Nothing guarantees drama quite like pettiness and these stories prove it. From passive aggressive "gifts" to the pettiest ways that people got revenge, get ready to see "petty drama" hit a whole new level.
1. A Shocking Turn of Events
I'm a lawyer who specializes in wills. This is the story of how I learned to always, ALWAYS watch DVDs before playing them in front of clients. I had this case where a man who passed fairly young left absolutely everything to his 26-year-old stepdaughter. It was quite a lot of money and property. The two ex-wives and his children from the first marriage got nothing, nor did siblings, nieces, nephews, or any other family members.
The will specified that a DVD be played to explain why the stepdaughter was getting everything. Like everyone else, I thought it'd be the guy explaining the big "screw you" to the rest of the family. What followed was completely unexpected. It was a hidden camera recording...of the guy and his stepdaughter going wild in bed together.
The video started in mid-action, with her screaming "Yes, oh God, yes!" It had obviously been edited to start with maximum shock value, and it worked, because it took about 30 seconds for me to recover enough to turn the darn thing off. It was definitely the biggest "holy moly" moment of my career. I later learned that the guy and his stepdaughter had a relationship since she was a teen, all the way to when he passed (when she was 26).
Apparently, though this is second-hand and I can't confirm, there were multiple clips of various video bits through the ages on the DVD. At the end of the DVD, the guy explains that the stepdaughter gets everything because she'd been "the best lay of his life". The worst part was that the will specified that I was to give every single family member their own copy of the DVD.
The copies had been kept in a box and had been distributed prior to the showing, so everyone had "The Best Moments Of" in their hands, at the time the DVD was playing.
Epilogue: the family sued and lost, believe it or not. The girl got to keep everything.
2. Playing Dirty
I moved to America to be with this guy, let's call him Rick. Rick happened to work at the same big box store as my friend Jason, and one day when I came to meet Jason from work, a co-worker innocently said, "Are you looking for Rick? He's staying with his girlfriend". Me, totally stunned: "I'M HIS GIRLFRIEND". Now another thing you should know about Rick is he bought his toothbrushes wholesale and lived in the grungiest apartment ever.
I cleaned every inch of that bathroom, toilet included, with each and every one of those remaining toothbrushes, documenting every step with photographs. Then I rinsed them in the toilet and put them back in the box. And I packed my stuff and left. But then I sweetened the deal. Ten years later, when I'd calculated he was on the last brush, I sent him the pictures.
3. Don’t Plant Stand Me
This was petty revenge executed on me by a friend. Executed flawlessly. At some point back in the late 90s, early 00s, my friends and I started pranking each other by sending each other links to what were supposed to be legit pictures but were actually pictures of plant stands. It got so bad that we started refusing to click links sent around, and coined the phrase "don't plant stand me".
Flares up and down for several years as my friends move away from NYC and around the country, but continue to share pictures/funny links/etc. We would also keep track of who had gotten who most recently, and I don't even remember what I'd done, but I'd plant standed one of them particularly badly. Fast forward about a year, I'm getting married.
Everyone is invited, including this friend who is going to stay at my place during the wedding. She drives up in a rental and asks me to help bring her bags in. I'm so excited to see her, I rush out and grab a couple and carry them into the guest room and get her all set up. It's a great wedding and my wife and I head off to our honeymoon for a week, saying goodbye to everyone before we go.
When I get back to my house, another week or so goes by before I have to get something from the closet in the guest room. And that's when I find it. A huge, wrought-iron plant stand, smack in the middle of the room. This friend of mine found, bought, disassembled, flew to another country, reassembled and left a plant stand in my guest room. And I helped carry it into my own darn house! Needless to say, she won. We don't plant stand anymore. There's no point.
4. Will Against Time
This was more of an estate issue, but there was a case with a deceased man who was married to a woman for nine years. These are what I call “late in life marriages,” where a woman with nothing marries a retired man with a house, retirement income, and time to vacation. The man brought a fully paid for house into the marriage.
He took out a mortgage to presumably afford vacations and new wife expenses. The bank required both names on the mortgage so he deeded it to them as joint tenants. Two years later, she left him for another man and was never heard from again. A couple months ago, he found out he’s going to die. He immediately filed for a divorce, which was never finalized, created a deed to his children, which wasn’t valid because it needed her signature, and a will which described in detail how terrible she was and disinheriting here completely, which all didn’t matter because the state allows a wife to void the will and take half of marital property.
He passed on before anything could be done. She now owns the only remaining assets of the house and a marital car. Even though the son moved into the house and took care of his dying father for two years, his heirs will receive nothing. She will receive a hefty house and a $20,000 car.
5. Performance Revenge
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 or can't afford to. I'll at least respect your honesty. Anything else, and you can go screw 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 don’t care.
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".
6. Smells Like Revenge
One of the best passive aggressive gifts I’ve ever given was to my aunt, who we will call Elise. She’s known as the diva of the family, and she lives up to it every year. Usually my grandmother makes Christmas brunch/Thanksgiving dinner depending on the occasion, and in my lifetime Elise has thrown tantrums at six of these entirely based on food choices.
A couple years ago at Christmas, she was sitting at breakfast and smelled cinnamon French toast being fried in my grandmother’s skillet, and the theatrics began. She hates cinnamon, and she ended leaving the house and offering to come back in a family group text under the condition that all the windows be opened and an exhaust fan in the kitchen window. Over cinnamon french toast.
Last Christmas, I went to Bath and Body Works to get little gifts for everyone and I found a heavily cinnamon scented hand soap. Perfect gift. The look she gave me when she opened it was priceless.
7. Weeding Out The Competition
Once upon a time, I was a newly married lad. We purchased my grandparents’ house from their estate as our first home. We didn’t have kids yet, so we both had full-time jobs and hectic schedules. Incident The First: One day, I came home from work to find my dog out, going nuts. She rarely barked, so I paused for a second, trying to find out was going on…
I then watched as a bright yellow sprinkler came flying over the fence. There was a bunch of stuff lying around my back yard, where the neighbor kid, let’s call him Evil Son, had been throwing it at my poor dog. I walked next door and banged on the neighbor’s door. The boy’s mother, let’s call her Witch, came to the upstairs window (not even to the door) and yelled, “What are you doing on my property?” at me.
By the way, this is my very first interaction with this woman. I introduced myself, and tried to explain what was going on. She immediately jumped to “Do you have video of my son throwing stuff?” Then, inexplicably, Witch started blaming my wife and I. “If you weren’t such hermits, everyone wouldn’t hate you so much".
Odd, all of my other neighbors waved when we went by…but we didn’t interact more than that. She was the only one I didn’t know. Anyhow, she went on, and it turned out that she was upset that I didn’t tell her that my grandmother had passed. Yeah…I hadn’t told someone I didn’t know about a family matter. Fine, whatever. I dropped the matter and left. But that was just the beginning of the nightmare.
Incident The Second: Shortly after, I stopped working a regular 9-5 and started my own business, working out of my home. I noticed some mail went missing. One day, I see the mail truck go by, and put on shoes to go pick it up from the mailbox. When I get down there, I find the box empty, and Witch walking away from it with my stuff in hand.
I yell at her, and she drops it in a pile on her driveway. Proceeds to yell at me that it was blowing around her driveway, and that I should be more careful. Yeah, so I call the authorities. They are reluctant to do anything since I didn’t actually see her take the mail from my mailbox, but they still go over to talk to her. I can hear her yelling at them from inside my house. The next day, she runs out and stands in front of my car, trying to confront me as I am leaving. I tell her in no uncertain terms that I am OK with running her over.
Incident the Third: A neighbor’s pet bunny went missing from its outdoor hutch. Another neighbor spots Evil Son down at the end of our cul-de-sac, looking suspicious. Bunny is found, strangled and mutilated, where Evil Son was seen. Officers are called, denials, the works. Incident the Fourth: We were getting our house ready to sell. Part of that included stripping and repainting our attached deck. I come home from work, and find a can of paint has been opened and thrown across the deck, some furniture, and the side of the house.
There are a few child-sized footprints through the paint. Officers come, but don’t care once more. Then Evil Son is expelled from his elementary school. He was found with a “Harm List” containing most of his classmates. Then the Witch has an “extinction burst,” as they call it, blaming everyone for everything bad in her life.
She puts fliers in everyone’s mailboxes, talking about a conspiracy against her. Did you know that that’s actually punishable by fine? She does now…so then Witch takes a different neighbor to task out in the street. Turns out, she doesn’t have any friends anymore. Other neighbors join the fracas, ganging up on her.
Turns out her kid offing their rabbit, or her kid throwing rocks at their cars, and various other events, made her no friends. Witch then gets kicked out of a city alderman meeting where she tried to have the entire neighborhood condemned for various imagined slights. Results: So, after years of dealing with this woman, we prepared to move to a new house. We threw one last blowout party, as one does.
I get a little inebriated and went on a rant about how little I was going to miss having that neighbor. That’s when we came up with an amazing revenge. A friend decided that payback was in order, so we went down into the cellar and looked over my grandfather’s shelves of Stuff He Never Threw Away. Among it all was a bottle of weed killer. Great Depression era, block letters. I have no idea what was in that stuff. Now, this is where the story gets a little hazy.
My friend disappeared for about an hour, and then came back as if nothing ever happened. I never saw the bottle leave the shelf. But, a few days later, parts of Witch’s lawn started to turn brown and die. Big block letters spelled out “I am a Witch,” but meaner. I ran into her a week later, as I was getting my mail. Contractors were tearing up her lawn, laying down rolls of sod.
She stomped over to me and complained about my other neighbor’s kids. She clearly saw them apply lighter fluid to her lawn, and light it on fire to burn the awful message into it. Funny thing, whatever was done to her lawn, within a week sections of the new sod dried out, and the message reappeared. Honestly, screw that woman.
8. Happy Wife, Happy Life
My uncle was a prominent, busy doctor. My aunt, a stay-at-home mother of two. My uncle was very rigid and authoritative, and had to have things just so: a certain breakfast at a specific time every morning, his clothes folded or hung in a particular way, a specific drink waiting for him upon his return home, and a specific dinner at a given time every night, based on a rotating menu.
This went on for decades until he eventually passed. Regardless, one night was meatloaf night, and after years of no complaints, my uncle erupts, screaming at my aunt that her meatloaf is simply garbage, how could she not be able to cook something so simple, all of this, and literally fires his full dinner plate across the room.
My aunt, his submissive, quiet, loyal servant over their then twenty or so years of marriage, simply apologizes and cleans up, promising to improve her recipe. It was only after my uncle passed on—they were married for 52 years—that she admitted to my mother that she’d fed him meatloaf made solely of Alpo (wet, canned dog food) for the past 30 years with nary a complaint.
