As much as we want to be liked by everyone at work, there's always going to be one or two folks who act like jerks toward us. A 2022 survey found that 90% of people have a colleague that annoys them. What's more interesting is that 57% of the respondents said they thought about quitting because of an annoying coworker.

Some people wait for karma to get their jerk colleagues, others take matters into their own hands. Like these people, who served some cold-blooded revenge to their coworkers and bosses and then shared their genius plans with folks online, prompted by one netizen's question: "What is the most satisfying revenge you got at work?"

#1

After the dotcom crash I got hired by a small software company. They didn’t really have a good product and it was obvious they were on the way down. One day the owner called in with instructions to fire all the sales people as they weren’t making any sales anyway. OK so at the end of the month he calls to ask how sales were going. I said about as good as can be expected with no sales people.


A week later the hammer comes down and we’re all let go and given our severance checks. I immediately go to the bank branch that check was drawn on to cash it and it bounced!


So since I still had the keys to the office, I went back and grabbed a bunch of high-end laptops and took them home. Another week goes by and he calls to ask about these laptops that have gone missing. I said they’re not missing, I’m holding on to them until you make good on the bounced check. I was told that was theft and they would be pressing charges. I said great, I’ll be contacting the Labour Relations Board about your s***ty practices and also the Police about knowing passing a bad check for thousands of dollars.


Needless to say I was asked to stop by his office to exchange the laptops for another check. It was like the scene out of Scarface where Tony Montana goes to buy the coke. Owner: Do you have the laptops? Me: They’re close by. Do you have my check? He gave me the check and I went and cashed it and then went back and gave him his laptops.

Image credits: Bimal Parmar

#2

I was an automotive tech for a few years. The last position I held with that title was at a crappy little locally owned oil and lube shop. Now after a few years in the industry I had accumulated quite the knowledge of OSHA AND EPA standards that the automotive industry has in place.

The owner of this business is not a good man. We’re talking big game hunting trips to Africa, only gave charity for tax-breaks, and somehow ZERO empathy for people as a whole. His holiday bonuses were 25$ gift cards…. to his own store.

Now the manager of this particular location happened to be the nephew of the owner. This guys favorite line was “(if you don’t do xyz) you can take it to the house (fired)”.

I guess he could tell that every employee was turning against him, as we were all one day pulled one by one into the office to have a “talk about morale”. Two of us mechanics were already talking about starting our own small shop, taking our loyal customers with us (they would tell us that whenever we left they would stay with us)

I guess nephew found out and was none-too-happy about it. The talks were really him just trying to weasel out of anyone if we (myself and mechanic #2) were stealing business from the company (not yet!). The next day we both received a call informing us that we were suspended for two weeks due to the smell of “whiskey” on our breath (which there wasn’t). This was their way of not having to pay unemployment.

Immediately I got on the horn with the EPA, informing them that this s.o.b instructed us to dump oil and oil filters, antifreeze, differential fluid, and transmission fluid into the dumpster. Then a call to OSHA to let them know about all the standing oil in the bays, exposed electrical components, and shoddy additions to the building.

I got a text from my friend that still worked there two days ago to let me know OSHA showed up and they had to degrease the entire garage, fix the awnings, and electricians were wrapping up the wires.

A day later found out that the EPA had hit this bastard with a huuuuge fine.

Two months later all locations were sold off.

Image credits: William Lockwood

#3

I was a government employee for 28 years and worked overtime whenever she asked me. I also took no sick leave and cut my vacation time when there was an overload of work. An opening for a promotion came up and I passed the tests with flying colors. However, my supervisor wanted a woman in the position and called in favors to have a female employee from another department transferred to her section. I then went to HR and asked when I could take early retirement with the best employee pension possible given my number of years as an employee. I bided my time and when the time came, I gave exactly 2 weeks notice. How did it hurt her? I had accumulated 2 years and six weeks of vacation, sick leave, and overtime, so for that time, I was paid full salary on early retirement. The best part, she could not have another employee fill my position because I was officially still occupying that position.

Image credits: Thomas Cameron

#4

Here's something that didn't happen to me, but to my brother (I'll call him Jake).


Ever since junior high Jake wanted to be a policeman, so he did everything he could in high school to get to know the police dept, prep for a criminal science degree, went on ride-alongs, etc. So after high school, he's accepted to a police academy in a nearby city.


He's driving to the academy, and gets pulled over by a highway patrolman for going four mph over the limit. My brother is very apologetic and embarrassed, and completely polite but the patrolman is a complete jerk to him, condescending, insulting and power-tripping hard. When Jake gets to the academy, he's telling his friends what happened and a couple of the other policeman there go "Oh, we know who you're talking about: Officer Bacon. Nobody on the force likes him because he thinks he's better than everybody else in the department; he's always ticketing people for stupid violations, and he's got a huge authority complex. He's the type of guy that gives policemen a bad rep."


