Turning the other cheek sounds noble, but we’ve surely all felt the itch to hit back at least once after someone’s wronged us. Letting it go might be the mature choice, sure, but it rarely satisfies that almost primal urge for payback in the heat of the moment. As psychologist Bernard Golden, Ph.D., explained in an article for Psychology Today, “Revenge is personal, powerfully driven by emotion.”
We might know that getting even isn’t the answer, but that doesn’t always make the temptation any easier to resist. Sometimes the high road just feels too steep. Or, as one of the Redditors in this list puts it, “Some days you need a win, and the only way to get there is being petty.” From clever payback to gloriously petty acts of revenge, these stories showcase the little wins people claimed after deciding they’d simply had enough.
#21 My Boss Annoys Me Sometimes, So I Eat His Pink Marshmallows
I just got off my shift after eating a good portion of our pink marshmallows and thought you people might like some petty revenge.
So I (21F) work at a bar/coffee shop in a golf course. It’s a pretty great job all things considered, coworkers are nice and my dad plays there every Saturday so I get to see him which is nice.
However.
Sometimes, my manager, let’s call him M, will annoy me. Nothing too bad mostly it’s his wack scheduling making my life difficult. Like putting me on for morning shifts seven days in a row after only working three a week due to uni.
Now we’re in Australia and it’s becoming summer. It’s hot as balls, we have several events making us really busy and worse my rolled ankle from like five weeks ago is fighting back and hurting me for no good reason. I’m in pain and I’m tired and sweaty.
Anywhizzle my misery aside I need an outlet to show my displeasure without it being a fireable offence. So I eat all the pink marshmallows so M can’t have any.
He often gets a hot choccy every day with two pink marshmallows. So I deplete his supply to show my discontent. Sometimes he deals wiht it and has white ones. Sometimes he’ll get a new pack open to get his pink marshamallows. Sometimes the manager in charge of ordering forgets to order marshmallows and he goes without.
I feel real vindicated those days.
So I (21F) work at a bar/coffee shop in a golf course. It’s a pretty great job all things considered, coworkers are nice and my dad plays there every Saturday so I get to see him which is nice.
However.
Sometimes, my manager, let’s call him M, will annoy me. Nothing too bad mostly it’s his wack scheduling making my life difficult. Like putting me on for morning shifts seven days in a row after only working three a week due to uni.
Now we’re in Australia and it’s becoming summer. It’s hot as balls, we have several events making us really busy and worse my rolled ankle from like five weeks ago is fighting back and hurting me for no good reason. I’m in pain and I’m tired and sweaty.
Anywhizzle my misery aside I need an outlet to show my displeasure without it being a fireable offence. So I eat all the pink marshmallows so M can’t have any.
He often gets a hot choccy every day with two pink marshmallows. So I deplete his supply to show my discontent. Sometimes he deals wiht it and has white ones. Sometimes he’ll get a new pack open to get his pink marshamallows. Sometimes the manager in charge of ordering forgets to order marshmallows and he goes without.
I feel real vindicated those days.
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2points
#22 You Don’t Get To Use My Email, Part N
Couple months back, someone opened a Kalshi account using my email. I know it's one of the other people with my name because he always uses the undotted version of my Gmail account, and I never use that one.
Well, if you are going to open an account with my email, then I can reset the password for it. I did so, to a random 50-character password, because if I'm going to be a jerk about this, I'm going all in on it.
I'm guessing he didn't think about the fact that Kalshi is required to act as a financial site, so you can't get anything out of them unless you're emailing from the email on your account (not happening), or logged into the app chat (not happening either now that I’ve changed the password).
And they have a pretty aggressive session termination timeout.
So it looks like he decided to try betting on something today, because in today's mail, from Kalshi: "Hi there, click the following link to finish resetting your password". Oh, I’ve already done that, no need to thank me. His account is very secure.
So secure he’ll never see the inside of it again.
Well, if you are going to open an account with my email, then I can reset the password for it. I did so, to a random 50-character password, because if I'm going to be a jerk about this, I'm going all in on it.
I'm guessing he didn't think about the fact that Kalshi is required to act as a financial site, so you can't get anything out of them unless you're emailing from the email on your account (not happening), or logged into the app chat (not happening either now that I’ve changed the password).