9. This Shampoo Isn’t Working
My ex-boyfriend was a real bad guy. Manipulative, narcissistic and really good at gaslighting. When I broke up with him finally, he threatened to take my car and report me to my child’s school for having her enrolled but not living in the same town. This was stupid, because my child’s father lived in said town and my bad ex knew it. Anyway, I was so angry over being threatened that I did something so gross and disgusting it's unforgettable.
When I took a shower that day I relieved myself in his shampoo…and then repeated the process multiple times over the course of two weeks.It was in a clear bottle and I was surprised he didn’t notice the yellow tinge to it. When he finally moved out of the apartment, he still had the shampoo and you could clearly tell there was something wrong with it because there was nasty stuff clumped at the bottom of it. Was what I did childish? Yes, it was. I do regret stooping so low…but oh, did it feel so good at the time.
10. Tears On My Guitar
I was at a guitar store once. I'm not a very good guitar player, but I was shopping for an amp and decided to try a few out. I pulled a guitar down from the wall, plugged into an amp, and started tweaking the settings to my liking. A guy in a wheelchair came up, plugged into the amp next to me and pumped the volume, then proceeded to play some metal licks right next to me.
I gave him the benefit of the doubt, powered off the amp that I was testing, and walked across the room to another amp, plugged in, and started fiddling with settings again. Again, he rolled himself over, plugged into the amp directly adjacent to mine, turned up to 11, and proceeded to go to town on the guitar.
A second time, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, walked away, and tried a third amp without saying a word to him. He rolled over, plugged in, turned up, and started playing as loud as he could. I asked him if he'd mind giving me a few moments, as I was considering buying one of the amps, and he responded with, "I don't know why you bother, you're a bad guitarist and I can do anything you can do ten times better". I knew exactly what to do.
I looked him in the eye, said, "Not quite anything," and reached up to hang the guitar from the top rack, all while maintaining eye contact.
11. False Overconfidence
There was a guy who was making $150,000 a year, got a Thai mail order bride, and had three kids. He has an affair and decided that he didn't want an immigrant wife and mixed-race kids so he initiated divorce proceedings. The woman's only priority was to have custody of the kids, so against her attorney's advice, she was willing to take a deal where she would get a car and $1,200 in child support without spousal support, and a $3,000 lump sum from their joint account so she could rent an apartment.
There's ZERO chance that he actually wanted custody of the children because he's already shacked up with the girl that he's having an affair with. She wanted full custody so badly that she was willing to live with hree kids in a modest two-bedroom apartment and pull the kids out of expensive extracurricular activities they were doing to economize, as well as getting a survival type of job after being nothing but a housewife since coming to the US. Not to mention that one of the kids had some talent in an Olympics event to the level where she was getting professional coaching lessons.
The husband ended up going in front of the judge against the advice of his own attorney who told him that he's nuts to turn the deal down. But because he didn't want to give her $3,000 and figured that the judge will decide between what she wants and what he wants all without realizing that there's a formula based on income that judges use to determine child support payments.
At court, the judge awarded the wife the $3,000 lump sum and $1,700 of child support...for each kid. So, because he didn't want to give his ex-wife $3,000 for his kids to have a place to live, about 50% of his take-home pay was going to his ex for the next 10 years and more. The attorney I worked with was all about money and never did anything for free but this was the one case where he represented the woman for just a nominal fee.
12. Left Everything Behind
A client and her ex-husband owned a successful renovation company. Marital issues happen and they decide to get a divorce. After looking at the money in the banks, the value of the company based on its past, the value of their house, and everything else, they made an agreement where she would get the company and house, while he would walk away with the ready cash.
He then takes off for a sunny place to start his life again, but soon after, the wife finds out that the husband had been planning to leave her for a while. He stopped paying the vendors and the payroll taxes, which is where the money in the bank accounts originally came from. Their company had been existing on credit for over 6 months while he emptied the bank accounts.
Employee's paychecks started bouncing within weeks of him leaving so they quit. Jobs weren’t getting finished so customers were demanding refunds. Within 12 months, she’s looking for someone to buy the home in a short sale just to get enough cash to close out the payroll accounts before she could declare bankruptcy.
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13. Stay Warm, Kids
Years ago, my stepmother disapproved of my (then) boyfriend. Leading up to Christmas that year my father kept asking me for a family picture of me, my boyfriend and our infant daughter. I ended up sending him the picture we took with Santa, where I was knealing on one side of Santa with our daughter on my knee and my boyfriend on the other side of him. Come Christmas Day, my stepmother gifts me a giant threadbare blanket (the kind you buy at the Walmart photo counter) with the Santa picture splashed across it in all it’s cross-stiched splendor, except that she had cropped the photo to just have me, my daughter and rando Santa Claus in it, no boyfriend.
The way she had cropped the picture onto the blanket made it so that our depictions on it were easily 5 times the size of us which made it obvious that she could have fit the entire picture. My daughter’s nostrils were easily the size of my fists. As I was trying to hide my incredulity after opening it she said, “It would look nicer but you didn’t really give us a good picture,” which was really the cherry on top. This blanket has been known ever since as “The Passive Aggressive Blanket.
14. Lose My Address
I was dating this girl. I thought she was the one, so I gave her the keys to my apartment. I worked late for my job, and I was just happy there was someone in my bed when I got home at 2 in the morning. Came home one night, and she was awake. She then suddenly confessed to using my apartment to cheat on me with seven different people. So I packed her stuff up, since she was still living with her mom anyway.
Then I lied to her and said I moved to Seattle. I moved to Hawaii instead. Three months after being in Hawaii, I get a phone call from her. I answer, and to my surprise, she's called me from the Seattle airport. She flew out there to try and fix things between us. The dialog goes as follows Me: So you're in Seattle? Her: Yeah! Weren't you listening? I came here to fix us.
Me: Oh...well, that's bad. Her: What's bad? Me: I'm in Hawaii! I then hung up the phone. She calls back immediately, and I answer. Her: YOU LIED TO ME!! Me: Huh, how does it feel? I hang up again. To me, that was good revenge.
15. Pay It Backward
My friend, we'll call her Susie, finds out that she has herpes. The only guy she has ever been with is Brad. Naturally, she is devastated to find out he's been cheating. We find out that she is not the only one he infected. There are in fact at least five other women we find out about. What's more, we find out Brad has known that he is positive and is still going around hooking up with people and saying that he is healthy.
Susie is just devastated and can't get out of her funk and what she now has to deal with health-wise. Now, there is an urban legend where a woman hid, I think, shrimp in her cheating SO's curtain rods when she was forced to move out of their apartment. This story has been featured on many shows about urban legends. It just so happened to come on late one night when me and Susie were watching TV.
It gave us a truly devious idea—Brad would regret ever meeting her. The only problem was, Brad had five roommates. So no way that was going to work. But wait, Brad has a car. And Brad is too broke to afford a new car any time soon. She knows the door code to unlock the vehicle and I just so happen to know how to remove certain vehicle panels to access holes in other panels that it would be impossible to get shrimp out of.
Plus, he worked the early shift on Wednesday. Lucky us, it's Tuesday night. So off we go to the store to buy the clearance section of meat and seafood out. We're talking ground beef, shrimp, imitation crab meat, various kinds of fish, and deviled eggs. Oh, and during this lovely time of September, our little town was experiencing a triple-digit heatwave. So off we go in the middle of the night, when it’s still 90 degrees out, and get to work.
Luckily for us, Brad lives in an apartment with no security cameras and other tenants who don't care about two women working on a vehicle at 1 AM. Sure enough, the door key code still works. So we pop out these little covers on the door’s panels that access the interior of the door. In go the tiny little shrimps. Then we remove the plastic panels from the wheel wells, and in goes some ground beef and deviled eggs. Next was his lift gate. Anyway, you get the idea.
We put his car back together and off we go. Over the next few days, the smell just got worse and worse. The apartment complex manager asked him to move the car off the grounds because of the smell. Our town also has some mean feral cats that roam around, they just loved hanging around his car. So not only did it stink, but he risked being attacked by some mean feral cats. He would have to always have the windows cracked open at least a little.
The best part is, Brad and I have the same major. So over the next three years, I saw him a lot. He became notorious for his horrible smelling car. He couldn't afford to replace it, no one would buy it, no matter how many times he had it cleaned, the smell remained, and no one could figure out where the odor was coming from. Even if they had figured it out, most of the panels would need to be completely replaced because the only access is tiny holes.
To this day, people still ask him about his car on Facebook. Like, if he says he will pick people up, they ask him if he has a new car. Nope. Still the stink-mobile. He currently works at Starbucks, so that thing isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Kind of like his herpes. I like to think of this as my ultimate Sherlock Holmes-level petty revenge/prank. I will never top the awesomeness of this one, it was my masterpiece.
16. Building Attention To Detail Skills
This wasn’t my case but I followed it closely because it was an acquaintance’s divorce proceedings. He and his now ex-wife shared some commercial property that was worth a lot of money. They were both on the paperwork and had access to the same information. Well, something hit the fan and the property was in arrears and I think some lien was filed. The husband would try to talk to his then-wife about the whole thing and she would blow him off.
Not only would she ignore him and the finances, she started cheating on him. Throughout the actual divorce, it’s contentious and they get down to fighting for the primary residence, for which market value was much less than the commercial building. She demanded the house and the husband effectively offered to give her the commercial building if he could keep the residence.
She never paid attention to how bad the commercial building was and for some strange reason, her lawyer didn’t do any due diligence so they took the deal. I don’t know if the asset allocation included any saving conditions or caveats for the ex-wife, but I did like to see that her own disinterest may have led to bargaining for an underwater property instead of a paid off house.
17. Splash Back
I was on a transatlantic flight and was sitting on the first row of the plane. The woman next to me had a baby in a crib and a small child. She sat on the opposite end of the row from me and sat her toddler right next to me leaving an empty seat between her and her kid; I had no issue with any of it until food arrived and the child started moving around a lot and kicking my computer and was making it impossible for me to eat.
I asked her politely to do something about this and her reply was that it is known that those seats are for people with children. I was so angry I couldn’t eat. I took my tiny vino bottle to the bathroom and filled it up with water. Then I waited. When she took the kid to the toilet I proceeded to pour the water on the seat next to me.
They came back and after 10 minutes the kid said to the mother that he is wet. She sat the child in the other seat and put a towel on the wet seat and sat there. Didn’t say a word to me. I think I slept the rest of the flight.
