Way back in the early 2000’s, I began to suspect that my wife was up to something. Our two kids were about 4 and 6, still young, but not so young they couldn’t tell you something about what had happened in their day. They started talking a lot about staying with my wife’s parents during the day which wasn’t really that strange in and of itself, but since they lived about 90 minutes away, doing so two or three times a week seemed a bit much (that was basically every day she wasn’t working at her part time job).

When I asked her about it, she denied it, but was never a good liar. So, I started tracking the mileage on her car and sure enough, she was driving an extra 400 or so miles per week. I knew some shit was going on.

Then one day I sat down at the computer and she had left a sticky note with her AOL password written on it next to the keyboard. I could not resist and logged in to read her emails and saw a few email exchanges between her and her college BFF where they discussed how my wife was regularly fucking one of her ex bf’s from high school. No mention of details about him other than my wife also talking shit about his wife making fun of how she’d gotten fat after having kids. Anyway, I printed out these email exchanges and stashed them.

I still needed to know the details, so I called a friend who was a cop and he suggested I call a guy he knew that had left the force to become a PI. “Ron” was great, I paid his retainer and gave him the emails and what little I knew about my wife’s activities and he figured out exactly what she was doing. His report detailed with photos and times/dates/locations all about how she would take the kids to her parent’s, then go meet this guy for lunch, then they’d go to a dumpy motel for a few hours, after which she’d pick up the kids and return home.

At this point, I hired a divorce lawyer. My parents cheated on each other and the fallout absolutely fucked mine and my siblings’ childhood. It was something that was totally unacceptable.

I also asked Ron to find out what he could about this guy. Ron absolutely came through. I learned his name (“Bob”) , that he was married and had 3 kids. I also found out that he worked as a VP of sales for his father in law’s business. Hmmmm.

At this point, I had my lawyer draw up the divorce papers. I also asked Ron for a couple more copies of his report and I one more thing I wanted him to do for me.

On the same day I had my wife served with the divorce papers at her work, I had Ron meet with this guy’s wife and show her everything he’d found out. She seemed nice and I figured that she deserved to know what her dear hubby was up to. What she did with that information was up to her.

While the information about my wife’s infidelity didn’t really matter in my divorce proceedings, Bob’s wife did a real number on him. According to the publicly available court documents from the divorce and other related proceedings, she cleaned out their joint account, took the kids and left. As soon as her dad found out what he’d done, Bob was fired and since her parents actually owned the house where Bob and his wife lived, he also got evicted. Their divorce was ugly. Lots of fighting in ( and evidently out of) court. I guess Bob went to the house and started arguing with his wife and it escalated to the point the her brother stepped in and Bob got his nose broken. There were restraining orders, a few more incidents with police reports, criminal charges, jail time and so on.

I can’t find Bob on the internet anywhere these days. Last I heard, he’d left the state and His ex wife did ok, she went to work at her dad’s company and took over after he retired.

As for me, my ex and I got along well enough, I didn’t engage with her on anything that wasn’t related to the kids and now that they’re both adults, I don’t talk to her at all anymore. I don’t hate her or anything, but I only care in the context that she is my kids’ mom and is important to them, nothing beyond that.

I live in Asia, and just purchased a new house. Now, the previous owners were family friends who needed cash urgently and haven't been living in my country for nearly 3 years. So I got it for a great price in the middle of the capital city.

The sale was finalized at the start of this month and I moved in right after. The house was definitely a fixer upper, as the previous owners had left mid renovation and the main door was locked with just a padlock, not even a door lock.

The house had no gate, meaning anyone could just walk right on in. The first day I moved in, someone's bike was parked in the garage. I just parked it on the road on the same day I had a gate installed. An angry man was knocking on my gate later and I didn't bother answering, but through my window I could see him giving up and taking the bike after 15 minutes.

So already, I wasn't digging the neighborhood. But I didn't have any incidents after that, aside from people not knowing that this was no longer an abandoned house, so my gate was blocked more often than never but a "No Parking" sign on my gate fixed that issue.

Last week, I was having a shower in my bathroom and I noticed my water pressure was lower than usual. I also heard my next door neighbors water pump going. Now this neighbor, an old guy, lived in a 3 storied house, the first being the lowest and the one he lived in. The other two floors were rented out to tenants.

This guy wasn't happy about the house being sold, and voiced many concerns to my friends the previous owners. He was super angry about it, and my friends did warn me but I'm a 6ft guy with 3 dogs. No way he was doing anything and yep, he didn't.

So with this living situation, a water pump is needed to pump water to the tanks on the roof, since the public supply's pressure is not enough to get it up 3 stories.

Now, I heard the water pump going and immediately was suspicious. Sure, coincidences exist, but it wouldn't hurt to check it out. I waited till his pump turned off, and then turned on different taps in the house. Sure enough, the pressure was back to normal.

This made me even more suspicious, but if he was stealing water, it also made sense. The water bills had been going up over the years this house wasn't lived in, but the house also had some water leaks. So it was chalked up to that, even if the bills were too high to be caused just by leaks. Now it's starting to make sense.

At some point in the last 3 years, this old miser thought he'd save the cost of paying for water, and waltzed into the property and is siphoning water from my lines. I couldn't find where exactly he was siphoning water from, but after checking my pressure multiple times, I was pretty sure.

So I sat on it for a few days, thinking if I should confront him, go the legal path or just let it be. Now, water in my country is very cheap. My total bill, even with washing 3 animals, a car every week and watering my garden only cost like $5 per month, even with the neighbor also stealing some of it.

But it wasn't about how much I was paying or who was paying for it. It's about entitled old people who think that they're deserving of using other people's resources without paying for it, and then getting away with it. It didn't sit right with me, and I really wanted to teach him a lesson.

What I did was really simple. I just turned off my water from the mains. I wouldn't have to break into his property, nor would I be breaking any laws. It was the best way of getting back at him without needing to even lift a muscle.

So on Monday, just 4 days ago, I waited till the pump flicked on, and turned off the supply. Now, the way household tanks work in my country, is that there's a ball valve in the tank which detects the level of water and turns on the pump. If the level doesn't increase, the valve stays open which electronically sends a signal to the pump to stay on until the level gets to a point at which the valve closes and also shuts off the pump.

However, the level wasn't increasing and anyone knows that starving a pump of water isn't a good idea. This way, my expectation was that I'd burn out his pump and cause issues with his tenants.

What I didn't account for is that his pump running constantly would mess up the fuses by constantly drawing power overnight and absolutely destroy his wiring. If he decided to upgrade his household wiring to a more modern standard, this would've been prevented. This house clearly still had 90s era wiring.

At around 3AM, I heard all residents in the house waking up and talking in hushed voices about why just their house in the neighborhood doesn't have power or water. I found out about the power part, because the tenants devolved into shouting at their landlord.

Our tenant protection laws are very important, and power and water are classed as essential even on a state level. Cutting those services are grounds for lawsuits, unless due to weather or some other unavoidable reason.

In this case, the landlord is responsible for keeping the house wiring up to date and in good condition, alongside the supply of water. So the tenants were not happy and one of them immediately moved out two days later when it was informed that water and power will not be returning the very same day this happened.

Both tenants in the two floors lodged a complaint with the police, and if a person is in clear breach of laws, the police have the authority to fine or penalize the person without a court judgment. It can be challenged in court if the person thinks that they were unfairly penalized, but they still have to pay the fines and will only be refunded if and when the court finds the fines unlawful.

So now, the landlord lost both tenants and has to pay a fine of $500, which is a lot of money in our country. He also has to refund the security deposits of both tenants, and cannot rent out until both issues are fixed, which will cost him more money.

As of right now, he's moving out on Sunday to his daughter's place since he cannot afford to live alone. The tenants were his only source of income, and he's a retired mechanic, so he has no other income.

He did find out why the motor kept drawing power, overloaded the wiring and burned out. He came by to my gate and asked me if I turned off my water, and I said "oh yeah, my tank had a new leak on a pipe and I turned it off till the next day until the plumber came by to fix the issue".

Y'all, the look on his face. He kept a straight one, but I just knew he was holding back. He just said "oh okay" and went back inside. Not sure if he knows I know, but I don't care because he can't do anything.

I'm getting a plumber down next week to correct my plumbing and remove any pipes that leave my property. So I got rid of my water issue and a neighbor who could potentially be a pain in the ass, by simply flicking a tap off. Two birds one stone I'd say.

TLDR: Bought an abandoned house, neighbor was siphoning water from my supply. Turned off my water supply when the motor was running, motor burned out the wiring in the house and cut off water and power to him and his tenants. Tenants lodged police complaints and the landlord got fined, is now destitute and forced to move in with his daughter.

Was a fun morning at the beginning of last week starting up my truck and waking everyone up at 2:45am to learn someone swiped the hollowed out cats. The idiots missed the neighbors cameras that basically gave away who they were. Its two kids from the area who drive around in a pretty busted up police crown vic. I chose not to call the cops, instead I called one of my friends who's code enforcement and let him know what my plan was and he relayed the info to the police that I was finally going to do a nuisance tow on that same crown victoria

The car they drive isnt street legal as it has no license plates or insurance or working taillights and rattles like shit due to the trash sound system they also spend their whole day at a chicken shack smoking. Not sure who theyre getting money from but I'm guessing stealing catalytics was part of the equation. When I spotted the car sitting on a quiet street I called it in and got the go ahead to tow. I took it straight to the police station and they tried to run a owner check with the vin number only to find out it hadn't been registered since 2011 and the owner was someone other than the kids who sold them the car with no title because of all the back registration owed

The cops said we can go ahead and take it to the junkyard til they can get a Black title(aka certificate of destruction). By then the two idiots were running around all over town looking for their car thinking it got stolen by one of their friends as a prank(the key lock was so worn out you could start it with any car key). They found it at the junkyard and tried to steal it by one of them distracting the owner and the other stealing their car but the junkyard was aware of who they were so they cut the driveshaft off beforehand.

I missed out on this part but they got arrested for trying to steal their car back and they watched as the junkyard used a crane to rip the car to shreds when I saw it the remains looked like a toddler just ripped it to the bare frame out of curiosity. They been out of jail since but haven't left their trailer, i did a drive by earlier and noticed a beater jeep liberty in their driveway also with no plates and already working with the cops on taking that too if I see it out in a public except I won't miss the show next time.

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

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

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

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

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

I am by no means an expert, or pro, at revenge but I am a patient person. I disclosed this to a friend and they directed me here. ThrowAway for obvious reasons, it's a long read but the setup and backstory are important.

7 years ago I was lucky enough to be able to buy my own place, I had saved for 10 years, worked my ass off, and I was so happy to be able to have a place to call my own.

Now, being a single person on the mortgage meant I had to make compromises, one such compromise was buying a property on a shared block (a lot cheaper). Where I'm from this usually means it's on a "strata" title. For some that's a bonus as it means there's a communal fund for repairs, typically insurance is cheaper as it's collective, and other things like maintenance being taken care of. Strata titles also come with a lot of by-laws and restrictions on what you can and can't do. I'm a pretty private and introverted person so having to deal with people and have limits on how I live was a no-no.

I took my time, found the perfect property. Shared block but freehold title. Only thing that was I needed to pay public liability insurance for the shared walkway on the property (split equally between owners). The real estate agent is local to my area, there's also about 3-degrees of separation between us, he has friends who are friends with my friends type of thing, didn't know him, but knew of him, so that sorta felt good too.

About 5 months after I move in I get a knock on the door from the owner (landlord) of the property next to me to discuss insurance. Not a problem, I ask for a copy of the policy so I have a record. It gets sent through and low and behold it's for strata insurance. I was incredibly confused and after much back and forth the property isn't a free hold title but a strata title. I called my lawyer who conveyed the title etc. He was dumbfounded but over it all did the right thing and made things as right as they could.

I arranged for a meeting with the real estate agent. I brought emails and printouts of the adds they had all saying it was free hold, emails between the real estate agent and my lawyer discussing it's freehold status, despite it being in absolute black and white he refused to accept any fault or offer anything to make things right. I don't begrudge that, he's looking out for himself, I get that. However I wouldn't forget it.

I did enter into mediation with the real estate agent and all I asked for was, when the time came for me to sell, they'd do it or cover the costs. I thought this was reasonable, but they flat out refused offered me 1k to go away, which I refused. I had the option to pursue them legally (and was advised by the mediator to do so) but ultimately I decided against it for a few reasons, the main one being my health at the time.

So I planned and plotted, and I schemed and connived as to how to get back at this son-of-a-bitch. And I settled on this.

I found his personal facebook page which wasn't set to private, saw some photos of a "Boys on Tour" trip he went on a few weeks prior (so about 5-6 months after I bought the property). I also found his address through a business registration search. On the anniversary of the sale, for 6 years straight, I sent them flowers with a note :-

"Dear Real Estate Agent
Remembering you, on this, our special day.
She has your eyes.
Love Elle"

They varied ever so slightly over the years but always had "on this our special day" and some weird inference to a love child and a desire to reconnect.

I also from time to time arranged for postcards and letters to be sent from another country, the one he was "On Tour" in, always signed "Love Elle".

I learned about 3 weeks ago that this guy had recently divorced, lost his home and is not longer working as a real estate agent. His wife had found out he cheated on her. The story I was told (through said friends of friends) went along the lines of "He would get weird gifts and flowers every year, same day, every year. She (his wife) finally put two and two together and realised what the date was and he admitted to cheating on her".

Now, I didn't mean for this, but it turns out a year before I bought my house he had gone on holiday, came back with an STD, gave it to his wife but somehow convinced her that it wasn't him. As such "our special day" turned out to be right around the time he'd have been balls deep, sans condom, in someone who wasn't his wife, only one year earlier.

He's apparently lost his house, half his retirement savings and also his business. I do feel a little bit guilty about all of it sometimes, but then I'm reminded that he's a scumbag and that Karma, like me, is a patient, spiteful and vengeful bitch.

This is a repost. Earlier post on r/pettyrevenge got removed. Story is from 2021.

My old TV finally broke down, so I got a new smart tv. Couple weeks later I realized that no one in the family watches any TV channels, everyone goes for streaming content. I decided that it's not worth it to pay for the TV connection anymore. Now, my TV connection is added into my phone plan along with my Internet as well, so disconnecting it was not straight forward. It was a custom plan with its own dedicated relationship team. It took several calls to the team to find a resolution, which was to convert the TV connection to a prepaid one and then stop recharging.

After the conversion was done, I got messages for a few weeks to recharge and then finally a message to return the set top box. I responded to that and in a few days, the box was collected from my place. Good riddance. Or so I thought.

Next started calls from random call centers for recharging. It felt different from the dedicated relationship team. I googled and found out that this had become the practice in my country. The company had outsourced this part of the support to a 3rd party, and they simply checked from the printed database about people who had a connection, but did not recharge last month. Since my disconnection was in the middle of the month, and their printed database was from the beginning, they did not have this updated info.

I tried my best to inform them about this to no avail. I started talking to the callers informing them of the fake problem my TV was having connecting to the set top box and that multiple support requests have fallen on deaf ears. Also started recording the calls. 3rd caller took it seriously and booked tech support. Got a call from a field tech within hours. He came by. I greeted him with drinks and informed him about the real issue. We had a good laugh. He suggested that I keep it up a few more times for good measure.

After 8 tech support visits, finally they got the message. Got a call from a supervisor asking why I was booking tech support when clearly I didn't have a connection anymore. I mailed him the call recordings. He was pretty annoyed. But I stopped getting calls so much. Any call I get now (rarely, like once a couple weeks), I just read from the same script and if someone takes it seriously enough to try to book tech support, they get a short note against my id to not bother this gentleman.

“Gazumping occurs when an agent or seller accepts an offer you make to buy a property at an agreed price but the property is sold to someone else. This usually happens when the vendor sells the property for a higher amount.”

This happened 15 years ago and it is one of the proudest moments of my life. My best friend and her husband have 5 kids together. They lived in an expensive city and rented an old 4 bedroom house for $400 per week. The house was very rundown with a disgusting kitchen and stink drains but it was all they could afford at the time. Still, they made it work. The owner was a nice old lady who as extremely wealthy and very fond of my friend. She froze the rent for 5 years and promised to let them buy the house once they had saved enough to get a loan from the bank. As she had helped other people in a similar way, they knew they could trust her and so they saved every cent they could. It took them 5 years but they finally told her they were ready.. Two days later, the nice old lady passed away; before anything was put in writing. 😔

Enter the new owners. The lady’s 4 children. Each extremely wealthy in their own right; they inherited a huge portfolio of properties. When they first spoke to my friends, they assured them that the sale would still go through but they would have to wait until probate had settled. Confident, my friends started making some changes to the place. They started by stripping wallpaper, painting and making plans. Finally probate was settled and the owners agreed to go ahead with the sale for the previously agreed price. My friends applied for the loan but to their shock, it was refused.

The owners had raised the asking price by $80000 without telling my friends. To make things even worse, the house would be put on the open market. In 7 days there would be an Open House and, with the market the way it was, it would probably sell immediately.

My friends were devastated. They might be able to borrow enough but it would take longer than a week to get. To make matters worse, property prices and soared recently and rents had gone up a lot whilst theirs had been frozen. Not only were my friends going to struggle to get the money. If the place was sold to someone else and they were asked for a higher rent or were evicted, it would be nearly impossible to find an affordable place with more than 2 bedrooms.

I was scared for my friends but I was also incandescently angry. Those greedy sods were some of the wealthiest people in the city. They were screwing over a struggling family for less than $20000 each. They didn’t need the money. It as pure greed and it was obvious that they’d always planned to do this.

So while my friends scrambled to come up with the money, I started plotting.

