'She failed them all... they couldn't do a thing about it': 20+ Expert-level petty revenge stories

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jan 26, 2024 5:00 PM EST

Sometimes you get back at someone in such a beautifully righteous way that you never forget it. Maybe you think of the perfect retort to someone's jab at you, and it gets a huge laugh. Or maybe, like these people, you come up with an utterly perfect solution to your problems. 

U/trexradar87 was curious what people's "best/funniest personal example of petty revenge" was, and the answers are inspiring. Several people had to deal with lunchtime thieves who ate their food, and had some genius methods to get back at them.

 There's a great story (see #5) about a dude who acted totally useless in the workplace, yet his coworker managed to get him back in the best possible way. It just goes to show that cheating your way to the top rarely works, even when you think you've gotten away with it. I bet the coworker also learned that people will always remember how you made them feel. The desire to get back at someone can last for years. None of that guy's coworkers will ever forget how he used their talents while doing almost none of his own work. 

After you've read those tales, check out what happened when a store greeter was caught on camera bossing his coworkers around. 

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  • 01
    Reddit, what's your best/funniest personal example of petty revenge? spartan-44 Kid stole my water bottle. I opened it up and left it inside his backpack. due Pump เ Jasani tenere CAMS OSTAD de Abkk ac.th LENTRES 600 NO. A
    via Noppadon Manadee on Unsplash
  • 02
    Reddit, what's your best/funniest personal example of petty revenge?
    via u/trexradar87
  • 03
    JoeySalamander A guy at work I me off. I placed this Craigslist ad with his phone number. 2 free goats. Hablas espanol. He spent the rest of the day getting calls every 15 minutes or so.
    via u/JoeySalamander
  • 04
    redman2532 Posted this previously.. My Ex cheated with a married man. He now lives with her. He is a POS.. but anyway, I still have login for her DVR. I logged in, erased all her shows, then recorded only the show "Cheaters." Petty, but it makes me laugh. Edit: Additional info. I also set the show to be manually erased and stop recording 3 hours after the show's end time.
    via u/redman2532
  • 05
    dr_tantis_moboggan For a while, I worked as a web designer in a small ad agency serving a very niche industry. Previously, the design team had no creative lead, and were all sort of operating independently across varying clients. We decided to hire a creative director to fill that gap, and I was given the task of sorting through and giving first round interviews to find the person who would later become my supervisor. Two candidates in particular stood out from the rest for very different reason
    via u/dr_tantis_mobogga
  • 06
    around nice guy, and somebody who generally would have been great for the role. The other, let's call him John, had mediocre talent, came across as an insufferable, arrogant but had previous experience working within the niche industry that we serviced. He also had contacts within that industry that could lead to new business. Despite my strong recommendation to not hire John, his relationships in the industry were too compelling to our agency's leadership to pass up, and they hired him.
    via u/dr_tantis_mobogga
  • 07
    It didn't take long before the entire company started to realize John was a huge burden. He had virtually zero experience in anything related to digital design. Design for apps, websites, mobile, etc., were all completely and utterly beyond his grasp, but he used his position of relative power to make decisions on those projects that the entire design team refused to support, most of which came back to bite the company in the later. The design team hated him, because fixing and working around hi
    via u/dr_tantis_mobogga
  • 08
    him, because he'd claim it took him unbelievably exaggerated amounts of time to complete even the most trivial of tasks (ex: 4 days to design a business card template), so they wouldn't even assign him projects anymore. Work that was clearly his responsibility started to rapidly trickle down to the rest of the design team. We'd be working late nights 4 out of 5 days a week, because all of his projects that were in danger of missing deadlines would be re-assigned to us. Meanwhile he'd be the firs
    via u/dr_tantis_mobogga
  • 09
    absolutely, without a doubt, the biggest tool I've ever met. Always right about everything, completely unbending on his idiotic opinions, and completely clueless that literally every person in the building wished he would get hit by a truck. I genuinely tried to work with him for about a year, until I decided that the job had become intolerable because of him, and wasn't going to change any time soon, so I turned in my two week notice. About a month after I left, I heard that he had been let go
    via u/dr_tantis_mobogga
  • 10
    that, I noticed that he had changed his LinkedIn status to show that he was working for a new agency I had never heard of, also servicing that same niche industry. I looked them up, and quickly figured out that he had started his own agency... a primarily digital agency... when he had NO experience in digital or interactive design, and had literally up every digital/interactive project he'd ever been on (I know, because most of them were reassigned to me when he proved incapable of doing them hi
    via u/dr_tantis_mobogga
  • 11
    found literally project after project of my work. He was using my work from the ad agency as examples of the work his agency could produce. I briefly considered contacting him and requesting he remove my work from his portfolio for ethical reasons. But I could already hear his reply in my head. "As creative lead, all work done by my team is an extension of my creative direction." He'd used similar lines in the past to insert himself into receiving credit on successful projects he'd had zero invo
    via u/dr_tantis_mobogga
  • 12
    So instead I sent an email to one of the partners of the agency we both had worked for, saying something along the lines of "hey, not sure if you've noticed this, but it looks like John is using your company's intellectual property to directly compete against you... if I had to guess, I'd assume his next step would be to make a move at your client list."