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18. All In The Family
We had a family “friend” who was a lawyer and my parents agreed that he would be the lawyer for both of them as a mediator. So, as the assets were being divided my dad got absolutely slammed. She was going to get the house, cars, half his retirement, and an insane amount of alimony to the tune of about $2,500 a month for the rest of her life. My dad has a good job as a municipal employee, but that was probably about 70% of his paycheck.
Eventually, the dark truth came out. It turns out that my mom and the “family friend” actually conspired to rip my dad off and make it seem like that’s what a divorce settlement looks like. She was going kick back more money under the table after the dust had settled. Dad just didn’t know how these things worked. So, after some convincing, he finally went out and got his own lawyer. He got a very fair divorce settlement after that. Mom still to this day can’t understand why we don’t talk to her much.
19. To The Letter
I used to work at a pizzeria. There was this one customer who everyone hated. She was rude as heck, complained about everything. And she wasn’t a normal customer, no, she would order essentially groceries from us by ordering disassembled sandwiches. For example, she’d order a chicken sandwich but with all of the ingredients separate.
It all had to be in particular amounts, with cutlery, butter, a side of grated cheese, 3 plates, oil and vinegar on the side, “medium rare” toasted bread, extra packets of ranch, you get the idea. But because it was all technically part of a “sandwich,” she didn’t expect to be charged for any of the extras and would complain if she was.
She also refused to answer the door when the delivery drivers got there and instead would leave the money in an envelope (exact change, no tip) under the doormat and wanted the driver to leave the food on her doorstep. She also had weird specifications about where the driver could park: Never in her driveway, only on the street, even when it was raining.
Also, she didn’t want them to announce their arrival in any way. No knocking, no ringing the bell, no beeping their car horns. They needed to be silent, or she’d complain. She was a nightmare, this woman. And every time she complained, she’d try to weasel some free stuff out of us for next time. Because of course she would!
So one day she says she needs the driver to make change and she wants him to just leave the change in the envelope and not take a tip because “he gets paid already". So I tell my driver this and he says, “Ohhh I get paid, do I? No problem, I’ll take care of it". He goes on the delivery and comes back pleased as punch, doesn’t say a word about how he “took care of it".
I get distracted, keep working. Minutes later, I get a phone call that makes everything clear. It’s the crazy lady and she’s FURIOUS because apparently my driver left her the correct change of $5.85, in the envelope like she asked.....IN PENNIES. Genius. I had to put her on hold so I could laugh. I get back on the phone with her and I said, “Ma’am, I think you’ll find that pennies are legal tender. There’s nothing I can do".
After explaining that I am, indeed, the manager and the highest authority present, she got fed up and hung up on me. That driver is still a king to me.
20. Checkmate!
In high school I once had a friend who, whenever I would buy a Pepsi would come up and take it from the table and take a drink without asking. He did this almost every week until I had enough and I wanted revenge. I had a friend who chewed snuff and he would spit into a water bottle. Out in his truck he’d always have a water bottle filled with his brown saliva and chewed up cancer leaves. I asked him if I could have it and with an odd look he obliged.
I went with the bottle of spit and bought a Pepsi. Went to the bathroom and poured out only half of the Pepsi so the can would still be cold. I poured the saliva inside the Pepsi can and went to our before class social hour. I put the can on the table and said “don’t even think about touching my drink. I’m going to the bathroom be right back” well he did what he did every week.
I come back only the room and there is throw up all over the floor and he’s gagging. I start hysterically laughing and he immediately gets so angry. He threw several bibles at me in a fit of rage while I couldn’t for the life of me stop laughing. To this day he thinks it was ketchup in the Pepsi.
21. Not Even A Stitch
When my friend was going through a divorce with her insane husband, he had texted her pictures of the pistol he bought to threaten her. Even though the authorities were called, there was nothing they could do because it was “only a picture". He was staying with a secret girlfriend at this point and my friend let him to go get his stuff from the house. She was scared to go back in the house alone so I went with her.
The first red flag was that he had changed the locks. So, we waited for locksmith to open the house and change the locks again. Well, when the door opens, we noticed all of the furniture was gone. We make our way upstairs in search of her cats. The entire second floor was empty. There were no cats, no furniture, and even her clothes were gone.
We came to find out that he hired a moving company to pack and take everything away—even the food in the fridge. Finally found the cats. He had taken them to another vet in town and put them up for boarding under his sister's name thinking she would not be able to find them. He was finally forced to disclose what happened to her possessions. He had them taken to a storage unit far away from the home.
22. Everything But The Kitchen Sink
My college roommate had a bad habit of leaving her things in piles on our bathroom floor until there was almost no space to walk to the bath or toilet. Not just clothes but change, jewelry, decks of playing cards, knitting needles, books, hairpins, scarves, earbud headphones, keys, etc. One day she left $40 scattered within the mess, so I put the money in one of her lesser-used bathroom drawers.
Originally I put it there to protect it from our third roommate and her friends. When I came home the next day and noticed that she was clearing her mess in an effort to find it, I decided not to tell her where the money was until our bathroom floor was spotless. Afterward, I decided it would be too awkward to tell her the truth so I left the money scrunched up in her hamper as I'd found it on the floor. She was ecstatic when she found it on laundry day. After that, her bathroom piles never got quite as big.
23. A Fishy Goodbye
Not me but my best friend. She worked at the busiest big box membership warehouse in the area for about 20 years. Everything about that store was total chaos, the parking situation, the busloads of international tourists that were constantly in there buying up all of the vitamins, and the super-rich entitled jerks for whom no rules applied, and that doesn’t even cover her coworkers.
The TV in the break room was always at top volume which caused everyone who was in there to talk over the TV so there was never a moment’s peace when she would take breaks. She finally couldn’t take it anymore and applied for a position at another store that was less busy and closer to her house. On her last day at the madhouse she went into the break room right before she left.
No one was on a break then so she unplugged the cable connection on the back of the TV and put a piece of fish in the microwave and set it for 10 minutes. Then she clocked out and left and laughed her butt off on the way home. It wasn’t fantasy level revenge, but it was enough to satisfy her and that’s all that matters.
24. Falling For You
I used to deliver pizza, and one time I had a delivery to a brownstone house with a small stoop. It was either Christmas or Thanksgiving week and we had snow/ice a couple of days beforehand. Well, I pull up, and there must have been some sort of family gathering at the house because there were a handful of people outside talking.
When I get out of the car, one of the people on the porch opened the door and yelled into whoever was supposed to come out and pay for the food. The woman came to the door as I was walking up the sidewalk. I was carrying a cut pie with a couple of bags filled with wings or whatever inside. I had a decent amount of food in my hands.
But as I was walking, I slipped on ice and fell onto the sidewalk while everyone was watching. The massive pizza fell facedown, box open, onto the icy sidewalk to the horror of the hungry onlookers. I remember being on the ground, in the process of getting up, picking the pizza up off the ground, and hearing this woman screaming at me. That's when I lost it.
She was so mad that I dropped her food. She didn't offer to help me up, she didn't ask if I was ok, she didn't apologize for having ice on her sidewalk, she just flipped out on me. So now I'm standing there with a mutilated pizza hearing this old woman ream me out in front of her family. I apologized as soon as I fell, but she didn't care. For at least 20-30 seconds she went in on me for dropping the pizza.
So I threw the pizza at her feet onto her porch and got into my car and left. I took her chicken wings with me so I had some sort of proof that I didn't deliver the food and I didn't get paid for it. I have a lot of stories from delivering, for some reason, this stuck with me for like ten years now.
25. Crazy Cancer Conspiracy
I represented a guy who was on his second marriage. His first wife passed on from cancer. He and his kids were obviously devastated. My client was a pretty sensitive guy with a big heart. His second wife could be very charming, which was why he fell for her, but it was all a facade. Anyway, to make a long story about a lengthy divorce short, my client met a very kind and affectionate woman during his case.
They really hit it off and were basically engaged even though his divorce was far from over. The fiancée started having health problems and was diagnosed with a form of terminal cancer. Somehow the second wife found out about this and tried to use the cancer diagnosis against my client in court. She developed this crazy theory that my client had taken the life of his first wife by giving her cancer and that he was doing the same thing to his “fiancée".
The second wife's attorney refused to be a part of it. The attorney never addressed the argument in court and didn't even ask the second wife any questions about it during testimony. Rather, the attorney informed the judge that the second wife wished to address the court directly about an issue. The judge allowed her to do so in a highly irregular move.
The second wife told her crazy conspiracy theory to the judge adding that she was certain my client had tried to give her cancer at some point as well. I wish I had an artist's rendering of the scene, capturing the second wife's crazy eyes, her attorney's look of shame and embarrassment, the judge's look of confusion, and my look of awe-inspired disgust.
26. Microgaming
Back in my junior year in college, my roommate was an idiot. We shared a standard size dorm room, and he would stay up till 4 am screaming and shouting at the TV (my TV) while playing Modern Warfare 2. I dealt with it throughout the year, but during finals week, I finally snapped and planned my revenge.
He was leaving first and had all his gear packed, but went to have lunch with his parents, who were there helping him move out. That gave me an hour to unpack his precious Xbox 360, with the MW2 disk still inside, and put it into my microwave and run it for about 10 seconds on high. Just enough time to fry the disk and hopefully damage the internals.
I then repacked it and bid him a fond farewell when he came back to finish gathering everything. Haven’t spoken to him since.
27. Pet Bio-Weapon
When the wife started dating someone new with a severe cat allergy like a year after they split up, her jerk of an ex bought a cat on his time with the kids even though he’s not allowed pets at his apartment. He sends the kids back to their mom’s house with the cat and all of its stuff. Mom is upset because she didn’t want a cat at all plus her boyfriend is crazy allergic.
She calls us asking what to do because her kids are bawling saying that she can’t get rid of their new “sibling” and she has the cat in the garage. The ex-husband told kids, “If mommy loves you, she’ll let you keep the cat since daddy is not allowed cats at his house".
28. Sorry To See You Go, Bro
I think a good passive aggressive gift has to come from the heart. I had a friend whose girlfriend didn’t like the rest of us in his circle. We kept warning him that she was telling everyone she was going to get him to move away from everyone in his life to go to Indiana with her. He kept saying he was in charge of his own life and even though she may want him to move to Indiana, he was still closely connected with everyone in his life and wouldn’t be going to Indiana any time soon.
I got him a guidebook to Indiana for the last Christmas we had together before she made him cut ties with our group all together. It seemed fitting. He knew the meaning, I knew the meaning, it was kinda perfect.
