#1
I was the opener the next morning, and it scared the heck out of me again.
#2
#3
He didn't know I had been working up the courage to tell him I wanted a divorce.
He tried to backpedal, but I moved out immediately, and initiated a divorce.
Okay, we can sincerely admit that at least some of the stories told in various online threads are untrue or made up. Still, we tried to pick the most believable and real-sounding ones for you.
The very concept of "karma" comes to us from ancient Indian philosophy, which asserts that there is a single universal law that encourages people to do good, worthy deeds and punishes meanness and betrayal.
In some cultural traditions, karma operates alongside divine entities, while in others, it operates independently. But in everyday life, karma’s more like people getting back what they gave out - a sort of 'punishment from above.'
#4
#5
#6
Mom stopped talking to them and to her they are gone. A storm hit their area and their house was wrecked and they didn't have the money to fix it. They asked mom for help but all she did was turn a deaf ear to them.
They had to sell their land and move to smaller place. .
Why do these stories pop up so much at work? Psychologists and sociologists say it’s no coincidence. Work teams are like little communities where negativity - whether obvious or sneaky - tends to bounce back to the person who started it.
The authors of this article on Slow Leadership introduce the concept of "work karma" in a statistical rather than mystical sense. In other words, meanness, humiliation, and sabotage by one or more team members only worsen the overall moral and ethical climate within the team, and other people begin to act similarly.
Sooner or later, those bad moves come back to bite the people who started them. The study sums it up like this: if you throw aggression and disrespect into the mix, it’ll come back to you - multiplied by how many people get involved.
#7
#8
Turns out he had been keeping notes in a shared company folder that anyone with the right access could read. Our manager found it weeks before the "meeting" and had already been watching him.
The list of my mistakes was mostly fabricated. His browsing history on company devices was not.
He got walked out the same afternoon he came in with his printed list. Still had it in his hand.
#9
Forced out 10 reps fueled by their faces dropping and staring as I crank the reps out (far too much weight but you have to prove a point). Finish and slide out and go "good times, you're next aren't you?" the next guy did not look happy, but ego and pride is a hell of a thing.
I wished I could of taken a picture of their faces, put it in a book and bring it out from time to time to warm me in my old age. Felt pretty good to be able to turn the tables and not be shown up.
Of course, such a buildup of "systemic negativity" ultimately does nothing good for the company, because yes, the initiators will get what they deserve, but the team atmosphere will still be damaged. This is especially true if unethical behavior goes unpunished for a long time. The results of a study, conducted back in 2009, clearly confirm this.
"It is highly costly to organizations because it slows down efficiency and hurts morale, which is so key to organizational functioning," Kellogg Insight also quotes Cynthia Wang, a clinical professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School, as saying. So, the best way to dodge payback drama at work? Just keep your own bad behavior in check.
#10
#11
At some point the higher ups take her aside because things have been going absolutely sideways (people never invited to important meetings or jobs despite the other party notifying the company on time, important conversations missing so it’s impossible to follow up for other colleagues etc) and it was usually when she was the only one working. Logically it’d be her fault, right? Luckily for my colleague, she was meticulous in keeping receipts on everything and proof of what she did and when she did it.
They did some digging and found out it was someone else who just got hired and went out of her way to get my now colleague fired by coming earlier and deleting a lot of stuff before anyone else got there. Unfortunately for her she wasn’t that good in covering her tracks. Instead of succeeding and getting my colleague’s position, she got herself fired the same day.
#12
However, many experts believe that karma doesn't actually operate in society, and that our stories about it are tied to magical thinking and the selective nature of our memory. That is, as a result of a general increase in aggression in a team, many people may experience negativity, but we will only remember the cases in which the perpetrator of the conflict was the victim.
Classical psychology recognizes the concept of "schadenfreude" (malevolent joy, in German). This article in Science News reasonably notes that people sometimes enjoy watching an aggressive or mean person face retaliation. We even tend to view this as justice being restored.
But hey, don’t get too carried away - too much gloating can turn into bullying and harassment of anyone we don’t vibe with. Like in the old fairy tale, where the brave knight, having slain the dragon, eventually became a new dragon himself...
#13
The problem was that Sony had spent years working with Nintendo to develop a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES, and that add-on was starting to turn into its own console with lucrative possibilities. This very public announcement was how Sony found out that Nintendo was breaking the partnership.
Sony made lemons out of lemonade by developing the prototype into the PlayStation, the console that would be Nintendo's prime competitor for years to come.
#14
They were my friend group from high school originally so they knew something was up because that’s not how I act towards people. She ended up losing all her friends because my friends were her main friends and after the cheating came out she got left all alone with no support system. Even her closest girl friends chose me over her. She even texted me on her birthday a year later asking how dare I not wish her a happy birthday. Nobody wished her happy birthday. I let her know we’re all purposely trying to forget her, why would we wish her a happy birthday.
#15
However, these are all just words, and in real life, yes, gloating works, and we don't think about social dynamics when we see, say, the office bully finally get what they deserve. And honestly, isn’t it kinda nice? Like we’re some sort of karma delivery service.
We’re pretty sure you’ve got your own stories like this - so why not drop them in the comments? Just don’t spoil the fun - read through all our stories first!
#16
I was the junior dev on call when the whole system went down at night.
Couldn't get the database back to connect. Client escalates, angry production team at night, yelling management over phone.
I called the seasoned database admin out. It took him a few minutes to find out the hard drive was full. With adult content. And the database server was hooked to the internet instead of the secure internal network.
He had a field day. Changed the raid, fixed the network settings and everything worked.
Apparently, the night shift was bored and some guy managed to download adult content from the internet....
The database engineer kept the hard drive as evidence and we never heard another complaint. But this gave us a lot of laughs for months.
#17
#18
Or the one where he told everyone what was going on but she thought it was a secret. Nobody had the heart to point out her denials were in vain.
#19
To buy me out he had to refinance his home on a variable rate mortgage. He then had to re-finance the office that we owned together at a variable rate.
He found out quickly that rising interest rates, and not having a business partner to share the costs with adds up. He had to sell his house to get rid of most of the debt and moved into a rental.
I paid off my mortgage with what I got out of the business. My new partners and I have absorbed about 55% of the book of business from the old shop.
#20
They hired a new division director, but the new department director was interfering with, and undercutting his replacement's authority on a regular basis. The powers that be decided they had made a mistake, defunded the department, and fired all the department staff, including the department director. The brass kept the division as a functioning agency headed by the recently hired division director who finally had the freedom to perform his job now that his predecessor was fired.