And they have a pretty aggressive session termination timeout.
So it looks like he decided to try betting on something today, because in today's mail, from Kalshi: "Hi there, click the following link to finish resetting your password". Oh, I’ve already done that, no need to thank me. His account is very secure.
So secure he’ll never see the inside of it again.
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2points
#23 My Mother And I Got Some Petty Revenge On My Horrible Ex Stepdad
My mom and I both struggle with codependency and trauma, and seem to be targets for the narcissists of the world. Well, today we got some sweet revenge. He has no idea what we’re doing, but it feels pretty good to us and I have a surprise up my sleeve, too.
Anyway, I’m a 35f, and my mom is 65. My dad passed away when I was 7, and my mom panicked and married the first guy that she found to keep a roof over our heads and the bills paid. Needless to say, my childhood after that sucked majorly. I had no problems cutting him off after I reached adulthood at least.
But fast forwarding to now, they’ve finally been divorced for about a year or two. But she kept hanging out and trying to be friends. Well, today I helped her officially put the final nail in the coffin and we sent him a nice polite text saying that she doesn’t appreciate the way he treats her and that she didn’t want him contacting her anymore. Needless to say, I’ve made it much farther in my own cycle breaking journey than she has. Plus I also do creative writing on the side. And boy did it piss him off. He started ranting and raving about how dare we disrespect him and sending Happy Birthday messages, because it’s HIS BIRTHDAY! I can’t keep track of the days when I’m not working, so I had no idea. Plus I also hate the dude anyway because he’s a crappy human being, so I’m definitely not at all invested in anything about his life.
Now for the petty part:
She apparently promised him a steak dinner at some point, and today is also his birthday.
So now we’re at Texas Roadhouse getting steak dinners for ourselves and celebrating the official end of dealing with that level of toxicity. On HIS birthday. I have half a mind to send a picture to him, but I’ve blocked him long ago. But I will probably post a picture on Facebook and hashtag happy birthday. IYKYK. Because I’m sure our friends and family will get it.
But as for the surprise up my sleeve, she owes him $30. So for my final FU to him, since she doesn’t have it in her, I’m going to send it to him in the mail in the best birthday card I can find. I don’t think Ive ever been so excited to send a birthday card in my life.
So much for revenge being best served cold. This one is medium well.
Anyway, I’m a 35f, and my mom is 65. My dad passed away when I was 7, and my mom panicked and married the first guy that she found to keep a roof over our heads and the bills paid. Needless to say, my childhood after that sucked majorly. I had no problems cutting him off after I reached adulthood at least.
But fast forwarding to now, they’ve finally been divorced for about a year or two. But she kept hanging out and trying to be friends. Well, today I helped her officially put the final nail in the coffin and we sent him a nice polite text saying that she doesn’t appreciate the way he treats her and that she didn’t want him contacting her anymore. Needless to say, I’ve made it much farther in my own cycle breaking journey than she has. Plus I also do creative writing on the side. And boy did it piss him off. He started ranting and raving about how dare we disrespect him and sending Happy Birthday messages, because it’s HIS BIRTHDAY! I can’t keep track of the days when I’m not working, so I had no idea. Plus I also hate the dude anyway because he’s a crappy human being, so I’m definitely not at all invested in anything about his life.
Now for the petty part:
She apparently promised him a steak dinner at some point, and today is also his birthday.
So now we’re at Texas Roadhouse getting steak dinners for ourselves and celebrating the official end of dealing with that level of toxicity. On HIS birthday. I have half a mind to send a picture to him, but I’ve blocked him long ago. But I will probably post a picture on Facebook and hashtag happy birthday. IYKYK. Because I’m sure our friends and family will get it.
But as for the surprise up my sleeve, she owes him $30. So for my final FU to him, since she doesn’t have it in her, I’m going to send it to him in the mail in the best birthday card I can find. I don’t think Ive ever been so excited to send a birthday card in my life.
So much for revenge being best served cold. This one is medium well.