29. Shattering Exit
During my first year of law school, lawyers from different practices came to give us a peek behind the curtain of different areas. One divorce lawyer told the story of a rather well-to-do couple that spent months and months and many tens of thousands of dollars fighting over absolutely everything all the way down to a single ceramic ashtray. He couldn’t remember the significance, but somehow it had come through the husband’s family.
Even after everything else had been decided, they spent many more months and nearly $100,000 fighting over just this ashtray. Then, after a court hearing, the wife finally won the ashtray. She promptly strode outside to the white courthouse steps...and smashed the ceramic ashtray. She left the pieces all over for the husband to see on his way out. Decided that day I would not be a divorce lawyer.
30. We Don’t Know Her
We live in an apartment block, and occasionally have new people move in and out. Yesterday we encountered a new resident, a short red-haired lady who, through dwarfism and food, manages to be about as wide as she is tall. My boyfriend greeted her with a simple “Hello". He also tried to say “welcome” but she cut him off with, “Shut up, I don’t know you". Okay, not the sociable type, neither are we, best not get friendly then!
Today when returning from grocery shopping we found her trying to pick the lock with what looks like a piece of a paperclip because you know, that’s going to work. She’s apparently been at it a while because before we could open the door with our key, a patrol car stopped and an officer called out to her. The officer asked her why she was breaking in, to which she responded she lived here. She turned to us and said, “They know me".
My boyfriend smiled and said, “I don’t know you". We entered the building after the officer asked us to confirm, and my boyfriend repeated: “We don’t know her". Can’t wait to have more contact with her…
31. Carry That Weight
So my sister in law is a piece of work. She’s constantly setting up Go Fund Me campaigns for house projects, vacations, sperm to start a family, etc. She’s just…. exhausting. So one year she gives me a rock for Christmas. And I open it and I’m like, “Oh….cooooool…". And she goes on this ten minute speech about how she slept with the darn rock to give it her energy and “help guide me” and tells me I’m supposed to sleep with the rock, too, so we can become “closer".
So the next year, here comes another Go Fund Me, this time she wants to hike a portion of the Appalachian Trail. Now, I’m broke: I’m finishing a Master’s degree, I have a new baby, etc. I’m not giving her money for her “finding herself” vacations. But I do decide I want to give her something. So at her vacation kick off party that she threw herself (not joking), I brought her a gift that I put a lot of thought into. I told her I wanted her to take it with her, for safe keeping, to remind her of her family waiting for her safe return from the great state of New Hampshire.
And I passed her a 15 lb slab of granite from my back yard. And deadfaced told her I wanted her to carry it in her pack for her trip because it had good energy in it. The look: priceless.
32. As Long As It Takes
My friend's dad Alan is a lawyer and does mostly divorces and custody cases. He had a couple come that had already figured out division of property, custody, support, etc. Alan figures it'll be a quick afternoon and he'll be home in time for dinner. He's reviewing everything with them and gets to the question of which parent should be called first if the child gets hurt or sick at school or camp.
Well, for some reason this turned into a huge issue. Each parent wanted to be the one who was called first. The couple argued for an hour, for which Alan was being paid hundreds of dollars. After an hour, Alan suggested that they split, take a break, collect themselves, and start discussions anew on another day or maybe talk about it on their own and come see Alan when they figured it out. Nope, the couple insisted on ironing it out right then and there.
They fought for SIX HOURS while Alan just sat there and listened. They refused his help, they refused to come to an agreement. By this time, it was almost 8 PM and Alan said, "I don't care what you two do, but I'm going home to my wife right now". For some reason, that seemed to make something click for them and they did eventually resolve it.
Not sure why it took six hours and a couple of thousand dollars to do it, but they did. Guess everyone has a hill to die on.
33. Can’t Wipe Your Cheat Codes Away
I worked at a computer repair store as a sales technician. A guy came in with a desktop and he wanted Windows reinstalled. I asked if he wanted me to back up all of his data first and he told me that he had everything he wanted and to just do the wipe. I put it in the queue and he paid then left. I started it about an hour later since an XP install was only about 45 minutes off the network.
I didn't bother doing anything else except deleting the original partition and making a new one and installing Windows. About an hour after that, his wife came running in asking if we had a computer with "Smith" as the last name. I told her I did and she showed me her ID and said that her husband brought it in to try and destroy all the proof of him cheating and stealing money from their business.
When she asked if I had wiped everything yet, I told her I just did a Windows install and didn't actually really wipe anything. I called her husband and told him the situation. I told him his wife was here to get the computer. He asked me if I reinstalled Windows like we spoke about and I told him I had. He told me, "I don't care. Give her the computer. There isn't anything left on it anyway".
I said alright and hung up. I told her that he said I could give it to her and then explained to her how reinstalling Windows doesn't magically delete everything and explained to her how I could recover all of her files in a couple of hours. I ended up staying late that night and she bought me pizza and soda.
I ended up recovering every file he tried to have me destroy and made multiple copies for her. She ended up calling him from the store and reading off some of the messages he had tried to delete from his emails. I was worried that he might try to come back in and confront me, but nothing else ever came of it.
34. Thrown Under The Bus
I was at a subway station a couple of days ago getting back from Uni. As I got off the subway to line up and go up the escalators, this middle-aged lady nudged me out of the way just as I got on to the steps, and made me trip over and fumble my bag. She stared at me and went on her way. I was right behind her going up, and she probably saved like 0.01 seconds getting on the escalator before me.
As we made our way to the exit and I got up to the door frame, she went out of her way to nudge past me again. She gave me another stare as she went through the exit and stood there looking at me like she couldn’t believe I tried to go first or something. There’s a bus terminal that connects to the subway on the street level, and we ended up waiting at the same stop. She was the first in line, and I was right behind her.
When the bus finally arrived, she really took her time fumbling through her purse, talking on her phone, and looking for her bus card. As she was searching for her card, she ended up dropping it right at the tip of my boot. She was still busy talking on the phone while searching through her wallet. I thought about it for a second and decided to lightly slide her card underneath the bus with my foot.
Eventually, she realized that she might have dropped her card, so she packed her wallet back in her purse, hung up the phone and looked around for her card. As she looked, she began getting increasingly worried, scanning everywhere for where she could have dropped it. It was my time to shine. I nudged her out of the way, gave her a stare, and made my way on to the bus.
I sat happily on one of the seats. I saw her flustered and panicked, as the next bus was coming in half an hour. The bus started to depart, and I opened the window and told her with glee, “Maybe you should check under the bus!” I watched her for as long as I could until she was out of sight, and enjoyed the rest of my commute home.
35. Back To The Health Board
When I got divorced, my alcoholic wife of 18 years had started another affair. This time it was with her addiction counselor...so my lawyer and I laid a devious 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 angry after putting her through rehab, which cost $25,000, 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 since I had already gotten him fired, 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. The lawyer had assumed I was just bad mouthing them to neighbors and friends and it never occurred to him 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. They were all too happy to oblige. Then they stripped his license and placed him on a register of sanctioned health professionals. He never worked again.
They were broke within a handful of years and she divorced him when the money ran out, but in the interim his mother had passed on, leaving fair sized estate, so it took longer than I expected. 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.
36. Punished For Coming In Early
I work in an office with flexible hours. We can start anytime from 8 am to 9:30 am. I’m always in the office at 8:15 am. Usually, if work comes in urgently in the morning, my supervisor gives it to me to complete since I’m one of the few in the team presently in the office. Well, yesterday I came into the office at my usual time and one of my colleagues was working on an urgent task given to him at 8 am.
He had to pause the task for 20 minutes so my supervisor told me to complete it while he’s away from the office. I couldn’t even have my breakfast or even drink water because of how urgent this task was. I was still working on it when he came back. He asked: “How are you going with the task?” and I explained that I’m still working on it and that I found a few mistakes and showed it to him.
He puts his hands up in the air and says, “Nope. Not my responsibility anymore” and walks off. Really? I was livid. But this needed to be done and I have no time for drama. I finished work at 5:30 pm that day. Before I left, my supervisor told me that she got a HUGE workload given to her and that she will need to give it to someone urgently in the morning to complete.
I knew that my colleague would be in the office at 8 am again. Guess who is walking in the office at 9:15 am today with a cup of fresh coffee and breakfast?
37. Having A Device-Free Holiday
When my bratty cousin demanded I get her an iPad, I put a bunch of feminine pads in an iPad box and drew I’s on all of them. I told her mom about it but she’s very not into disciplining her daughter in any way, she found it funny but had the nerve to say “Did you get her a real iPad for after?” Uh, no. My cousin was throwing herself on the floor demanding I buy an iPad in front of her so she knew I was getting it for Christmas for her, she threatened me that she would get herself kidnapped if I didn’t.
Like she already apologized to me for it and doesn’t normally behave like that with me (which is why I pick her up and hang out with her sometimes), when I threatened to never to pick her up again she was super apologetic and crying on the phone so I forgave her. Ruined Christmas for herself though and I hope she learns a small lesson never to act like that with me again.
My Aunt’s parenting skills are so subpar and it’s so sad that I actually had to say, “I am not your mom and I will not for a second put up with that type of behavior".
38. I Will Be Wiping Away My Tears….You Won’t
When my wife and I were selling our house, I had a huge work table in the garage. I told the real estate agents that of course it would be gone by closing. There was another workbench up against one wall that was permanently mounted. The buyers freaked out about it, saying that I had agreed to remove it, and threatened to back out of the sale. Then they offered to remove it themselves if we paid them. We were busy moving and buying a house; I didn’t have time to deal with it, so we paid.
As I was doing my final walk through to make sure we had moved everything out, I went through all the bathrooms and took every roll of toilet paper with me when I left.
39. Sold Out Of Love
My wife was pilfering money from the marriage to the tune of about $1,000 per month. It had gone on for a few years before I figured it out. (I thought she was saving the money, she was really stashing it in her dad's accounts.) Not satisfied to simply stash away her own salary, she began to buy stuff on the joint charge card, then sell it on eBay. I was the one paying off that card.
I started the divorce without telling her. During this time, I took my name off the joint card without telling her and began using my own credit card. When the bills came in for that month, I informed her that I would not pay the credit card bills anymore, that she had her own job and her own money and she could pay her own bills. There was the expected ruckus about that, but I wouldn't budge.
A week or so later, she had a screaming foot-stomping tantrum about how it wasn't worth her time to work her eBay business. (Because she now had to actually buy her own inventory instead of just selling stuff I bought). Yeah, I cracked a smile. The story ends thusly: I later traded the stolen money—and my silence about the felonies she committed while transferring the money—for shared custody, zero payments to her, and zero claims on real estate, etc.
