When things go wrong in the workplace, these folks didn't get mad, they got even! These workers took to Reddit to share their most satisfying revenge on the job. Who said it all is all work and no play? See how creative these individuals got in the workplace, and how they spiced off their office life. Content has been edited for clarity.
“Pandemonium Breaks Out”
“Every year, I go away for 2 to 3 weeks to work in a different location. One summer when I rotated through, my usual supervisor took some time off. To cover the three weeks, they brought in a person from outside of our group to supervise.
I was working my butt off, doing my work and what should have been the supervisor’s work. We were set up in a temporary office, with no connections to the outside world. We had plenty of work to keep us quite busy though. The supervisor’s day consisted of playing solitaire all day on the computer and then yell for an hour at the end of every day that work wasn’t getting done fast enough.
Two and a half weeks in and I had enough. I deleted the shortcut for solitaire off of her desktop. Pandemonium breaks out, she lost her mind. I had to swear that I did not delete any programs from her computer, which was completely accurate. I watched her over the next few days I was there, do any and everything to get a connection so she could download solitaire. She even tried to get AOL working on the machine so she could dial up and get it.”
Out-Smarting Someone 101
“Me and a few workmates were at an Italian restaurant for a leaving party, when I had to go to the bathroom. Came back and carried on eating my pizza. Turns out one of my colleagues poured the chili oil all over my pizza and that set my mouth on fire, plus I’m not a big fan of heat anyways, so I basically had to write off a slice of pizza. Anyways, the guy that did it found it hilarious, and since he covered his food in the same oil, I figured he’d have oily fingers from the bottle.
So I said to him, ‘You’ve got something in the corner of your eye, Callum.’
His left eye went completely red and didn’t stop watering for about 15 minutes”
“It Was Not My Fault”
“I worked at a successful tech company. I worked with a project manager, Maggie, who mis-read my email and got her dates messed up. She scheduled a meeting for Thursday instead of Friday. When I told her she scheduled on the wrong day, she got mad at me, and emailed all my managers up to my vice president (4 levels of management) to say how much of a trouble maker I was … but it was her own fault for not being able to read, she was just blaming me.
2 years later, I have to work with her again, and I pretend like I’m all happy and friends with her.
2 years after that, I quit and move on to a better company. I get an email saying that Maggie is applying to my new company and asks I could provide a positive reference for her.
I email the recruiter and blast all my 6 years of stories and block her from getting hired.”
Pager War
“My boss paged me on my wedding night (yeah, bad on me for leaving the pager on but in my defense it automatically turned on after charging and I wanted to have a full battery before setting off on my honeymoon trip). He did it as a joke, but it came at an … inappropriate … moment. We had a ‘page only if something’s on fire’ policy, so I had to call in even though I had just gotten married and was about to go on two weeks’ vacation. When he answered, he laughed so hard I just HAD to do something about it.
So when I got back, I programmed the mail servers to call out on their phone lines at 4AM. Every day. His wife got this pager before he did one time and saw a text message something like ‘Call back when your wife’s gone for the day.’
Wife was NOT amused and tore him a new one.
He knew it was me, but he was too stubborn to ask me to call it off. So it kept up for weeks until he finally figured out where the script was running from and used it to page me instead. We had a back-and-forth pager war for a while.”
Stopped Ordering Pizza From Us After This
“I occasionally deliver pizza as a part-time job.
There is a customer that tends to pay with a big bag of change. I don’t mean a bag full of quarters, I mean a bag full of dimes, nickels, and pennies. Since his meal typically costs about $20, the bag usually weighs several pounds. It is a total pain to count out all of the change, so typically drivers will just assume that he has the correct amount, and leave. Usually, he has just enough or maybe a few cents over. I don’t think it is an innocent thing either, as he usually gives the bag of change with a grin. It is such a pain, that most of the drivers know his address by heart, and avoid going to his house if at all possible.
I was having a bad night, and by the luck of the draw got this dude’s house. I decided to test something out. I pulled up to his house, and left the pizza in the car. I rang the doorbell, and when he answered I saw the large bag of change in his hand that I knew would be there. He asked where his pizza was, and I said ‘New policy, sir. Gotta count it out before we can give out the pizza.’ So I sat down on his doorstep and started to count out all of the change. At one point, I even asked if he could turn on his porch light, because I was having a hard time seeing. He did end up sitting there while I counted out the entire bag of change, even though it took about ten minutes. He ended up being about a dollar over, so I started picking up pennies to give him his change back, when he said that I could keep the rest as a tip. When I gave him his pizza, he sheepishly told me sorry and then shut the door.