    via u/dr_tantis_mobogga
  • 13
    The reply was short and sweet: "Thanks for bringing this to my attention. He'll be hearing from our attorney in the morning." John's website was brought down less than 24 hours later.
    via u/dr_tantis_mobogga
  • 14
    iwmcguy This happened a while back, study hall in 8th grade actually. I always brought two small sandwiches to school so I could have one at lunch and one in study hall since our teacher let us eat in that class. One day as I was about to eat my Sandwich, I get up to use the bathroom. As I walk back in the classroom, I see the kid in front of me eating my sandwich. I was pretty annoyed but nothing serious at this point, so I confront him politely and he denies it completely. I left my sandwich o
    via u/iwmcguy
  • 15
    to make sure it was him, and what do you know, it is. So on the third day, I hatched a plan. I put habanero cheese on my sandwich, and then doused it all in ghost pepper sauce. That was everywhere, but it luckily didn't smell spicy. I get to study hall and my plan works flawlessly. I leave my trap sandwich on my desk and get up to use the restroom. This time I take as long as I can, and end up wandering the halls of the school. I did this because my study hall teacher was about the hall pass, an
    via u/iwmcguy
  • 16
    was allowed to leave the class at a time, even for water. After about ten minutes I come back into the class to be greeted by the sandwich thief crying hysterically with a bright red face waiting for the hall pass. He was in the bathroom for the rest of the day.
    via u/iwmcguy
  • 17
    8 a-dizzle-dizzle My mom had a fantastic one. She was a language teacher at my high school and years after I had graduated, she called me kind of upset because a group of guys was trying to make her look dumb. The class was supposed to write one of those team dialogues in Spanish, and had a week or so to prepare it, then had to perform it in front of the class. When she called for them to do theirs, they said, "But we already did ours, we're not doing it again." She said, "You definitely didn't
    via u/a-dizzle-dizzle
  • 18
    here and I would remember it if you had." They refused to do it, insisting they already performed it and that it was her fault she didn't take notes/scores down. She was feeling puzzled and questioning herself, when one of the good kids came and said, "They didn't do it - they were bragging about making you look stupid and threatened the whole class if they told you anything. But please don't tell them I told you this, I don't want any problems with them." (These were those stereotypical dumb jo
    via u/a-dizzle-dizzle
  • 19
    whatever reason). My mom was really into yoga at the time and got a great idea while meditating. She went in the next day and said, "Boys, I owe you an apology. I found my notes on your presentation and I do remember it, I don't know how I forgot!" She went on to describe all the grammatical mistakes they made, that their dialogue hadn't been as long as required, that they didn't include the necessary vocabulary, etc. All made up.
    via u/a-dizzle-dizzle
  • 20
    She failed them all on the project and they couldn't do a thing about it without admitting they'd made it all up. TL;DR - My mom is awesome.
    via u/a-dizzle-dizzle
  • 21
    spartan-44 Kid stole my water bottle. I opened it up and left it inside his backpack.