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1point
#24 I Spit On My Husbands Clothes To Get Back At Him
Maybe this makes me just as bad as him, but I spit on my husbands clothes while he’s not home to get back at him. Sometimes I also dip his toothbrush in our toilet. Another time, we had a huge fight and he slammed his hands so hard onto the computer keyboard the pieces went flying and then he stormed out of the house. I purposefully broke his space bar piece in half and put it back so he would think he did it. He’s controlling and emotionally manipulative to me and I can’t escape bc I’m a foreigner in his native country and we have kids. If I try to leave he’ll fight me for custody and most likely win. So I do these things bc I can’t talk back to him or have a rational conversation where he accepts that he was at fault for anything. It’s my secret way of arguing back to him.
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1point
#25 My Neighbor Told Me To Stop Being So Cheerful, So I Got Even
My neighbor once told me I was way too cheerful in the mornings and that my good mood was annoying. So the next morning, I saw him outside looking miserable and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be extra happy for both of us today!” Then I waved like I was running for president. He went straight back inside. I still smile and wave every morning. Apparently, happiness is my new revenge.
1point
#26 Look Down On Me, Well I'ma Clog Your Toilet
Just talked to a friend about this and felt like it was a decent story.
For context I'm Chinese American and unfortunately I lost my ability to speak and understand Cantonese. Fitting the sterotype ABC, American born Chinese (whom usually can't speak their native tongue, among other things). In college I hung out with a good amount of Asian Americans and Asian internationals. My friend and I got invited to a house party where practically everyone was international Chinese and we were the only ABCs.
Most of the conversations were in Mandarin, my friend could understand a bit but my background isn't from the mainland, it's from Hong Kong where they still speak Cantonese. When people realized I couldn't understand some started to speak Cantonese. To their surprise I couldn't understand either. A guy made a comment saying Tian Gou. To me, I'm thinking nothing of it just a comment. My friend pulls me aside and says we should go they just called you a bad phrase. I think it's like dog licker meaning brown noser in literal translation but really it's banana yellow on outside and white on inside. But its two fold. Its as if you choose to forgo your Chinese roots for American culture. Thing is it's hard to keep those roots when you're surrounded by nothing but american people and culture with little to no other Chinese people around you.
Anyway I obviously got offended and was like f u guys. You invited us to your home as guests and only have bad things to say about me. Before we left, I was like I need to use the bathroom. Took a big nasty poo in the main floor bathroom and made sure to throw a lot of toilet paper in the toilet to clog it up. Flush and sure enough it starts clogging and overflowing. Booked it out of there after.
Edited: Talked to my friend about my post and he called me out on not explaining the phrase enough. It's brown nosing to American culture. Being a banana and forgoing your Chinese roots to be an American. People don't realize how difficult it is to keep those roots when you're a minority of minorities in your area and all you can do is be exposed to American people and American culture.
For context I'm Chinese American and unfortunately I lost my ability to speak and understand Cantonese. Fitting the sterotype ABC, American born Chinese (whom usually can't speak their native tongue, among other things). In college I hung out with a good amount of Asian Americans and Asian internationals. My friend and I got invited to a house party where practically everyone was international Chinese and we were the only ABCs.
Most of the conversations were in Mandarin, my friend could understand a bit but my background isn't from the mainland, it's from Hong Kong where they still speak Cantonese. When people realized I couldn't understand some started to speak Cantonese. To their surprise I couldn't understand either. A guy made a comment saying Tian Gou. To me, I'm thinking nothing of it just a comment. My friend pulls me aside and says we should go they just called you a bad phrase. I think it's like dog licker meaning brown noser in literal translation but really it's banana yellow on outside and white on inside. But its two fold. Its as if you choose to forgo your Chinese roots for American culture. Thing is it's hard to keep those roots when you're surrounded by nothing but american people and culture with little to no other Chinese people around you.
Anyway I obviously got offended and was like f u guys. You invited us to your home as guests and only have bad things to say about me. Before we left, I was like I need to use the bathroom. Took a big nasty poo in the main floor bathroom and made sure to throw a lot of toilet paper in the toilet to clog it up. Flush and sure enough it starts clogging and overflowing. Booked it out of there after.
Edited: Talked to my friend about my post and he called me out on not explaining the phrase enough. It's brown nosing to American culture. Being a banana and forgoing your Chinese roots to be an American. People don't realize how difficult it is to keep those roots when you're a minority of minorities in your area and all you can do is be exposed to American people and American culture.
0points