The whole situation was incredibly awkward, and to my knowledge, he hasn’t ordered pizza from us in a while. Oh well.”
“I Wanted A Petty Victory”
“Used to work with people who were tech illiterate and one woman talked on her personal cell all day, and worked on her own time. So I did all the work. I talked to all the bosses but nothing was going to happen, she was in the ‘in’ crowd. So one day I turned off her middle monitor (we used 3) just so it’d be blank and that’d show her!…11 hour days are rough with someone who could help but was too lazy, I wanted a petty victory.
The next day, I kid you not, four people were at her desk trying to get it to work (she started an HOUR before me). I chuckled and took my seat and got to work because it needed to get done by lunch. I finish our presentation, get it all set up before lunch and they are still at her desk, it’s been 6 hours at this point. I figured there must be something big they are doing, I’ll help.
I walk over and the middle monitor is STILL off and they are talking with our in house IT department and were at the point they replaced the cord and were going to order a NEW monitor. At this point, I asked if it’s turned on, they look at each then at me, ‘Of course it is,’ which is when I reach over and turn on the monitor and boom, it turns on and displays correctly…
I was so disappointed, proud but disappointed.”
“Not My Problem, Right?”
“My current job is not all that great, small company cronies and all that. But what makes it truly crap is the management and ownership attitude. We are treated like throwaway items, not people. We’ve had a fair amount of people let go recently, most of them for cost cutting reasons. When some of these terminated employees pointed out that the holiday season is a bad time for planned reductions, they literally got told ‘not my problem, that’s your problem’.
When we are forced to perform jobs without adequate equipment, funds, parts, etc.
‘Not my problem, make it work.’
‘Lie to the customer if you need to, its your issue, not mine.’
I’m the last surviving member of my department. I’m doing the jobs of three people, just to keep operations running. I’m by no means vital to company survival, but there will be pain if my workshop sits idle.
I’m turning in my final timesheet today, without notice. My new job starts next week. I think its petty revenge, but that’s ok.
Not my problem, right?”
Craiglist Revenge
“I used to be in sales for a startup in London, UK. I had to call up potential business customers day in, day out.
Anyone who has done sales knows that it can be very tedious and is only made worse when someone is rude on the other end of the phone, or hangs up without hearing what you have to say.
Well, I had had a bad day and I called up this phone number and a receptionist answered (we call them gatekeepers in sales because their one job is to defend from sales calls). This lady just didn’t want to hear anything I had to say and she hung up on me.
So I called back a second time, and she hung up on me again as soon as she realized who it was.
And I tried again and, lo and behold, she hung up on me again!
So I was fuming by this point. So, I went onto Craigslist and listed a large 60 inch TV under the category of freebies. I said that unfortunately I needed to get rid of it because I was moving abroad. I then put the receptionist’s number as the contact number! And then I clicked publish and it went live!
So, it was the end of the work day and I went home, leaving my work mobile in my locked drawer at my work desk.
When I turned up at work the next morning, everything seemed fine. However, I suddenly realized that the Craigslist ad was still live. She would have been inundated with calls about the free TV all night long!
Just as I go to check my phone I see that I have about 10 missed calls from the receptionist. Then I get a call again! I pick up and as she starts to talk, I realized quickly it’s the receptionist irately talking so in panic I hung up!
Oh, also I took down Craigslist ad after the call.”
Choco-Thief
“My wife used to keep these little Godiva chocolates that she likes in her desk at work, but started noticing some of them missing and figured it must be someone from the overnight cleaning staff taking them. Fed up with losing her treats, she decided to get revenge on the choco-thief in question by replacing the good chocolate with little squares of chocolate laxatives that look just like real candies. The next morning she saw several of the laxatives gone, and then from that day forward, she was never missing another one of her good chocolates ever again.”
“This Revenge Went On For Years”
“I used to work as a system administrator for a Fortune 500 company. One day as myself and friends were walking to lunch, I opened the door as we were walking out of the stairwell. A senior manager was walking past the door as I opened it. I didn’t hit her with the door but the door opened up in front of her. She was walking and talking on her phone. She pulled the phone away from her ear and tore into me about how I need to watch where I walking. I would have just let it go but she mentioned something about me ‘just being a contractor.’
