There’s nothing quite like delicious, petty revenge, is there?
I think in my day to day, I do my best to embrace “turn the other cheek” and just flat up write people off, but BOY do I love reading about other people descending to levels of pettiness.
u/q6u8g2 asked Reddit, “People of Reddit what’s your “If I’m going down I’m taking you with me.” Story?” and the good folks of Reddit truly delivered. Here are 20 of the best stories.
1. Rock Climbers
I was rock climbing and this guy who was my belayer for the day was kindof a dick. Well no surprise, dickwad spends most of his time flirting with a cute girl who is friendly but seriously not into him. He gets chewed out by our lead for not paying attention, which means he continues to not pay attention as he is incapable of picking up cues. Well, there’s me, twenty five feet or so off the ground with my rope slack and feeling my hands slipping because I’m just running out of steam. Now having told him three times to pick up the slack, I look down and see he’s completely ignoring me to chat with this girl again.
My mistake was looking down, as I reach to re-adjust my weakening hold and slip. The rope shoots out of his limp, sausage like fingers and I began to fall (I know a properly tied off rope shouldn’t do that. I don’t know how he fucked that up too). My only thought is if I’m going to fall, I’ll damn well land on him. Well I did. I landed straight on his cushy, asshole body. I was barely injured. He was taken to hospital after having 80 odd kilos land on him from two stories up. I never happened to see him at that rock climbing club again.
2. Nice try, start up
I once worked for a startup company, and they missed one of my paychecks. It wasn’t a gigantic deal to me because they were a bit strapped for cash and we had a big release coming soon, and I was decently paid anyway, so I just said “fuck it.”
They then fired me two days before release, making it sound like I had been inadequate despite zero indication from them that I was such before that day.
So I made the proper legal arrangements to recoup my missing paycheck and told them I’d be going to Labor & Industry (I had already filed a complaint) because if they were going to fire me after I worked 70 hours a week for over a month to try and meet their deadline, out of nowhere, I sure as fuck wasn’t going to cut them the slack of an entire paycheck. I got my paycheck, they went out of business because they were corrupt and had been misusing investor funds for years before this unbeknownst to me, and I laughed my way to the bank.
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3. Fear of water
Super simple, but I am notorious in my friend group of having a fear of water. I’m okay in pools since you can (hopefully) see the bottom but even shallow lakes rivers and oceans are a no go for me. Some friends ended up renting a boat and wanted to take it out on the lake and beeeeegged me to come out. I kept telling them no way in hell would I ever willingly go out and sit in the middle of a lake.
Finally I caved because I dunno. They were friends and really wanted me to go. Someone said it could really help me face my fears. Even though I didn’t plan on getting in the water, I’m not going to wear jeans to the sunny “beach” so I left my wallet, keys, and phone in the car. Within 10 minutes of getting to the middle of the lake, buddy who suggested I “face my fears” and I think his brother ask me if I got the time. I shrug and tell them I left my phone back in my car.
They both lunge at me and start throwing me overboard. I latch on for dear life and fight as if the river is lava because to me it essentially is. I eventually realize I’m 100% going over and there is nothing I can do. Except let go of the railing I was gripping onto and instead grab them both as I pulled back and forced all three of us into the water.
Getting back on the boat was easy, it had a little ramp and ladder for climbing in/out and you can bet your ass I was the first climbing back up. The brothers got mad at me because they had their phones in their pockets and I ruined them. But everyone quickly pointed out that they pushed me in the water knowing I hated it and that they deserved it. They argued that they intentionally tried to make sure I didn’t have anything electronic on me but everyone shut them down.
They were allowed back on the boat when they apologized. My friend apologized and I actually did chip in to help him get a new phone later, but his brother swam back to shore and got even more upset and demanded I help him with his new phone since I helped his brother. But he didn’t feel bad or think he did anything wrong so fuck that guy.
4. Nursing
When I worked as a case manager as an MHMR, we had a new department supervisor come in and she was the worst. Every single person but myself and another case manager quit within the month of this woman starting. I really liked my job and it was also my internship site for my master’s degree so I needed to stay employed there.
Since so many people quit, this lady got permission to hire and it soon became obvious that she wanted to get rid of anyone she hadn’t hired and have a department full of people she had personally chosen (surprise surprise, most of her hires were shitty just like her).