She walked away with less than she'd have gotten if she was honest. I even got the house. Our divorce was final four months ago.
40. Cash And Carry
I occasionally deliver pizza as a part-time job. There is a customer who tends to pay with a big bag of change. I don't mean a bag full of quarters, I mean a bag full of dimes, nickels, and pennies. Since his meal typically costs about $20, the bag usually weighs several pounds. It is a total pain to count out all of the change, so typically drivers will just assume that he has the correct amount and leave.
Usually, he has just enough or maybe a few cents over. I don't think this is an innocent thing either, as he usually gives the bag of change with a big grin. It is such a pain that most of the drivers know his address by heart, and avoid going to his house if at all possible. So, I was having a bad night, and by the luck of the draw got this dude's house.
I remembered reading something involving someone paying in a checkout line with a bag of change, and I knew I could use a similar method to take my frustration out on this guy in the pettiest way possible. I pulled up to his house and left the pizza in the car. I rang the doorbell, and when he answered I saw the large bag of change in his hand that I knew would be there.
He asked where his pizza was, and I said, "New policy, sir. Gotta count it out before we can give out the pizza". So I sat down on his doorstep and started to count out all of the change. At one point, I even asked if he could turn on his porch light, because I was having a hard time seeing. He did end up sitting there while I counted out the entire bag of change, even though it took about ten minutes.
He ended up being about a dollar over, so I started picking up pennies to give him his change back, when he said that I could keep the rest as a tip. When I gave him his pizza, he sheepishly told me sorry and then shut the door. The whole situation was incredibly awkward, and to my knowledge he hasn't ordered pizza from us in a while.
41. Stuck Together Forever
This couple was breaking up and Mister left the house. Missus went to work the next morning as usual. When she returned home in the evening, she found Mister had been to the house and removed his clothing and belongings as she expected. What she didn't expect was that he had also Gorilla glued her belongings together. He glued the tv remote to the table, the phone to its cradle, the couch pillows to the couch and even glued the vacuum cleaner to the carpet.
She called the authorities and reported this as property damage. The officers went with her through the house documenting dozens of items glued to various things but for days she was discovering random things and she would call to amend or update her report and say, “my OVEN MITTS were glued to the wall," or "he glued ALL of the sheets together in the linen closet!" I've seen people do and say really awful things to each other but that was diabolical.
42. Crayons For The Mature Adult
I’m a server at Denny’s. Today I had a grown woman come in with her two little kids and ask for a booth. I cleaned one and sat her down. She then looks at me points at a booth across the restaurant and says she wants that one instead. Okay, whatever. I move her. I sit her down and seat someone at the booth she was in originally.
Not 2 minutes later she comes up to me and asks for the other booth back because “I was there first and it’s nicer". Yeah, I know lady: that’s why I sat you there. I tell her I can’t make other customers move and she can keep the one she’s in now or wait until a new one opens. She then says, “No, I want that one. I was there first they have to move". I told her, ” I’m sorry I can’t do that".
She asks for the manager. I get him and explain the situation. He then tells her exactly what I said. She sits down crosses her arm and pouts like a child. I proceeded to walk to her table with a huge smile on my face and hand her 3 children’s menus. I looked her straight in the eyes and asked what color crayon she wanted. She goes, “I’m an adult!” I gave her green and walked away.
She walked out, but the satisfaction of not getting in trouble or having to serve her was worth it.
43. Relationship Breakdown
I have a friend who went through a nasty divorce and his ex was vengeful despite that he had done nothing "wrong" like cheating, lying, etc. He got laid off from a good job and the loss of status embarrassed her, especially as he took to being a stay-at-home dad and their kids adored him—never mind that she had MBA and six-figure job herself.
She would rack up credit cards to show high expenses and then return it for cash or store credit so that the refund didn't go back on the card. That way she could try to get more support. Since he needed any work he could get, he took a job at Home Depot. Later on, he landed an IT consulting position that was part time but paid about what he made at Home Depot working full time.
She petitioned the courts to try and force him to have a full-time job, basically wanting to force him to spend 30 more hours to earn same. The worst was that part of his custody granted him dinner one night a week with the kids around 5-7 PM. He asked for it to be school pick-up to 7 PM instead, and she refused. Even though from 3-5, they were at home with a nanny who had to be paid for that time while mom was at work.
44. Burning In The Bathroom
Several coworkers and I noticed that our lunches and drinks would constantly go missing, even when clearly marked. One of my coworkers was a diabetic and it ended up causing him to have a hypoglycaemic incident due to having his food taken. So after that, things got serious. He brought in a lunch that was laced with laxatives and a Carolina reaper extract oil. The previous diabetic incident was well documented and HR at this point was now aware of the food bandit. Luckily, that day, he hit the jackpot.
Turns out it was someone from HR who was taking people’s food. We heard a blood-curdling scream when the guy took his first bite and he was caught red-handed. It only got better from there. He stayed in the office the remainder of the day as things were sorted out. However, he ended up in the bathroom suffering even more. So not only did he get his mouth burned, he was pooping his brains out at the same time.
45. Petty Voicemails
Last year some stupid for-profit education company kept leaving me messages for some person I’d never heard of. My outbound message is literally just, “You’ve reached John Doe, please leave a message". And they’d start in with, “This message is for Jessie Harrison” or whatever name it was. I had blocked the number from ringing long ago, but I was starting to get sick of them leaving my voicemails too. I could have unblocked the number, but it seemed like a lot more fun to just change my voicemail message just for them (a pretty handy feature of Google Voice).
I recorded a 3-minute message (the maximum) where I repeated my name many times and implored them to actually freaking listen before they leave a voicemail. They called once more after I set that message… and never again. I guess they took the hint that I was just going to keep wasting their time or something.
46. And That’s Why You Lock The door
I was at a restaurant for lunch and I got “the urges". I dash off to the bathroom and it turns out to be tucked away and single stalled. I get in quickly, notice the sign that reads “please lock the door while in the restroom". Weird. Why wouldn’t anyone lock the door? But anyway, I lock it but the moment I sit down someone starts knocking.
I say, “There’s someone in here". But then the door starts shaking like I’m in a horror movie. I’m literally sitting on the toilet trying to do my business. The knocking and shaking don’t stop. Then whoever is on the other side starts KICKING the door OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again.
Many people have told me stories about getting hurt in restrooms, so I’m panicking while sitting on the toilet. Is this just a ploy to get me to open the door? What was I going to do? Open to the door to a violent crazy person? Then I thought to look at the situation in a funnier light. I’m standing on the side of the locked door. They can’t hurt me. If they break the door, the restaurant will make them pay.
I take a few deep breaths (albeit in a nasty bathroom) but I kind of just brush my hair and wash my hands really clean for another five minutes. The door is being kicked to no end and the knocking doesn’t stop. I get a text from my friend asking if I’m okay. I text my friend to see if she can take a peek at what’s going on.
And she tells me it’s JUST A LITTLE GIRL. And it’s the same kid who screamed at her father in the restaurant earlier. I had noticed she was the kid that screamed at her father, “I WANT TO ORDER SOMETHING NOW!” See I would never do this to a child. But I — as a child — also would never kick and scream on a stranger’s door, let alone the public bathroom door when it’s only been less than a minute. It’s infinitely rude.
I finally open the door and I see that she went to the server. And I catch the server saying, “Oh, look you can use it now". When I get out, I glare at the mom who just looks at me with a deer in the headlights look.
Pixabay
47. Detestable Diminishment
One of my father's friends tried to salt the earth before getting divorced. A rental house and a cabin were deeded to relatives, the cars they drove every day were sold to other relatives for tiny sums, stocks handed over to a trust “for the children,” etc... He even vanished a chunk of cash from the company he co-owned with his wife using phony invoices and stopped paying himself a salary, electing to burn through their personal savings for over a year instead.
He then learned that judges really, really hate when you try to hide or intentionally diminish assets and they will absolutely refer you to prosecutors for fraud. I don't think he did any time in lockup in the end, but his ex-wife got EVERYTHING plus the satisfaction of firing him from his own company.
48. Joke’s On You, Dads Love Snacks
A couple years ago I got my father a very expensive gift that I thought he’d love. I had to save up a lot for it because I wasn’t working at the time, but it seemed worth it. He basically said “oh neat” and then never used it. He now has a $15 gift limit (I’ve spent about $200 on my mom for comparison). I make him a bag of snacks, most of which I buy from the store I work at so I get a discount, and just shove some tissue paper on top. I just reuse the same bag every year.
I got him some candy, a bag of off-brand Cheetos, and a bag of the same type of jerky I got him last year. He was more grateful for that stupid jerky than he was for the big gift I got him. Anyway, ridiculously low gift limit and some snacks from the corner market. But it looks like you tried, which is impressive in the age of gift cards, so no one even knows.
49. Paging Dr. Prankster
Boss paged me on my wedding night. He did it as a joke, but it came at an...inappropriate...moment. We had a "page only if something's on fire" policy, so I had to call in even though I had just gotten married and was about to go on two weeks' vacation. When he answered, he laughed so hard I just HAD to do something about it.
So when I got back, I programmed the mail servers to call out on their phone lines and hit his pager with dial-back numbers for naughty phone services. At 4 AM. Every day. His wife got this pager before he did one time and saw a text message with something like, "I loved how you described how you would screw me, Jerry. Call back when your wife's gone for the day".
The wife was NOT amused. She thought he'd been calling other ladies and tore him a new one. He knew it was me, but he was too stubborn to ask me to call it off. So it kept up for weeks until he finally figured out where the script was running from and used it to page me instead. We had a back-and-forth pager battle for a while, but then it all messed up when an actual data center emergency happened and one of us ignored the page, thinking it was the other pranking him.
That ended the fun.
50. I Want My Mother Outback
My mom was an evil mastermind with this divorce, let me tell you. My parents had been separated but living in the same house for a while and it was around the time of year when our family would normally go for a camping trip. She convinced my dad that we would break the trip up and he would get a week, then when he returned, she would get a week with us, the three kids.
Secretly, during my dad's week, she got her friends to help her clear the entire house out, and I literally mean clear it out. There was nothing left, not a single clothes hanger, no couches, TVs –quite literally nothing. She chose this vacation setup really well too. Camping meant we didn't need money or have access to cell service, of which she took advantage as well and emptied the bank accounts and hid all the money away.
She didn't stop there though. She also maxed out lines of credit and all credit cards. Normally, this would take a while, but she was quite smart in this approach. Earlier when planning this divorce, she had convinced my dad to quit his job, which was quite high paying I should add, to start a company. This company was still new and needed a ton of expenses paid so the banks didn't think twice about this ridiculous amount of money being transferred as it wasn't out of the norm anyways from their new set up with the company.