I looked up advice on what helps to make a sale. We needed to make the place as undesirable as possible without making my friends look like bad tenants.

Uncluttered: We moved all the furniture in from the walls, added some extra furniture and borrowed ornaments and hung a load of motorcycle memorabilia on the walls. The place felt more smaller.

Smell: My friend boiled a head of cabbage on the stove and we sprayed ammonia around the front and back doors (because it smells like all the neighbourhood cats had been marking their territory). We also poured 2 dozen rotten eggs down the drain to make it smell like sewer gas 🤢.

Neighbourhood: We obtained a mouldy old couch and dumped in front yard of the neighbour across the road (with permission of course).

Neighbourhood x2: We started calling friends for help. Anybody with a loud and crappy car was asked to do a few laps in front of the block during the Open Day. The street was unusually busy that day. Everyone we knew found a reason to drive by. It was practically rush hour.

Neighbourhood x3: We called out mates from the rugby club (full contact football without any of that soft padding). A big portion of our club are very large men. The next door neighbour set up a bbq in their front yard and we offered free food and cheap beer. They came on motorcycles, wearing their roughest gear. There was quite a crowd.

A lot of people showed up for the Open Day. Quite a few were in and out within minutes. One lady sat in her car and watched the party next door before driving away. The one bloke who stayed any length time, was brave enough to start up a conversation with someone leaving the party. He asked if they were often there and was told every couple of weeks or so, they have an after party morning and the party the night before was 3 doors up. The party goer also helpfully mentioned the troublesome drains that are always getting blocked by tree roots and stinking up the place. The potential buyer left without making an offer.

So my friends were the only ones to make an offer. They still had to pay more than they’d planned but not as much as the greed bastards wanted. My friends signed the papers and paid the deposit that day. So when the brave buyer put in an offer of $30000 more than my friends, there was nothing the owners could do about it (strict anti gazumping laws). I would have loved to see the owners faces when they found out. 😈

For all the people who are saying they had cheap rent. They didn’t. $400 was the rent in 2004 and that was pretty high back then. By the time the lady died, average rent for a house that size had only gone up by about $40. Nowadays, 4 bedroom houses in that area go for approximately $800 per week.

This is gonna be a long one. TLDR at the end. This could also go in AITA sub. You guys decide. Names have been changed to keep anonymity.

Mobile phones became common in my country around 2004, just as I finished high school. My parents bought me my first phone, a second-hand Nokia. It was bulky and basic, but I promised myself that someday I’d buy a new phone with my own money.

When college started, I had a 2-hour daily commute. In high school, I had excelled academically and won several district-level awards. These awards were being distributed during my first year of college. One nationalized bank award finally gave me enough money for a new phone. I bought a Sony Ericsson K300i and a premium SIM card, not realizing it had been abandoned by its previous owner.

By the third day, I started receiving calls for a guy named Bitsah from various financial institutions. It turned out the number previously belonged to him (and for 20 years, I've been getting these calls). Determined to keep my premium number, I began a routine of blocking wrong numbers. Back then, blocking was device-specific, so each time I got a new phone, I had to start over, keeping a list of numbers to block.

I got my first job after graduating in 2009. Around 2010, I was assigned to a new project with a notorious reputation for burning people out due to a nefarious project manager named Bits. I didn't know his full name for quite a while. He took pride in making our lives a living hell.

Bits ruled with an iron fist. From the moment his team stepped into the office, they were met with a barrage of emails and messages, each more urgent than the last. Bits thrived on creating chaos, often changing project deadlines on a whim, demanding his team work late into the night and through weekends.

Bits’ presence loomed over every task. He insisted on micromanaging every detail, yet was quick to take credit for any successes, no matter how small. Failures, however, were met with his notorious tirades, publicly berating his team and assigning blame without hesitation. His unpredictable temper kept everyone on edge, afraid to make the slightest mistake.

Meetings were another tool in his arsenal of torment. He scheduled them during lunch breaks and after hours, ensuring no one could escape his grasp. These meetings were often pointless, serving only to reinforce his dominance and disrupt any semblance of work-life balance his team might have had.

His relentless stream of emails continued around the clock, each carrying a thinly veiled threat: perfection or dismissal. Under his reign, morale plummeted and burnout soared. Yet Bits remained oblivious, satisfied only by his complete and total control. I was quite ashamed when I learned that he was from the same area as I was and had gone to the same school, though years before me.

In 2012, our company merged with a parent company. Almost nothing changed personnel-wise, but infrastructure-wise we got MS Outlook and an organization view. That was when I first learned about Bits from an organizational hierarchy perspective. His full name was an eye-opener - it was Bitsah.

Now, the name was common enough, but at the time, mobile numbers had an area-specific pattern, so I already knew that the previous owner of my number was from the same area as me. Still, it could be someone else. I wanted to dig deeper.

I talked with an old mentor who lived in the same area and had coached several high-school students for the last two decades. He confirmed my suspicions. I won’t go into the details, but it was evident that Bitsah and Bits were the same person. I had been quite pissed with this unknown person named Bitsah for almost a decade by then, and Bits had been the bane of my (and several others') existence for quite some time.

This is where the revenge lies. First, I unblocked all the numbers in my phone. I was getting 5-6 calls daily on average, but after unblocking about 150 numbers, it increased to 15-18. My answering strategy changed drastically. Instead of saying "Wrong Number," I politely explained that the owner had changed his number and provided his current number to update their database. This is where I could be the AH - I also volunteered his manager's number, in case he tries something else.

The fallout was epic. These people had been trying to find him for almost a decade. Banks had sold his debts to companies that harass people for a living to get their money back. It turned out, he had been taking loans in everyone's names (his wife, parents, uncles, aunts) and giving everyone that same number. He was evading credit card debt and loans of upwards of $200k (equivalent in USD, but it's a shitload of money where we are from). Apparently he had almost 20 cases filed against him, but no one could find him. Probably why he thought he could walk on water.

There are multiple versions of what happened at the office when his manager started to get calls about him. He was let go about 2 months later, haven't heard from him since.

TLDR: Previous owner of my number had duped several financial institutions. He later turned out to be my shitty boss. I informed the banks of his new number and his manager's number, leaving his career in shambles.

sorry all. had to the delete the post because I've gotten about a dozen requests from people trying to monetize it.

This happened in the early 2010s, before the advancement of technology in video editing and content creation. I was hired as a content creator for a university that wanted to leverage YouTube to kickstart their branding campaign. The pay was low (roughly $2200 USD) and in those days, there were not that many video content creators around and the process usually took a long time from start to finish.

I was hired and on my 2nd day, my manager presented my KPI of 85 3-10 minute videos in 52 weeks which was impossible for a one-man team in those days. This meant I had to do the scripting, producing, casting talents, shooting videos, composing music (they were too cheap to pay for a royalty-free music subscription) and editing - all of which I had to use my own equipment and software because their cameras and computers were so old, they simply couldn't handle the strain of even doing things in 720p, much less 1080p.

I tried to let my manager know but she just smiled encouragingly, telling me to give it a try, assuring me if the videos were good, the quantity would not be what she focused on. Hearing this, I agreed to give it a try.

My manager treated me well in the first month, however, one day when she found out I was a smoker, her attitude changed overnight. A colleague had actually done a facepalm when I told her about it and she let me know that the manager hated smokers and often advocated to get them fired. She started nitpicking me on everything, from smelling like cigarette smoke after my breaks, coming in 5-10 minutes late despite doing more than 4 hours of overtime daily, not being contactable during break times...the list goes on. But I soldiered on, because I just wanted to do the work and do it well.

5 months in, I was called into the Director's office where I saw my manager putting on her best "displeased but gleeful face" and I felt my stomach drop.

The director told me that she was disappointed because she had heard that I was falling behind on my work, and it was already halfway through the year and I had only completed 30 out of my 85 videos. I tried to explain that I had been working my butt off on these videos, I literally worked 6 days out of the week, over 60 hours just to do what needed to be done and that being a 1 man army made things impossible, and also the fact that the videos I had put up grossed the highest views ever on their YouTube page. I also recounted how my manager said that she was looking for quality videos over quantity.

The director dismissed this and stated that the KPI was simply 85 videos in a year and since it was almost half a year in with my numbers at less than half, she felt it prudent to cut the cord early. I asked how would they even meet the KPI if they were to fire me now my manager had snorted, saying "We'll find a PROFESSIONAL production house to finish your work." The director had given her an odd look but nodded in her support nonetheless, telling me "You don't need to worry, Manager will get the job done." That was when a lightbulb went off in my head.

Seeing as I was the content professional in the office, one of my jobs was to keep a database of production houses to use in the event we needed to do a shoot that required more resources, and I was sure that they would be using the production houses in my database as my manager had no contacts in the production industry. So, I changed the contact numbers and messed up all the emails on all of the entries except ONE. The one, I had a friend working as a junior director (not an assistant director, but a director assigned to smaller video projects). I gave him a call and told him of my plan, and sure enough within 2 days, they were called to come in to pitch.

I told him that I had a plan that was a win-win for us. It would instantly help him and put him on the fast track to a director position by bringing in that much business to his production house and it would also benefit me financially. I would teach him exactly how to pitch to win over the boss and the director and in turn, his company would pay me a standard finders fee of 15%. He agreed instantly and immediately put me on the line with his general manager who upon realizing this was to be 6 months of work for a high 6-digit payout, instantly agreed and drew up a contract.

As it turns out, after I gave them a metaphorical "step-by-step playbook" they were the "perfect fit", somehow understanding the needs and style of the university as well as the sort of themes the university wanted to feature. The director and my former boss were amazed that my friend's production house was so familiar with their content that they signed them up on the spot.

Now, even back then using a production house back then was not cheap. Each video that they produced could cost double to triple my monthly salary given that they had specialized people for each function (Producer, Director, Director of Photography, Gaffer, Sound person, Video Editor, Assistant Director, Production Assistants etc), but this meant that they could complete a video every 2-3 days.

So yes, they produced 50 videos in a span of 4 months for over 100 months of my salary and I sat back and collected the healthy 15% which was about 15 months of my salary. This allowed me to put money aside for a holiday and the rest to further my studies with a respected film school overseas. I thought my plan ended here and I had gotten back at my former bosses, but to my surprise, I received a call from my colleague while I was holidaying in Bali one day. This was the same colleague who had facepalmed when I told her that my manager had found out that I was a smoker.

She told me that my former manager had been FIRED and my director given a massive blasting by the Chancellor of the University. The content creation project which I was hired for was only given a budget equating to about a year and a half of my salary and they had exceeded that budget by over 10 TIMES. My former manager was so desperate to ensure that her content creation project could be completed that she had thrown caution to the wind, paying anything to get the job done so that she could show my director that she had completed the project, and had approved the massive spend without getting consent from the director.

So that is how I got my friend a super fast promotion to a full Director in his production house, and a year of pay after getting unfairly fired from my job.

Someone suggested I post this story over here… enjoy!

When our first child was born, my ex forced me to quit my job. When our 2nd child was 2, I found out about his affair. By then he was extremely verbally, emotionally and sometimes physically abusive. When he abused our first born, I put him out. That was in 2012.

I couldn’t afford daycare to work and had no family support. He refused to give me any money to take care of the kids saying “The courts haven’t ordered me to give you a dime!” He lied to the bank and had my accounts frozen and even assaulted me when I filed for default in the divorce.

The judge finally ordered him to pay child and spousal support 6 months after I kicked him out. It was 2562 a month. He refused to pay it until the garnishment kicked in and by then he was 6k behind in support. I used that to get permission to move away.

I remarried a year after the divorce. I checked the court docs and there was a little box that said spousal support stopped upon remarriage if that box was checked. It wasn’t checked, so I figured I was good. Instead of filing for his retirement, I just took that year of spousal support (12k) and left it alone. (Spousal support was only ordered for 2 years)

In 2017, he filed for sole custody of the kids out of nowhere. That was when he found out I had remarried and he had paid spousal support to me during the first year of my marriage. I told him I took that money instead of filing for my share of his retirement. I said if he let me keep that 12k, I wouldn’t file to split his 401k. He demanded that I repay the spousal support. The judge ordered me to repay it but increased child support and deducted the repayment from that. It ended up that I got an extra 20.00 a month and he repaid himself. He dropped his bid for custody in exchange for 2 extra weeks in summer.

I pursued the retirement account split. He refused to cooperate and dragged it out for 4 years. It was so bad, they sanctioned him and he had to pay me 600 a month for a year in addition to child support. They also charged him with contempt.

In Jan 2021, he proposed to his girlfriend. In May of 2021, I finally got the disbursement from his 401k. I won’t say how much it was, but it was about 4 times the amount of spousal support overpayment. I had no idea it would be that much. I had thought it would be around 12k which is why I thought keeping that year of spousal and not filing for his retirement account was a fair trade. Had he not tried to take the kids from me, I never would’ve filed to split the account. Play stupid games… win stupid prizes.

His fiancé emailed me recently and told me it is my fault he won’t marry her because I cleaned out his retirement account. She said I shouldn’t have “stolen” his money. I told her that I gave him the option to let me keep that year of spousal support or take it back and I could file for his retirement. He chose to have me file for his retirement. I told her that if he really wanted to marry her and protect his assets, they could get a pre-nup so he wouldn’t have to worry about it. She said she shouldn’t have to sign a pre-nup because I “robbed” him.

I never asked to be financially dependent on him. He clearly indicated he wanted a court order to take care of his kids so I got him one. I tried to be fair and take the lesser amount by taking the spousal support and not filing for his retirement. He wouldn’t let me.

In summary, my ex refused to pay me until support orders dropped, refused to pay until they revoked his license. Tried to get me in trouble for accepting spousal support over payment and in the end it cost him a lot of money out of his 401k.

My landlord was a terrible human being. Honestly, calling him a human is even pushing it. Just a few things he has done to me over the past three years..

Stole my dryer and other household products that are in a common area. Made me pay for a plumbing repair which was deemed normal wear and tear. Tried breaking into my house. Retaliated against me because I went to my lawyer after he sent me a letter about a parking spot. He tried charging me an extra $150/month.

Mind you, I was never late for rent in 3 years, except for when he made me pay for the plumbing repair. So the next month I was a couple days late.

The list goes on...Now this apartment was no where near nice. I found out the plumbing was illegal, he left me with a porch for years that has severe safety issues, the ceiling paint was always falling down, gas heater was not up to code, and so on.

I finally got my chance to leave after he wanted to raise my rent $500/month. He will do anything, and everything to get more money out of his tenants.

So I called the building inspector 4 days before I left. I told him everything. The porch when he finally replaced it didn't have a permit and was definitely not up to code. I told him about the plumbing and the heater. I went on and on. The inspector came over the very next day, I saw him taking measurements. Each violation is a $500/day fine until fixed. I honestly don't know what happened, but my God did it feel good to finally get him back. He's at the very least on the town's radar.

A week before I moved out he tried telling me I needed to be out at a specific time. I never responded and where I lived, that's not how it works. He tried to threaten me with the police if I wasn't gone. Well, I went to the police myself that morning to warn them. The landlord did come by, threaten me and harass me. I called the police, they informed him I was in the right.

Long story short, he had broken into my apartment (I had left to go to storage) while I was gone. He nailed my door shut. I told the police to get the supervisor because I was over being harassed by this guy. Go figure he left before the supervisor could get there. I'm positive he knew he'd be arrested on site.

Got the police report, they're charging him with a felony for breaking and entering.

Fines plus a charge? Don't be a jerk to good people.

i had a landlord who was pretty absent. i lived in this building (a high rise, like 20 stories) for 10+ years. he, despite living next door to me, was absent and cold personally but cool enough. rent was good, our agreement was NEVER bother him about anything unless its an absolute emergency.

shower head wonky? go buy a new one. fridge breaks? get it fixed, or dude just buy a new one. take it out of what you pay in rent. lost the receipt i DONT CARE i know more or less what a fridge costs just take it out of rent

finally his wife decides she wants more rent, wants to rent the place out as an office (not legal) and wants us out asap. i agree to move out a month early and get a month's rent back + deposit.

complete 180 on their part. "the place is ruined, can't give you shit until you fix all this stuff". 2 main things: my cats did scratch up the leather legs of the dining table, and the pull-up bar made 2 dents in the door frame of the kitchen, which was quite nice hardwood. they come to me with this list of TONS of stuff like oh you hang a photo frame here, this tile is slightly chipped.

this is the busiest work time of the year for me but im trying to be cooperative, sure, i got the table legs re-leathered, spackle the photo frame wall hole. can't do anything about the door frame, take it out of deposit. patch the tile. like dozens of little everyday-wear-and-tear things, like you want me to change the window screens? these are all new screens and in nicer shape than when i moved in! but i did them all, i trusted the guy. gotta get my money

at the end he should have been giving me 24k rmb (~£2500). he gave me FIVE. "i still need to use the money to fix all that stuff, if you can't accept the five, i can't give you anything at all." i was super pissed off but took the five.

now, people in the building are gossipy. i dont participate but i did tell this one older lady about my frustration. she told EVERYONE. the wife went from being the star of the "mommies group" of the building to nobody wanting to talk to her. people shunned the guy, too. i originally told them i was planning on moving to another city but an opportunity came up and i ended up renting a similar unit in the same building. so they thought they could just screw me over and not have to see me, but now they still did. often.

a year later the office calls me with some question about how to do something with the floor heating, i go... door frame is not fixed, still has dents, i call the guy like "what the hell, man" and he tells me to mind my own business

5 years later... i see the light at my old place is still on at 3am. huh, that's odd. i go to check, the door is open, and the place is just trashed, ruined. cabinets broken, stuff on the walls "lazy landlord"... and the dents on the kitchen door frame are still there. so the guy never fixed anything, just kept my money

by this time smartphones were popular and we had a chat group for the whole building, so about 500 people. i took pictures and posted everything. apparently he had also nicked these peoples deposit, and there was a huge ruckus when they trashed the place, cops called. all these people chime in with complaints, and pictures. people smoking in the hallways, leaving leaky rubbish outside the front door, videos of people using foul language in front of children, dirty footprints.

he got fined a lot for 1: creating a public disturbance 2: degrading the quality of the living space 3: illegally renting a residence as an office and to top it off the building management wouldn't grant him permission to have workers in to fix the place, so it sat there empty for like 6 months. the fines were big, too.

take ~1.5 month's rent from me, lose a year's rent. suck it, bro.

