28 Times Petty Revenge Was Executed Perfectly At The Workplace

I quit smoking to get even with a coworker. She and I shared an office, but she wanted my job (which was higher), so she began complaining vociferously to management that her health was being affected by sharing the office with me. (This was back in the '80s, when you could smoke in your office.) Since I knew that she lived with a boyfriend who smoked, I knew her complaint was bogus. So one weekend, I quit smoking. When I entered the office on Monday, I had not been smoking for three days. I continued for the week, waiting to see when she would notice. She never did, and she continued complaining to management. After two weeks, my boss sat her down and told her that despite her statements, our office had been smoke free for two weeks, and she never saw it. He suggested that perhaps she needed to find a job with a different office-mate since she had pretty well poisoned her relationship with us.
I still don't smoke, and it's 40 years this year. So I thank her for her deviousness!

I used to work for a sandwich shop. All the other employees there were Indian women with very long black hair. Mine was sort of similar I suppose? Medium length and brown. But every time a customer would complain about a long black hair in the food, my boss would immediately blame me without any hesitation or investigation, despite the fact that I was the only person who wore my hair up and netted. So one day I dyed my hair blue with the sole purpose of not being blamed for black hair being in the food. You guessed it, it happened. And how huffy and annoyed my boss got when I said it couldn't be my hair because mine is blue, was beyond amusing

I worked in an office where there was a break room food thief who would not quit no matter how many angry meetings were held about it. For some reason, the thief really liked my sandwiches. So one day, I finally had enough, and I liberally doused my sandwich with the most ridiculously top Scoville rated hot sauce that I could find. Like so hot that the reviews from people who loved really spicy things were saying that they couldn't handle it.

The thief didn't think anything was wrong, because I often put hot sauce on my sandwiches. We found out who the thief was really fast, because all of a sudden, an employee who I knew did not like me started yelling "Oh my god" again and again and trying to drink a million glasses of water. They never stole a lunch again.

For a little backstory, I work construction. When work is slow, I deliver pizzas with a company, whose name is synonymous with a table top game. I knew this coworker from the construction job. When I was very new, he was my lead. He was the kind of guy that would watch you make a mistake, then berate you and call you an idiot for that mistake. Not a nice guy by any right. But one thing he loved to do was brag about how doting his wife was [and] how she was a homemaker. But also bragging about how hot his girlfriend was, and how much they sacked when his wife thought he was working overtime. I got a delivery with a familiar name (we’ll call him AC). I arrived at the house, knocked, and he opened the door. He looked quite surprised. AC: 'Hey, I didn’t know you delivered pizzas!' Me: 'Yeah, when work gets slow. Anyway, that’ll be $15.' AC: 'Here you go.' He hands me $16 and looks kinda smug about it. I take the cash, am about to turn around and say just loud enough that anyone inside might hear, 'Hey AC, is this your girlfriend’s house, or you and your wife’s place?' The color drained from his face, and he handed me an extra $20.

For lunch a group of my coworkers, our foreman, and myself would sit and each lunch in the foreman’s little hut everyday. My seat was an empty lidded 5 gallon bucket and everyday as I was getting ready to sit one coworker would kick it across the room before I had a chance to sit down. Everyone found it hilarious. It was funny the first couple times but it got old.

So one day I thought it would be hilarious to cut the bottom of the bucket off and then fill it with nuts and bolts and put the lid back on.

That day at lunch we go in he tries to kick the bucket, of course it goes nowhere and he angrily picks it up and tosses the bucket across the room. And of course as he picks the bucket up all the nuts and bolts go spilling out of the bottom. It was hilarious and everyone in the hut was laughing. I had brought in a camping chair pulled it out and sat down and said, “Damn man looks like you have a mess clean up!”