So my brother Jake eventually graduates from the academy, and gets hired on as a city police officer in a town an hour away from the academy. About six months into his job he's out on patrol, and gets a call from one his police buddies at the academy: "Jake, you remember Officer Bacon? He left here in his highway patrol car about ten minutes ago, and he was saying he was going to be late for a meeting in your town." So my brother Jake strategically parks his patrol car on the off-ramp of the highway, and waits while running radar.


Sure enough after sitting there for a while, he sees a highway patrol car take the exit ramp and it blows right by him, no lights or sirens. Jake pulls out behind the highway patrol, and throws on his lights and pulls the patrol man over. Jake gets out and walks up to the car, and he can tell the driver is already pissed. He gets to the window (which is already down) and the driver goes "I'm Officer Bacon--why the f**k did you pull me over?!"

"Sir, do you know how fast you were going?" "I'm already late for a meeting at headquarters. I don't have time for this--show me some professional courtesy." "I clocked you going 80 in a 55 mph zone. I'm going to have to write you a citation. I need to see your license and registration, sir."


At this point Officer Bacon flips his s**t, and virtually throws his license and papers at my brother. He's cussing and talking about how they're both law enforcement officers, and what Jake is doing is bulls**t. My brother keeps it completely cool and treats it like just another traffic stop. As near as my brother can tell, Officer Bacon doesn't recognize him.


He goes through the whole process, then hands Bacon the citation and says "Have a good day sir." The highway patrolman speeds off, totally red-faced with rage. My brother goes back to his HQ and tells his co-workers what happened and they're all pretty much just high-fiving him. Later, he heard through the grapevine that Officer Bacon went and complained to his commanding officer, and instead of siding with Officer Bacon, Bacon ended up getting reprimanded.

My brother said he wanted so badly to go up to Officer Bacon and say "Remember me? Karma sucks, don't it." but he never did. tldr: brother gets ticketed by dick highway patrolman, becomes a policeman, ends up ticketing highway patrolman while both are on duty a couple years later, and gets patrolman in trouble.

Image credits: LostSoulsAlliance

#5

My girlfriend, at the time, had a boss who was always hitting on her. He would buy her things, flirt with her, etc. We hit a rough patch in our relationship, and he did everything in his power to win her from me. He was a VP at the company, so he had the money, and probably the smooth talking skills. She would bring him up in fights as a comparison. I got sick of it. Me and her ended our 3 year relationship and sure enough, they're dating about a month later. However...


He knew that the company was making her work overtime and not paying her, (and said "there's nothing I could do about it" when she asked him), and he knew that she was having to take work home (which was a no-no since she was a lingerie designer), AND was helping her start her own line, which was a conflict of interest to his company.


Flashback to a few months earlier. Her company has a Christmas party, and I meet the CEO. I won't say his name, but it was a name that I remembered for some reason. Now, I was pissed. This scumbag basically took my girlfriend from me. I know it was probably for the best because any girl that would fall for that shouldn't be with me anyway. But I'm not thinking that way at the time. I have no ethical hangups about revenge, and it was time to get some.


I realized that her company e-mail address had a template. [First name].[last name]@[company].com. So I figured that the CEO's e-mail address probably had the same format. With all the knowledge I had, it would be a shame not to blindly e-mail the CEO of his company with detailed information about how his VP was putting his company at risk by dating his employees, knowingly breaking employment laws, allowing sensitive materials out into the public, and start a rival company. So that's what I did.


I never got a response from the CEO, however, a couple years later I ran into my ex and had a couple of drinks with her. She told me about how s**tty of a boyfriend he was, how they fought all the time, and how she went off and hit him one night. (She got really close to hitting me a couple of times, but I calmly told her that if she laid a hand on me, I would hit her back harder than she could ever imagine, and would be happy to go to jail for it).


She also told me that the problems really started when he lost his job. I asked how that happened, and she told me that it was abrupt, but even he didn't really know the reason. It was one of those HR-driven "we're letting you go" type firings. I told her what I did. She was shocked and angry and left the bar without saying another word, but I didn't give a s**t. Even the remote possibility that I was the reason why that scumbag got fired, AND he got my s**tty girlfriend who hit him, made me feel like a million bucks. And I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Image credits: CalvinDehaze

#6

A few months out of college I got a job working in the courts. Not long after I started, I was perusing the docket and saw the name of a kid who made my life a living hell in middle school - turns out he'd been caught selling coke out of his basement.

In my job I only deal with victim oriented crimes, but I didn't have any hearings for the next hour, so I decided to sit in. I was standing at the prosecution table chatting when he came in to be sentenced. I turned around, caught him eyeing me and simply said "hey Mike, how've you been?" He didn't say anything - just lowered his gaze to the table looking dejected. As the judge took his place on the bench I walked back to the gallery and watched my former tormentor get sentenced to two years in the state pen.

There's a saying that the greatest revenge is to live well. I came to truly appreciate its wisdom that day.

Image credits: [deleted]

#7

I once worked (NO laughing!) as a night watchman in a mattress factory… It was a pretty good third job, because all i had to do was punch some key boxes once every 2 hours, to demonstrate that someone had been there to make sure that foam rubber was not spontaneously combusting (burning foam rubber is very toxic, and hard to extinguish).