This story takes place about 20 years ago.

In the mid 2000s my friends and I would frequent a small billiards place in a neighboring town where you could rent a table by the hour or play per game. We’d play a few games, watch whatever sports were on TV, and have casual conversations. There were no problems and no drama until about 3 months of us visiting this place.

A guy shows and takes our spot at the billiards table. No big deal. We were all chatting anyway. 20 min later my friend lets him know we want to play next game and the jerk is super dismissive.

Needless to say, we didn’t get in during the next game. So I politely let him know we wanted to play next. Another lady chimed in she wanted the game after us. The guy blatantly ignored me and the other woman.

Some more time going by and the guy leave the table. We see our chance to get in. We put the quarters in and the balls are dispensed- except the green “6” ball. The guy took it to the bathroom with him.

At this point it was ridiculous and we notified the manager. The manager noted it was 12:30 and they were going to be calling last call and closing so he didn’t want to make a scene by kicking him out. He gets us another ball so we can play.

The guy comes out of the bathroom and knows we realized what he did. He smirks and proceeds to the patio to have a cigarette, bringing along his beer and the green billiard ball.

The guy comes back in and tossed the ball he was holding onto the table hitting a few balls on the table and messing up our game. He goes up to the bar just in time for last call.

One of the friends I was with suggested we follow him home and each call the highway patrol to report a suspected drunk driver. 3 of 4 of us agree. So when he leaves we used our trusty Nextel push-to-talk phones and coordinated several calls to the police. We provided details like license plate, vehicle make and model and color, and mentioned the car nearly hit another vehicle, was swerving between lines and driving erratically. This was under a 15 minute plan. We had no idea where the guy lived but suspected it was close as he was visiting a neighborhood place so our time was limited.

The one guy who didn’t notify the police tailed the jerk and called us giddy when a police officer pulled between him and the guy and turned in his lights to pull him over. The police blotter that week included an arrested of a guy who was pulled over after multiple calls of erratic driving. He wasn’t arrested for DWI but instead for driving on a suspended license.

TLDR: guy was a jerk at a local billiards club so we got him pulled over by the cops and he was arrested for driving in a suspended license.

Landlords are assholes, generally speaking. Everyone knows that. But if you think residential landlords are bad, they’re nothing compared to commercial landlords. Landlords of commercial buildings are some of the cruelest, nastiest people I’ve ever come across. This revenge tale is about a commercial landlord, and how I dealt with him.

Back in the 90s, sometimes I’d go for lunch at this restaurant in the basement of our building. The place was called “The Vault”, because it had a massive bank vault that had always been there, dating back to the days before the place was turned into a restaurant. The vault was so huge that they could seat a couple of tables in there, and you could eat dinner surrounded by rows of old, gleaming safe deposit boxes. One day I was there for lunch, and the owner took me aside.

“The landlord’s driving me nuts,” he said.

“The landlord drives everyone nuts,” I said.

I was a subtenant in the same building, sharing space with an older lawyer, Aaron, and the landlord was always causing us trouble. I’d already had a few run-ins with him, and we hated each other on sight.

In most jurisdictions, commercial landlords don’t need court orders to get you out if you're late with the rent. Instead, they just change the locks, and you find out about it when you show up and your key doesn’t work. Every time our landlord had a dispute with anyone, which was often, he’d always threaten to change the locks.

“He keeps demanding all this stuff for extra rent,” the Vault’s owner said, “and it’s really weird, because a lot of it’s really old.” The restaurant owner showed me a letter the landlord had served on him earlier that day. I looked over the demand, and read a list of expenses for snow removal and parking lot repair and common area flooring and all kinds of crap going back years. I read it all the way to the end, and there it was, the usual clause saying he was going to change the locks if the tenant didn’t pay this and do that.

“From the wording of the demand, it looks like you’ve been fighting a while. Why did you wait before consulting a lawyer?”

“I asked one of the lawyers I know, and he said it’s hopeless.” He told me the lawyer’s name. It was a guy I knew with a shitty real estate practice, who’d resorted to taking little legal aid cases to keep the lights on when the market tanked in ‘89.

“You do something to make the landlord hate you?” I asked, “because this is a bit over the top, even for our asshole landlord.”

“He knows I’m moving the restaurant. I think he’s trying to grab as much money as possible before I go. Plus he’s giving me grief over the vault.”

“He won’t let you take it with you?”

“Are you kidding? It weighs almost a hundred tons, and I don’t need it. But the lease says I have to remove it, and that I also have to restore the building to what it was before there was a vault. That would cost a fortune. The asshole landlord says if I leave the vault behind when I move, he’ll sue.”

“Send your lease up to my office, and let me look it over,” I said. I finished my lunch, and when I got back to my office the lease was waiting for me.

It was just as bad as the restaurant owner said. The lease was a renewal of a renewal of an assignment of a renewal, the original documents dating back to the shortly after W.W.II when a bank first leased the place and the vault was installed. Somehow the landlord had suckered the restaurant into taking over a lease that left him liable to remove a bank vault at the end of term.

“No big deal,” I thought, “the restaurant can default, and all the landlord can do is sue a shell company.” But when I got to the last page of the lease, there was a guarantee clause. The restaurant owner had personally guaranteed the lease, and he was on the hook for removing a vault weighing a hundred tons, and then fixing the place up. It would cost a fortune.

The case was hopeless, of course; that was obvious right away. But then I thought about the asshole landlord with his demands and his threats and his rent hikes, and I asked my brain to do me a solid, which it promptly did. I picked up the phone and called the restaurant owner.

“I’m fucked, right?” he said, “You’re calling me to say there’s no way out. That’s what my commercial lawyer already said. But I just thought I’d ask.”

“I can save you, but it’s gonna cost.”

“How much?”

“Five thousand in legals, and another G-note for the agent.”

“Agent? What kind of agent?”,

“Real estate. Send up a cheque, certified, and leave the rest to me.” The cheque hit my desk in less than an hour. I went to Aaron’s office. “I need a real estate agent,” I said.

“You buying a house?”

“Nope.”

“Selling a house?”

“Nope.”

By this point I’d been sharing space with Aaron for almost five years, and he knew me pretty well. “You pulling one of your stunts again?” he asked.

“Yup. But nothing that will get you into trouble.”

“I know a guy,” he said.

Aaron knew all kinds of guys, and that’s one of the reasons he eventually got disbarred. But he knew a guy, and he gave me the agent’s name and number, and the next day I paid the agent a visit. I told him what I needed, and we agreed to terms. I gave him some papers and the cash for his fee.

A few days later I was again at The Vault for lunch. The owner saw me walk in, and greeted me himself.

“The landlord’s here,” he said.

“Why?”

“For lunch, and to be an asshole. Let’s sit in the vault room so I don’t have to look at his face.” He took me to the vault room, and with the door almost completely closed, we had a consultation while we ate pasta and drank red wine.

“We’re making demand on the landlord,” I said, between bites of a perfect carbonara.

“Demand? What are we demanding?”

I pulled a document out of my briefcase and passed it to him while I sipped my wine. “We’re demanding that the asshole landlord release all the restaurant equipment, all the fixtures. The ovens, the freezers, the ventilation: everything you need to run a restaurant.”

“The lease exempts all that stuff,” the restaurant guy told me, “He can’t stop me taking what I want. The only thing that matters is the vault, and of course I don’t want that.” I shook my head.

“You need the vault,” I said “and we’re demanding that he release the bank vault as well. We’re insisting that he let you take it out within seven business days.”

“You think you can beat the landlord with reverse psychology? You think if you treat him like a two-year old, you can manipulate him into doing what you want?”

“We’ll find out soon enough. He’s had the demand for a couple of days now.”

The restaurant owner dropped his wine glass and it shattered on the marble floor. “You already gave it to him?” the restaurant owner said. He got up, swung open the vault door and called for the waiter to clean up the mess.

“Let’s see what the landlord has to say,” I told him, and we walked over to the landlord’s table. The landlord was a big, beefy man with a big appetite. He sat alone, eating a rack of lamb wolfishly with his hands.

“My client needs an answer today,” I said. The landlord looked up at me as he chewed noisily. “I’m The Vault’s lawyer,” I said. “I gave you a demand the other day. My client needs an answer right now. He needs the vault for a new place, and he’s got to make arrangements.”

“Your client can forget about the bank vault,” he said, wiping his massive greasy hands on an already soiled napkin.

“But you can’t do that,” I said. My shock was feigned, but the restaurant owner’s jaw dropped for real.

The landlord laughed at us. “I’m the landlord. I can do what I want.”

“I’m gonna need that in writing, because my client might sue.” I said.

“Sue all you like,” the landlord told me, “sue ‘till you’re blue in the face.” He told me that I’d have a formal response by day’s end, and then he told me to go away and let him finish his lunch. When the letter arrived from the landlord, claiming ownership over the bank vault, I brought it downstairs and showed it to my client.

“How the hell did you do that?”

“Trade secret,” I said.

The following month the restaurant moved out and the place was empty, and that was too bad, because I had always liked eating at the Vault. Now the restaurant was in a new location twenty minutes away. They called the new place “The Vault,” and they’d preserved the vibe of the old place. It was very similar, except they didn't have the bank vault. The bank vault, all one hundred tons of it, was where it had always been, in the basement of the building where I rented space. I showed up for work a little after that, and Aaron collared me.

“The landlord’s looking for you,” he said.

“Oh yeah? What about?”

“He’s really angry. He said his deal fell through.”

“Deal?”

“He was supposed to rent the place downstairs to a new tenant, a bank or a credit union or something like that. They were supposed to come in to sign a lease, but they didn’t show up.”

“And what’s that got to do with me?” I said to Aaron, and I said the same thing again to the landlord when he managed to track me down a couple of days later.

“I know you were behind this,” he said, his jowls quivering, “I know it was you. That offer from the agent, it was all bullshit. Just a trick to make me keep the vault, so that your client could sneak out of the place and leave that fucking bank vault behind. I’m gonna sue.”

“If you’re looking for counsel, I think I’m going to have to declare a conflict.”

“I’m gonna sue the restaurant, and that agent, and I’m gonna sue you.” He stormed off.

But the landlord didn’t sue. Of course he didn’t. He didn’t have a contract to sue on, only a vague letter of intent that I’d drafted, enough to hook a greedy landlord who was used to having his way. The offer he’d received was non-binding, incapable of acceptance without the signing of a formal lease, which of course never got signed.

When I left Aaron’s place a year later, the downstairs was still unoccupied, with a sad ‘for rent’ sign sitting in the window, starting to look faded.

So my dad owns a house that he's been renting for some time now. The tenants that lived there were for the most part decent people who my dad thought were trustworthy.

That all changed about 2 months into the tenancy when the the tenant refused to pay the month's rent. My dad showed some leniency and gave them another month to pay up what was owed, they didn't pay a thing.

By this point, my dad frustrated by the whole situation and being two months out of rent money offered them a deal. Leave the house ASAP and then only pay half the money owed, they countered with a different agreement, they would leave the house in a clean state with all of their furniture left behind as compensation.

My dad, wanting to just be done with them, agreed. Queue to when my dad gets to the house, finding the place in a mess, with NONE of the furniture left behind, including the furniture that belonged to my dad in the first place. The two sofas that my dad owned were left behind, but they were trashed and left in the shed.

When my dad confronted them asking for them to pay up the full amount that the furniture was worth, he was met with a promise of "payment after two weeks" which he didn't believe and when he requested they pay earlier he was met with "Good luck getting your money" followed by laughing emojis.

This made my dad angry and he decided that he wasn't going to let this slide.

My dad knew that the tenant was a christian pastor of a church, and his son also had some job related to the church. My dad contacted the church and explained everything from how they hadn't paid him rent money to stealing the furniture and trashing the place. The church was somewhat interested about this behaviour.

The next day, my dad gets an angry phone call from the tenant's son cursing at him and asking him what he thought he was doing contacting the church saying he was being 'unfair'. My dad hung up on him only for him to attempt to ring 10 times after he hung up. From what we could piece together, the church had told the pastor that if he didn't settle things with my dad, him and his son would lose their jobs.

My dad received the full amount for the furniture that same day and agreed to back off. My dad later said, it was never about the money but the way this guy treated him and his values (my dad being a christian himself was disappointed)

My very good friend made...some slightly dumb mistakes and sent some pictures to someone that she reasonably thought she could trust, but not knowing much more than than his first name, his screen name, and roughly where he lived and the type of work he did. He is not in our country but had indicated that he would be traveling for work to near us shortly, and they had made some plans to meet.

And when she got some red flags and backed out, the dude threatened to publish these pictures online.

I am, incidentally, an attorney.

So, some searching later, and gathering up any pictures he sent her of him, that could possibly identify him, his online handle let me to a TikTok page, which lead me to an instagram page with his name on it.

That lead to a linkedin page with his place of work that matched a picture he sent with a branded polo he was wearing.

Some more searched got me the email of the CEO, VP of HR, operations manager, and public relations manager.

I just fired off an email on behalf of my client of the screenshots of him threatening revenge porn, snippets of the conversation showing that username while he sent that exact picture of him wearing his company's branded apparel, links to how I know it's him, along with pictures he sent her of his motorcycle with the license plate showing, as further proof it is him. I also included screenshots of him discussing a workplace incident that were time stamped, along with pieces of dialogue discussing how he had sex with an ex at his place of work, and discussing plans to have sex with her in his office as well.

I also included a picture he sent her showing his work laptop with his entire outlook calendar, along with proprietary information (which he sent to "prove he was busy") along with other pictures he took of his workplace with non-consenting employees.

I further informed his employer that I will be forwarding all this information to local (to them) law enforcement and since he had indicated that he would be traveling to the United States soon, will also forward this to the local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as, since my client is a US citizen on US soil, these threats constituted a federal crime. So that should they continue with his employment, and continue with their plans to send him to the United State for work, I will ensure, on behalf of my client that federal law enforcement is waiting for him on arrival. Which I will do, as one of the assistant US attorney's for this region is a law school buddy of mine.

Since I have his license plate # I know where he lives, and will be contacting his local authorities tomorow.

You dumb mother fucker thinking you were hiding around anonymity thinking you could threaten my friend? It took me 45 minutes to destroy your life.

TL:DR Don’t mess with the IT guy.

I was discussing this sub with a good friend, and he said, “Boy, have I got a story that’ll fit.” It wasn’t his story, but his brother’s, and I sat with him and got the details. Buckle up, it’s a good one…and a long one.

Let’s call him “Bob”. Bob has been fiddling with computers since he was a kid, and knows them pretty well. As with most IT people, he’s moved from job to job. The employer he worked for was a service/distribution company, and there were two IT employees. The company was located in Ontario, Canada.

About three years ago, Bob’s employer decided to modernize their software. They had separate programs for Dispatching, for Inventory, for Payroll and Finances, and it was complicated moving information from one program to the other. They decided to get an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) program, and Bob recommended one that he knew inside-out from a previous employer.

For those of you who don’t know, an ERP program handles everything. Purchase orders. Sales. Inventory. Personnel. Vendors. Customers. All of it. You can run a report and find out which customer has bought the most Part ABC in the last year. Which salesman has improved his numbers the most. Which vendor has the fastest delivery time. Which shipper packed the most orders.

Everyone in the company used the ERP program, but it was very complicated, and they used the aspects of it that related to their position. For example, the Receiver would accept a shipment, verify the quantity, confirm it was received…and the inventory stats would be available to the Sales people if they wanted to look up how many were on hand. The Receiver didn’t care what the price was, or who the vendor was, he just did his job.

Bob was run ragged during the implementation process, but he managed to train most of the employees on their aspects, and after a few months, everything was running fairly smoothly. Bob still got tickets for tweaks in the operation of the software, and occasional hardware IT issues.

Then the company decided to expand their footprint and was marketing into different time zones.

That messed things up. Atlantic Canada is 90 minutes early, so if someone sent an email or an order at 8am their time, it would arrive at 6:30am Ontario time. Pacific Canada is 3 hours late….so an email sent at 3pm Vancouver time would arrive at 6pm. This stretched out the day, so many staff came in early and worked late.

Bob would arrive at 8am and there would be people that demanded his immediate assistance, and were annoyed that he didn’t respond instantly, even though their request was submitted before his start time. Same with late in the day…his phone would ring at dinnertime with people that wanted help right now.

They decided to stagger his and his IT colleague’s shift times, Bob would start at 6am and work till 2:30, and his colleague would start at 10:30am and work till 7pm. Bob’s colleague had kids, and refused the shift change. The employer insisted. The colleague quit.

That meant that Bob was the only person in the IT department. The employer said they would look to hire a new IT guy, but they had trouble finding one that knew the ERP system….and they were offering well under a market value salary.

Bob asked for a raise and was denied. Then he wanted overtime, and the employer told him that as an IT specialist, he was exempt from overtime laws in Ontario. Bob looked it up, and the employer was correct. This went on for some time, and he knew lots of IT people socially. They told him what the company was offering, and Bob know that they wouldn’t find another tech.