Then, when it came time for my dad’s trip to end, she told him he needed to call her when he got back in cell range. Upon calling, she told him that she was on the way out in the same direction anyways so we could just meet halfway to spare us kids a bit of driving time on our way to the next trip. This was odd considering after a week of camping, we all wanted to shower and clean up but she was very adamant.
We met up and swapped vehicles. Then my dad was on the way home alone, while we were off to hide away at a location different than where she had told my dad. When he got home, he thought we had been robbed. It didn't sink in. He called 9-1-1 and started phoning family because of how empty the house was. He broke down and didn’t know what to do.
That's when my mom’s dad came over and told him the brutal truth. He said she left him and took everything. She hid us and I believe tried to abduct us but that part is a bit fuzzy for me. Eventually, it somewhat caught up with my mom, the judge was shocked at what she did. She even went as far as trying to convince us kids that my dad was abusive and had us interrogated by a cop wanting us to lie about him.
The whole situation was crazy. She ended up blowing all the money on fancy trips and shopping sprees with her friends, and when the judge ordered her to pay it back, she fled the country. Now she lives in Australia and doesn't have to pay anything.
51. Definitely Too Subtle
Not a family member, but a coworker. They harassed people in various ways and took credit for my work despite being one of the lowest performing people in the building. They screwed around all day talking to other people, injecting themselves into conversations that didn’t involve them, generally starting drama. Because we were a two person department, I did their work and mine.
I got the aromatherapy lotions from Bath and Body Works for some coworkers. Happy, Comfort, Stress Relief, those things. Because I knew she would complain to HR if I didn’t get her one too, I simply got her one that said “Focus".
52. “I’ll Just Be A Few Minutes…”
So years ago I delivered jugs of water to homes and offices. My work truck was fairly big probably about 35ish feet long. I had a building I delivered to that had 8-10 stops in it and was one of the few places that had a loading bay for delivery vehicles. This bay was wide enough for 2 large trucks side by side and long enough for my truck to mostly fit with a bit of the cab sticking out in the alleyway (not so far as to block traffic).
On the other side of the alley was another building, and the dumpsters for said building. These dumpsters were in a position that it could be a little tight to get into the dock but it was doable. This day I pull up and see a small courier car (size of a Honda civic) pull into the bay and stop right at the entrance. This position is just enough that I cant get the angle I need to be able to nose up to the dumpsters and back into the open spot in the loading bay. If I tried I’d likely hit the car.
Luckily for me, the driver was just getting out of the car. So I politely asked if she could back up a couple of feet so I could get into the dock. Her: I’m only going to be a few minutes… Me: Yes but if you take 5 seconds, we can both do what we need to do… Her: I’ll be a few minutes… Then she just walks into the building.
So I’m kinda stunned at this point. I’ve been in the delivery industry for almost a decade most other drivers get that it’s a tough job and we can all do what we need to do and there’s kinda an unwritten code even amongst competitors. So I maneuver my truck nice and tight to the building so as not to block the alleyway while parking perpendicular to the loading dock entrance and blocking her car in.
I start loading the first of 2 or 3 cartloads into the building. She comes out and sees my truck… Her: Well isn’t this cute… You need to move… Me: I’ll only be a few minutes. Her: I need to go. Move your truck now… By this time my cart is loaded and I tell her, “It’s okay, I’ll only be a few minutes". And I walk into the building.
53. It’s Not The Kid’s Fault
So when she inevitably wound up knocked up at fourteen because “she didn’t want to use birth control and said she didn’t need it” (their actual words) and god forbid anyone parents, their response was it was like Romeo and Juliet (to which my sister got smacked by my mom for pointing out that it was too quick and they die horribly because of selfishness, though she agreed) and they’ll live happily ever after. So when that doesn’t happen because teenagers are impulsive little brats, my grandparents are raising their great grandkid and are loving it.
I love my baby cousin, and because none of this is her fault and you can’t get mad at someone for existing and being born into a horrible environment, I’ve decided to show my disdain for her irresponsible mother by getting her the most irritating toys in existence. For her first Christmas, she got a load of books and a leap frog doggie that talks all the time that she loved. For her second when she needed a helmet due to being in her car seat too much. And it was obvious she didn’t really pay any attention to her kid, I made her a mommy and me blanket with some books for storytime with the cutest little pattern of a mommy elephant and a baby elephant.
The best part is the baby LOVES me since I spoil her and teach her new things, so I know she’s going to love the ball pit with a bag of extra balls I’m getting her for Christmas this year.
54. Special Delivery
My little brother and his girlfriend came to stay at my house for the weekend, and the girlfriend was super self-centered and obnoxious. When they left, she forgot her clothes and toiletries because she left them sprawled all over my bathroom. About a week later, she and my brother moved into an apartment together.
After he paid for the moving truck, deposit, and utilities, she cheated on him with her ex and kicked him out of the apartment. This left him broke, homeless, and heartbroken. In the days after the breakup, she kept calling and emailing him several times per day, demanding that he ask me to ship her clothes and toiletries back to her. “It’s really important, it’s my North Face".
My brother called and pleaded with me to ship them to her so she would stop having a reason to contact him. Being the loving sister that I am, I gathered up the Really Important sweatshirt, shorts, underwear, shampoo, conditioner, soap, and razor. I folded everything nicely. I then wrote a nice note apologizing for taking so long to mail them to her, and let her know that I hope all is well.
The note was written in permanent marker, and the paper happened to be resting on the Really Important North Face when I wrote it. Unfortunately, the ink bled straight through the paper and onto the shirt. Also unfortunately, the shampoo, soap and conditioner caps were not tightly secured on their bottles, and the contents leaked out all over the clothes, further spreading the ink.
The most unfortunate result, though, was that her razor didn't have any sort of protective cap or container and left little slashes all over the front of the Really Important Northface. She received the package, and my brother never heard from her again.
55. That Was Easy
I worked at Staples for six months in college and my favorite story from there was the only time I ever sold a chair mat because the cheapest one wasn’t very good and the nice one was around $120. One day a guy walks in who looks homeless. He looks distraught. I give him my normal, “Doing alright today, sir?” He tells me that he needs a chair mat so I walk him back to show him the options.
I told him that no one had ever bought one because the $30 mat is flimsy and the nice mat is over $100. He looks deeply into my eyes and says, “My wife left me today. She cheated on me and she’s going to take everything. Give me the most expensive mat you have. If she wants it, I’ll cut it down the middle so she can have her half".
I didn’t really know what to say, but I came back with, “Well, we do sell protection plans for $9.99...if anything happens to it…” He interrupted me and said, “Whatever, add it on there. Every dollar spent is one she can’t have". I hope he’s alright. I probably caught him on the worst day of his life. I got props from the bosses for not only selling a chai mat but also for the protection plan.
56. Still, Not A Bad Gift
For my family members going through puberty, I get them deodorant. It’s not exactly subtle, but it gets the point across. For my brother specifically, I get him gift cards, every year, for every event. Now you may be asking, “What’s passive aggressive about that?” Well I used to get him thoughtful gifts, but he would always cry and whine about them.
Well one year I got him Halo 4 (this was the year it came out) because we like to play Halo with our friends, and even just together. He spends 30 minutes literally bawling and yelling how I “Just got it for me” so now he gets Steam gift cards. I literally told him the first year I did it, “See, now you can only complain to yourself when you don’t like the game you get".
It’s been 6 years and I’m still mad about it.
57. Laundry Battles
Sometime around 2001-2002, I had an incident in my university dorm laundry room. Anyway, I’m a freshman living in the dorms, it’s the weekend, and I’m doing laundry. We had an unwritten rule in the dorm laundry room: if you don’t attend to your laundry, it’s totally cool for someone to pull it out and throw it on the table (wet or dry). If you don’t like it, just promptly attend to your laundry when the washer or dryer turns off.
I don’t like people touching my laundry, so I always set an alarm to be there when it’s done (on my digital watch, not my phone!). I wash my clothes, throw them in the dryer, and set my timer. Soon after, my watch goes off and I walk back to the laundry room only to find my dryer load completely wet and on the table. Oh heck no! Someone pulled my stuff from the dryer, only to dump it out and dry their stuff for free.
Well, good news: I had more quarters, so I could dry my stuff just fine. Actually, I had enough quarters for my anonymous friend too—why didn’t they just ask? So I decide to "help them" with their laundry. I grab their clothes and throw them in an open washing machine with six of my spare quarters. Actually, wait—I can drop another quarter in for a heavy cycle, which entitles you to an additional rinse and spin! I happen to have another quarter, so I do. The heavy cycle takes over an hour and a half to complete.
Now’s a good time to mention a nice feature the washing machines had that the dryers didn’t: they locked while in operation. The homie would have been stuck for about 100 minutes waiting for another chance to dry their clothes. I hope they made better choices the second time. I was kind of a petty jerk as a baseline, and I look back with a bit of a shock that I didn’t dump in some bleach or turn the water hot.
I’m glad I’ve outgrown that kind of thing, but I look back with some pleasure at that little guy standing up to some random inconsiderate person.
58. If You Could Care, That’d Be Great
This hasn't happened yet, but it should commence in roughly three hours. My current job is not all that great, small company cronies and all that. But what makes it truly bad is the management and ownership attitude. We are treated like throwaway items, not people. We've had a fair amount of people let go recently, most of them for cost-cutting reasons.
When some of these terminated employees pointed out that the holiday season is a mean time for planned reductions, they literally got told "Not my problem, that's your problem". When we are forced to perform jobs without adequate equipment, funds, parts, etc. "Not my problem, make it work". "Lie to the customer if you need to, it’s your issue, not mine".
I'm the last surviving member of my department. I'm doing the jobs of three people, just to keep operations running. I'm by no means vital to company survival, but there will be pain if my workshop sits idle. Well, surprise! I'm turning in my final timesheet today, without notice. My new job starts next week. I think its petty revenge, but that's ok. Not my problem, right?
59. Charging Away
My good friend found out her husband wanted a divorce when she was contacted by the bank. He had attempted to take her name off all accounts, vehicle ownership, mortgage, and everything without her knowing. Of course, it didn't work and she snapped. It was just after this that we had a girl's weekend planned. She put all of it on her credit card.
She paid for meals, hotel, skeet shooting, hitting the town and drinks, everything. It was her way to show how she felt about him. It was a really bad divorce too. He put hands on her, verbally abused the kids, switched to a low paying job to reduce her amount of any child support, etc. His family is loaded and he immediately hooked up with a new woman who also has money so his lifestyle maintained just fine. She came out the other side fine but it was a rough couple of years.