The business was in a low lying industrial area on a river, and the bus ride was long, the stop in a pretty scary place. My husband would ride with me there in the evenings, but in the early morning I would take the bus on my own to the YWCA for a shower, and on to my day job.

The business was not doing as well as they needed it to, partially because they had lost a delivery driver willing to go to all the tiny rural towns down through the Catskills where small family shops bought foam rubber for furniture manufacture.

Long story shortened significantly: I ended up driving to these towns on my days off from my other day job, now tallying up to *4* jobs. The pay schedule was every 2 weeks, 3 days behind. I get to work on payday and discover that I will not be paid for 2 1/2 weeks of night mattress supervision, or the 2 weekends of some of the most terrifying mountain driving I have ever done, in a heavy truck, with lousy tires, on narrow, winding, roads, some in very poor condition.

I quit, and let my employer know that although I was just a little person, and there was nothing I could do to make him pay me, but God saw that he was cheating me of my wages, and that it was wrong… and I called my husband to come meet me early for the bus, and left.

By the time I got to the overpass to meet my husband, a flash flood had wiped out the factory, and the huge blocks of foam that mattresses are cut from were floating down stream like giant bars of soap! The bus did not come, so we bought a bottle of wine and spent much of the night watching them float away. They done got smote.

The final chapter of this adventure did not come for over 3 years. The place hadn’t come to mind in a very long time, when I got mail containing a check for the wages for my last 2 1/2 weeks at the foam factory, and letter that stated they had been trying to find me for some time, and finally hired someone to find out where I had gone, with a plea that I let God know that we were square!

Image credits: Gina Creedon

#8

I work retail. This woman comes in to return a cellphone. She says she's been to the news, they did a show on her, and she was told by head office that she can come in for a complete refund. She is months past our 14 day return period. I let her know I'm sorry, but because we are a franchise location, we provide cannot warranty support. The return period is 14 days. The closest warranty is on this card I'm handing you.


She FREAKS THE F**K OUT, calling me every 4 letter word she can think of. I tell her I'm sorry and I move on to the next customer. She is honking and flapping at the customers in my store, going on about how her kid is in the hospital with cancer, etc. She finally leaves.


10 minutes later her daughter comes in, I repeat the 14 day/warranty centre speech. She calles me a f**kwad and leaves. Fast forward a month, my boss calls me and says a woman will be in this afternoon by the name of XXXXXXX. Return it and give her full refund. I say ok. ,


4 days later she comes in and throws the phone on the counter with the receipt and says nothing at all. I do the refund. and I make the call to customer care to cancel the line. Whelp. She decided it was time to leave because she has her money and I'm an inferior sack of skin wasting her time. Customer care finally picks up and asks to verify the account and ask the customer a few questions. Because the customer has left, and cannot verify the account, the phone line cannot be cancelled. I say thank you and hang up. She's gonna receive a letter in a couple month from collections because we cannot contact her any more :)

Image credits: boostedjoose

#9

Worked in an office with this a**hole that used to make noises on conference calls with his headset mike. Extremely annoying. So one day I borrowed it and used the mike to clean the bottom of the urinal in the mens room. From then on when he sucked on it to make his annoying sounds, several of us on the call were amused rather than annoyed.

Image credits: UBERELLIOTT

#10

My boss was a woman. She didn’t like the fact that I had told her I was pregnant the day she told me she was divorcing. From that day on, I was persona non grata.

My job was highly sophisticated. Have you ever called an 800 number for software support and expected the person to know the answer no matter what? That was the kind of job I did. For 16 years. I enjoyed it and my customers. They liked me as well, and trusted me.

Well, things started going south with my boss. It took an hour (without traffic) to get to work. The problem? My son and daughter’s day care didn’t open until 7:00. Which meant that if I got to work by 8:00 it would be a miracle.

There WERE people on special schedules. One person worked 7–4 simply due to traffic issues. One person worked 9–6, simply because he did not like to get up early (I swear to God, that was the reason). So, I thought it was quite logical to ask for an 8:30–5:30 shift.

Guess what? I was told NO. The reason? “We don’t do special schedules anymore.”

Okay, fine. My review comes up. I’m marked down because I’m 15 minutes late every day. This goes on for a year and a half, 2 years. One year she dings me badly for the 15 minutes. I talk to HR. They take my side, knowing I have asked for a special schedule and could have been given one.

Paid lay-offs are offered while I am on vacation, yet I don’t get the paperwork. One of my friends gives me the papers, I fill it out, and submit it. Her first question was, “where did you get these papers? I didn’t leave any for you!” Another trip to HR.

She finally submits the papers for the paid lay-off, after 4 months of waiting, and isn’t happy about it. I told her it was her fault for giving me bad reviews instead of agreeing to a special schedule.

My last day comes. I have a buddy in the mail room. All the big bosses work in the same building. I have been working on a letter about ALL her transgression with a copy of all our memos back and forth as supporting documentation. I wrote to her bosses boss and up the chain all the way to the Regional President. I also wrote HR and asked that a copy of the letter be put in her file.