Things went downhill from there. Bob would get chewed out if he missed a call or an email, no matter what time it came in. He had to train new hires in the ERP system, as well as take care of the hardware. He asked repeatedly for better compensation, and was denied….so he planned to get a new job.

Now here’s the revenge. Bob had access to the entirety of the ERP program. When a user signed in, the time was logged, and even if they didn’t sign out, after 15 minutes it would log them out anyway. Everyone in the company was on salary, and many of them came in early and stayed late. Ontario labour law states that even salaried workers are entitled to overtime after 44 hours a week, unless they were Managers or Supervisors.

So Bob jumped into the program and ran a report for each employee that wasn’t a Manager. All the way back to when the ERP program was started. Then he reached out to an employment lawyer and got the okay to refer employees to him.

Bob lined up another job, and after he left, every employee in the company got an email with an Excel sheet showing the hours they had put in past 44 hours a week. The subject line said “You’re Legally Entitled to Overtime Pay” In the body of the email was the lawyer’s name.

The shit hit the fan. Almost every employee authorized the lawyer to negotiate with the company on their behalf, and the company had to pay a ton of money.

All the company had to do was pay Bob for the extra work he put in. Instead, they had to pay almost everyone.

Sorry this is a bit long. All names changed. Throw away account for all the reasons.

When I was in college in the 90s, I met “Jake” (then M23) through mutual friends. He had already graduated and was planning to move to the opposite side of the United States for grad school and I had already been making plans to move with friends only a 90 minute drive away from where he was moving to. We had so much in common, fell in love and it really seemed like fate, both planning to move 3000 miles and landing so close together. He had two sisters and a younger brother who were all awesome people and I became instant friends with them as well.

Because he was in school and I was working, I would usually go to him to hang out on weekends. He was renting a house with 2 roommates, also in his program. We were young so money was tight but we had fun, went for taco dates and spent a lot of time at his house where he was breeding and selling small animals. Jake was an animal sciences PhD student so being around animals was normal and I loved it. I met and became friends with his advisor’s wife (“Mary, F mid-50s) who worked in administration at the university. She is a lovely woman and I would often have lunch with her when I went over on weekends. Jake was a teaching assistant (TA) and I met other people in the program and made friends with them faster than he did.

After about 2 years of dating, I was at the house one day, laying in bed together, in a state of some undress and he said out of the blue, he was concerned I’d been gaining weight and it made it harder for him to be attracted to me. No concern about my health, it was all about him finding me unattractive. I sat up and said, well, then maybe you should make sure there is better food for me to eat than crackers and cheese when I come up on weekends. Even at 23, I didn’t take that kind of BS. I had gained MAYBE 10 pounds since meeting him two years earlier and still wore the same size clothes (about a US size 6-8). I wasn’t going to engage in a fight about it after all, it was his problem, not mine, so I asked him calmly, so what is your solution to this? He stared at me blankly and said well, I guess that you should try to lose weight and I said, nah, I’m not going to do that so what are YOU going to do about it. He said, well, I guess nothing, I wanted to let you know how I feel and I said, cool, thank you, put my clothes back on, went to sleep and drove home the next day as usual.

We keep dating and about 3 months later he called me and said he wanted to break up after close to 3 years. The reason AND I QUOTE “You don’t know enough about science”. He felt like he couldn’t have a conversation with me about his work where he didn’t have to use common names for animals instead of scientific ones. I said, well, that’s bullshit, what’s the real reason. He said it was the real reason. He came to see me a month later to return something of mine and I confronted him, demanding the real reason. He finally admitted he had been seeing one of his undergrad students, let’s call her Meg, a 19 year old. He was then 26 and her teacher. I screamed at him to leave, my roommate threated to throw him off our second floor balcony if he didn’t go and he left. It hit me all at once after he walked out and I went from rage to stunned laughter. I’d met Meg a few times and at one point, she was at his house for a BBQ and spilled something all over her pants. Jake asked me if I could loan her some sweats. I couldn’t because I was a size 8 and she was a size 18. Nothing wrong with that, AT ALL, but the point is, I realized he made those comments about my weight to try and get me to break up with HIM because he was a coward. He clearly liked a big gal. Although, when he’d said those things to me about my weight it was 1am, I lived about 95 miles away and we had just had sex so I don’t know how he thought this would go, even in hindsight, it’s perplexes me.
Did he think I was going to break up with him and storm off into the night and drive for an hour and a half?

ANYWAY, I emailed his roommates, it was the early 2000s, it’s how you communicated anything you didn’t want to say on the phone. I wanted to let them know we'd broken up and that they were always lovely to me and thanked them for being friends. They both admitted they knew about Meg and were the ones to demand that Jake tell me or they would. That’s when he broke up with me with the lame, you don’t understand science excuse. One of his roommate, a super nice, super cute guy named “George” offered to help me get a few things still at their house that he had collected for me away from around the house. He suggested I come up for the weekend, we go out and drink and have a good time, all the things Jake didn’t want to “waste” money on and I said sure!

So I went up and George let me into the house while Jake was gone. I took photos of all of his animals because while I might not be a PhD student, I paid attention and I knew he had an endangered species in his care. He wasn’t breeding it, it was an un-releasable animal he had taken in from a rescue organization. There was paperwork he had to submit with a $25 fee and he refused to do it, saying he didn’t want the government in his business. I took photos of that animal, all his breeding conditions and a photo of an animal not allowed in the state which was in a tank, right next to a window and visible from outside. I then went out for a night on the town with George. We stumbled in early, around midnight so Jake and Meg who were watching TV would see me in a short dress, drunk and George practically carrying me. I spent the night in George’s room. He was a total gentleman but made sure to leave the room and parade past them in his boxers a few times and we giggled and moaned loudly so they could hear us. When I went to leave the next morning, Jake said I didn’t have to act like a whore in front of him as I ate a donut slowly in my rumbled dress with messy hair while George beamed at me and then planted a kiss on my head. Meg looked ashamed, not quite knowing where to look and I said have fun with my leftovers and walked out. I wanted to think the petty, loud, “hook up” and a few juvenile insults was my “revenge”. It was not.

The next day I had my photos developed (ahhh, the good old days) and called the state office of Fish and Wildlife. I reported the animals in the house, the potential over-crowding of breeding animals and the two animals he shouldn’t legally have at all in the state and asked them how to make a report. Turns out Jake wasn’t well liked by his peers in his program, or by his roommates but I was! George had suggested that he and their other roommate could submit complaints to the University that a TA was sleeping with one of his students and showing her favoritism. The night we were out at the bars, we made sure to tell the story to anyone who they knew. They made sure all the women in his classes knew he was sleeping with Meg. It wasn’t a large program so people knew fast he had cheated and was now dating his student. George and the other roommate made sure people knew they had put in complaints, sick of Jake’s entitled BS.

With my full statement made and photos sent to the state wildlife officials, I called my friend Mary, Jake’s advisor’s wife. She knew about the break up and lame reason and I let her know he admitted he was sleeping with a student. I’d been emailing with him and he admitted to it in writing so I sent that to Mary. To say she was not happy about that was an understatement. She said she made sure it would be investigated and told her husband, Jake’s direct advisor while I was on the phone with her.

Speaking of investigations, a few weeks later George called me, giddy, to say state Fish and Wildlife officials were there, confiscating animals. He told them he would be happy to tell them whatever they needed to know. Meg was there when it happened and told the officials as far as she knew, all the animals belonged to her boyfriend Jake and that they were all legal. That put George and the other roommate in the clear. One animal was kept in the backyard so it was implied to Jake that a neighbor reported it. While they were there to investigate, they knew to look in the back window to see the far more problematic, illegal to have in the state under nearly any circumstances, animal. Since George was on the lease, he was able to let them in to investigate in the house. The animals were all in communal areas and the officers stayed there for a few hours and returned with a warrant to take all the animals and enter Jake’s room to investigate. George and the other roommate let them into their rooms with no issues and were quickly cleared. Meg apparently couldn’t get a hold of Jake and eventually drove to the University to find him. Remember, no cell phones yet! It was a good day. The only animals they left was some guppies in a fish tank.

Now, PhD students need grant money to do research and a large part of animal studies funding comes from the federal government. Jake had just gotten an EPA grant right around when he broke up with me. So I called the EPA and asked how I would report that a person with a federal grant was being investigated for illegally harboring endangered animals. Long story short, he lost his EPA grant and had to make restitution on what had already been used, close to $30,000. He would never be able to get another federal grant. He avoided jail time on the state charges since all the animals were in good health but lost all his breeding animals (worth thousands of dollars) since they were collected for safe keeping during the investigation when the two illegal animals were taken. In the end, he owed a $15,000 fine and the two animals went to a nearby nature center. For years, I would stop by if I was in the area to visit them!

The university revoked his scholarship and fired him from teaching for having an inappropriate relationship with a student. He somehow escaped being expelled but it always shocked me that he never tried to hide the relationship with Meg and was so stupidly self assured he didn’t even wait the 4 weeks until she would have been done with his class to start publicly dating her. By the University rules, he would have been in the clear to date her, not being her teacher anymore and she would just have to avoid any classes he was a TA in. It never fails to make me laugh.

After a few months, I emailed his sisters and told them I missed them because Jake broke up with me after trying to call me fat and cheating on me and I felt weird contacting them. The girls told me he told the family I broke up with him because of the distance. I forwarded them emails that Jake wrote after the breakup, talking about how he fell for Meg and he was sorry about it but it was true, I couldn’t keep up with him academically and it made him attracted to Meg.

Jake managed to convince his dad to pay for one more year of school so he could get a Master’s instead of a PhD and while I stayed in contact with his sisters and brother via email and then social media, I largely let it all go. I got even, made some friends, Mary became like an auntie to me and I went on with life. I went on to get a master’s degree myself and my specialty? Helping scientists and doctors communicate their work to lay people. You know, us dummies who can’t remember all the scientific names. I swear, it happened by accident, not design but I love it and I work with everyone from small town doctors and nurses to pharmaceutical companies to museums to state and federal governments to film and TV producers. I travel a lot and speak and get to learn a lot of cool things about our planet and how things work.

I knew through his siblings that Jake and Meg got married and had 2 kids. Meg dropped out of the sciences and became an accountant, Jake went back to breeding animals. Every once and awhile, his sisters or brother would tell me something over for lunch or via text but we had our own relationship that exists outside of him. Apparently when I sent a wedding gift for one of his sisters he loudly complained at a co-ed bridal shower that all of his siblings still were my friend and didn’t make an effort to embrace his now wife, Meg. Apparently the sister just laughed and said, I don’t make it a habit to be friends with homewreckers. This is how Jake’s parents found out how their relationship started and ours ended, 10 years after we broke up. Jake never found out I was behind reporting him to the state and in the end, I didn’t lie about a single thing, except maybe exaggerating a drunken make out session with George who is now a successful and tenured professor with a lovely wife and daughters.

Fast forward about 20 years to a few weeks ago. I was at a university giving a lecture to a room of 250 undergrad and grad students. In the end, I was mingling with the student afterwards and I hear a voice say, hey OP, long time no see and I realize it’s Jake and I didn’t change the expression on my face, at all. I was completely shocked and my instinct was to play dumb! So I said, I’m sorry, help me out, have we met at another workshop or lecture? He looked incredulous and said, it’s me Jake and I said, I can’t place you but I would love to figure it out. Finally I gasped and said, oh my goodness, Jake! I guess I blocked you out and said, well, lovely to see you and moved on quickly when he tried to reach out and hug me. I was happy to leave it there, with the satisfaction of him seeing me as a guest lecturer in a science department of a major University when he was just in the audience.

The department chair and faculty who had invited me to speak took me out to dinner and while there, one of them said, so you know Jake? I said, I did from over 20 years ago, being vague about how. She went on to tell me he had been there for an interview for a teaching position and had spent a few days there observing and they were likely going to hire him. I couldn’t control it, I scoffed. When they all looked at me I said, I’m sorry, I’m just shocked he’s teaching after what happened at University X. They said what happened and I said, he was sleeping with a 19 year old student when he was 26 and he had to leave the program without a PhD because he couldn’t afford to stay after losing his scholarship. The three people I was with all looked at each other like they knew they had a problem and said, wow, we’ll have to look into that and changed the subject.

My old friend Mary (retired a year or 2 now but still friendly with her old collages) called me this weekend to say a friend at the university let her know someone had called doing a background check about Jake and they pulled his file which included being fired, leaving the program with a lower degree and the complaint letters from over 20 years ago about his conduct. Mary’s name had been on it with her husband listed as the faculty advisor, so she thought she’d like to know. As a bonus, it had a copy of his arrest record for the illegal animals. I guess his dad had paid for a decent lawyer to get the record expunged after the charges were reduced and he paid the fines so it doesn’t show up on a standard background check. I don’t think he’s going to get that job.

So I will return to my life, content that the universe comes through sometimes, especially if you give it a little nudge now and then. The best revenge is when you don’t have to do anything wrong, you just have to help direct knowledge to the right places. If there is anything I can impart to any young women and men reading this, as I shimmy happily into my now size 10 pants, it’s that, if someone who is supposed to love you complains about your weight or looks, that is their problem to fix mentally, not yours and maybe it’s time to check out what they are doing behind your back or simply move on. Remember though, it is their flaw, not yours. If Jake hadn’t been a coward and tried to make me break up with him and just ended things with me in a mature way, I might not have found out about Meg and turned his own wickedness back on himself.

This one is not technically my revenge but some revenge I got to see up close and take joy from, and slightly participate in.

The background is most of the story so this will be a little long.

Trigger warning for self harm.

I was in the Navy and stationed on the submarine base in Connecticut.

I had a friend I met in boot camp and we were in the same class for our A school (Navy job training)

We'll call that friend Bill.

Now Bill wasn't the most physically fit guy. He was short, kind of chubby, and wore glasses.

However Bill was really smart, and as the sonar technician he was meant to be he would've been amazing. He had a pragmatic way of looking at things I really valued in a friend and I know it would have made him successful if he had made it out to the fleet.

While in school we had a couple of petty officers that were hard asses. They somehow convinced themselves they were super soldiers despite the fact that our jobs in that field are really nerd centric. You get picked for that job because of your math and computer skills, not your deadlift number.

Still they were both all about being fit and working out all the time.

We would do physical training 3 times a week and while most of us could keep up, Bill often fell behind on runs or didn't quite meet what these two idiots believed to be the standard. To be clear, Bill did pass the minimum requirements for fitness, he just didn't go as extreme as these guys. (Side note for other Navy vets, he got the MCPON coin for how hard he pushed himself at PT the day he visited.)

The end result was that they would constantly berate and belittle Bill. They'd call him fat, lazy, and everything else, They'd tell him he should kill himself, you name it. They were always on his ass despite him passing his assessments.

At some point, Bill pushed himself too hard an injured his knee. He told these petty officers he was injured and had been seen by the doc on base. The doc had put him on light duty so the knee could recover. He had the paperwork to back it up.

They elected to ignore that and threaten him with kicking him out if he didn't do the workouts.

So Bill kept pushing himself, injuring himself more, and his mental health degraded the whole time.

In my time in the Navy you didn't get mental health services really, the only person to talk to like that was the Chaplain. For those who don't know, the Chaplain is the religious leader, usually a pastor/priest/rabbi that has signed up as a commissioned officer. Our Chaplain was the sweetest little woman you ever met, but as a Chaplain she held the rank of Captain (high ranking officer).

So Bill set up a meeting with the Chaplain to talk about things.

When Bill informed the petty officers he would be missing class the next day for his Chaplain meeting, they yelled at and berated him more.

They called him a pussy, useless, not fit for the Navy, and everything else you can imagine. They convinced Bill he was being weak and the Chaplain wouldn't care about his issues, that nobody would care. They promised to make life even harder if he didn't show the next day. So he cancelled his meeting.

Evidently, bad luck hit and that night his girlfriend was also breaking it off with him. (She wasn't worth his time or money but he couldn't see that)

That night I awoke to a 3:00 AM call from Bill. I couldn't hear anything and I asked several times "Bill you there? Are you ok?"

It wouldn't have been the first time that I got a drunk dial from one of my friends after a hard day like Bill had. Sailors have been known to drown their sorrows a bit.

Eventually I figured it was a butt dial/ drunk dial and hung up and went back to bed. I still regret that decision.

The next day, all hell broke loose.

Me and a couple other friends got calls from Bill's now ex-girlfriend informing us he was in the hospital because he slit his own throat.

Turned out a few of us got that 3:00 AM call, but Bill couldn't speak at the time and was kind of out of it due to blood loss.We finished what we had to do on base and rushed over to the hospital.

As we got there, the Chaplain was on her way out and we passed her in the hallway.

She spoke to us briefly to say that Bill would be ok, and she wouldn't forget this.

I have never seen a look on someone's face that so accurately depicted raw unfiltered rage.

It took us all by surprise because she was such a small, sweet, and personable lady.

But the look in her eyes, you could just tell she wanted someone to pay for this, she wanted revenge and we all knew she wore the kind of rank that could get it done.

We visited Bill who could barely talk but he told us the story of what had happened, what he was thinking at the time and how glad he was it didn't work.

Apparently it was cold enough that the blood clotted on the outside of his neck and made a kind of patch that kept him alive long enough for the EMS to find him and get him to a hospital. The Doctor said he missed his carotid by about a millimeter.

A week went by and we hadn't heard anything until we got called in by the Chief of the training command (the boss to these petty officers). He said he wanted to check on the rest of us and make sure there weren't any other issues with these guys he wasn't aware of, and that we were all ok.

I let him know about an ass chewing he gave me a few months back, that I was really set up by these guys and they had lied to him. My friends cited a couple other examples of their own with these guys being generally shitty dishonest people.