On top of being an awful human, she also had very little background in mental health and gave truly awful “supervision” when it came to clients and getting them the services they needed. Since I wasn’t a part of the people she had hired, I knew she would try to get rid of me so I made sure to document document document everything. Any time I staffed a client with her, I would document her advice in that person’s chart as well as the actions I took due to her advice. I also kept a detailed paper trail and would email her questions about policy so that I’d have record of her answers which usually were the opposite of what our policy actually was. She even started walking to my desk to verbally give me answers to the questions I sent via email and I’d have to make up some excuse as to why I needed her answer in an email. Like I would tell her a parent or client had asked and I wanted to be able to give them a verbatim answer. I could tell she hated it.
Anyway, several months later, I staffed a client with her who I believed needed to be hospitalized and wanted to run it by her first as she demanded. The kid was suicidal, homicidal, and impulsive which is a recipe for disaster. She disagreed that this kid needed hospitalization and told me to refer the client to another agency because apparently the client was too high risk for us but didn’t need to be hospitalized? I tried to get her to agree to just calling crisis to assess her but she denied that as well.
I documented what she told me to do and referred out. Well literally a day later, this kid brings a gun to school and gets in a ton of trouble obviously (thankfully he was stopped as soon as he stepped through the metal detectors). Mom is pissed that my agency just referred him out and didn’t get him the help he needed and a day later he plans to shoot up his school. My supervisor’s supervisor is pissed as this is a PR nightmare and comes down on my supervisor but since I was the direct care staff assigned to this client, my supervisor blamed it all on me. I ended up getting fired for my “negligence.” However, the higher up of course carefully went through this kid’s records and saw all of my documentation regarding the awful decisions my supervisor had made which lead the higher up to investigate even more. Basically there was medicaid fraud being committed, this lady was lying about her mileage and being reimbursed way more than she should, and all this other lovely stuff. So she was fired as well. I was asked to come back but fuck that place and its corruption.
5. If you’re at war, you can have a damn beer
When I was stationed in Korea my sergeant threatened to tell command I was drinking underage. Fortunately I had pictures of our squad drinking and he was present so I told I would show them to command if he told on me.
6. Final Marks
When I was in University I did a six month exchange program in Spain. I took 4 classes while I was there and all had an equivalent credit at my university in Canada. I was getting As in all of my classes except one class where I was really struggling and getting a failing grade on an assignment in that class finally broke me. The prof for this class was the worst. It was an intermediate Spanish class and he was marking us like he thought we should all be writing Shakespeare. Not only that but how he told us to complete assignments vs how he marked them would be completely incongruent. He expected us to be doing things that he never taught us and he should not have been expecting in the first place from an intermediate Spanish class. I realized it wasn’t just my problem when the girl from France, whose Spanish was far better than anyone else in the class, started crying one day after she got an assignment back and begging to understand why she was marked so poorly. He just pointed at her assignment like that was the only explanation required and then ignored her after that. There was no way to drop the class or switch into another because of the way it was built into the exchange program so I decided I would start emailing the teacher constantly after he gave us assignments, clarifying every little point, coming back with follow up questions to try and figure out what the hell it was he actually wanted from us, spending way more time on assignments than they deserved. That way if I failed I would have this record showing how hard I was working in the class to bring to administration if I needed to fight it and all the discrepancies between how he provided assignments vs how he marked them.
A couple of days before the final exam teacher evaluation forms came around and I could tell by how long it took all of us to turn them in that I wasn’t the only one in the class unloading on this guy. This was his first semester teaching at the university so if his teacher evaluations didn’t go well he wouldn’t be invited back. If I failed this class then at least that asshole wouldn’t be doing this to someone else next semester.
We get our final marks a week later and I’ve managed to pull a C- out of my ass. Great, just squeaked by. Then with final marks dispersed he’s allowed to see his teacher evaluations. He sent an email to the entire class that night and lost his frigen mind. We’re talking sections with all caps, multiple exclamation marks, telling us how fucking stupid we all are and how we don’t know what we’re talking about. He’s the greatest teacher alive and we’re all just bad students. Complete meltdown. The next morning I found another email, from the university this time, stating that professor asshole is no longer with the university and will not be welcome back again followed by numerous apologies regarding his behaviour. I inquired about our grades in light of what happened but I guess they weren’t that apologetic because they refused to change them. Go figure.