The second I clocked in, my boss (let's call her K) pulled me aside for a serious talk. She handed me a write up for discussing salary with other employees. I am paid a good bit more than others, being cross-trained and having relevant experience and education to back it up. The issue is, I'm paid more than the assistant manager, and she's pissed that I make two more dollars than her and has eight years with the company while I've been here only two months.
My boss says it's a final notice — next time is termination as per company rules. I pointed out this is in violation of not one, but two federal laws, and she retorted, 'This is a right to work state. I'll fire you for chewing gum; don't press it! I got home, did a little research, and found the exact place to help me: The National Labor Relations Bored. I talk to an agent who helped me through the process of filing a claim and helped me upload both the pieces of incriminating evidence, both with corporate approval, and my manager's signed confession of retaliation and corporate policy in clear violation of federal law. They can't really defend themselves when they drafted the incriminating paperwork to intimidate me. The real kicker is the penalty — on top of restitution to employees affected (me), they also lose government contracts. ... This hurts my job extra hard as a pharmacy. As a pharmacy tech, I know for a fact that 50+% of our money is from Medicare and Medicaid programs that we will lose permanently. I've already got a job lined up, and I was planning on jumping ship the day my new one started, but I couldn't be happier to burn the ship down on the way out.

Did this to a fellow correctional officer (captain) back in th day. Our office had a refrigerator used by all captains in our office. I worked days and would keep some plastic bottles of Coke on hand. The captain on nights would always help himself to my Coke so when I got down to my last bottle I heated up the end of a straightened paperclip and poked three evenly spaced holes into the bottle just down from the cap. Wish I was there to see it, but a coworker said he took a swig and dribbled coke down the front of his white shirt.

I bartend at the airport. This happened last night, and it felt absolutely glorious. The security line through TSA was wild. There is an employee line, but it's mixed in with the regular line (hard to explain, but it's basically not any faster). After a coworker and I had already been waiting 25 minutes, we finally hit the front of the line. Two employees apparently thought they were more important than everyone else, and cut in front of us. I was furious. I remembered their faces. We have hot grab and go burgers and sandwiches at my store, and what we don't sell at the end of the night, we usually walk around and hand them out to employees or random people flying out. One of the line cutters came up 20 minutes after close, and we had, like, 30 hot sandwiches left. She asked if she could order food still, and I said we were closed.
She says, 'What are you going to do with those sandwiches?' I replied, 'That's up to my manager.' She told me I better find out fast because her break was almost over. I was counting my till, and had just finished it. I told her I couldn't ask until I finished counting my till. I recounted it six times until she left. Then I bagged up all the sandwiches and handed them out to every single other airport employee I could find, with a smile, like I was Santa Clause. Take that, you line-cutting jerk.

I used to work in a warehouse where one other girl and I worked in one area together, except I did all the work while she played on her phone all day in between occasionally yelling at me for stuff I didn't do. I'd hustle to get the job done, and I cleaned up on recognition from supervisors who saw me hustling. She tried to blow it off when she got busted for slacking but never did clean up her act. She even occasionally had the nerve to tell me to 'calm down' because I work fast and she looked bad in comparison just standing there. Eventually, I found another job, but I made a point of not bothering to mention to this girl when my last day was. I knew she was going to be unpleasantly surprised by suddenly having to take over my job the next day, so I set her up to have the worst first day ever. I used up all the good packing tape and left out only the identical looking stuff that tore easily, I hid the good tape gun and left out the identical looking but broken one, and I unhooked the UPS scale. (When you unplug the scale, you have to restart the computer.) And I changed the password. Resetting the password was a massive headache because IT was terrible and inevitably took a couple of hours to do anything. The whole thing took less than 30 seconds, and I sabotaged at least half a day for her. I later learned she got fired for not doing her job.

One of my coworkers is a huge choosing beggar. Like, aggressively choosy to the point he will bully people who are buying him free things to get exactly what he wants. ... Unfortunately, the person who does all the food ordering and general paperwork stuff in our office is a super sweet older lady that isn't comfortable telling people no. One day we had pizza for a lunch meeting, and we all realized that the favorite pizza of everyone in the office...was obviously different. ... She straight up told me that [my coworker] had stood by her desk and basically berated her until she changed half the pizza to be what he wanted. ... The straw that broke the camel's back was when I noticed that he hadn't even touched the pizza. He was eating a different one. I decided to casually ask why he wasn't touching it. Come to find out he didn't actually want any during that lunch. ... He figured he might want some leftovers later in the week, so he had her change the order. So basically, this motherf**ker bullied a sweet old lady...on the off chance he might want leftovers later. So you want to guess what I did. I ate it. All of it. I didn't want more than one piece, but I ate all six pieces...just so he couldn't have any. You can bet your a** he complained about it, too. I just looked back and was like, 'Oh sorry, did you want some during this meeting? 'Cause if I had known you wanted it today, I would've saved you some.' He glared at me for about a week and I felt like I just ate Thanksgiving dinner, but [it was] worth it.