I don't think it mattered, I think their fates were already sealed and we were being asked for more ammo to bury them with.

The next day they were nowhere to be found and we were introduced to new instructors who would be taking over our training permanently.

After class, I decided to stop by and asked the Chaplain what happened.

She told me she had never been more disgusted by the actions of a sailor than these two guys who convinced someone NOT to come see her.

She teared up a bit regretting that she didn't get the chance to help Bill before he made his attempt. In her mind, it was these two that precipitated and enabled Bill's attempt.

So on to the revenge:

The Chaplain told me she went to the Admiral in charge of the entire base, and demanded their immediate discharge. He granted it. Both petty officers were immediately processed out with dishonorable discharges. I can't remember the exact charge I heard they cited for it, but I know the Navy has a way of selling BS on paper when they want a certain outcome. Especially officers at that high level.

So basically they get no VA benefits of any kind, got kicked out of the base housing they lived in, and could probably only find work at a gas station or under the table stuff somewhere. Also I know from someone else who got the boot that the Navy only pays for a single bus ticket to get you back home, not your family or any of your belongings.

When you have a discharge like that, no company with DOD contracts is allowed to hire you. That includes McDonalds because they have stores on bases throughout the country. Taco bell, Subway, etc. none of them will give you a job. They can't and they don't want to anyway.

So I don't know where these guys went or what become of them, but I know their lives were irrevocably ruined. One of them had about 18 years in, so he was 2 years from retirement and lost it all. The other was at about 12 years, so he also lost a lot. Wherever they are now, I'd be very surprised to hear they're making more than minimum wage.

As for Bill? Well he made a full recovery, he got a full medical discharge. Which is an honorable discharge that meant E5 pay for the rest of his life, full benefits, and a referral to a counselor in his home state once he got back there. All paid for by the Navy.

We lost touch over the years but I did see on Facebook he got himself together, became a police officer, and got married.

*Edit to add*

For those who have pointed it out, their discharges were actually OTH but I didn't want to have to explain the difference or have people google it. We always used dishonorable colloquially for OTH/BCD because they all mean you got the boot and your life is gonna suck. But no they didn't do full CM or any brig time, but I did hear they pushed it to ASB and lost.

Also saw someone pointed out Bill wouldn't get the medical at 100% for his neck, that's also true he wouldn't have but they wrote it up for his knee cause it was basically bone on bone inside. I think they decided to do him a favor and not put him down as a mental health discharge.

I am not sure if this is pro revenge, so I will let you all decide (if not let me know and I will move it). I will say in advance sorry for the long one, but the backstory is relevant.

Back in the early 2010’s I started working for a big internet based company in the UK. The company was opening a new office with a new subdivision in London. When I started there were two team leaders and the office manager. The two teams were the content team and the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) team. I was recruited to be the development team lead (that is web development).

When I was interviewed for the job, both the office manager and SEO team lead were carrying out the interview. As you do in interviews when they asked if this or that could be done I would respond “Yes of course” or “You know you would get a better result doing X, Y or Z”.

So, I got offered the job and for the first year there was so much going on. As well as building a team, I also had a portfolio of websites that needed to be redeveloped and redesigned. It was at this point that some red flags started to pop up. I would have the SEO team lead (we will call him Andy), coming to me and telling me that I needed to do things the way he wanted. I would always push back and say no, and give a reason why I was doing things the way I was. Andy would get irate and would complain to the office manager about me. When the office manager would ask me about it I would explain what had happened and why I had said no and the office manager would leave it there because at the end of the day I was the one with the experience in web development not Andy. This happened a few times over the first year and I then realised that the reason that Andy was getting so irate was because he thought that I would be a yes man to him. Sorry buddy, that is not who I am.

So, now that we have the backstory let’s get into what lead to the revenge.

Me and the team had been working hard to get two of the new websites completed, and I was due to show them off to the board before they went live. This company’s head office was in another part of the country, and I had to leave the office in London at about lunch time. So, I arrive to the hotel that is across the road from the head office about 4pm and jump on my laptop to start going through the sites to run some tests. I was testing functionality, making sure the look and feel were correct, things like that. Then it happened, we found a major bug that caused a major issue with the functionality of the website. So it is at this point that I am going to introduce the star of our story, Johnny (not real name, but attacked all the same) who was my Senior Developer. Me and Johnny working through the night, me in the hotel room and him in the London office. We finally fixed the bug, about 7am the following day. My meeting with the board was at 10am, so after getting showered, feed and over to the office I started my day with zero hours sleep.

I go into the meeting and the first thing that is said, is the CEO asking if I was ok (I had meet him a few times and he was a really nice guy). I explained that we had found an issue with the sites yesterday and me and Johnny had worked through the night to fix it before the meeting. Long story short everyone was really impressed and loved the new sites. At the end of the meeting the CEO pulled me aside and thanked me for everything and then told me to go home and get some sleep (it was about a 3 hour train ride to London and then another hour home). I thanked him and when on my way.

So, after taking my team out for a well-deserved lunch to say thank you. The office manager then organised a night out for the whole office to celebrate on the following Friday. We started off at a fancy bar (not my sort of thing, I am a man of cheap tastes) and then everyone moves on to a small club. I go to the club for a bit, but then leave quite early in the night as I need to get a train home. I say my byes and then head home.

I come into the office on the Monday and there is something going on. I speak with Emma (Not real name) the content team’s lead. She does not know what is going on, but there are people from head office, HR and others. Then a few minutes later all the team leaders are call into a meeting. We are all squished in one of the small meeting rooms, there is office manager, two members of the HR team from head office and the three team leaders (including myself). So, HR explain that there has been a complaint made against Johnny. A member of the SEO team (we will call him Mark) had called Andy on the Friday saying that Johnny had been making racist comments while everyone was out at the club. Both myself and Emma were taken aback, this was not like Johnny.

On a side note, I fell that I need to explain the races of people involved. This is just for context and not an attack on anyone involved. Johnny, Emma and I are white British. Andy is African (born in Britain, I believe), and Mark is Indian (once again I believe).

So, the whole day was spent with HR doing interviews with the other people that were there that night and we then all reconvened towards the end of the day. The result of the interviews were that no one had heard anything like what Mark was saying. So, it was Marks word against Johnny's, this was not acceptable for Andy. He wanted Johnny fired and cried "we could not have someone like that in the office".

So, both Emma and I looked at each other and though that it was strange that he was so instant on firing Johnny with no evidence. Both the office manager and HR agreed, and Johnny was let off with a warning and to be aware in the future of how things he says that could be mis-interpreted.

Life went back to normal in the office, that is until about two months later. The story of what had happened had gone round the office (about 12 people). Then one afternoon, I was pulled aside by one of the guys on the content team and he said that he had over heard Andy and Mark talking and thought I should know. We went into on of the meeting rooms and he laid everything out.

What I heard made my blood boil and I think had I been in a cartoon steam would have been erupting from my ears. He told me that the racism complaint was faked and a plan that Andy had to attack my team because I would not bend to his demands. Him and Mark we on a call outside the club (Andy was not there that night) and that is when he heard what they were doing. It later came out that their plan was to make the complaint against Johnny and get him fired which would then lead on to Andy complaining that I was not fit to run a team if I let that sort of this happen under my leadership.

My first question was why he didn’t bring this up with HR in the interviews, he said that he did but it was his word against both Andy and Mark. I thanked him for this and went on with what I was doing. I WAS PISSED!!!!!!! There was no way that I was going to let the slide, but I knew that if I was going to go after them, I needed to have everything in place before hand. I didn’t tell Johnny what I had been told and asked the guy that told me to keep it to himself for now. I didn’t want Johnny to get pissed off and do something that would get him fired or worse affect any revenge I could dish out.

So, I watched. I watched everything the SEO team did (and didn’t) do. Then it happened, it was like angles had descended from heaven to deliver me the winning lottery ticket.

The building we were in was a three story building with a main stair well with a door on each floor to the offices. The stair well also lead to a door out to the street . At the time I was a casual smoker and used it to get a break from the screen and clear my head if something I was working on was not going well. So, I walk out of the door to the office and into the stair well and who is there…. Mark of all people.

He is on the phone, and he goes white as a sheet when he sees me. Now he is mid-sentence with the person on the other end of the phone and as I am walking past, he is forced to carry on the conversation. I overhear, and from what he is saying I can tell that he is talking to a school or something like that. The conversation sounding like he was looking for information about applying and about a visa. I thought that was a strange call to be having and something was fishy about it.

I had my suspicions as to what was going on, but nothing concreate at this time. A few days later I was heading back up to the head office and by that time we had a new office manager who lived near the head office so was based there most of the time. When I got there, I dropped my things off at the hotel and headed over to the office. I went to his desk and ask to have a quick chat. I explained to him what I had over heard Mark talking about on the phone and said that maybe the company might like to look at his visa status.

So, a week went by and nothing seemed to happen…… then BAM!!!!! He stopped showing up to the office. A few days later I got told what had happened from one of the other SEO team members. Mark had been fired with immediate effect for no longer having the correct visa to work in the UK (the company did not want to get involved in sponsoring a new visa for him, I don't know why). I started asking questions around the office (random chit chat) and I found out that Mark is from Dubai and he was here on his wife’s student visa (I don’t know how that works, but it was all above board). I also found out that his wife’s course had finished and that left them with a small window of time to get a new visa.

That is when it all clicked.

​

Now there are some doggy people in London (and everywhere else) and they would setup these fake collages that would sign people up to get visas to live and work in to UK. At some point before or after this saw a program on this and normally these were setup in tiny offices that you couldn’t swing a cat in let alone be a collage. They were used as postal addressed for the "collage", and they would charge a “course fee” to be enrolled and thus be able to apply for a student visa.

So, what Mark was trying to do is to get “enrolled” in one of these “collages” so that he could stay in the UK and carry on working.

I found out a few weeks later that Mark and his wife did have to leave the UK and go back to Dubai because he didn’t have any money coming in to pay for his new “collage” course. BYE MARK!!!!!!!!

When I found out that Mark had been let go, I pulled Johnny aside and filled him in on everything. He could not believe it and was stunned that they would try and do that. I apologised to him as it was my fault that he had been targeted by them in a way to get at me. He would not accept it and said that I had gone above and beyond in defending him.

Following on from this I made it quite clear to Andy that I know what he and Mark had done, and I would not be forgetting it and to watch his back (I made sure we were not in ear shot of anyone else). About two months later Andy handed in his notice and left the company, never to be seen or heard from again.

I have told this story to some people over the years, and I have been asked so many times if I feel guilty for what I did. I always respond the same way,

“I feel guilty that Johnny, was wrongfully accused and targeted. I don’t feel guilty about what I did to Mark. You don’t mess with my friends, family or team.”

Back when metered on ramps were first installed on the main highway in my town in Oregon, the interval between lights on the ramp I used daily was 15 seconds. Cars would be backed up onto the adjacent feeder streets, and you could be stuck for 15-20 minutes on the ramp.

Took a bit of research to find out that it wasn't the City or County, but ODOT (Oregon Department of Transportation) that controlled them.

After repeated complaints and no action, I finally got the names of the two ODOT Traffic Engineers responsible for setting the light intervals.

I made numerous voice mails, and finally, had one discussion, but still no fix to the issue.

Well, back in the day (early 2000s), we still had phone books, and both these Engineers had listed home phone numbers.

I got a 4x8 piece of plywood and painted & lettered it:

"Tired of these idiotic ramp lights?

Call the ODOT Engineers responsible for them.

Dennis Mxxxxxxx 503 xxx xxxx

Bill Cxx 503 xxx xxxx

And let them know what you think."

I stood with it on the side of the ramp for 2 days, 4pm to 6pm.

The next day, I get a call from one of them (don't remember which) begging me to stop.

I said "Fix the fucking lights"

"You'll stop with the sign?"

"Fix the fucking lights"

"OK"

The very next day, they had a survey crew out there in the afternoon to count cars, and the day after that, the lights were reset to 3 seconds between cars.

Bottom line...when dealing with government, until those personally responsible are held accountable in a manner that inconveniences or scares them, they will continue to abuse the public, whether from negligence, incompetence or malice. But bring it home to them, and they will (grudgingly) change their ways.

I originally posted the story in malicious compliance and a few were saying it would be great here and at r/nuclearrevenge