    via u/spartan-44
  • 22
    [deleted] Had a Chief Warrant Officer in Iraq throw a bottle of petroleum jelly at my after I got done ranting about something I've long since forgotten. Told me to go "take care of it, and come back when I feel better." During his afternoon siesta I spent an hour covering everything on his desk with it in the most inconspicuous spots (e.g. inside the handle of a coffee mug, underneath the handle of the Keurig pod loader, behind the canister holding Keurig coffee pods, anywhere he could grab som
    via u/[deleted]
  • 23
    not see it without first inspecting it). He came back and proceeded to curse at a rate never witnessed before as he had to continuously wipe all the jelly off his hands every 3 minutes. He caught the jelly on the inside rims of his over-the-ear headphones before he rimmed his ears with it, but the best came after I let him calm down and get back to work.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 24
    Everyone else in the office watched me do it, no one said a thing, but they all had their eyes on me as I waited five minutes before picking up my phone on my desk and slowly dialed the number at his desk. It rings, everyone turns to look at him, he's on the computer, picks up the phone, slaps it to his ear, "Radio Battalion SIMOSONOFABITCH!!!" Turns his head, ear was caked full of petroleum jelly I had dumped all over the ear piece of the phone.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 25
    Master Guns and Major told me these antics and pranks made that deployment. CWO Ryan, if you're reading this: Sorry, not sorry.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 26
    reloadingnow Speeding up a coworker's double click speed and watch him squirm when his normal double clicking speed isn't working.
    via u/reloadingnow
  • 27
    pipenho In seventh grade I used to take home-made lunch to school. We prepared our own salad dressing (lemon juice, salt, oil, etc), and one kid decided it would be good to steal it, and drink it before lunch time. I asked him not to, but he continued to drink it, but started doing so in one gulp so I couldn't stop him. So instead of making a huge deal, I prepared two salad dressings. One that I would actually use on my salad, and another that had all the liquid condiments I could find in my
    via u/pipenho
  • 28
    mom's kitchen. It was really fun to see his face as he drank it. He never stole my salad dressing again. EDIT: to answer some questions, it was a type of vinaigrette. As someone said below it's nice to taste a little when preparing. As you can imagine, it wasn't the first time it had happened, and I had already asked him to stop. By then it was more of a "what are you going to do about it" rather than anything else. He got what he deserved.
    via u/pipenho
  • 29
    DoctorRaulDuke Guy's swerved across two lanes on the highway one day and cut me up. I slammed on the anchors and gave a good indignant blow of my horn. He starts acting like Mr Angry at being called out so starts slamming on his brakes, then speeding up if I try to overtake, flipping me the bird, the whole caboodle.
    via u/DoctorRaulDuke
  • 30
    Seeing the next junction coming up I flash my lights and start beckoning to him in classic 'you want a piece of me?' mime, and mouthing 'come on then'. Then start pointing at the upcoming junction. He obviously believes I actually want to go somewhere quiet and sort it out like.......... men. I swerve angrily into the exit lane and he follows suit. Finally I blow my horn and point at something on the junction then, whilst he's distracted, swerve back out onto the main highway and speed up so I'm
    via u/DoctorRaulDuke
  • 31
    so he can't get back over. He looks over in panic, I smile and blow him a kiss. The junction ends and he's stuck sailing off wherever the junction takes him. It's a 24 mile round trip to get back to here.
    via u/DoctorRaulDuke
  • 32
    Sidekicknicholas I have two with a previous landlord / property management company. I signed a lease on a townhouse while in college that "included high speed internet" ... the setup was basically one router for 14x townhouses (so like 28 people). Needless to say it was and the location of our unit vs. the router made it worse. We made some calls to try and get them to add a router or hardwire us in so we could add our own. No dice. I
    via u/Sidekicknicholas
  • 33
    Eventually I paid to get my own service and added 2x routers in our unit. I changed the SSID to match what the "free" router was, and kept the passwords the same... so to the residents it looked like there was better coverage. After about two weeks I changed one router's password and just disconnected the other. So some residents could use the "free" router, some had a bad password, and some could connect but couldn't reach the outside world. They must have been flooded with calls because within
    via u/Sidekicknicholas
  • 34
    had someone out and added 3x new routers to help with coverage. The other was after a huge snowfall (-24" in 24 hours) .... the property management company hadn't touched the snow in our parking lot for days... after day 3 I called to mention we were sort of trapped and they needed to send trucks / snow blowers / etc to take care of things... the response I got was basically "Sorry, we'll get to it sooner or later".
