chair; she told me later she thought I was going to deck him. I knew he was full of nonsense because I WROTE PROGRAM X. It was custom code for this project, and he had no way of knowing what it would or wouldn't do. He was just trying to bully me and be the alpha dog.

I did not deck him. Instead, I went to the client's payroll manager, with whom I'd been working closely for months, and who was driving the client side of the project. I laid it on the line. I said, "Look, I know you know I don't work for CH. I'm here on an independent contract. That contract is up, and I've been working here week-to-week just to get you guys through." She told me she was aware of this. "Okay. This new guy, David Stress, is a bully and a blowhard, and I won't work with him. I have no contract at this point, and with him running the project I won't be back next week. I'm not asking you to do anything specific about it; I'm just letting you know as a courtesy so you can plan to transition my work to someone else." She sat back in her chair, thought a moment, and said, "Okay. Thanks for letting me know."

Two hours later, David Stress was removed from his new position. The payroll manager, faced with losing the one technical guy on the team who actually knew what was going on with a very complicated payroll system, called CH and said "We don't want this new guy, take him away." CH rearranged some things to keep the original project manager with the project.

The funniest part of the whole thing was that CH had scheduled a "welcome" dinner for David at a posh steakhouse that evening. Rather than create the further embarrassment of cancelling the dinner, they actually went ahead with it, as a "farewell" dinner for David, who had been on the project for less than one day. It was fun to watch him try to put on a brave face for that.

(Yes, I did stay with the project to the end after that, and yes, they went live successfully.)

I used to work with this guy. He and several of his neighbors had their decorations stolen off their porches last year. The woman actually got caught at a neighbor's house, but the neighbors declined to press charges. This year, my former co-worker had enough: he set up a security camera trained on the front porch. Sure enough, a few weeks ago some of his decorations went missing, so he checked the tape: and there was his neighbor from one street over. As he is telling his story to the local news, the police show up, so they all walked over to the woman's house to confront her. The best part: my co-worker IS pressing charges, and the police say they may charge the woman with the theft of the decorations from LAST year.

I was doing some hr training at work today and the hr rep told a story which was given as an example of one of the consequences of poor customer service.

When my coworker was going to be married, the wedding was out of state so as to be closer to his and the brides families. One of his friends who was going to be in attendance had to fly coast to coast across the us in order to attend.

The day of the wedding, his flight was cancelled, and the airline refused to rebook him a flight in time, and on top of that were not at all kind or hospitable. As a result, he missed his good friends’ wedding, and this pissed him off.

What the airline didn’t know, was that this particular person worked as a travel agent. His job was to book commercial flights for large groups. This airline was on of the bigger international airlines based in the us, and someone he would normally consider when booking flights. However, after this airline refused to rebook his cancelled flight and caused him to miss his best friends wedding, he refused to even consider them as an option for his clients.

He was so pissed off by the airlines customer service, that he even kept track of how many time he could have booked a flight with them, but instead chose another, perhaps even more expensive option. Over the next couple of years, he cost the airline over two million dollars in lost revenue because they were rude to him and refused to rebook his flight, causing him to miss his friends’ wedding.