I am a military veteran who was injured in Iraq, I mention only because it is important to the story.
I worked for this company I say company but in reality it was a guy who owned a few businesses and he was the richest person in a very small town. It's important to say how I made it to this situation, I will try and make it quick so I can get to the steak and taters as it where. I joined the military before I even completed highschool late birthdays and all of that. I choose a military career path that I figured I would enjoy and since I love working on things I became a mechanic. It offered a great sign on bonus so that was a bonus. I went through basic only ever spending money on necessities so saved up quite a lot. Saved even more through advanced training for my mos (military job) by the time I was done with both I had half of my sign on bonus and just short of an entire years pay in my bank account. At my age most would have splurged I invested in the stock market Bitcoin and paid off my parents house. A couple of deployments the other half of my bonus and the only thing I really ever spent money on outside of necessities was my hotrod. Needless to say I had some money saved up and invested it also. Long story short when I discharged I was pretty comfortable even after a nasty divorce.
Don't get me wrong I didn't/don't have stupid money but because of the divorces a lot of stocks were cashed out split and if anyone follows Bitcoin over the past two decades you know how that turned out. After my divorce I worked to recover what I lost and then just to keep busy. Like I said I love working as a mechanic and would bounce around where ever I felt like since a good mechanic can make money anywhere.
After a decade of this I decided to set roots in a small town since it would be nice and quiet. By this point I was tired of always working on others people cars and wanted to devote time to working on my car. I bought a small house and saw a help wanted sign at the local lube shop. Figured it would be simple work for me and be something to cover my few expenses.
I grab an application from the office getting all kinds of looks from the townies. Btw I am 6'3 since I discharged from the military I stopped cutting my hair and shaving and I have one full sleeve. Needless to say most people cross the street instead of walk past.
When I went to turn in my application to we will call her Sue the bookkeeper she ask me a couple of questions noticed I checked I was a veteran and puts a y on my application. Later that day sue calls me and ask if I would come back in to meet the owner let's call him Peter. I agree and sue says Peter will be there in an hour so if I come in then we can talk about the position.
I show up and Peters eyes bulge at first sight but we get to chatting and my southern charm wins him over, he tossed me a calendar that he had made of his car collection and ask me to name of the ones I recognized. There were a couple of mustangs a Ford gt a bricklin sv-1 a judge a demon a Pantera and a mxt. He was impressed that I knew what the sv-1 was and we chatted cars for a bit. He offered me the position and explained that I would be paid $100 dollars a day and that I would work mon-sat from 8-6 no overtime but I would get a full days pay even if we closed shop early for some reason, and eat when I could. I would be off every Sunday and one extra day during the week.
Awesome start and work maybe a year no issues. Peter ask if I could help him out by being a relief worker for his other lube shops in neighboring towns, he says he will give me $20 every day for travel and basically I would be covering so guys could take days off at the other stores. I agreed and did this for about a year then disaster strikes Peter meets Karen and falls madly in love in the span of a month they are married and he starts supporting her and her gambling problem.
This is when all of the problems start, one week I notice my paycheck was only $250 and ask about it, sue tells me apparently there have been some changes and I should really speak to Peter about it. Sure no problem I call up Peter and ask if we can talk about somethings. He shows up with Karen in tow and when I asked why my pay was short he tells me it was because of the bad weather and us closing early affected the business, I would have let it go at that because Peter was a nice guy but Karen decided to speak. " It isn't very fair to us to have to pay you for a full day if you don't work the full ten hours." I said that would be true if I wasn't on a negotiated day rate and if I get paid for each day I work not hourly that why I don't get paid 19 hrs overtime each week. She claims that's not how it works anymore that from now on I would be paid for the hours I worked and nothing else. Ok what ever you say Karen.
Fast forward to the next week we had a weeks worth of very busy days were we were open a couple hours later than normal to finish up with waiting customers. And I gave up one of my days off to cover for a sick coworker. So when what should have easily been over an $800 paycheck was only $600 I had some questions. I called Peter and asked him what was going on why I only got paid $600 and he says well that's what we agreed on a $100 a day. I look at him blankly and ask if he forgot about last week and he asked what about it I reminded him and he just says it is what it is.
Ok so at this point I am aggravated and that is when Karen walks and and ask so what is he bitching about now. I look at her coldly and say well I worked 80 hours last week and yall only paid me $600 she looks at me and says "you're contracted labor and you agreed to $100 per day so why would we pay you more than that." I look at Peter and ask is that how it is he just says you heard the lady.
I went home and convinced myself that I was only working to cover my few living expenses anyway the job isn't that hard. The only other things in this small town would have been assembling sheds or slinging chickens at a chicken plant.
The next week one of the guys I work with is getting yelled at in front of customers by Karen about what she claims is an OSHA violation. She claims that as part owner of the company it his her responsibility to ensure that all OSHA regulations are met and his apparent violation was him wearing tinted safety glasses. Now this is BS because the bays faced east west and with how the cars pulled in top workers got the sun during the day and the pit worker got it in the evening I shake my head as I am walking in and like a T-Rex in a dinosaur movie it attracted karens attention and she decides to shout at me "you got something to say you big bitch" and I just kept walking.
I told Sue she needed to have a long talk with Peter before karens mouth wrote checks he would have to cash and she says I just keep the books don't involve me. So this behavior goes on another year and finally I am at my limit.
On the day I started my malicious compliance I was in a very bad mood. I had woken up to news that a good friend of mine that was responsible for me surviving being blown up in Iraq was taken out by a drunk driver. Not wanting to deal with anyone I tell the shop I will be working pit all day and to just let me be these guys have been working with me a few years now and know something is up. I never once thought that this would be a day that I would need to deal with Karen, since I was working at the furthest shop from the main shop and it was in the opposite direction of the casinos. But I wasn't so lucky or maybe I was, Peter and Karen show up and she storms into the pit and scream Peter come look at this mess. I have no idea what she is talking about about because I always kept the pit spotless and would clean as I worked were a lot of others would clean at the end of the day. Her complaint was about 50 of the most common oil filters we would use in a day being stacked on my waste drums for easy access to me so I wouldn't have to wait to the top guys to hand me filters. I did this all of the time and Peter knew about it and never cared before he comes down looks around and tells me like he is talking to a teenager "clean up this pigsty. I shake my head and say todays not the day Peter move on and take her with you.
This apparently infuriated Karen who of course thought it was the utmost disrespect to her and Peter, and he tells me if I don't like it I am free to leave so I left. Now don't freak out this story isn't over yet that it just the first flap of the butterflies wings that started a massive shit storm. The next day Peter calls me and ask me to swing by the main store on my way home. I think he is going to apologize about the day before figured one of the other guys might have told him why I was so on edge. No that was not what this was about. Peter was calling me in to inform me that for the next six months I would be on a probation period for my actions and for these 6 months I would only be paid $50 a day and I wouldn't receive the normal $20 a day I received for driving to the other shops. I ask if he is serious about this and if he has seriously considered what he was doing.
This is when peters let his true colors shine he tells me I am lucky I wasn't fired for my constant disrespect towards him and the co owner Karen how if he didn't pitty me for being a struggling disabled veteran (I never once discussed my money with anyone I worked with why Peter thought I was broke and desperate was solely based on my appearance from what I could tell.)he would have fired me long ago. Something inside me snapped and I just started laughing he asked me what I thought was so funny and I stood to my full height stepped to him like a drill sergeant about to give some wall to wall counseling and say you should re consider your life choices and who you choose to go into business with. Peter then says "what you gonna sue me or something go ahead if you think you can afford to what do you get from the va like $1000 dollars a month I know how bad you need this job."
That wasn't my plan but it kicked in my malicious compliance and since I will always be a solider to go to war. That day I called a labor lawyer paid the 3k retainer and started my lawsuit for unsafe work environment, unpaid overtime, and minimum wage violations. All while continuing to work for him it was glorious but still not enough. It took about the 6months of my probation for the lawyer to get off of the paperwork together and filed slow rolling it on my request and this lawyer was a former marine so I think he had an idea of what I had in mind.
After everything was ready my lawyer filed the paperwork and Peter and Karen were served at the main store while I was at work. They read the paperwork and the process server for my lawyer stuck around to be a witness to what I knew would be coming. When they read that I was suing them Karen and Peter flipped Peter shouts I should kick your ass you ungrateful piece of shit and Karen screams you're fucking fired you pussy I bet you weren't even really in the military.
The process server recorded everything gave it to my lawyer who added to the law suit unlawful termination because it is illegal to fire an employee because they are suing you.
The next day I opened up my lube shop carwash combo and started recruiting my former co-workers at higher pay plus commission. They also wanted to jump in on the lawsuit and my lawyer was more than happy to add them to it.
So 2 years down the road after subpoenas to get security footage from the shops, the books going back five years, and sworn testimonies we go to a mediation to settle they offer a measley 50k to split between the 15 of us on the lawsuit when that didn't even cover the unpaid overtime.
We declined then our apache came in to save the day
sent by the IRS delivered to my lawyer because of request for the company's tax documents. Peter held each lube shop as it's own individual llc each with it's own tax id and employment record. Peter and Karen thought it would be a smart move to file for a tax credit for employing a veteran at each of the 6 shops. In their filing they claimed that they employed a veteran me as a full time employee working a minimum 36hrs a week at rate of $12/hr.(the government gives a tax brake to companies that employee veterans)
At the next mediation my lawyer presented the reports to their lawyer and the mediator and after a quick 20min discussion Peter and Karen came back and agreed to settle at our request of 400k in unpaid overtime to be split between 15 of us all legal fees and a personal settlement for the unlawful termination suit of 20k for each shop I was listed as an employee at as well as unpaid wages for the six months I was only paid $5 an hour. Their only demand was that we all agree to a gag order so that nothing would leave the mediators table.
Of course we signed and we took our paychecks. But some how their tax paperwork made its way to just the right person at the IRS and they decided to audit Peter and Karen. And and investigation was opened on them for tax fraud.
I sold the shop I opened to the guys that came over and jumped in on the lawsuit they each paid me 8k and I washed my hands of it. I put my house up for sale and moved away.
I did go back about 8 months later because the guy who was supposed to take care of the lawn had apparently been arrested and the yard went a few months without being cut before the city informed me that they were going to fine me $100 a day until it was brought to code so I went down to mow it my self while there I decided to check in with my realtor to see if there was anything we could do about yard maintenance and who do I see but little ol sue sitting pretty at the front desk.
Sue couldn't speak fast enough to tell me what all had happened and it was perfect. What I thought was an Apache turned out to be an atom bomb, Peter filed bankruptcy to try and not go broke after making a plea deal for probation for tax fraud and paying a ton in unpaid taxes Karen took off with some dude she met at a casino. I asked sue two questions if she knew who reported the fraudulent tax paperwork to the IRS and what happened with peters car collection she told me I have no idea and to check the parking behind the realtors office before leaving. On my way out I took a peak behind the realtors office to see a safety green sv-1 sitting there. Apparently Peter started selling off his cars early and cheap hoping he would be able to buy them back after filing bankruptcy.
To this day I have no idea who if anyone actually turned in the paperwork to the IRS. My personal theory is who ever was tasked with compiling it all with their claims noticed something strange and reported it. How ever it happened it couldn't have happened to anyone more deserving

This will be decently long as it needs some context. I'm going to throw in a lot of stuff to make it all easier to understand as well. I'll put a *** where the story proper starts, in case anyone wants to skip the preamble.

Minor details might not be entirely accurate as I've no interest in a revival of this conflict on any level. I won completely, and any resurrection can only taint the experience.

We'll start off by noting that I spent about 2 decades working in security. During that time I worked many different types of security in many different locations. The one that matters for this story was time spent in the Rental Housing Tribunal in a major city, as a kind of bailiff.

For those not knowing what that is, think a court room (in a major city anyway, in a smaller town it'll probably be an event room in a hotel or community centre) as you'd see on tv but with less formality and an adjudicator instead of a judge. They functionally are the same thing to landlords and tenants, but they definitely aren't the same thing. This place exclusively deals with landlord and tenant disputes, and is the only place to resolve landlord and tenant disputes.

Note that I wasn't a bailiff, and it wasn't a court, but these terms mostly accurately describe the situation and my place in it.

For 2 years I worked at the Rental Housing Tribunal, it was early in my time in security I was 18-20ish. Being as it was a major city, the sheer number of cases I sat through was beyond my ability to count. I saw everything there was to see. Noone is capable of surprising me with a story because I've seen them all. In detail, as a side duty of mine was to ensure all parties had copies of all evidence being presented. I did a lot of photocopying, and always read/inspected everything I copied to ensure nothing got cut off or made illegible.

By the time I stopped working there I probably knew the way everything worked well enough to be an adjudicator myself. Well no obviously not, but I'm certainly in no need of a lawyer either should I ever have need to go there.

I also had intimate knowledge of how the system worked beyond the actual rules. Like, for example, adjudicators would always give a little leeway to anyone representing themselves over someone who had a lawyer. Or how pissed off adjudicators would get when a party was speaking out of turn. Seriously do not do that.

***

Skip forward almost a decade. I left the city and am in a fairly large town in the same Province (same tenant laws). I have a few roommates in a decently sized townhouse. We get along well. But there's a problem. Only I can write cheques, and our paydays don't line up. So I'm the one who pays the rent, and I usually can't do it on the 1st because roommates don't usually all pay in time. We advise the landlord we might be a day or two late but we'll always have it by the 3rd at the latest. They have no problem with it at all, I spoke to them myself.

For about a year this works fine. No complaints from landlord because even if we're often a day or 2 late, we always pay. We're also fairly quiet and don't damage the property. Nearly model tenants.

I do not actually have any idea why, but one day this changed. I suspect a different person in the company started overseeing the region. One day, suddenly we got a summons to the Rental Housing Tribunal (hereafter to be referred to as RHT) on the 2nd of the month for failure to pay rent. This doesn't actually lead to a case because we paid the same day. But now we have to pay the application fee the landlord paid in order to serve the summons. I bitched to the neighbour who was also the superintendent and eventually heard back that their contact at the company was now demanding 1st of the month no exceptions.

Well that really didn't work for us, so we probably had to pay that fee 15-20 times over the next 2 years. I could have gone to tribunal over it but we were technically without a leg to stand on and I knew it. Maybe if I went enough times I can ding them for harassment but I don't have time for that and my roommates don't care. After being split between us all the fee wasn't enough deterrent to change our behaviour so we accepted it.

If this was the only issue, there wouldn't be much story though. At around the same time the rent leeway vanished, so did mandatory maintenance. I'm not going to list everything that went wrong and wasn't fixed. You'll get a decent idea at the end.

We suffered through it. We were all working too many hours at shit pay to be able to actually do anything about it. We adapted.

But after about 2 years it broke. Everyone but me up and moved out for various reasons within a 4 month period. I'm not going into any details on my roommates at all because things kinda exploded for a couple different reasons outside of this. No reason to dig any of that up.

I had been saving up awhile and was able to quit my job without having to immediately get another so I suddenly had a lot of time. I didn't want to stay and pay the rent by myself or have to find new roommates I could live with, and with my experience in the RHT I knew I had the landlord by the balls.

So I went for them. I stopped paying rent. Annoyingly I didn't get a summons the 1st month. But I did the 2nd. So I went. With a meticulously documented plethora of evidence of failure to maintain the property and entering the property without formal notice. I had a copy for the landlord and a copy for the adjudicator. I know from experience that technically you're supposed to give the other party the evidence before the tribunal, but I also knew about that leeway an adjudicator gives to those who represent themselves. So I didn't give the landlord the evidence until our case came up, 100% total ambush.

They argued they were ambushed, but the adjudicator just dismissed the case, dressed me down a little, and told me to file my own summons as I should have done. This was the petty revenge. The landlord and lawyer drove 3 hours to get there, for nothing. Worse than nothing.

I filed my own summons, and the big day shows up. It's been about 4 months of me not paying rent at this point. I'm prepared to if I lose, but I don't think I'm going to lose.

The whole thing could not have gone better. I had 20-30 pages of evidence and 20 odd photographs, they had nothing. They had no actual defence for our water heater being out for 6 months or us not having a fridge for a year, just to mention 2 severe issues. Their entire defence rested on us being late for rent, which actually worked against them once that led to the adjudicator learning how many times we'd paid the application fee, and lies that had no evidence to support them. They even talked over me a few times, and I SAW IN HIS EYES the one time I opened my mouth to protest during their turn to speak but forced myself to shut up with every gram of willpower I had so only a squeak came out, the adjudicator respected me. He had no respect for the landlord. I had won on every possible front. The only question was how much.

It was more than I'd ever seen. I got 9 months of free rent, and the landlord was ordered to have everything fixed before the next month was over or I'd get more. I gave notice I was leaving at the end of the 8th month and left at the end of the 9th. Because the landlord had never renewed the lease I didn't have to give him the 3 month notice the lease specified.

If you want a figure to put to it, I basically got a $13,000 judgement in my favour, adjusted for inflation and rounded. I also made the landlord and lawyer drive 3 hours, twice, only to lose. The landlords face was so red at the end I thought he'd have a heart attack. He didn't though. Bye Mark!

​

Edit to clarify a few things based on questions.

I also want to add for those good landlords out there, I do feel you. My time in the RHT was eye opening. For every bad landlord there are 10 bad tenants easily. There's a massive debate of debates to have over the whole thing I'll only say that I do sympathize with the good landlords out there. I'm not trying to paint all landlords as terrible. This is the only landlord I've ever had that was so useless.

Edit

I've revised my estimate of the ratio based on a little research and some comments from 30 tenants per landlord to 10. I'm probably still wrong, but the sheer number disparity between landlords and tenants effectively requires there be more bad tenants than bad landlords simply because there are so many more tenants than landlords. I'm going to leave it at that and just beg you not to rip me apart from either side. I'm intimately aware of the problems both good landlords and good tenants face and my sympathy goes out to both sides.

So this past Christmas, my missus and I purchased one of our 9yr old son's Santa gifts from a certain UK sports retail company that also have many stores here in Ireland as well. It was a football rebounder, kinda like a trampoline that you kick the ball at and it bounces back to you. Anyway we purchased it from their Irish website and thought nothing more of it. A few days go by and we get a notification from a certain brown uniformed courier company that there are customs charges due on something, and as you can imagine we've bought many things for the kids so we had to double check what we've ordered and we didn't have anything left that was being imported so we naturally assumed it was a scam, so I told the wife to call the company and find out who shipped it and it was a different courier company based in the UK. After a bit of digging and investigating it turns out that it's our rebounder. They had shipped it from the UK, via a local carrier, to the brown uniformed guys to deliver to us.

Now, my wife and I are both on disability so an additional charge of almost €50 when you're both already on a fixed income is harsh, especially at Christmas so I told her to pay it and I'd deal with the retailer. The first day I called I had to call 3 times being stuck on hold for at least 20 minutes each time but I was patient and polite because I've worked in a call centre before so I knew those people are only doing their job, but I asked to speak to a manager and was promised a call back each time that never happened. The 2nd day was quite similar. The 3rd day I was starting to get annoyed so called back, waiting even longer on hold and finally wasn't taking this shit any longer. I told the rep that all I wanted was the €50 back because our consumer rights in Ireland dictate that a person must be informed of any additional charges on a purchase, at the very latest, by the final checkout screen, and in this case there was nothing to show that, and I could easily replicate that issue by putting the same item in my basket and going all the way to the checkout screen again and there was nothing saying we'd have to pay import charges. The rep was indifferent to the situation but tried to "help" and what he said sent me over the edge. He offered me a measley €20 gift voucher to use on their website, but more importantly he read a statement to me. He said "we advise our customers that there may be DDU charges (Delivery Duty Unpaid, i.e. customs charges) on any item that gets shipped outside of the UK." Then I asked him where it states this information and he paused, then said he didn't actually know. I said "Well I know 1 thing, it doesn't say it anywhere on this transaction because I've checked and because this is a violation of my consumer rights i'm going to give your company 1 last chance to make this right. Have your manager call me within the next 60 minutes or I'm going to post this entire debacle on LinkedIn and link every senior officer in your company!" Then I hung up the phone and waited....... Yet again, no call.

The next day I went on LinkedIn and followed through on my promise. I created a post detailing what they had done by sticking us with hidden charges and that they were ignoring our requests for a manager, and everything they said and did. Then I tagged EVERY senior officer at that company from the regional managers, through the European directors, all the way to the CEO, and I shamed them for how they operate their company. This, ladies and gentlemen, was now an act of war.

Shortly after I posted that I noticed that they took down the item from their website in an attempt to hide this but they must have thought in a simpleton that doesn't understand how the internet works. They didn't realise that when you searched for "rebounder" on their site, that it shows the item in question so I took a screenshot of that, then another of the item page that was now "missing", but then I did a Google cached search for the same page and found a version from 2 days prior happily showing the item. Then I added a comment to my original post highlighting how they were trying to hide it, with the evidence, and trolling them for their heinous behaviour ESPECIALLY at Christmas. Then I tagged and shamed all the senior officers again, and at this point it was really starting to get some attention, not only publicly, but 3 people in "incognito mode" viewed my profile....I wonder who they could have been....... So naturally I took a screenshot of the 3 mysterious visitors listed on my profile and did the same thing. Commented on my own post highlighting it and trolling them for their incompetence.

The next morning I got a call from a senior exec at their head office in the UK practically licking my boots with apologies, asking what she can do to make this right. I told her I originally only wanted my €50 back as it wasn't fair, nor even legal, that I had to pay it, but since I had to go to such lengths to get their attention now I wanted my €50 back, a full refund on my entire purchase, AND I wanted to keep the product. That was the only thing that would make this go away. She asked for a couple of hours to fix it and I said ok.

About an hour later I got another call from her again apologising. She asked for my PayPal address where she sent the €50, then she refunded the whole purchase, and she let us keep the product. Obviously I thanked her for her help because at that stage I was just happy it was over, but I'll be fucked if I'll let anyone walk all over my family, even if they are a £58,000,000 annual company.

The most of the story here is, don't take bullshit from anyone. I may be just 1 man, but my sons view of Santa is FAR more valuable to me than the opinion of some retail chain that doesn't care about it's customers nor how it operates ethically.

Here I am, writing this long tale in my honeymoon, but it does feel cathartic to finally type it out, and my husband is more excited about this than the resort drinks, lol Anyway, this is a throwaway because I don't have a reddit account and my husband, the reddit fanatic, said he doesn't want this associated with his main. As to why the reddit guy isn't the one writing this, it's because he said "since it's my family, I should be the one with the honor of posting the story", but he is looking over my shoulder to help out.

I'm not a lawyer so I don't know if this works but: I do not give permission for this to be reposted anywhere else

So, I think first it's necessary to give some background, to explain how this behavior reached this level, and why our responses were as they were. It's a long read, I apologize.

So, ever since I could remember, my parents loved my sister more.

I don't mean in subtle ways either. If my sister accused me of something, they'd believe it and punish me. If I accused her, they wouldn't believe. Even if there was undeniable proof, they'd still give her a lesser punishment and try to find a way to scold me in tandem.