    via u/Sidekicknicholas
  • 35
    ... side note - years ago if you opened a yahoo email, you could add a second email for recovery without confirming it. I created a new @yahoo email address and used their general @Xpropertymanagement as the alternate email. I had it copy every email to both. I then signed up for alerts for every time there was an ebay listing for "snow plow" "snow blower" "snow shovel" or there was a "sale on X snow removal" gear.... it took a matter of hours before thousands of emails were sent. Ended up crash
    via u/Sidekicknicholas
  • 36
    They responded to all residents with a very nice email explaining they get the frustration, and they're working on it.... so I paused the alerts. 24 hours later, still nothing, alerts back on. Another email, another pause, another day of nothing, repeat. Eventually we got the driveway plowed and life was good.
    via u/Sidekicknicholas
  • 37
    [deleted] I once had a colleague I hated (he was very condescending and really arrogant), so I put an extra Bluetooth receiver in his computer for a computer mouse and kept the mouse in my drawer. I would just open my drawer and it would mess his right up. Kept it going for like 2 months. He was about to murder the world when I thought I better stop.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 38
    [deleted] Back when i was studying engineering, it occurred to me to try and find an app on my iphone for those Panasonic projectors in lecture rooms. So I get the app and it just let me connect to the one in the class without a password or anything. I have a friend who is one of those perpetual pranksters, you can't leave your pc or bag or food/drink unattended when he's around.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 39
    So i beam a picture of him onto the projector, so the lecturer is just talking away and this goofy picture of my mate is on the screen. Lecturer doesn't realise yet, people in the lecture start waking up and giggling a bit. Now i use the pen function and draw a on the picture too. Mate was red in the face and trying to hide. Lecturer finally noticed and says "Michael why is there a picture of you on the screen?". Finally for a fleeting moment I actually wrecked that
    via u/[deleted]
  • 40
    Lil-Night This happened to my SO when he was at university - another comment here reminded me of it. His class were doing presentations in pairs, and he got paired with some girl who didn't bother to bring notes or research information for their presentation. She instead let him do all the work, and any slides she did were made from his notes and research. He complained to his tutor and she told him "Don't worry, leave it to me". And then the day of the presentation comes.
    via u/Lil-Night
  • 41
    They present, and then at the end the tutor asks the girl a question. If I remember correctly the question was something like "Is there any evidence to suggest that some cultures are more prone to mental health problems?". And the girl answered no. The tutor then asked my SO the exact same question, and because he'd actually read the research on the topic, he was able to list of several studies that showed that some cultures are in fact more prone to mental health issues.
    via u/Lil-Night
  • 42
    The girl glared at him the entire time he answered the tutors question. Pretty sure she ended up with a D, while he got an A or B.
    via u/Lil-Night
  • 43
    overbread I had a 6 month school internship at a mobile phone store. The boss was a total that treated his school-interns like full paid workers (even gave me some concerning money- responsibilities). A while after the internship he called to tell me i would have to give a statement at court. He had a problem with some customer and a shipment and he planned to tell the court that he explained me everything concerning
    via u/overbread
  • 44
    shippings precisely. Of course he didn't. And of course i didn't lie infront of the judge. My boss' attorney gave me a look i will never forget when he realized his stupid plans didn't work out. Few weeks later my now ex-boss tried to call me again. I didn't pick up. this guy.
    via u/overbread
  • 45
    porcelain_queen On every email I send, I attach my name, company, position, etc. ALL the time people will respond "Thank you Sara"....but my name is spelled with the "H". I have started to reply to them leaving off a letter of their name. "No problem Rene" "Have a good day Jon". They probably think I am an idiot, but it is worth it to me.
    via u/porcelain_queen
  • 46
    caca_milis_ When I was a kid I got the Sabrina the Teenage Witch "Handbook" - it was full of kiddie experiemtns and stuff and was pretty fun. My older sister had upset or annoyed me about something, so I tried out one of the 'tricks' from the book, you fill a cup with water and some corn kernels, put some tinfoil on top of the cup, the kernels eventually pop and it makes noise against the tinfoil.
    via u/caca_milis_
  • 47
    I put it under her bed, it takes a few days to "work", so I completely forgot about it, until one night I woke up to my two sisters whispering - it had popped in the middle of the night and she thought there was a rat under her bed.
    via u/caca_milis_
  • 48
    AR3Leatherworks Someone in my office would always crush lunches with his gigantic lunch box. Either he ate bricks or lead, I don't know, but I always came to the office fridge and found that my lunch was in pieces. So, after three bouts of this, and numerous notes from myself and other colleagues, I carefully removed his lunch box, emptied the contents (a gigantic sandwich, a chips, some vegetable pieces, and a few other bits), and ran I
    via u/AR3Leatherworks
  • 49
    over them with my car. I carefully packed it back in, and put it back. He kept his lunch in a cooler by his cube from then on.