I took the letters, gave them to my guy, gave him a huge hug and said, “Elvis is leaving the building.” Only at that time did he put it in the inter office mail. Every big boss got a letter about her antics, her favoritism, her lack of professionalism, etc.

I found out that she was demoted 6 months later and ultimately fired a year later. Yeah, I smiled when I heard that.

Image credits: Cathi Richardson

#11

Got my degree and wasn't able to get a promotion at my current company. Let my boss know I was looking for a new job and handled the move professionally. Left on good terms.

Started my new job, at a significant bump in pay, and quickly discovered it was nothing like the DBA job I had interviewed for. Instead of managing databases I was expected to learn a proprietary coding language created by my new boss. There was no documentation and he treated everyone like an idiot if they asked questions while trying to learn. After 3 months I had a review. I was told I was doing great and given a raise.

I continued learning and persevering through my bosses abuse. 3 months later I was pulled into another meeting with my boss and his boss. I was told I wasn't meeting expectations, although they wouldn't explain how, and told to sign a document putting me into a lesser position at a significant cut in pay. If I didn't sign I was told I would be fired. I signed and immediately started looking for another job.

I called up my old boss and asked for a reference. She told me she would do so happily, but I should know she had just submitted a job requisition for a new position that I would be perfect for. We discussed it and I agreed it would be a fit.

I went through the interview process and got the job at a higher salary than my new company had started me at. The only problem was that they couldn't bring me on until January 1st (it was Oct). I said that was fine.

For the next three months I made sure to use all my vacation and did next to nothing while at work.

I scheduled vacation for the last week of the year. On the last business day of the year I came into the office handed in my laptop and a letter of resignation that was effective immediately. They were actually surprised that I was quitting.

Image credits: dameon5

#12

I got revenge by living well, by being successful in my career and personal life. I got revenge by not caring one bit about what he thought or if he even existed. I had peace of mind.

He, on the other hand, created problems in his personal and professional life.

He felt he was (or should be) the center of the universe, and he raged when he discovered the rest of us did not share his belief.

Our successes infuriated him even though they had nothing to do with him at all.

I did not seek revenge; therefore, I will never feel guilt about what happened to him. But I admit that I occasionally have a twinge of satisfaction.

Image credits: Verneita Boonlom

#13

I had an a**hole of a boss. He was demoralizing and condescending. I worked in inventory control and my boss would hide discrepancies in a bogus location. I knew all about it and he would have me use it to adjust inventory. Our client owned the inventory and one month they had corporate auditors grilling us. I stepped into the office they were working in and closed the door behind me. I then proceeded to tell them everything. I have them the bin location name and where it should physically exist.


They continued the audit for a couple days and then nonchalantly asked my boss to verify that location. He turned to me and asked me to go verify. They interrupted and insisted he do the verification. A month later he left the company to pursue other opportunities and I was promoted into his position. It was later said to me that the auditors were so impressed with my integrity that they insisted I manage the inventory.

#14

I was hired at an Internet/Cable company to build their business intelligence program from the ground up. From the beginning, the data team didn’t want to give me access to their data, the sales team didn’t want to see my fact-based reporting, the service team didn’t want to know what customer surveys said and my boss, while supportive in the big picture, didn’t understand why any of this was a problem.

I was working 60–80 hours per week, fighting an uphill battle, and getting little recognition for it.

Over time, I fought for, and got the data, and started showing results. I showed the people who doubted me how accurate reporting and timely information was useful to improve their performance - not to make them look bad, and earned their respect.

Then that boss left.

His replacement treated me like crap. He didn’t listen to anything I said. When I say didn’t listen, I don’t mean “didn’t do what I wanted.” I mean, he would ask a question, I would answer him. In the next meeting, he would ask the question again, get the same answer (from a man, invariably) and only THEN would he believe it. I don’t mean he didn’t like or implement my suggestions - I literally mean he wouldn’t hear them if they came from a woman. He had the same behavior toward the director of IT, who was a woman. He would re-check anything she said with one of her male subordinates.

It was 100% toxic.

So, I quit. No job lined up. No solid prospects - I just left.

My old boss recommended me for a job at his new company with better pay, better benefits and a much more positive work environment.

I’ve been there for five years now, and I love it. I make twice as much as I did at that old job, and not only do I almost never have to work overtime, I have half a day blocked off every week just to spend time improving my skills, getting to know my coworkers, or preparing for the next week.

That company is still limping along. They didn’t go under without me, and I don’t care. The bad boss got fired from first that job, and then from a couple of others. I don’t know what he’s doing now, and I don’t really care. I’m fine and as long as I never have to work with him again, it’s all good.

Image credits: Carrie

#15

I worked as a tech and consultant for a multimedia production company just a couple of years ago.

We did these shows with live action, video projection, special effects, and a good sound system. I designed a lot of the tech myself. Quite a bit of specialized equipment was deployed.

I got paid was I thought was fair, but I was reasonably aware that the boss thought otherwise. No surprise.