60. A Bus Seat Built For Two
So I’m on the way home from the shops and I decide to take the bus. Really, it’s only about three stops away and I should probably walk, but it’s the middle of Australian summer, I’m wearing flip-flops, my bags are heavy and, most significantly, I’m lazy. So I jump on the bus home and it’s pretty full. No problem—as I said, only going three stops, not far, more than happy to stand. I’m shuffling through the aisle past other standing people though when suddenly, about halfway down, I see it.
A middle-aged woman hogging a whole seat to herself. Now I catch public transport every day and let me tell ya if you take up a whole two-person seat by yourself when other folks are standing, mate, that’s 5 years gulag in my book. Not only is this woman not sharing the seat, but she’s also moved herself to the aisle side so as to discourage anyone else from sitting down. Not on my watch.
Now previously I had been perfectly content to stand, but that’s all over now. I walk on over to this woman, look her straight in the eyes and with my nicest young man voice, broad smile and most unwavering gaze ask if I can please sit there. She glares daggers at me but relents — but not by shuffling over though. Instead, she stands in place with a huff and turns her shoulder a few centimeters to the right to indicate that yeah, there’s a seat, but if I want it I can squeeze past.
I am not in the least bit dissuaded. Happily, I squeeze past the standing woman and gosh, well I sure am a big clumsy boy carrying some bulky shopping aren’t I, and there is just not a lot of room between these seats. It takes me a few seconds to shuffle my lumbering butt all the way in, by which time the lady’s taken a few whacks of the old green bag and my grocery-laden backpack, not to mention been stumbled over once or twice by my big ol’ un-coordinated feet (it’s so hard, walking in thongs).
I sit down in contented silence, she lowers her huffing self down next to me, I spread out and brush up a little with my hairy legs, she fixes me with a glare. We sit in silence for two minutes. And then, wouldn’t you know it, my stop arrives and this woman is forced to get to her feet once more so we can do the whole dance again on the way out. Smack, go the grocery bags. Smack, smack, smack.
I hope you enjoyed your personal space, witch. Next time just shove over.
61. Yearbook Humiliation
So flashback to grade one when I was happy being a little innocent child. Until this girl in my class, let’s call her Mary, uninvited me to her birthday party so she could invite someone else. I was such a sad little nugget after that! Anyway, for the next 10 years, Mary and I end up going to the same schools since we lived in the same school district. In elementary and middle school she would torment me and anyone not in the “in” crowd, but would get away with it because her dad was a teacher. Needless to say, Mary was not in my good books.
A few years later, it’s grade 9 and I am part of my middle school’s yearbook class, where we got to design and create the yearbook from photos taken at school events. One of the pages that we need to create was a talent show page. Mary happened to participate in the talent show doing a singing performance. I saw an opportunity. I browsed through the photos of Mary singing at the talent show and found the one where her face was the most gloriously contorted and screwed up, as she was singing her high note.
I blew that photo way up and placed it in the middle of the page, carefully choosing background colors that wouldn’t take too much attention away from that moment in time where her visage was disheveled and distorted. And that’s how we published the yearbook. I’m 21 now and almost have an undergrad degree, and I still think back to that glorious moment and pat myself on the back. I bought a copy of that yearbook so I will always have that revenge as a treasured memory.
62. No Looking Back
I did an internship with a family law judge in law school and sat in on this one case where the ex-husband wanted to lower his spousal support payments due to his lowered income, great financial responsibilities, and the fact that his ex-wife was declining to seek paid employment, all of which sounds reasonable on the surface.
It turned out that while his income had been lowered due to “cuts,” his new wife, who technically worked as his “assistant” and had done so prior to the divorce, was now making quadruple her salary—more than he ever had. He claimed that his ex-wife had “unpaid renters” living with her and could have money to survive if she charged them rent, but the “renters” were the couple's shared 18-year-old twins who were living at home having just graduating high school and were going to keep living at home while starting college in the fall.
He later had allowed his step-daughter and her two children to live with him and his wife rent free and paid for her college. His ex-wife produced evidence that he told his own kids to figure out paying for college themselves. He claimed that his ex-wife worked as a nanny for free by choice and should be getting paid for work elsewhere.
The kids she watched for free were their three joint grandchildren from their eldest child, two of whom were severely disabled. He claimed that when he married his new wife, he gained over fifteen new dependants, which was technically true, but those dependants were all in Mexico and included his new wife's grown siblings and their families, none of whom he had ever met. This dude was shocked when spousal support wasn't decreased.
63. Grandma’s A Closet Liberal
My Grandma has always favored my older brother over me and every Christmas for years I would receive awful, cheap gifts while having to watch my brother unwrap expensive brand name clothes, video games, money etc. I still remember some of those gifts. Things like an off brand Barbie doll that was missing half her hair. A piano-shaped jewelry box that was supposed to play music but didn’t. The hat/visor that was covered in pink and blue Spandex like material which I’m pretty sure she took from Richard Simmons. And the flesh coloured boob-tube top that was 2 sizes too small.
But the Christmas that I was 12 was probably my favorite. After watching my brother open numerous awesome and expensive gifts, she handed me a badly wrapped package. Inside was a bright red hat…. with a green marijuana leaf embroidered on it. I was speechless. I looked at my Grandma and she smiled and asked me if I liked my “nice Christmas hat".
I was trying so hard not to crack up laughing and you could tell that the rest of my family was struggling not to laugh too which made it that much worse. I managed to say that I loved it and then had to wear that freaking hat for the rest of the day until Grandma went home. I have no idea what happened to the hat because I never saw it again after that Christmas day. But every year when Christmas rolls around, I can’t help but think of my “nice Christmas hat” and have a good chuckle. Thanks for the laughs Grandma.
64. I’m Rubber, You’re Glue
Years ago I was working for a company where I had an office and the neighboring department was all open plan. We shared coffee facilities so I would often speak to the people in this department over a coffee. There was one idiot called Trevor in that department who would only talk to people on his desk phone on a conference call—every conversation. Needless to say, the rest of the department were annoyed with this loud and obnoxious person screaming on the blower.
As a senior guy, I casually raised this with Trevor. He responded by saying: “You can go and get [bleeped]!” Now, as he was in a different department I had no authority over him and his boss was a moron too so I would have got a similar response. After Trevor went home, I went to his desk and accidentally dropped some glue into the microphone on his phone. The next day it was set rock hard.
Of course, the phone rang and he answered it on a conference call, but of course, the person couldn’t hear him. He started screaming into the mic, but they still couldn’t hear him. They would then hang up and try again. This went on for a couple of calls until he answered the phone in the manner appropriate for the office.
65. Big Hero Zero
I once mediated the case of a hrroible guy vs a green card mom. It must have started out as the perfect dream for someone who would usually have a hard time getting to where he was. He landed a hot Asian wife, brought her to this country, but once that green card came through, things changed. They had a daughter together and the case was mostly about her.
The mom had zero respect for this guy and try as I might to maintain my empathy, I've never felt a greater urge to stuff another human into a locker. Two of his demands really stand out. He asked for the following injunction, "-wife- shall be enjoined from discussing husband's weight in a derogatory manner, specifically, she may not refer to him as fatty, tubby, pudgy, or Baymax".
Normally I wouldn't take an offer like that to the other side. I'd normally help a guy come up with something more sensible, but everyone, including his lawyer, just could not take this guy seriously, so I wrote that out verbatim and trotted over to the mom's room. Of course, she thought it was hilarious. She had a super thick accent and said, “My daughter call him Baymax because he look like Baymax. I can't fix that. He have to fix that".
Then at the end of the day when everything is pretty much settled, the very last thing that they have to do is start dividing the things in the house. Of course, the dad has a meltdown at this point over a Nintendo Switch for the daughter. The mom made the very sensible proposal that the daughter take the Switch with her to each parent’s house as she goes back and forth. He freaks out and demands the Switch stay with him at all times because "there's no way the mom can take proper care of it".
Mind you, the attorneys are billing enough to pay for three Switches an hour at this point. I don't know what happened to the guy but I do know calling him Baymax could land one lady in contempt of court after the most hilarious enforcement trial of all time, and he owns what's probably the most expensive Nintendo Switch in the world.
66. Psycho Coworker
In my old department, there was this dispatcher who probably shouldn’t be a dispatcher. We’ll call him G. One day, G needed to stay home for the gas and electric people to do some work on his home. Instead of taking a whole day off, he made the mistake of telling our boss that he’ll be at work no later than noon, but he could be there sooner if it’s really busy. G said he’d call to see how we were doing to see if he needed to come in early. I was left to dispatch for that day.
I came in at 6 a.m. Starting at 7 a.m., he called numerous times. By the time it reached 9, G must have called at least 20 times. Each time he said the same exact thing: “Is it busy? How does it look? Do I need to come in?” By the 20th call, I got fed up and told him that it’s really busy and we could use the help if he’s able to show up. He hesitated because he had no one to watch the house, but eventually agreed and said he’ll be at work in a few minutes.
When he came in, I let him know about the workload. He realized that it wasn’t that busy and asked why I did that. My response? “Because you called me more than a psycho ex. I had to stop you somehow". Our boss wouldn’t let him leave and thought the whole thing was hilarious especially since G knows better than to do things like that to me.
Pixabay
67. Hold My Teeth
When I was a kid, one of my aunts passed due to a pretty gruesome accident. At the wake, one of her sisters started a fight with the other sister, which included a full-on fist fight with hair pulling. But that's not even the worst part. The sisters were firmly in their 80s so we only knew it was on when my one aunt took her dentures out. The poor funeral director just stood there in complete and utter shock while these old, petty ladies duked it out.
68. South And More South
I was working at a call center. My coworker, who has a very rich 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, tramp". My coworker had the best idea. She then sent her to the SPANISH line. I just about passed out from the laughter.
69. Sobering Judgment
There was a case that involved a young couple who had a child together. The woman wanted a divorce from the young man because he enjoyed the "thug life". He had recently been busted and charged for possession with the intention to distribute illicit substances, and in possession of a firearm, meaning it was an unlawful carry.
The guy didn’t want her to leave him so he hired a local big-name top divorce attorney—granted, they were from a very rural area. He got a temporary divorce order entered that said she couldn’t have overnight guests of the opposite gender, which is something common in rural conservative areas, but I think it's mostly a thing of the past in more urban places.