They told me that if I were to leave tomorrow, no one would notice. Well, I quit last week, took all my stuff in the middle of the night, including the microwave, all cutlery, all spices, and all the pots and pans from the break room. I think they WILL notice.

I (22f) work at a kiosk in the mall, and A (20s M) works at the kiosk right beside ours. I disliked him from the first month I started working there. ... He's a douchey guy and says a lot of misogynistic things. I usually ignore and don't partake in the conversation, but when it's a joint conversation with my coworkers (who are all men) and I'm talking, if he gets bored or doesn't want to wait till I'm done, he'll face the other guy and stop me halfway so he can talk about whatever he wants. The other guys don't pick up on it or are used to doing this as well, so I completely stopped engaging if he's around.
Recently, a new girl started working, and he tried to do the same to her, and she picked up on it. The very first time he tried to interject four times. He actively tried to stop her from talking four times, and she would not budge — she continued talking to me and our other coworker. At that point, I just decided 'f**k him.' So now, whenever he struts over to our kiosk to talk or he tries to talk to anyone, i interrupt him midway and start a new conversation or pull my coworker into doing a task. Every time without fail. It's enough to keep me content at work. We also don't let him get a word in when it's just the girl and I, and I full on ignore him if it's just me at the kiosk.

I use my Deliveroo plus account at work to get me and my colleagues lunch, who then transfer the money to me. ... This week, I realized that one colleague hadn't sent money for his lunch in four months. I told him he hadn't, and he replied saying I should have reminded him. He again ordered lunch with the rest of the group. I told him his total; he said he'd pay later, but didn't. I reminded him two days later, and he still didn't send the money for that week's lunch. I realized not only is he not going to pay for previous lunches; he also doesn't care enough to start paying for his lunches either. I created a spreadsheet with everyone on the lunch run's name on It, and all the different amounts people owed me. Obviously, everyone else was on zero, or a small amount. And this coworker was owing me just under £150. I then shared that spreadsheet with my coworkers. ... My colleague freaked out, and I told him that until he pays his outstanding balance, he won't be allowed to use my account for his orders and will need to pay his own delivery charge each and every time. He has since said that I'm mistaken on how much he owes, and I've told him I'm quite happy to give him a full cost break down.

A group of us would go to lunch every week, and one of the guys always figured the check. After a while, it was obvious that he was overcharging the rest of us for his own benefit. One time, I insisted on figuring the check, and I overcharged him. After stuttering around for a few minutes, obviously uncomfortable but unwilling to point our my math error, he pulled out his wallet and paid. He never cheated us again.

An unfriendly coworker used to use my Keurig in my cubicle all the time. She brought her own pods in, so I really didn’t care. Then she started emptying my Brita pitcher to fill her water bottle up every day after I left and never refilled it. Annoying, but whatever. Then one day, a friendly co-worker was standing at the entrance to my cube talking to me about a serious operation his wife needed to get soon. He was clearly worried and needed to talk to someone. The unfriendly walked up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder, and snapped, 'You’re in the way.' The guy seemed embarrassed, apologized, and walked off. She walked in, started her coffee, and walked off while it brewed. I grabbed my bottle of MiO blackberry water flavoring and squeezed probably 1/3 of the bottle in her cup as the coffee filled it. She never used my Keurig or water pitcher again.