We did this tour-thing sporadically, going to different cities and putting on the show. The company somehow sold tickets to these shows. I don’t know exactly how that part worked.

We got to one Midwest US city, and the show itself went technically fine. But attendance was terrible.

I knew the boss well, so, sensing an impending issue, while breaking down the show I withheld a critical piece of custom electronic gear from the equipment box and put it aside to take home with me. Best part: I never billed the company for that piece of gear, so it was technically mine anyway. It wasn’t actually worth much money, but it was invaluable in terms of running the show.

And sure enough, the boss, upstanding businessman that he was, left town overnight without giving the cast and crew their return airplane tickets.

Cost me something like $650 to buy the return ticket and get home.

After many phone calls, I finally got paid several weeks later, including the cost of my return ticket, but still held onto this piece of gear. I was pretty pissed off.

I think at that point I was told that I was no longer needed, so I told the boss something like this: “We were pretty tired when breaking down the last show. Make sure that before you go on the road again, PUT EVERYTHING TOGETHER AND MAKE SURE IT’S WORKING OK.”

Sure enough, to save money, the jerkwad did not heed my advice. One weekend a frantic call came into my voicemail: “Do you have any idea where such-and-such piece of equipment could be?” I called him back. Me: “No clue. Far as I know, it was packed with the rig when we broke the show down in that last city. Wish I could be of more help. Good Luck.” Click.

He lost a ton of money on that trip. Could NOT put on the show.

I was NOT heartbroken. BTW many of the details above are vague or altered. But this did generally happen as described.

Frankly, the creep deserved it. Oh yeah, and I think he’s dead now.

#16

I was working at a pizza joint. My mom's former boss came in and ordered. I spat in the pizza because she was such a c**t to my mom.

Image credits: heiberdee

#17

I didn't experience it personally, but it was at my behest, and it was satisfying as hell.


I worked for a very small company(about 20 employees) right out of college. When the owners of the company went out of town, about 2 or 3 times a year, the managers would frequently throw all-day parties for the workers, we'd grill, drink, play games, etc. There was one older lady at the company that, I guess, for whatever reason, did not like me. I could be a bit outspoken about social issues being in my early 20's, so that may have been it, but I really to this day don't know why she disliked me so much. Anyway, she waited until about a week after one of these parties, went straight to the owners of the company, and told them that the week before, she was watching me and noticed I didn't do any work all day(duh, none of us had, including her). She was banking on the fact that the owner would only pull my logs for that day and no one else's and she was right. My managers fought for me(truthfully, they were probably a bit worried I'd rat them and the whole office out) but it was to no avail. I got fired.


The revenge bit of the story is that since it was such a small company, everyone quickly got wind of what this woman did, and she was given stone-cold silent treatment by everyone, including the managers. She even went to the owner and complained that she was being treated unfairly, but there wasn't really a lot he could do about people not wanting to socialize with her. She ended up quitting about 3 weeks after I got fired. Apparently she had trouble finding a job and came back a few months later begging for her job back, but my managers were in charge of all hiring and basically laughed in her face. She went above them again to the owner, but at that point he was sick of her drama and told her he wasn't interested in having her back.


tl;dr Former co-worker gets me fired behind a bunch of bulls**t, ends up quitting because I was well-liked at the office and she couldn't handle the backlash from the managers and my co-workers.

#18

Many years ago when I was Production Control & Warehouse Manager for a large manufacturing plant, we had a satellite warehouse about 30 miles from the main plant. We staffed it by rotating 4 warehouse workers there each week without a supervisor. One warehouseman, Gene, had recently become a body builder and really bulked up. His self-confidence grew exponentially and one result was that he began stealing lunches from the break room refrigerator when he was assigned to the satellite warehouse. The other workers identified him as the thief and plotted revenged. They carefully doctored a pack of chocolate Hostess cupcakes with ex-lax and planted them in the fridge. Gene took the bait and about 20 minutes after his break and illicit snack, he was working on the loading dock. The ex-lax kicked in and Gene rushed for the men’s room, but his co-workers waylaid him with questions and salutations to finish his work before leaving. Gene s**t his pants. He also never stole anyone’s food again.

Image credits: Bill Pearce

#19

Not me but my father. He was working for an IT company developing software, but ended up being asked to help out in sales for a few weeks as their department was short staffed for some reason. He turned up and found that his new colleagues really didn't like him, for no apparent reason (though he suspected it might be racism).

Within the first few days, he'd scored a few sales and his manager had actually offered him a job in sales, but he turned it down as he preferred having a set salary, rather than commission. The reason for his relative success was down to two factors:

Networking;

Several subscriptions to professional IT journals and magazines.

He had started by calling people he knew and then he started calling people he'd read about in magazines, while the rest of the department were apparently relying on cold calling. Furthermore, having helped write the software he was selling, he could actually explain what it did, while the rest of the department ... well ... they couldn't.