7. She was screwed
Current job, previous manager. I was on a team of 2, and when the lady I worked alongside with quit, they decided not to replace her. I have a young child, who as children so often do, gets sick a lot. Being the only person on my team (and the most important role for our office to function since it is literally the first step in all our processes), I had a very hard time whenever I used my PTO with short notice. I had given my manager multiple ways to fix the issue, but she never would hear any of it. She also was in a remote office so she had 0 clue what I did with my day. She finally sent me a very angry email basically telling me I could not use my PTO for emergencies all the time when my son got sick. I wrote back a long, detailed list of every method I suggested to fix the issue, along with the fact that I was the only person in my position for months, and that our company policy states in bold letters that using PTO because you or your loved one is sick is not only acceptable, but encouraged. My manager responded to my email by stating she would forward my concerns to HR and that I should probably polish up my resume…
But HR was in our office that day. For the first time in 6 months. Great coincidence, right? So I went in, asked if I could speak about an issue concerning my manager, and explained everything as it happened. The HR rep had this look on her face like she was going to murder someone. She asked me to forward the entire email chain to her, which I did. Then she called me back to talk to her. A few people I talked to were aware that the manager and I had issues, and the lead of every team in our office basically told the HR rep that the entire office can’t function without me and that I’ve been doing the work of 3 people for 9 months.
Later that day, my manager sent me a very angry message over email basically saying I was fired and that I was to pack my things immediately for failing to do my job and because I was causing a hostile work environment. I forwarded this to HR rep, and then walked to her office and asked if I should pack my stuff. She looked at me, and in a single, sweet sentence said “Not a chance, she’s royally fucked.” And that’s basically how my manager went from making $80k a year to being fired on a Wednesday with no compensation, no benefits, and no way to collect unemployment.
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8. Group projects
When I was in 8th grade, we had to create a presentation on a book we had just read, including a skit from one of the scenes. Here’s the best part- we were forced to work in groups. Being an introvert, I hate groupwork. What I hate even more is when your group mates don’t do their work. The day we were assigned the project, we decided to divvy up the slides equally. It was a Google Slides, so we could all contribute to the same document. The class ended, and I had already finished one of my slides. One boy only changed the color of the title, and the other two didn’t do anything. Two days later, I had finished all of my slides. Nobody else had done anything. I offered to start the script for the skit since I had finished, and asked for the others to contribute. Nothing. A couple more days passed, I had finished the skit as well, and all of the other slides were still empty. Finally, the night before the assignment was due came. I had hoped that even a title had been added. The slides were still empty. I finally decided to just finish it myself. I was up until about midnight, and the slides were not the best quality. Finally, presentation day comes. Of course, my group mates felt absolutely no remorse for doing no work. It was our turn to present, and my group mates nominated me to present. I finally decided to show them the consequences of their actions. I told them that we were all to present the slides we were supposed to work on. They obviously didn’t know what they were doing and were extremely unprepared. My grade went down, but theirs went down even more.
9. Taken down
In 7th grade my teacher decided to use process drama to teach about the Holocaust. He told us we can hide anywhere in the building and if we successfully evade him looking for us, we will get a bunch of extra credit. Conversely, if we are caught, we will get 5 points for each other classmate we rat out. I hid successfully in the computer class under a spare tv cart that barely fit me.
My soon-to-be-not-friend had chosen poorly in the same room and was easily found. Upon walking out I very clearly remember him yelling, “Wait! Yams is in the corner under the cart!” I can’t remember being so mad at someone. Ratted out for a mere 5 points?! I yelled at him and def overreacted. The lesson being a process drama, that was kind of the point… To experience the fear and potential rage at your neighbors for ratting you out.
10. Nice try, dad
Dad pushed me into the pool but before I fell in I grabbed his arm.
11. Uncle ruined a town
My uncle used to own a hardware store in our shitty little town. He wanted to put up a cover between two buildings that he owned but the town council wouldn’t let him. They never gave any real reason like, “we need to leave the area uncovered because of XYZ building codes.” They just went on a power trip and said, “you’re not gonna do it!”
Eventually due to some other power trips my uncle threatened to move his shop a few towns over. Town council went all, “you’re not gonna do it!” in a “I dare you” way. So my uncle did just that.
If I remember correctly he paid the most in taxes so all the money the town was getting from him disappeared. Most of his employees were in high school and couldn’t drive. When he moved the kids went with him. Since the parents had to drive their kids to their job they decided they would also pick up groceries and other things they needed while they were in the new town. So the cloth shop and grocery store went out out business. Since no one could get what they needed in our small town just about everyone moved.
Now the town is run down and there’s barely anything here. My dad said it used to be a nice little town. Now hardly anyone lives here and everything is falling in. My uncle even warned the council, “if I leave I will take this town with me.” But they didn’t listen.
12. Plumb sick of it
My next door neighbor kept picking my plum tree dry when I would go out of town so I cut it down out of frustration. No plum jelly for anyone.