Earlier today, a coworker was walking around with a can asking for spare change donations. From what I could see of the label (I realized afterwards he was likely obscuring the full label on purpose), it was a kid's charity. Okay, cool. He got to my desk, and I did have some loose change, so I dug it out of my purse. As he held the can out and I put the change in, I saw the full label and noticed it wasn't a kid's charity; it was an anti-abortion foundation. I am quite fiercely pro-abortion rights. Maybe I gave about 30 cents (I held the rest of the change in my palm once I realized what it was), but it was the clear deception that pissed me off. And I know a good bunch of my other co-workers tend not to ask details about donations, so he got a lot of mindless donations.
So, I pulled out my phone and made a nice donation to my state's local abortion fund, and they let you do it in honor of someone, so I wrote, 'In honor of (a**hat coworker's name) who thinks he can pull one over on busy office people.' Suddenly, Monday doesn't seem so bad

I worked at an auto parts store and we had just hired a new guy that seemed to have prior experience in the buisness but christ was he a cocky bastard. He was super jealous of my position and I had gotten a raise and I'm not shy about it. So anyway I'm a sales lead and hes under me. He constantly undermines my authority and is just a general pain in the ass all the time. Ignores my instructions and always tries to threaten me with policy. So what I did was drop a hint that there was a store manager position I was considering, which normally was a good position, but this store was a wreck and everyone knew it. Never held a manager for over a month. So ofcourse he applies for the position just because he thought I did and got it by default, nobody else had applied in over a month of it being open. Pretty soon he was working 120+ hours on salary with no OT and the store barely broke even so he didnt even get very good commissions, which is supposed to be like a 1/4 of their pay. I was making over double per hour with all the chill cushy shifts in a fully staffed store that made bank. The store ended up shutting down and he got moved somewhere else. Didnt ruin his life, but it had to be miserable for a while and he made less money per hour than he did before. Dont assume your smarter than people you dont know.

Three months ago, I decided to quit my job — as a parting gift, I worked extra hard to raise our targets. Long story short, I was transferred to a team with bad statistics, bad workflow, attitude...bad everything. It came to the point that when I said to a colleague, 'Please get back to work, there’s backlog,' it blew into a fight how I’m a princess who thinks I'm better than the rest. ... After a year and half of arguments, attempts to tell HR how I ruined the team (for making them work), I left my notice at my manager’s desk. For the last three months of my notice, I’ve been working extremely hard, giving my 150%. Our higher ups raised monthly targets three times already and will do it once again. But this time, they will not achieve them. They have never achieved them before I came. Petty? Very much. Do I care? No.

My ex-manager was a total nightmare. I worked at a small office for about three and a half years, and I trained about five people during my time there, but none of them stayed because the manager was a complete hell-on-wheels supervillain. She was really getting on my last nerve one day, and I knew she had a zoom meeting at 3 o'clock. She would always take her work laptop to the back of the office, where the bathroom is located, for these meetings. Around 2:50, I got up from my desk and went to the bathroom. I took a very large, very smelly dump and did not use any air freshener afterwards. When she went to the back to start her meeting, she FLIPPED out! She immediately went to the front of the office and swung open the front door and turned on the A/C. She muttered curses under her breath while I sat at my desk holding back my laughter. I had to put up with her s*** all day long; I figured she deserved to put up with mine for an hourlong zoom meeting.

I work with a guy, we'll call him Bob, who is a bit of a prick. ... The quick rundown is he's very abrasive, he talks down to people, he's creepy about women who visit the office, and he looks down on people who do manual labor for a living. ... He doesn't really know how to do data analysis, so I find myself more often than not crunching numbers for the guy. It's not something I mind doing, I actually like data analysis; I just don't really like doing it for him because I don't like dealing with him.
I have, however, found a way to entertain myself with the way in which I present the data to him. You see, Bob is a die-hard Ohio State University fan. He grew up around there, he went to college there, and he will sing the praises of the only FBS Team not to score a point in a bowl game last season.

My revenge: All charts and graphs I create for him are in the University of Michigan's color scheme of blue and yellow, and every chance I get, I try and slip a quote related to Michigan, wolverines, or media that references wolverines in any form. I'm not sure if he's noticed it yet, but it's getting harder and harder to subtly insert Red Dawn/X-Men quotes into my emails these days. Either way, I am entertaining myself, and that's all that matters.