From that point on, I would randomly change her network password every time her name came up in conversation or anytime I was reminded about me being ‘just a contractor.’ This went on for years. Sometimes every day for weeks at a time. Sometimes once a month. Sometimes I would go months without changing or locking her account.”
Sneaky Revenge
“I’m a consulting engineer and in my line of work, we bill by the hour. It’s similar to how lawyers bill their time.
So, I’ve been working on a number of large projects, and I do my best to track my hours and make sure that they’re accurate. However, I have one boss that I despise. He constantly micromanages the staff, gives them poor to no guidance, and then throws them under the bus because they inevitably mess something up due to his poor management abilities. He never reads anything we send him, and whenever he gets a phone call or email from a client, he goes into a kind of panic attack and starts making people drop everything they’re doing to attend to his little emergencies. I’ve had to drop everything, once, to help him rotate a page on adobe pdf.
For this big project I’m working on with him, he has me come in early every day, before he arrives. And he wants me to leave the office after he does. He also wants me to work weekends as well, about half of which I reluctantly come over. Most of this time is spent re-doing work that we have already done, but that he messed up because he didn’t read the guidelines the client gave us. It’s been going on like this since June, and we’re still not done with this project, yet.
How do I get my revenge? Simple. Any time he asks me to do anything, I charge 1/2 hour of time. That little pdf rotation thing? Yeah, it took me two minutes to go to his office and rotate a pdf for him, but I charged 30. And on all of these really long days where I’m working 10+ hours a day? Yeah, I charge 10.5 hours. I keep on taking little bits of time away from this project. He’s the only person I do this for. Luckily for me, he does not really check the time we charge for any of his jobs.
What purpose does this accomplish? My company does not pay us overtime. However, they do give us staff engineers comp time (think about it as extra time off for more than 40 hours billed per week) if we have to work long weeks. My boss is an associate and he does not get comp time. He has to slave away on all of his miserable weekends without any extra pay, and he has to do it on his own time. Meanwhile, I’ve saved up 5 weeks worth of comp time, and make certain that I will be taking all of that time off within the next year. And yes, this is on top of the 4 weeks of time off that I’ve saved up as well. I can take 9 weeks off next year if I wanted to, and there’s nothing my company can do about it.”
Impatience Gets You Not Where
“At my work, we have these really narrow escalators. Not wide enough for the ‘step to the side so if people want to walk up, they can’ type, they just fit one person across. Big office complex, there’s probably 10 stairways for every one escalator. There’s also many elevators.
So my friend/coworker and I get on on the first floor and a woman hops on behind us and she is visibly mad that we aren’t walking up the escalator. She’s like huffing and puffing, tapping her feet, smacking her hand on the rail, obviously has someplace to go and we’re in her way. Never actually said anything to us, just fumed. My friend and I look at each other and proceed to ride the escalator all the way to the 4th floor, when we really needed to get off on the second floor, but just to anger off that woman we kept riding. There’s plenty of stairs you can storm up.”
Karma Came Back To Play
“I worked as an electrician for a guy that did hotel remodels. He wasn’t a fan of pulling permits or doing work to code. I worked for a couple months for him then got into an argument with another employee of his about a code violation that needed to be addressed but was told to just leave it alone. Keep in mind these are high end hotels, not Motel 7’s. I refused to leave such a blatant fire hazard alone and was promptly fired for insubordination or whatever. I had been paid very low for the job considering my experience and production. So on my way home after getting my last check I made a call to the local building inspector. Needless to say the next day one of my former coworkers called me and said that they had been fined and kicked off the multiple jobs that they were doing.”
“The Manager Agreed That The Guy Asked For It”
“I used to work member service at a place where, you guessed it, you had to be a member to shop. There were two options: basic and plus, and we were constantly rated on our ability to push people to get the more expensive plus membership.
So one guy comes in and walks to where I’m standing behind the counter and asks about joining. I start to point out the two memberships and their different benefits when he cuts me off saying, ‘Listen, I know you gotta do the whole spiel but I’ve got my own pair of eyes for reading and if I have any questions about it, I’ll use them.’