    via u/AR3Leatherworks
  • 50
    [deleted] When I was a kid my younger brother and I would go for extra Mandarin lessons after school. Then we'd take the bus back. He would never press the bell for the bus to stop because he knew I'd freak out and press the bell rather than miss the stop. So, one day when he was sitting on the bus but in front of me, I made sure to get off the stop before ours. I laughed my off when I saw the bus miss not 1 just our stop but disappear into the distance. Petty? Sure. But I was about 12.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 51
    whereyouatdesmondo We were sitting by a pool once, and a woman stood over my wife and started spraying sunscreen all over herself - and my wife. We asked her nicely to please move and she ignored us and kept spraying. When we left, I took one of her flip flops with me.
    via u/whereyouatdesmondo
  • 52
    Orange_Kid When I was about 13, I was snooping around my older brother's room and found a stack of 20 dollar bills stashed away. He was saving up from his high school job to buy a car. Hundreds of dollars. To 13-year old me it was a fortune, and I figured he wouldn't notice if I stole just one 20 -- still a lot of money to me. So I did.
    via u/Orange_Kid
  • 53
    For years I would remember it every once and a while and feel guilty. The worst part was, when I took the 20, he was also a teenage kid and probably knew exactly how much money was there. He probably knew I took one but let me get away with it because he figured I needed it. That made me feel much worse.
    via u/Orange_Kid
  • 54
    15 years later, I'm hanging around with him on the holidays. I see that he left his wallet on the counter, and he's upstairs. I sneak into his wallet, see there's a few 20s, and I slide an extra one in there. Got him!
    via u/Orange_Kid
  • 55
    0124NN I was in a big meeting (50 managers/supervisors) and two high level guys made fun of my car (Subaru Outback) in their presentation. I had access to their personal info (phone #, address, emails) and sent it to the Subaru sales group, asking for a test drive/quotes/etc. They got spammed pretty well for a while.
    via u/0124NN
  • 56
    sippistar Work related- My co-worker was always complaining and always lazy with his work, yet he got recognition for the simplest thing he would actually do. He also took credit for a full days work that was pretty much all me. I always got ignored. So one day, I came in early and I unplugged his Ethernet jack just barley to the point it looked like it was still plugged into his computer. For 4 hours he couldn't do any work.
    via u/sippistar
  • 57
    Meanwhile, I got my work done, and he couldn't take any credit for it since everyone knew he didn't have Internet access. Half way through the day, he left on break, I plugged it back in and bam, just like this it was working. By then, he couldn't claim my work, and I begun to get noticed more. :)
    via u/sippistar
  • 58
    im_your_boyfriend A guy owed me money, but I wasn't immediately worried because we had done transactions before. This was a transaction via USPS. He started dodging me, ignoring calls and messages and all, but stayed active on Facebook (just ignoring me and deleting my comments and posts). After three months, getting progressively more impatient, I had had enough. I got the notification to approve him as a member of a Facebook group I'm in.
    via u/im_your_boyfriend
  • 59
    I approved him, then made a big post in the group putting him on blast for it, tag and everything. I then added his mom and sister on Facebook and sent them messages. Mind you, the guy is in his thirties. He messaged me about it, and things are getting resolved. If it slips again, however, I'm calling his work. Working for Amazon and committing mail fraud probably don't go well together.
    via u/im_your_boyfriend
  • 60
    [deleted] I used to buy small treat bags of gourmet cookies from a local bakery a few years ago. I would eat maybe one a day, but they were a treat for me. Back then my husband and I had a retail store and a few friends that would hang out at the store (it was kind of a lounge too). Well, my husband and our friends (most were guys) would just help themselves. But they had no self control nor would they even ask for some. I would buy the bag of cookies for me, and they'd be gone. I would try to h
    via u/[deleted]
  • 61
    So I bagged up a bunch of dog treats that the local pet food store had that looked very very close to cookies for people. And were all about the same size as the ones I bought from the bakery. I placed them where all the guys could see them, and waited. Yep, they tried them... asked if they were a bad batch or maybe the bakery missed an ingredient or two in the dough.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 62
    I waited til they tried to eat more than 3 each... then told them they were dog treats. They never touched my cookies again.
    via u/[deleted]

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