My birthday cake had to be a flavor she wanted. Hers did not, and my parents always denied knowing I didn't like that type of cake. They always bought her a bit more than for me. We went to where she wanted, even if it was an event that should be about me.

My sister grew up spoiled and didn't like me, just used me as a punching back. But at first she mostly ignored me. But then it got really bad when we were young teens.

I'm not sure what the cause and effect are, but she found herself with no friends and her behavior got worse. Did her friends move, did they ditch her because she was mean? I don't know, because we were never close and my parents loved to boast about her achievements but never ever mentioned any issues (whereas with me, they loved to bring out any flaws of mine constantly as 'teasing' material). I only knew she had none because we went to the same school and I noticed her no longer walking around with people.

Anyway, she had no friends. I did. I used to be decently popular. My sister realized that and suddenly I stopped being the occasional punching bag to a hated person she needed to take down at all times. She started accusing me of more stuff. She accused my friends of more stuff. My parents stopped allowing me to hang out with anyone, the excuses ranging from "they're not good people according to your sister" to "why are you trying to leave us, why cant you be like your sister and enjoy family time?".

What saved me from complete isolation was extended family. Most of my family lived in the same hometown, and I got along with my cousins despite some age difference. At one gathering, they invited me over to something (I don't remember what), and I sadly replied I'm not allowed to go anywhere. When asked why, my kid self with no filter replied that it was because I wasn't allowed to have friends since my sister didn't have any.

Well, that reached the adults. Who apparently tore my parents apart. Later I was scolded for lying and grounded (as if I had anywhere to go) for a month. But after that they allowed me some leeway, so it was worth it.

And my sister changed schools. I guess the humiliation of extended family knowing her social status was bad and she demanded to be changed. And my parents immediately obliged, even though it cost them more since the school was further away. But she made friends on the new school. However, she never went back to the previous status quo of mostly ignoring me. I guess having felt the power of how badly she could screw with me, and anger that I told family she had no friends, she never let me go.

My life was still bad. Her friends would come over and bully me and my parents called it light teasing. I never called friends over because my parents were awful hosts to them, or my sister would accuse them of taking stuff and they'd believe it. I did become close to my cousins though, since my parents never dared do any of that to family.

And then I got my first boyfriend. I didn't want to bring him home at all, but my parents insisted. Well, at one point we were separated and he came to find me to tell me my sister was flirting with him. By which he meant, she came over with skimpy clothing, batting her eyelashes really badly and started telling him how bad I was and how good she was. He was irked and ran off to find me.

Of course, my sister told my parents a different tale: that my bf had instead tried to flirt with her, but she naturally refused since how could she do that to me. Guess who my parents believed.

Now, my bf wasn't perfect but... I immediately believed him. For a mean reason. But remember that back then I was a teen and suffering from the unfair bad treatment. I was very resentful and moody and now hated my sister as much as she hated me. With that disclaimer out of the way... let's talk about looks. I hadn't mentioned them yet because they weren't relevant. My parents were/are overweight. And since they liked showing love via food (giving you more food, buying treats etc), my sister was/is also overweight, whereas I was/am not (in fact I've always been kind of skinny because punishment often included no treats or snacks). OBVIOUSLY, weight isn't what matters, personality is. But my sister even then was already rude and spoiled, even her flirting attempts were bad because she never learned to work for anything since she could demand and my parents would deliver. Added to that the fact that she didn't look like some sexy model... even my self conscious teen self didn't believe my bf would try and cheat on me with her.

Anyway, my parents prohibited me from dating such a horrible boy. I did try to keep going in secret but it was hard and the relationship ended. I did get another, but again my sister accused him of flirting with her when he refused her advances. Again my parents believed her. I tried pointing out how this happened again, but they decided that meant I was incapable of making good choices and kept picking bad boyfriends. The relationship couldn't handle the romeo juliet situation, and fizzled out again. I would eventually get called a slut in highschool, as I was fine with making out with boys and such but refused to have relationships. Thankfully it never got back to my sister or parents.

My sister did bring one boyfriend home during all this time. He was paraded with pride, and my parents spent every second telling me how good he was, and why couldn't I be like my sister and find myself someone like that. Until he stopped showing up, and suddenly he was conniving bastard that tricked my sister. Oh well.

And the unequal treatment continued at this time. She had more spending money, her curfews were much better than mine, she was free to go anywhere at anytime while I couldn't. If I pointed it out, my parents would say it's because she's older. But when I reached that age, I still didn't have the same treatment she had, and when pointed out, they'd deny they ever said that or claim it was because I couldn't be trusted like she was (using my sister's accusations against my bf and friends as proof of my bad judgment).

Time goes by, and it's time for my sister to graduate. She was accepted into a college. Not a very well regarded one, and she had no scholarship or anything. Again, because only her achievements were told to me, I don't know which colleges she even tried for, so I can't say how badly she was rejected. I do know her grades were bad in school though, because whenever she got a B we would celebrate (I would usually get good grades but my parents refused to celebrate, claiming since I always got those, what was there to celebrate?). My parents, naturally, made a lot of fanfare and told her they'd pay for everything. I was relieved she'd be going away. Not that it made my life any easier. She'd always come home every other weekend and somehow stuff kept missing from her room or some other issue she'd think of to make my life miserable. My curfews were still strict, etc.

Eventually, my mom came to talk to me about my impending graduation (I'm only a year younger than my sister). She told me since they were paying for my sister's college, they had no money to pay for mine. So it would be "better" for me to start working immediately after graduation and waiting until my sister finished uni to see if they could afford something for me. Oh, and if I decided to stay at home, I'd have to pay for all my stuff, part of the bills, and rent.

I pointed out I could get student loans. Mom said yes... except no. That is, because they were so caring towards me, and I had such bad judgement, they would decide if a college was worth my getting in debt or not. I'm not sure how they'd stop me from getting loans, but I didn't ask. Scholarships weren't mentioned. They had no idea what my grades were anymore, and never believed in my capabilities.

Anyway, I didn't bat an eyelid. I simply said okay. My mom clearly didn't expect that and kept pushing. Maybe she hoped I'd throw a tantrum so they'd have an excuse to not ever pay for my college. But I said nothing except I understood their position, thanked them for caring and that was that. My dad later tried the same but I also refused to be emotional.

You see, after a whole lifetime of their terrible parenting, I NEVER had any expectations towards my education. I knew they would find an excuse to not pay for mine and make my life miserable. I never believed they would eventually pay it if I worked and waited for my sister to graduate. I had been preparing for college for a long time. I could barely go out, my friendships were slim, so I had a lot of time to study. And study I did, because I saw college as my only chance to be free.

Well, the time came and I worked my ass off and got a scholarship. Not to anywhere like Ivy league or anything like law or medical school. But it was a good enough course, in a decent college, with a full scholarship. Knowing my sister would hate it and try to stop me via parents, I put my achievement in social media at the same time I told them. Even forced myself to thank them in the post. Now they couldn't forbid me from going, as they'd have to explain to family why not. Initially they were even a little proud and boasting about it.

And then I guess my sister got to them, and they changed gears and even asked me if I was sure I wanted to go. They let slip my sister wasn't doing well in college, and since she was smarter and had better judgement than me, I'd suffer worse. I obviously stuck to my guns. They weren't happy but couldn't do anything.

College was my savior. I started being happy. I still contacted my parents and visited on holidays and such, but since they refused to pay for anything, I could excuse not going a lot due to money. During this time, I avoided introducing any man to them. And my sister stopped going to college (I know she didn't graduate because, again, they'd have made a fanfare about it), moved back home (paying no bills or rent but "it's different" my parents said) and started working at the same company as my mom, obviously thanks to my mom pulling strings. This was all sold to me as a source of pride. Oh well.

Almost there I promise!

I met my husband around this time. You know those people that say that "if I was in X situation, I'd have done something"? My husband is the type that really does. I'm the person that is meek and a doormat in any situation and then can't sleep at night wishing I had done something, had thought of something witty to say etc. I'm the person that can't help but cry when I'm angry. My husband is the guy that claps back immediately. He loves drama, in that he loves to resolve it. He's the guy that if he doesn't immediately reply to a slight, you better start worrying because he won't forgive and forget, he's just stewing something worse for revenge. He's the one that wanted me to post here. And wanted to post on a nuclear revenge board too, but decided what we did wasn't nuclear.

People were baffled I got together with him. But just because I was incapable (thanks to my upbringing probably) of acting like him, it didn't mean I didn't like it. I love that my husband does what I can't. And he treats people well as long as they do the same to him.

When we discussed marriage, we decided we didn't care much about the ceremony due to our budget, as we'd rather spend on a dream trip to Europe for our honeymoon. As for where to do it, since his family was spread out and mine was still mostly concentrated in my hometown, we decided to do it there. We weren't living too far off either, so we could take some long trips during the weekends to manage stuff. Plus there was some work flexibility, so we could say in my hometown for a bit too if needed. We sent out the engagement announcement and the save the date for a few months later.

Well, at this point my parents naturally demanded they meet my man. I wanted to grow a spine and refuse, but was having a hard time. The distance had made me think maybe my parents weren't so bad. Well, my husband looked like I cancelled Christmas when I told him I would at least ensure they were never alone with him. See, he had been getting ready for this. He even bought a high quality recorder he could hide in a pocket to record it all. He was stoked, thinking of all the ways he could refuse my sister's advances, insult her, and then spread the recording of her attempts to my family.

So, off he went alone and excited to meet them. And came back later euphoric. "Babe! Babe! You won't believe the awful shit they wanted! Babe! We can fuck them over so bad, there's so many possibilities!"

I was confused, and wanted to hear the recording but he, smartly, told me it was better to listen to him first or else I'd misunderstand him.

Well... he went there, and instead of the flirting, my parents and my sister sat him down. After some grumbling about not being okay with him, my judgement etc, they proclaimed they were willing to pay for my wedding... on one condition. My sister would walk down the isle on my wedding first. In a wedding dress.

Their excuses were that it wasn't okay for a younger sister to marry first, so it was only fair if my sister had at least the experience of it. On my venue. With pictures being taken, and the dress, and she'd have a cake later too etc.

My husband will now type his part: hey! vengeaful husband here, hell hath no fury like a prorevenge/instantkarma/nuclearrevenge lurker when his beloved is scorned! That said, as much as my wife (teehee, she's my wife now!!) paints me as this quick witted dude, I admit my neurons all but shortcircuited when those folks legit suggested that shit like some sort of great fucking gift. Even Troy would rather take in the horse a second time, methinks. Alas, after my brain rebooted, I did have a whole ass catalog of insults about to spew out, but something in my soul whispered in my ear like the devil: string these fucks along. So I said I needed to think, see how my wife (back then fiance) would react, and then ran out of there before I could give away my nefarious plans.

Back to me, the wife: So, my husband sincerely recounted how my parents wanted even my wedding to be about my sister, with a grin on his face. And had the recording to prove it. I was shocked. The distance had softened how bad they treated me. And I thought even they wouldn't go so far. Thankfully, my husband insisting on the angle of revenge helped me not go to a bad headspace. We had a blast thinking up ways to screw them over this. From ridiculously outlandish to what we thought was feasible.

We then called his much more level headed brother when we decided on a plan. It involved having two venue addresses, giving them the wrong one etc. Well, level headed brother scolded us for it. While he acknowledged he would never be able to convince us from retaliation, he at least showed us something like that would be hard to pull off. Some of our other ideas were also at danger of getting sued.

So we eventually settled for the most benign plan: Act like we agreed, but then hire security and don't let her in.

Obviously, if that was all, it wouldn't be prorevenge.

The rest is all mostly my husband, by he wants me to do the honors so here goes. Just important to mention, everything he did was previously discussed with me, and were our mutual ideas:

He went back to my parents. Said he probed and thought I wouldn't be down with it. However, he didn't see the issue and, not wanting family to fall apart, would be down to helping them do it.

He pointed out I don't like conflict, so if I was surprised with it, I might not throw a tantrum in front of all the people. On the other hand, marriage IS a big thing, so who knew if I'd lash out.

Thus he suggested a compromise: they'd help pay for stuff. This way, I would feel even more pressure to not say anything, as not only would we be public (well, with our families there), but I'd be grateful to the help they gave and that'd mollify me.

He said my parents looked surprised, by my grown sister starting skipping with joy. Literally so, like a kid. So it was accepted.

IMPORTANT: my husband also claimed that due to some bad judgement in boyfriends in the past (These words were all my idea and I'm so so proud of using their words against then lol), I was distrustful and controlling and liked to check his phone and stuff to ensure he wasn't cheating on me. As such, it was imperative that NOTHING of this plan was ever put in any writing. For any discussion pertaining to my sister walking down the aisle before me, he'd go over to their house to talk.

And so began the months of deception. Where my parents and sister thought they were tricking me, and my husband and I were milking them.

How? Well, rather than pay for the wedding than lay low, of course my parents wanted input in everything.

Some stuff that meant a lot to me (the songs and color palette), my husband would convince them to let it go to "keep me in line". But since we never really cared for the ceremony to begin with, everything else was game... or so they thought.

What we did was thus: we'd go, say, to check the drink and menu options. We'd then accept the lowest or second lowest priced option. My husband would then "secretly" take my sister there to also try it out, then sigh and say it's a pity we don't want to abuse my parents goodwill so we wouldn't get the best options.

Cue my sister demanding my parents pay for the best. My parents would then tell me not to worry and they'd pay for the most expensive. Same was done with photographer.

Flowers: My husband handed my sister a bouquet of the flowers we wanted, then sadly expressed how I wanted some other, tasteless flowers. Cue my parents telling me they wanted us to go with said flowers and they'd pay for it.

Wedding dress: we hit a minor snag here. My parents wanted me to use a hideous dress. Okay, not outright hideous, but it wasn't my stile and wouldn't look that good on me. We had planned on saying yes then simply not using it, but my mom sent me a message about it, so there'd be proof I said okay.

We had to go with me refusing in text, and standing my ground. My husband went over there and said he'd "see what he could do". My sister suggested ruining my desired dress so I'd be forced to wear the other one. He pretended to agree.

During all this time, they really kept communications outside any text. We made sure that'd happen by, when my sister tried messaging my husband, have me reply to hear. This solidified the "I'm controlling and neurotic" claims my husband was making. So they believed it and never risked anything in writing.

(And maybe some people might not like the thought of their partner going around and talking badly about them to family. But I'm such a doormat that the thought of being painting as this controlling and dangerous bitch is extremely funny to me, and I egged him on to do it. I guess I have a warped sense of humor lol)

Oh, and my sister did try to flirt with him, but he acted conflicted.

Also, to really sell that he was with them, my husband would pretend to tell them things without my knowledge.

But he never told them we hired security.

It was really funny. My husband and I, who had sincerely considered a courthouse wedding to focus cost on our honeymoon, having this extravagant, expensive wedding, and barely spending a dime. We called it "backpay for emotional damages" from my parents, lol

I think my husband (okay, he just confirmed I'm right lol) was enjoying the whole tricking them more than planning our wedding lol I didn't think it was possible to witness a guy beaming at the thought of wasting his whole Saturday doing a car trip to discuss wedding details with his in laws, but here we are.

Soon the day came. The plan my parents/sister/husband had come up with was: wait until everyone was seated. Since the bride always comes out late, they'd have my sister arrive at that precise time (to avoid me seeing her and trying to stop it), and walk down the isle. By the time I heard what happened, it'd be too late to do anything.

As for my dress: we saved some of the leftover fabric from my dress alterations, and my husband took that to my parents place (sister still lives with them even now), and showed them as proof he'd ruined the dress. Than said he had to go back to me as I was raging and he needed to calm me down, he'd see them at the wedding.

We made sure to keep our actual security hidden at first. As the guests and my parents arrived, all they could see was a woman with a list of names to check. Only after my parents arrived and sat down did we bring out security. A guy that looked like a bodyguard. We told him to not allow anyone my sister in, and even agreed on paying a handsome tip if he didn't reveal we told him that.

Soon the time arrived. My parents got a text my sister was less than 5minutes away, so my dad went and told people to start. My bridesmaids had been told to follow his lead beforehand, so they obeyed without checking with me. After they all went down and took their places, my dad stood up at the entrance, as if waiting for me.

During this, a friend not in the wedding party texted me to get ready. This because if my husband or bridesmaids etc took out a phone and started texting, people might notice. This friend was in on the plan. She's my husband's friend, as willing to help stir drama as he is and didn't care about being a bridesmaid or anything.

Well, as soon as my dad took his position, the bridal song started playing, the doors open and... I come in.

My dad looked aghast at me being there. He tried glancing behind me, but you can't see the venue entrance from where we were, so he couldn't see what happened to my sister.

And then his phone rang, I saw the caller ID and it was her. He just... left me there with a mumbled "something came up".

There were gasps and confusion all around. The friend in on it, loudly asked what happened. I lied and in a teary voice said he told me "it wasn't supposed to be me there".

(It's not what he said, but my husband and I agreed that if he dared leave me, I should say that to make him look the worst possible. As for the tears, I wish I could say it was just my stellar acting, but no. Despite everything, a part of me didn't think he'd go as far as abandon me there. That the sister thing wasn't true but an elaborate joke. I don't know. I was hurt, still am, so I was sincerely trying not to cry)

The friend then loudly went "What did he mean by it shouldn't be you???" so that as many people as possible could hear and spread it, then went "I Will go and check!" and ran off. We decided to do this to make her create hell with the security and stop my dad from coming back and stopping the ceremony or something. At some point my mom also left.

At this point, my husband's dad quickly ran over and took my arm. He'd been forewarned he might need to. Watching him run desperately to me helped me smile.