At the beginning of his second week in the department, he took a long lunch break as he had to visit a dentist and got back to find a woman was being congratulated on her success making a big sale to a company he had planned on calling that very day. When he got to his desk, he noticed things weren't as he'd left them and noticed a list of people and phone numbers he'd planned on calling had vanished. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what had happened while he was away. Rather than let it slide, he decided to get his revenge ...

The next day, he made up an excuse to be out of the office in the late morning and early afternoon, spending his time back in the software department. When he returned this time, however, things were a lot more sour.

As before, he had left a list of potential customers on his desk and, as before, the woman had taken it off his desk while he was away and started making calls. The problem is that one of the phone numbers wasn't for a company, but for the wife of her boss, who her boss was currently in the process of divorcing. And the name he had listed next to the number was the mistress of said boss, the reason they were getting divorced.

The boss wasn't happy at all to get a phone call from his soon to be ex-wife's lawyer, accusing him of getting his staff to harass her. She got fired, didn't get any commission for the big sale she'd made the previous day and my dad ended up finalizing that sale in the end as he explained that, by shear coincidence, he had gone to university with the guy the woman was dealing with.

A few weeks later, she accused my dad of plotting and setting up the whole thing, but, by this time, he was back in his old position and the guy in charge of the sales department had no power over him.

#20

I was laid off, specifically because of age. They admitted it. However, the two people that took over my job both quit. I had a year’s pay, not for severance, but to agree not to sue based on age discrimination. In five months I was back at work, collecting a pension, retaining the payout, and earning about forty percent more. I stayed for a total of eight years more, which were the best years at the company. At least for me. The boss that could not stand me was livid I was doing so well, and SO HAPPY! The best vengeance is living well.

Image credits: Ed Fuller, Sr.

#21

This happened to my husband when we were first married. He was working (salary) 60–70 hrs a week. He worked for a company that was a family business, except my husband and the skilled field employees. The familly office staff didn’t do as much as my husband, so he asked a raise, since he was doing a higher level position than he was working. He also asked for an assistant, because he was doing that much work. My husband knew they would probably not honor his requests, so he went prepared. He had gotten a license to form his own company, and and went in with a resignation letter. When he asked for the raise and an assistant, his boss literally laughed in his face. My husband gave his notice and walked out. He had a couple of jobs lined up from other contractors whom he know from his connections other than his job, so he didn’t skip a beat in getting work.

A week went by, and his boss called him begging him to come back. My husband rightfully declined. They had to hire 3 people to fill his position there, and within 2 years, they went out of business. I’m proud that my husband did all of this with class, dignity and integrity!

Image credits: Ms Waid 2u

#22

I worked in a unit with a supervisor who treated the women like s##t. He was always cordial to the senior guy and disrespectful of our senior woman who was studying to become an attorney. He picked on another woman in our unit who was quiet but she was a good worker. Our supervisor was Bob, his real name. So ..one morning I left an anonymous letter accusing him of treating women badly and favoring men in the unit. Needless to say it created a furor and embarrassed Bob a lot. The claims manager went on the hunt for the letter writer but never found me. I'm not sorry I did it because it put a big spotlight on Bob's crap behavior, which was my intent. Being in the spotlight made good old Bob tone it down a LOT. He was a jerk.

Image credits: Lyra Yeretzian

#23

Actually I wasn’t fired, but my direct supervisor made working there impossible unless one were in her circle of friends. The day after I left I started getting calls from that office, asking about various things. I told them that I would get back to them, and sent an e-mail to corporate and to the management in our area. I let them know that from that time forward that I would be happy to help but my fee was $150.00 per hour with a minimum four hours charge and that the clock started ticking the minute that I answered a call or opened an e-mail.

So the next day I got a call and helped the caller with their issues. I then sent an electronic invoice to corporate. They called and said it was only a ten-minute call and they were willing to pay me twenty dollars. I reminded them of the e-mail and told them if I didn’t receive payment in full ($600.00) within thirty days I would notify the credit reporting agencies and start legal proceedings. Three days later a check arrived, FedEx next-day delivery, signature required, and strangely enough I have yet to receive another call or e-mail from any of their employees. I can’t imagine why…lol.

Image credits: Glenda L. King

#24

I had a horrible 40 year old woman that got a job with us at my workplace doing sales. At first she seemed nice but I would always hear about her saying things about everyone that worked there too. She would even insult the store manager and talk about the SM to customers. Anywho my SM told me that this 40 yo said I was trying to take over the SM's job. I thought this was ridiculous I did not even like the job that much. I just let it slip my mind but a month later I just wanted to tell the 40yo how I feel so I texted her about how I was not trying to take over. I did not swear or wasnt rude about it. She tries calling me back but I couldnt take her calls becuase I was in a seminar for class. When I get the chance to talk to her she demands who told me that and denies saying anything about me. So this housewife calls the SM and begins to rage at her. My SM and I play it cool. SM told her she did not know what she was talking about. This hag was obviously surprised someone spoke back to her. Its my first shift working with this hag after the incident and act like it never happened. Perhaps a few weeks later the franchise manager (above store manager who runs not 1 but 5 other stores) finds out about what happened and says if this hag says anything to me about it, she'll be fired. Nothing escalates but the hag has customer complaints against her for being rude and is reported to the companys head office. She is given one final warning. Perhaps 2 more weeks pass and she cannot come to work becauase she has broken her ankle. Hallelujah! She is off for 6 weeks! It was nearing the time I was about to leave the company for a better higher paying job when I hear she will not be returning for certain reasons. Yayy! Im glad I wont be seeing her around anymore especially since the store is at my local shopping centre.