13. Hand holding
When I was a little kid, my mom made me hold her hand to cross the street out of Publix (ya know, as parents do). She slipped on a wet spot on the street, screamed “cocksucker!”, and yanked me down with her. Then she had some kind of misfired reflex, and slapped her hand over my face to try to cushion my fall (I guess?). At the time, I thought my mom was randomly trying to assault me or smth right in the god damn parking lot.
14. We all got grounded
Growing up my best friend and I got in trouble for cutting up brand new, expensive jeans to make shorts. Her mom was (rightfully) screaming at me, so I said, “what about [her daughter], she asked me to and handed me the scissors?” and got us both grounded so at least we could sit together in her room lol
15. Hospital boss
Had an absolutely terrible boss at a hospital. She had been there for almost 30 years and was almost omnipotent. She was an absolutely horrendous human being in every way shape and form. She liked to pick one person everyday at random that worked with her and pick on them until they cried. She would then fake false feelings about how sorry she was, that she didn’t mean to do it, and so on. Our department ran the Toys for Tots drive at our hospital. She insisted that all toys were kept in her office. It didn’t take me long to figure out she was stealing the toys. I took photographic evidence as well as writing down everything I could in the ensuing months about everything she was doing. I knew at this point she knew that I did not like her and that I had pretty much figured out what she was about so she turned her attention to me and made my life miserable. I finally did quit, however, I made it my mission to take her with me. Everyone in the hospital, including the CEO, we’re somewhat afraid of her and we’re just trying to get her to her 30 years so she could go out naturally. After I quit I sent photos and all of my written documentation to the CEO of the hospital who I had tried to talk about all of this stuff with before I left but could tell he was not listening. I then wrote if she was not dealt with I was going to notify the local news channels about what I knew was going on with her. Needless to say she was forced to retire immediately upon her 30th anniversary, which was a week away.
16. The worst manager
I did customer service for a major cable company as Tier 2 internet support(First native English speaker you spoke to). I worked for a 3rd party company that was contracted by the cable company. The company was terrible, like Walmart terrible. I got written up for hitting the exact minimum quota(intentionally) every month without improving, they promoted people to managers as a “trial” for 3 months then put them back to their previous position(there was no pay change), and I had to quit my part time job that I loved because they couldn’t get the schedule correct.
My new manager was a grade A jerk and was trying to get me fired and so I decided to bring him with me. Shortly after he took over he actually was friendly towards me and actually messaged me on work chat about an escalation call he was on, “the guy is going to kill himself because he didn’t have internet” and proceeded to joke about the guy killing himself. Now work chat can be configured to save everything locally on your PC and I made sure it was set for that to cover my butt.
I decided to quit about a month after this incident, sent my resignation to HR and CC’d him, attached was also the transcript of the conversation, and I cited that as one of the biggest contributors to my leaving. He was let go.
17. Oops.
Egged an Ex’s house when I was young, only one guy got caught, pulled the entire 8 of us down. That one sucked.
18. Lawsuit waiting to happen
I worked as a mechanic and tow truck driver for this man, I had a class A CDL. I could drive any class truck and was a master mechanic, but my specialty was older cars with carburetor. Anyway, he had a contract with a major moving van company. Where people can rent a truck to move themselves. This man would go on a service call where a customer left the lights on, replace the batteries. Charge rental company for new batteries. Take the batteries he took out of van, recharge them and do it over and again. Rentalcompany was paying for new batteries, that were not new. They had been used over and over Saw him once taking new tires off a rental truck that fit his tow truck. When I left, I called rental company and told them.
19. Crazy boss
My boss threatened that if I ran off his favorite worker, that he’d shut the business down. There are a number of vital functions that only I can perform in that office. Nobody else is even close to being trained to do them. He’s allowed me to become too important, this is not an ego thing. I’m looking for a job. When I leave, he’ll have to close down.
20. It all worked out
Not sure if this counts but in high school I played quarterback and started my freshman and sophomore year (junior varsity). When I moved up to varsity my junior year I was a back up which is fine but I didn’t see eye to eye with our new coach. He said he’d give me playing time but one day pulled me into his office and said he wouldn’t be doing that. He gave me an ultimatum either I go down to jv again and be their quarterback or I don’t play and stay on the bench. I said cool ok I quit. He was like um what??? His assistant coaches were begging me to stay and said they’d start me at any position I wanted but at that time I enjoyed running track more anyways. Now here’s where the “taking you down with me” comes into play. The next game or so the starting qb gets hurt and guess who has no back up qb? he was subbing randoms in and was so desperate my friends told me he considered looking for a qb in the stands, needless to say they lost that game badly. He apologized to me years later but yeah I really enjoyed that.