When the young woman started seeing someone new, the young man gets very upset and on top of all the other attorney fees, has his fancy lawyer ask for a hearing to accuse her of violating a court order and to seek full custody of their children. The young woman, on advice from a mutual friend, hired me for this hearing. It turned out to be a case that I'll never, ever forget.
I sat down with opposing counsel and she basically tried to strong arm me with her experience and laid out egregious terms that include the mother must not only give up primary custody, but must have visitation with a supervisor as well as pay child support and attorney fees. She knew I was a new baby attorney in town because I’m fairly certain I had been licensed for less than a year. I balked and she said that she'll see us in court.
I went into the hearing with a copy of his probation arrangement on his possession with intent to sell and unlawful carry. He hadn’t told his attorney about this so she was unaware. She called him up and established how my client had her new boyfriend over on x,y,z nights. The VERY conservative judge was not pleased.
Then, opposing counsel passed the witness. I ask him if he had a job. He didn’t. I asked him, “What do you do for money?” He’s vague and said, “Things here and there". I acted surprise and said, “Oh? Ms. opposing counsel is awfully expensive...do you sell [illicit substances]?" He just looked at me and played dumb,"...what?" I repeated my question, "Have you ever sold [illicit substances] to make ends meet? He pauses with an, “…uhhh no".
That’s when I introduced a copy of his guilty plea and straight probation sentencing. The judge was now staring daggers into him—and I was just getting started. I leaned over to my client who was sitting next to me and whispered, "If you took a drug test today, be honest, would you be completely clean?" She told me she would be. So, I asked the young about when he last did any substances. His attorney tried to object, but the judge overruled him.
I knew that this judge will drug test people on the spot as he was also the misdemeanor drug court judge. The young man tells me, "It's been years, I'm clean," so I followed with, "If you were tested, you'd be clean?" He says he would be. The opposing counsel asks the same of my client and we agree. Judge has them both tested.
He tested positive for illicit substances. My client was clean. The judge denied his motion and asked me to send in new temporary orders that required the young man to maintain employment and start paying child support and placed him on supervised visits. The icing on the cake? The opposing counsel actually called me and left me a voicemail congratulating me on, and I quote, "Handing her butt to her for the first time in a long time".
70. Treat Others As You Want To Be Treated
One of my biggest pet peeves is when somebody buys something, but instead of handing me the money, they plop it down on the counter. So one guy came up and was being… undesirable. Grown man. When it comes time to pay, he grabs a ball of crumpled cash and throws it on the counter in front of me. I stare at it for a few moments and eventually the guy says something along the lines of, “The money’s right there, you can count it!”
So being the petty little guy I am, I pick it up, thumb through it incredibly slowly (about 30-45 seconds without exaggeration), and this guy is giving me the ANGRIEST look. That's when I did it. I open the register to grab his change and I go to set it on the counter. He tries to dip his hand beneath mine to grab it so I slide my hand to the side and drop it on the counter. I slide the item he bought across the counter and look up and smile with a, “Have a very nice day sir".
He storms off and I ask if he’d like his receipt. When comes back and tries to snatch it out of my hand, he instead rips it in half and it took all of my energy not to bust out into tears. I will go to any lengths to anger people if they treat me like I’m subhuman.
71. Calm Down, John Proctor
I’m in court for one of my first times after passing the bar exam and handling a routine child support case. The events that transpired did not involve my client from that day. First, I have to explain that in Massachusetts, when one party is unrepresented in Family Court there is a pre-trial meeting with the probation officers so they can assist the judge in framing the case.
These probation officers are trained social workers who act as mediators in these instances, so they’re nothing like criminal probation officers. So, these two parties are meeting. You can see the guy is just angry over everything but they are making progress working out the divorce. Then all of sudden he stands up and throws his chair over and swears at her, yelling, “You took my house, you took my kids, you even took my dog. I will kill you if you think you are keeping my name too!"
Within seconds, he is restrained by court guards and escorted to a private room. He ended up getting busted for threatening to kill her. It was all because she wanted to keep his last name instead of going back to her maiden name to make it easier on the kids.
72. Revenge Clap
I think one of the most satisfactory ones for me was when I got back at my childhood tormentors. I got into fights because I’d physically defend friends weaker, smaller, and younger than me. Eventually, the jerks had had enough. The main girl literally recruited two years worth of bad kids. My friends sat at our usual table. The hall was weirdly empty, then came in ALL the jerks and sat at two (eight-person each) tables.
Three of them came up to me. They started insulting us. One grabbed my fork and started eating my pasta. She then picked up my cardboard juice box, stuck the straw in it, and started drinking. I clapped my hands together and all the juice flooded into her mouth where she was forced to splutter it all down herself. The rest of the jerks found this hilarious, and, not having a nice fun fight to get involved in, left.
The main jerk with the juice all over her started yelling at me. I said, “Oh yeah? You and what army?” She panicked and fled. I ate my pasta and one of my friends shared their drink with me.
73. Was That Really Appropriate?
I got a call that my grandma had just days to live so I flew out to see her before she passed on. I stayed to attend her funeral, and missed my girlfriend’s birthday. When she picked me up from the airport when I got home, I could feel a chill, but I ignored my instincts. She acted like everything was fine for two weeks, until my birthday. That day, what she did...I still can’t believe it.
I show up at our favorite dinner place and wait 45 minutes at the bar for her to arrive. She texted me a picture of her and her girlfriends out at a concert asking how I liked being ditched on my birthday. Tears streaming down my cheeks on the car ride home, I calmly packed up her stuff, let myself into her place with my key, left her belongings on the floor, and locked the door behind me on the way out. Blocked her number on my phone and social media. And changed the locks the next day at my place.
The next weekend I am watching TV and it’s late. She tries the door and I hear her key trying to work the lock. She’s sobbing outside my place, I just poured a stiff bourbon and turned up the volume on the TV until she left. What a waste of a year. Looking back, I can’t imagine how I put up with her selfish antics that long, life is too short to deal with people like that.
74. Salt of the Earth
Lawyer here. I once amended a will for a doctor in which he disinherited his son by removing everything he had intended to bequeath and replacing it with a "manure spreader". I didn't ask any questions because changing a will is an easy thing to do. But one day, that doctor will die, and his son will have essentially be told to "eat excrement".
75. Can’t Catch Me
I knew a guy going through a divorce whose wife had cheated on him. During the proceedings, he liquidated his 401k and sold the house which was in his name. It was more than a million dollars. He’s a dual US and Romanian citizen and just left for Romania a few days before their divorce was final with the money. All she got was her BMW lease.
76. That’s Not Supposed to be There
My co-worker had a client in a messy divorce where the parties were required to split up some antique pots. When the husband delivered the wife's share of the pots to our office, he had defecated in each one of them. It was a whole big incident.
77. Forgive but Never Forget (or Enrich)
In her will, my vindictive grandmother left my aunt $20 as a reminder of the $20 my aunt took from her once.
78. Ice Queen
The spouse had been out of the house for weeks. She waited until he was on a business trip, came into the house, turned on all of the faucets, plugged the drains, turned off the furnace, and left. It was -10 degrees. He came back five days later. The house was ruined. The water froze and cracked the foundation.
79. Not All Funds
I work as a paralegal for a divorce lawyer and one of our clients told us he didn't clear out the marital account after the parties filed. While technically true, it’s because he removed $45,000 and left about $3.50 in there.
80. No Parting Gift Like One Last Miff
Lawyer here. I thought I'd seen it all, but this vicious will proved me wrong: "To my wife I leave her lover and the knowledge that I was never the fool she thought me. To my son I leave the pleasure of working for a living—for 25 years, he thought the pleasure was all mine". Best diss ever.
81. Nothing Koi About It
A soon-to-be ex-husband left his wife's prized koi to die on the doorstep of their house. Apparently, the value of these six fish was over $100,000. She was, according to her lawyer, so distraught that she couldn't be in court—only in LA.
82. He Has Got to Go
My parents got divorced about a year ago. My mum didn't want my dad to show up in court because he would contest and then they'd have to split the assets. She phoned me and told me to put laxatives in his food so he wouldn't be able to make it there.
83. 100 Pennies in the Wind
My great-grandmother left her daughter "just one dollar and not a single penny more, so help me God". This was before I was born, but my grandmother (not the daughter with the dollar) said that when they all read the will, her sister had a full-blown temper tantrum, and no one has heard from her since. I guess she had it coming.
84. The Last Rose
A husband and a wife were having a very acrimonious separation. If I remember correctly, he was very successful and she was going after him for an immense amount of money. She happened to be a multi-prize-winning gardener. We're talking about an absolutely exceptional collection of rare and gorgeous flowers, shrubs, the works. After an unsatisfactory development in their divorce proceedings, she came home to find that her husband had ridden their lawn mower over her entire garden, shredding every last stem and leaf into bits.
85. Have a Lemon!
My mom showed up to the final meeting for my parent’s divorce and her last request was to “trade cars". My dad had a car about a year newer that she had never driven and my dad drove the other car 30 miles for work while she drove three. It was such an odd request, especially since he had given up on most of it.
Her lawyer acted off during the conversation and my dad’s lawyer said definitely not. A few days later, my dad gets home to a message from his lawyer that said he found out that mom’s car had shut down. It needed a new transmission and she failed to mention that when she offered up the trade.
86. Messed Around, Found Out
My first car was a 1984 Jeep CJ7, a pretty sweet ride for a dirt poor teenager in the 90s. I was working midnights at a gas station and loaned it to my brother who was taking a date to a party. I got a call around 1 AM from my brother who told me he left the keys in the Jeep and it was stolen. I was absolutely, totally devastated.
I was still on the phone with my brother when the thieves pulled my Jeep into my gas station to fill up on gas. As luck would have it, the gas gauge on my Jeep was broken and always read "empty", and I worked at the only 24-hour gas stations in the area. I pressed the silent alarm and... proceeded to fill up my Jeep (it was a full serve station). When the thieves were out of the jeep, I saw an opportunity to slip the key out of this ignition and into my pocket.
They paid for the gas, and argued amongst each other who had the keys last. The delay was enough for law enforcement to arrive. I had to explain the story to the officer half a dozen times before he understood. The thieves had this stunned look of disbelief on their faces I'll never forget. The officers were belly-laughing telling the story to dispatch, all the while the thieves sat in cuffs in the back of the squad car.
The story made most of the major newspapers the following day.
87. The Mother Of All Pettiness
I had my graduation from engineering on the same day as my mother's birthday. I, of course, had nothing to do with choosing the date. But you couldn’t convince my mom of that. My mother said I "ruined her birthday"—and then she got a cruel revenge. She scheduled her birthday party to be on my actual birthday. Her birthday is in March, mine is in August.