#25

I was the Maintenance supervisor of a Irrigation District, which manages and delivers water to farmers. I didn’t do toilets and lightbulbs, my department fixed and maintained roads, pipelines, and canals.


We had that one guy. The guy that is a pain in everybody’s arse. And he lived to be a problem. He wanted the supervisor position when it was open, but they hired me from the outside. That really pissed him off. He would find every minute issue and try to blow it up into a major complaint, then try to upset his coworkers about the “injustice of the week”.


One morning he walks up to me and said he wanted to file a complaint. I said about what, now? He said there is no hot water in the mens room. I said so? What do you need hot water for? He said to sanitize his hands, of course. I said thats what the soap is for. It’s antibacterial. He tells me OSHA requires the employer to provide hot water for sanitation. I said BS, were not even required to provide a bathroom, but we do so you don’t spend all day driving into town to pee. He tells me if i dont fix it, he would complain to the GM. (GM didn’t like him either).


I told him i would handle it


The next morning, bright and early I get summoned to the GM’s office. He’s holding a laminated piece of paper, rubbing his eyes. “Is this your handywork?” Yes sir. “You can’t do that. You just can’t! And…I’m taking this home to show my wife, because she won’t believe me. Try to figure out a way to get him hot water, and don’t post anymore signs, PLEASE”. Yes sir.


The laminated sign said : “WE DON’T HAVE HOT WATER, DON’T PEE ON YOUR HANDS.”

Image credits: Jim Brost

#26

Based on my dad’s experience with one of his bosses. This guy got the job as head honcho in a clothing manufacturing factory, because he married the owner’s daughter. He wasn’t qualified.

There was a sewing operation he didn’t know how to do, so he asked my dad, a sewing machine mechanic who knew it all. He showed the operator and the boss how to do this operation.

When the owner came in, he saw the dress the operation was on and said “oh this is nice! Who thought of this?” the boss’s son-in-law took the credit and the thanks without citing my dad’s help.

So the next time the guy asked how to do something, if it was out of the realm of my dad’s job, he said “gee I don’t know, can’t help you.”

#27

My boss had a falling out with her boss and he (boss' boss) decided he would destroy her and everything she cared about. This meant he was going to destroy me too, since my boss had done a lot to get me where I was.


I didn't get fired or officially demoted, but I was moved a few layers deeper on an organization chart and put into a job I used to do four years earlier. I got angry for two days, then polished my resume and cast it across my large company. A month after it happened, I was flying to across the country to interview for the most prestigious R&D organization in my industry and three months after that I was watching someone load my s**t into a moving van. The evil-doer was fired two weeks after I started my new job (in the same company, very different division).


I never had to file a grievance, my silent determination to get out from under him was the loudest scream, and losing a very promising person made the company really look into him.

#28

I was the Customer Contact Manager for a small manufacturing company, so my department entered the orders and did the following up with dealers.
We had several salespeople, most of whom were very nice and supportive of our efforts.
And then there was Jill.
What a witch.
Always rude, always back-stabbing, always with a chip on her shoulder, Jill seemed to delight in making the staff miserable. My department, accounting, production, shipping, didn’t matter. Nothing was good enough and if you did something different from the way she would have or made a mistake, she would write a page-long email to her boss, detailing how this grievous situation caused her great personal injury and embarrassment.
A real drama queen.
One day, she brought me a box from production. She told me she told the dealer that since UPS had already picked up, she would make sure it got to UPS that evening so it would move and deliver the next day.
She wanted me to take it to UPS. Like a moron, I agreed, and I drove through town in a cold, pouring rain in the dark to drop this box off. It made me an hour late getting home, and I was soaked to the bone.
“Never again,” I said to myself.
A couple of days later, she brought me another box, same deal. “I told the customer I would get it out tonight.” I told her that she would have to take it herself because the UPS store was inconveniently located, it was raining again, and I don’t see worth a crap in the dark.
She said, “No, I can’t. We’re all going out to dinner tonight.” “We all” meant sales and the Real Managers of the company, not the lowly peon managers like me who did most of the work.
“Nope. I did it once as a favor. Now it’s becoming a habit. Not doing it.”
“You have to.”
“No. You have a choice to make: Do you keep the promise you made to your customer, or do you go to your fancy-pants, expensive, company-paid dinner?”
She took the damn box.