He was talking about the piece of laminated paper we used to visually show the benefits to new members. Of course, his attitude was the usual type we saw, that ‘I pay your salary with this membership fee so stay in your place’ approach.
I shut up and handed him his application, and as he filled it out he began to ask questions about the different memberships. I wasn’t having it after his rudeness, so I didn’t answer at all for a minute or two before he finally looked up and demanded I answer him.
Shrugging, I said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought those were rhetorical questions because you said you wanted to use your own eyes.’
He got a bit red in the face and went right off on me. This is a fairly wide desk I’m standing at and there are actually three other employees of the same position at the desk to keep lines low. He eventually walks away from me because I’m still refusing to answer his question and approaches the only other girl of us four.
‘That bimbo isn’t going to have her job much longer. Now answer my questions!’
‘I’m sorry, sir. You told my coworker you didn’t want her to tell you the spiel and that you had eyes for reading if you had questions. Here’s the information for you to read.’
This went on twice more for each of the other coworkers until he demanded a manager. The manager heard the full story from both sides and then answered the guys questions himself. We didn’t get into trouble and the manager agreed the guy asked for it.”
“I’m Not Normally This Petty But It Was A Slow Afternoon”
“When I delivered pizzas, I went to one house and it was like 3 high schoolers inside. I handed them their pizza and they handed me a big bag of change and the quickly closed the door on me. I figured something was up so I sat in my car and started counting only to find out it was 5 dollars short. I went back up to their door and knocked and rang the doorbell very annoyingly for a couple of minutes. I called them as well and the girl picked up her phone and right as I told her who I was she quickly hung up. Clearly they planned on shorting me to begin with. Now I’m not normally this petty but it was a slow afternoon (like 2 pm on a Tuesday) so I called back to my manager to see if it was busy or if we had any orders, to which, he told me no. So I told him I got shorted by some kids and was going to call the cops. I went back up to the door and yelled I was calling the cops if they don’t come out and got no reply.
So I call the non-emergency line and a cop shows up in around 5 minutes. They go up to the door and start knocking and yelling that typical ‘Police open up’. Almost immediately, 2 of the kids show up and the girl is nowhere to be found. They try to pass the blame on to her and then said that she had just left, so it was just them home now. Cop tells them they have to go inside and find some way to pay for the rest of the pizza, one of the kids comes out with a ten dollar bill and starts walking towards me and right as he gets up to me, the cop says, ‘You know, you should probably give him a tip.’ So the kid just kinda looks at her and then tells me I can keep the rest.
Pretty enjoyable for me, the cop didn’t seem to mind coming out to help either. Maybe those kids learned a lesson, maybe not. All I know is they spent more money than if they had just given me the correct amount without tipping me and now that house and phone number are both banned from ordering pizzas from our store.”
“At One Point Somebody Said ‘I Have A Plan'”
“Northern United States. Snow on the ground. The dead of winter. My coworker at the local shop is a consistent jerk. Said coworker also goes out for frequent smoke breaks and, rather than standing in the cold outside the back door, likes to sit in their car.
So one day, a different co-worker of mine comes into the shop with a cardboard box in their hands and a gigantic grin on their face. Long story short they have purchased two pounds, now think about this, TWO pounds, of glitter. It came in several small clear plastic bags all within the cardboard box they were carrying. I’m sure I’m just remembering it this way, but I swear at one point somebody said, ‘I have a plan.’
Said co-worker with the gigantic grin manages to slip outside into the parking lot during the shift. They come back with an empty box.
Fast forward to lunch time. Said jerk coworker goes out to their car for a smoke. It hasn’t been snowing, but it’s cold enough that you can see your breath. So they getting in their car and as the door closes, the engine comes to life. At my other coworkers insistence, several of us have gathered by the break room window to observe this occasion. What happened next I can only describe as a literally screaming snow globe. The howling that came out of that car, as all of the glitter came shooting out of the dashboard air vents, we’re filled with surprise, panic, denial and eventually anger. For about 3 seconds, the front windshield of their car looked very similar to the effect of stirring metallic paint, only vertical and multicolored.
Years… No exaggeration. Years later, he would come into the shop and from time to time you can see a piece of glitter stuck to their backside, or their hair, their hands, their boots, pretty much anything that would have come in contact with the interior of that car.”