I walked down the isle to whispers as people discussed what happened. Some apparently left to check too. When I reached my husband though, all was well. He made me feel better joking my sad face was so real I deserved an Oscar, and don't worry, he'd rake them over the coals for what they did lol

We got married without a hitch. My parents didn't come back. I did notice a lot of people leaving then coming back during the party, but no one dared tell me what was happening. Someone did come and whisper in my husband's ear and he went out. He came back after a while, with a thunderous expression, but whispered in my ear he needed to go hide somewhere before he broke character and started smiling lol

Well, what happened is... it worked! The following is the summed account from friends, family, the security guy and my husband, that I received afterwards:

My sister did arrive in a wedding dress. The security refused to let her in. Per our agreement, he claimed she must be in the wrong venue because there was already a bride. And yes, we tipped him really well as promised. My dad went there and tried threatening him with police, claiming he never heard of him, so he couldn't be working there. The security agreed to the police, since he was hired by us and doing his job. My dad realized by then it'd be too late and tried to demand he let my sister in.

At this point the friend came over started shouting and insulting my sister and asking what was going on. Basically stalling. My mom soon came and eventually other people.

At this point the wedding plan was bust. All my parents could do now is damage control as everyone that learned about it was aghast they'd try and pull it and screaming and berating them. The three naturally said it wasn't a secret, and threw my husband under the bus.

At this point my husband was summoned. When he came over he put on his best look of confusion and denied, denied, denied. To quote him: gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss lol. He denied having ever agreed to something so ridiculous. When they insisted he did, he demanded proof and of course, they couldn't produce any. All text exchanges they could produce were about normal wedding decisions.

My sister was scream crying and apparently sat on the floor kicking her legs like a kid. My dad looked like he'd beat my husband, but security and other people held him back. Of course, they said they had no proof because my husband told them not to text. My husband laughed and said "wow, how convenient huh?" then again repeated why would he EVER agree to something so fucked up. Tore them a new one about being awful parents, then said he wasn't going to let their stupid plans and lying get in the way of his wedding and went back to me.

No one believed them. The venue had cameras but they refused to show me the recording as that was only for security purposes. But some people filmed parts of it. Watching my parents and sister get ripped apart by any and everyone that came out to check the drama was delicious. After years and years of being accused of stuff and not believed, to watch them have a taste was one of the best wedding gifts. My mother was crying, my dad kept changing from purple to white, my sister was still on the floor crying and screaming. They kept insisting on that my husband was in on it. But people kept asking why would my husband agree, why was there no proof, why did they want my sister to do this to my wedding? And they had no good answer to any of it

Eventually they were told to leave and had no choice but to do so. My dad apparently had to drag my sister up as she refused to leave the ground.

Again, people said nothing to me all night. I guess they wanted to spare me. And maybe it's because I was the bride and not just a guest for once, but it did feel like everyone was making extra effort to be nice, positive and excited about everything. My husband says "all the expensive shit they were eating drinking certainly helps" lol.

We had a blast. My husband maintained the forced angry face for only a short while before breaking out in smiles again.

After that we went to the hotel to catch some sleep before going to our honeymoon.

(Speaking of which, my parents did try to pay for our plane tickets, but we thought that was risky as they could try and cancel them or something so we refused)

Of course, since that whole thing the three have tried to contact me. I've refused calls, because my husband insisted on keeping a papertrail. I smart thing, because my sister did eventually message me. I won't repeat it as it was very unhinged and didn't make much sense, but the important part was that she blamed me for her humiliation, called my husband a two faced snake that fooled them for months (he wants to print and put that on our wall lol) and hoped (but was also certain it'd happen) that I'd get cheated on by him. She did also suggest he was cheating on me with her, actually.

My husband took my phone, screenshot the call logs, screenshot my sister's message, screenshot some messages of my parents demanding I pick up the phone... and sent it all to my family group chat. And sent screenshots of messages to him, where they called him names and threatened him (but he kept up the "you're delusional, I never agreed to anything" shtick, and even threatened to sue them for defamation and harassment). He wrote a message in said group chat begging my family for help, as I was now being harassed by them constantly. He begged family to help stop them from trying to ruin my honeymoon now that they had failed to ruin my wedding. Then finished neatly with a request that they don't share our locations, to avoid my parents sending my sister over and then claiming he had somehow agreed to pretend to fuck her in our honeymoon suite. LOL. My family assured him they'd take care of it.

And indeed, since then we've had silence. My husband is a little disappointed my sister didn't disobey, so he could tattle again while tearing her a new asshole. We'll see if it'll last.

All in all, while I obviously would preferred to have a normal loving family at my wedding, at least for once in my life they not only failed to ruin something meaningful to me, but I got them back.

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Extra info:

Do I know why they treat me like this? I've been asked this question a lot so I assume you all will think the same. I have wondered this all my life, and I still don't know. I tried asking when I was young, but they denied any difference and scolded me for acting spoiled, so I quit trying. I've thought of some many possibilities, but based on my observations I think it's this: I was unplanned. They took a while to have my sister, so she was not only wanted but also like a miracle child after so long. However, given our age difference is quite small... I think they didn't expected to have a kid so soon or easily, and didn't use adequate protection way too soon after my sister's birth. And maybe didn't notice my mom was pregnant until too late. So they were saddled with an unplanned baby while still dealing with a newborn. And they're not that well off, so having the extra expense likely didn't help. So they resented me. But that's my conjecture. Regardless, I've accepted the answer won't truly matter: what they did to me was unwarranted no matter what.

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Did they really think this would work? My husband and I talked, and we have the theory that they never wanted to do this at all. We think my sister threw a tantrum over me getting married first when she barely gets dates, and they gave my husband that outlandish proposition. As in, they didn't want to pay for my wedding and didn't think we'd accept or that it'd even look good for them to do it. But by suggesting it and being refused, they could look like the good guys to my sister while having an excuse to not give me a dime. But then my husband accepted it, and they couldn't backtrack, or else risk my sister turning on them.

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(edited to fix some typos)

SUMMARY because it did get too long: bad parents want to have my sister walk down the aisle at my wedding first, in wedding dress and all. My husband pretends to go along with it, and uses this as an excuse to get my parents to pay for the most expensive stuff possible for my wedding (which they only did because they thought it would be for my sister's sake). When the day comes though, we hired security that didn't let her in. When family called out my parents, they said my husband was in on it. But my husband denied it. There was no evidence, so no one believed them. So now family is against them, no one believes them, my sister didn't ruin my wedding and we got a lot of money out of them

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My dad just shared a story about my late Uncle Dale (his lifelong friend and fellow engineer). So in his memory and in spirit of the upcoming holidays, I present for you the tale of nepotism, engineering students and Idina Menzel.

Uncle Dale was a senior engineer at a small firm in the Midwestern USA and engineering instructor at the local community college. He was also (unofficially) in charge of the office parties. To help offset the costs, he had a small tin box on a table outside of his office with a slot in it so anyone could donate money to the party fund. Everyone knew about it and were happy to donate. A month or so before before the company's big Christmas party, Uncle Dale decided to check the box.

Low and behold; it was empty.

Uncle Dale knew something was wrong because he had seen several colleagues putting money in the box. This could only mean one thing: someone was stealing from the party fund.

At this moment, Brad, the owner's nephew and a fellow engineer, came around the corner...and something about the way Brad was looking at him made Uncle Dale suspicious.

Brad didn't have a good reputation around the office to say the least. He had a reputation of being pushy, obnoxious, rude and just plain entitled. Unfortunately, he was not only the owner's "beloved nephew" but knew how to skirt the rules so he wouldn't get fired.

Uncle Dale decided to set a trap to catch the thief. Using his engineering skills, he set up a hidden rig using a hidden doorbell camera right by the box. He then had a colleague loudly brag about how he contributed $100 to the party fund. Then he waited.

He got a notification that the camera was recording...and watched Brad open the empty box, scowl in disgust and throw the box against the wall.

Now you'd think this would end with Uncle Dale presenting the video evidence to his boss to get Brad fired but oh no.

As I mentioned in a previous post, "if there's one thing engineers love, it's solving problems. And if it's engineering students, they'll make it an experience to remember."

Uncle Dale then went to his engineering students. He offered them extra credit to come up with a rigged box that would make noise when opened. The more obnoxious the sound, the higher the bonus.

One week later, they delivered their project and demonstrated how it worked. Pleased with the results, Uncle Dale awarded them the extra credit as promised. The next day, he set up the rigged box and proclaimed "Well! Isn't this nice! Someone donated $50 to the party fund!" Then he went to his office and waited.

The engineering students had rigged the box with one of those inserts from cards that play music when you open them. By popular vote, they had picked "Let it Go" from the Disney movie "Frozen"...right around the time the song was beginning to become unpopular. They also managed to ensure that once opened, the box couldn't close unless you pressed a hidden side button releasing the hinge...so the song would continue to play. For extra funsies, they made sure to angle the insert for maximum volume AND secured it down with industrial strength glue.

Sure enough, everyone in the office heard Idina Menzel belting the hated song and Brad's frustrated grunts while trying to close the box. One of those attracted by the sound was Brad's uncle. Finally, Brad chucked the box at the wall, managing to put a good sized dent in it. The uncle then summoned Brad to his office. Fifteen minutes later, Brad left with a cardboard box and cleared out his desk...along with a note in his file "do not rehire. do not recommend". So his engineering career was over.

That Christmas, Uncle Dale had a little video prepared to show at the party. The doorbell camera had caught Brad's attempt to steal from the box...all to the tune of "Let it Go."

Hello, r/ProRevenge! A couple of years ago, I posted a revenge story involving my step-mother Shanty Wife, my step-brother Shorty, and my dad, who is now resting in a purple urn. In case you missed it, you can read it here. Well, I finally have an update!

To recap, Shorty, my step-brother, was my dad's Power of Attorney while he was sick and had heinously abused his position, stealing a very large sum of money. When I got involved, I got a restraining order against Shorty, filed charges, took over my dad's care, and exacted some sweet revenge in the process. I was warned by the court's Victim's Advocate, who is my first cousin because that's how it is in that town, that bringing Shorty to trial for what he did would take a very long time. She was correct.

In the meantime, I monitored Shorty's online activities. When he moved out of state, I called the court and let them know just in case it violated his bail. When he got a job as a truck driver, I called the court to let them know he was repeatedly leaving his home state just in case it violated his bail.

Then, six months ago, I got a call from the same victim's advocate. The trial was going to be set soon, and the court wanted input from the family regarding possible plea deals and sentencing. He was indicted on felony elder abuse and was facing 15 years in prison. The advocate let me know that the family could request prison time, or plea him down to work release with restitution. The upside to prison was obvious, but the downside would be that we would not likely receive restitution since he'd be perpetually poor and in prison. With work release, we would receive restitution, but he would have his freedom. Somewhat. She wanted to know which we preferred. I asked for the night to think it over.

Shorty's future rested in my hands and I wanted to savor it. What kind of god did I want to be? To decide, I needed to do some math. If he went to prison for 15 years, he would be out in half or less. Seven years is a long time. But restitution would surely take as long if not longer, and I would get the pleasure of taking his money every month, for years and years and years. I liked the thought of him working every day, toiling away in shit conditions for shit pay and him knowing that a portion of that shit day would be for nothing. I loved the thought that I would be the reason for it.

So I called her back and told her we would be OK with a plea deal to felony supervised release and restitution. I didn't hear anything further until last week, when the advocate called me again to let me know he'd accepted a deal.

The Deal:

He plead guilty to felony elder exploitation, 1st degree. He received 15 years, split and suspended which means he won't serve any jail time. Two years will be on felony work supervision where he'll have to call in to his parole officer every day and be drug tested almost as frequently. After that, he'll be on regular probation for up to five years. The judge will schedule check-ins with him to ensure he's paying restitution and meeting the requirements of his work release and parole.

The Restitution:

He has to pay back $130,539.39. He was ordered to pay $300 a month beginning 01/01/2024. My math gamble paid off; it will take him 36 years to pay that back at $300 a month. If he misses a payment, he will go to jail. I will be in his life for decades, taking back from him bit by bit what he stole.

So I think that's going to be it. I've done everything I can do, apart from being there to catch him if he violates the terms of his release. Thank you for reading this tangled web of revenge. I hope it warms your heart for the holidays!

I’m crossposting this from TIFU. I’m really not a mean person and genuinely felt terrible for destroying a marriage. But the lovely users thought I should post here though I didn’t mean for the revenge to go to this level by any means. I don’t even know if I meant for revenge at all… but here we are.

I (42 F) TIFU big time. 2 weeks ago on a random Thursday morning at like 1AM someone starting shooting off fireworks in my neighborhood. I’ve been having bouts of insomnia and was finally able to get to sleep and I had to get to wake up at 4AM for a meeting 2 hours away that I had to be at for 8AM. I was pissed and so we’re my dogs. I love fireworks but think there’s a time and a place. Thursday morning at 1AM is not it.

I posted to the neighborhood fb group a few hours later during a coffee break about people that set off fireworks at 1AM mid-week.

After I make the long drive home, I check my fb. Some guy comments that I can’t sleep because I’m a fat pig. Now, I’m chubby but not sloppy fat. Plus I just lost the equivalent of a fully grown male wombat, or 54 North American grey squirrels, so I feel fucking awesome about myself.

This is where I may have really fucked up…

I respond to the guy, who was maybe mid to late 30’s/very early 40’s. About the same age group as me. I write in a comment beneath his, “Listen guys name I’m sorry I had to end things, but I just didn’t have the same feelings. What you’re saying now is just hurtful and mean. Please stop sending me messages and commenting on my fb posts is just a pathetic way to contact me. I told you a dozen times already, we are done. It’s over.”

The following day I had to get to the airport for an out of country vacation that had me getting up early and leaving early as hell… so I don’t check my fb during all the craziness (also because I’m only on it sparingly. I don’t live on my phone and when I am, I’m usually on Reddit or TikTok vs FB).

I could not check my fb even if I wanted. I was on a cruise- not paying $25/day for internet and the country we visited didn’t really have the greatest Wi-Fi. Besides I was having a blast leaving the chaos of the world behind.

I signed on Monday night and FUCK. Apparently, people took this seriously and told his wife! She was freaking out on me, pleading for information. Sending me messages. Her and his friends were DMing me. He was DMing me. It was bad.

The last message was the guy saying I’m a total cunt because I refused to tell the truth and I just destroyed his life. I immediately message both him and his wife explaining what happened. I sent pics of me on vacation even - time stamped.

Apparently, he is a serial cheater and when I exposed our affair, another woman exposed her affair with the husband to the wife because AP was jealous that he had yet another side chick. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back because not only of the multiple affairs, but because he humiliated her with how public it was (especially it being a neighborhood group).

So there’s my accidental pro revenge.

TLDR; someone tried to hurt my feelings after I posted about fireworks being set off early morning, and I pretended to publicly address our “breakup”… his wife and affair partner were not pleased.

This happened a few years ago when I was serving overseas with the US military.

The location I was at, was in a poorer area. There's a fair number of panhandlers, a lot of petty crime, and just people doing stupid crap.

Well one racket that goes on in this area and apparently in other areas of the country too, is the local cops incentivize reporting vehicles without of date inspection stickers. Apparently they give these people access to the inspection database if they think the sticker is fake or stolen which actually does happen. If you drive a motorcycle, one of the things they tell you when you in-process is to keep the sticker in your wallet and not on the vehicle or else it'll just get peeled off. Anyway what these people will do if they find a car with an out-of-date sticker or if they run the plates and find it's out of date they will jimmy the door open, steal every single thing out of the car and leave a note that they've taken it to the police station. The idea is that you show up at the police station to get your stuff and they force you to pay the fine for an overdue sticker and then give you a deadline for an inspection or else you'll get another fine.

Well I came out to my car one morning and lo and behold there was a note on my seat saying that all my stuff was at the local police station because my inspection sticker was fake and I had to go get it. No not only am I late for work my kid is also going to be late for school because there's no bus and I have to drive her every morning on my way. Also my inspection sticker is not out of date so I have no idea what's going on. Now here's the thing that was extremely problematic was I had put my passport and my wife/kid's in the glove box because I was taking them to the base to get some paperwork done. As well as grab some paperwork for my wife to apply for a new passport because hers was expired. I'm very forgetful so I put them in the night before and made sure the car was locked. Yeah dumb mistake...

Anyway I get to the station, ask them what the heck was going on, and then when I have them look at the inspection documents that the guy had taken which clearly stated the car had been inspected and was current they apologized and told me that they would give my things back and I had to wait there for a second. I asked to file a police report for theft but they looked at me like I had three heads and told me nothing was stolen even though somebody broke into my car and took my things.

This is when a light bulb went off in my head and this might fall into the unethical category. The guy had taken official US passports which might be a problem but probably nothing would come of it since they were turned right in to the police. However, I asked him where my wife's passport was.

They told me that whatever is there is there. I said I needed a police report because I needed to contact the US embassy about a stolen passport and the fact that this police station would know exactly who the person was that stole it because they had dropped off my things that morning.

I have never seen someone's attitude change as quickly as that cop's attitude changed. He tried to talk me out of filing a police report but I was pretty insistent so I went ahead with the police report and then I did contact the embassy and reported the passport stolen and gave them all the information of the police station and when I got the police report I emailed it to them as well.

Wound up getting a free passport out of it for my trouble. The embassy told me they were going to handle it and from what I heard the person who broke into my car actually got arrested and fined and was looking at additional charges because he stole foreign documents. Really would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when one of the local cops rolled into wherever he was at and told him to come with them.

I don't feel bad at all. Hopefully dude learned his lesson and I did not have any further issues until I PCSd home.

*edited for grammar and mobile formatting errors and because I'm getting screeched at about going out of my way to get someone in huge trouble for a "minor" offense.