#29

I worked very hard in college. I was dirt broke for the whole time, sometimes earning only $20 per week. There was a kid in my school who bullied me. He was a popular football player, drove a cool car, had a good after school job. He wrecked my fathers car, refused to wait on me in the department store that he worked even knocked me flat on my back, just because he was at least a least a foot taller. One day, long after I graduated from college and I was working a good paying job, I was leaving for work. I was dressed in a nice suit, drove a brand new car and there he was working as a garbage men, emptying the barrels into the truck's hopper. He saw me, I saw him and I just smiled got into my car and left for work. As I drove away, I looked back and saw him throwing the empty garbage barrels around, kicking them and swearing up a storm.

I learned that day, success is the best revenge.

#30

Yes, he ended up doing not only my job full time position, 50–60 hours a week), but his full time job as well, was overwhelmed by more work than one person could possibly handle, and ended up being fired for not keeping his job duties in accordance to the policy of the workplace.


He was my supervisor, he made my life miserable because he was a miserable little selfish and arrogant s**t who took great pleasure in other people’s misfortunes. I was dealing with stressful family issues,and this little f**ker failed to notify me when it was important that a message got to me from my wife concerning a relative’s life-threatening surgery. I told the owner of the company to fix the problem with my supervisor.


After 30 days, nothing changed, so I quit the job after notifying the owner that I couldn’t put up with the supervisor’s s**t anymore. And the little f**ker got what he deserved, I often think back about how hard his life must’ve been to do not only my job, but his as well, and it makes me happy to realize that the best way to get revenge on him was to give him all the work he could stand (and then some).

#31

I left him dangling in the wind with no recourse.

I was a contractor for a large IT company. After we wrapped our 18-month project, the original manager moved to a different job, and it was a good move on his part.

His replacement was, however, a real piece of work. He was dismissive of the progress we had made before he took the helm. Moreover, he consistently pushed back and then cancelled meetings. And, without ever meeting with anyone, he declined to hire us back for the next phase of the project.

Instead, he just wanted us to fill him in. So I wrote up the math and statistical analyses I had done. It was only 25 pages, and he never even read it. Instead, he had me stop by to explain it. Ten minutes into a one-hour meeting, he said he didn’t like the approach and dismissed me.

That’s when I found a new job and left ahead of schedule.

A month later, his managers were asking him to explain the math and statistics from phase 1. It was all in my document, which he’d received via email and hard copy from me. For whatever reason, he’d lost all his copies and needed my help.

I declined since he’d already gotten four copies from me. Besides, he had said he didn’t like it anyway. Apparently, his managers weren’t too impressed with that answer.

#32

I had a coworker who had a position similar to mine, we each managed about 7 employees. She didn’t work very hard, and to be honest, wasn’t very knowledgeable, but she was connected (her husband was a high-ranking navy officer, but not at our command). Her people would wait until she was out of the office to come to me for assistance, and she was out a lot. They’d wait because I was better at the job. If she found out about it, she’d blow up on them and me. I’d have them go to our superiors and get written approval to come to me. Management knew what the game was, they also knew she was connected. I’d then help her employee. If/when she found out about it, she come shrieking (literally) into my office to b***h. I always printed out the written approval and I would say a word, I’d just hand it to her and she’d steam off. Had I spoken to her like she spoke to me, I’d have been disciplined. I never called her out on it as I’m not a fan of drama, my superiors didn’t want it either so I just rode it out. I’m not so sure if that’s revenge if malicious compliance, but it was very satisfying. She eventually retired and her replacement was excellent. I didn’t shed a tear.

#33

Company hired me as a contractor, then refused to pay. The next company I worked for, did some business with them, for quite a lot of money. A few weeks in, I went to have drinks with the COO and talked about how that company had stiffed me.

Turns out to be the last straw for the company to switch suppliers. The company that refused to pay me took a very big hit, got in trouble and had to sell itself to a competitor 2 years later.

All I did was tell the COO exactly what happened, so it wasn't actually revenge. But man it felt good!

#34

My former employers owe me $1,300 USD. (Their business failed due to their own incompetence)

Afterwards they had to get jobs of their own. They just dissolved their business and decided not to pay anyone for their final two weeks.

So I reported them to the department of labor and industries. Their paychecks are being garnished by 25% until all of us are paid.

It will take a while, but it feels good.

#35

Re-wrote and re-did several dozen LCPs and routed them for approval after being told to make a unified tool room for the squadron, got everything done, routed, and approved. XO comes down to find out my name to get a NAM routed for me (It took me 3 months to get everything done), I get the paperwork for my NAM ready, start the routing.

Here's where it starts. My supervisor took my paperwork, puts his name on it in place of mine, routes it upstairs. Gets approved. During award quarters, XO and CO have a really disgusted look on their face when they notice that I'm in the back of the formation, and my idiot supervisor and chief are both in the awardee lineup.

XO came by my shop later that day, tells everyone that's not the Chief or the idiot supervisor to get out. We walk out into the hanger bay, and we can hear him, the StgMaj, and the CO all chewing into their asses.

About a month later, the ERB results came out, and the idiot supervisor gets booted out. I had the sick pleasure of handing him his paperwork (was getting ready to renlist myself, so I was in the NC's office to get my stuff done). I loved the last three months he had left, because I'd ask him how it feels to be stabbed in the chest, by the guy he stabbed in the back.