At some point or another in our lives, we are all going to desire sweet revenge. In many cases, it has to do with somebody wronging us and we want to set matters straight.
Many people feel that revenge is a way of getting universal justice and it can make you feel better if you are able to accomplish it. In other cases, however, you may find that revenge is nothing more than a problem because it can backfire.
Sometimes, the best thing to do is to live vicariously through the revenge others have been able to achieve. We have a few stories below that allow you to see it in an awesome way.
1. Knock Down Our Mailbox? I’ll Teach You A Lesson
My parents live out on a lake just outside of town. Their property extends to both sides of the road, and their mailbox is on the opposite side of the lake and the house.
Over the 4 years they had lived at the property, a black SUV has knocked down their mailbox 6 times (they catch the vehicle on the security camera on the gate but get no identifying info).
My dad would report it every time, but not much could be done. It was knocked over by an intoxicated driver once as well, but he crashed a bit further down the road so that was the only time that my dad got reimbursed for the damage.
Well, after the seventh time it was knocked down, he had had enough.
The land on the opposite side of the road dropped off steeply immediately after the shoulder, so my dad contracted some guys to build out a small gravel pad (15 feet long and 3 feet deep or so) so he could set his mailbox back from the road. My dad told me that if someone tried to knock it down now, they would regret it.
Well, about 4 months after the work was complete, my parents were awoken by a loud crash in the middle of the night. They called the police and went out to investigate. They found the black SUV off the road, having crashed into a very large tree.
The guy was taken to the hospital and was charged with a DUI from the crash as well as possession of illegal substances they found in the vehicle.
By building out the gravel pad and moving the mailbox back by just a few feet, it still appeared that the mailbox was on the shoulder, and still seemed like an easy target. In reality, those 3 feet made all the difference. Because the pad was so short, the vandal left the roadway before the pad started, and when the right side of his vehicle went off the shoulder, his car went veering down the steep incline.
The dude was pretty badly injured, and I know my dad felt bad about this. I think this was much more effective than he had in his mind. My dad isn’t the kind of person to intentionally injure someone, so I am sure he was hoping to just cause damage to a vehicle and teach a lesson that way.”
2. Our Neighbor Complained About The Noise, So We Installed Hardwood Floors
“Sometime around 2002, my wife and I moved into an 1100 square foot condominium with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. We were very fortunate to get this condominium as a second owner and we paid only $114,000 (6 grand more than the original price). Our condo was on the third floor and ALL rooms were carpeted throughout the condo with only one small 4’X4′ square of linoleum inside the front door to the outside breezeway (This will become important later.
And yes, even the bathrooms, kitchen, and dining room were carpeted.) The front door opened to a large open space with vaulted ceilings with the great room to the left and the dining room and kitchen to the right. The Kitchen area was separated from the great room with a wall that had a cutout over the kitchen sink and we had a long hallway directly going out of the great room to all the bedrooms and straight in front of the front door.
We got to know some of the neighbors and got along well with most of them. The neighbors directly below us were a young couple that was attending University and was nice and cordial with us. Shortly after they graduated, they rented out their condo to her brother and his college friends. The brother was a decent guy and we mostly had no problems except for one of his birthdays where their music and boisterous conversations and happy birthdays!!!
etc. kept us up until 4:30 am. My wife and I returned the favor by blasting our music the very next morning at 8:00. But we talked a couple of weeks later and all had a laugh about it and never had any real problems after that.
Between 2004 and 2006 we changed all the flooring in the kitchen and dining room to ceramic tile (Including the area in front of the front door) to avoid having to pay for carpet cleaning in the dining or kitchen area due to spills or our young daughter throwing food on the floor from her high chair.
In 2007 our cordial neighbors sold their condo to an older newlywed couple (late 20s to early 30s). Now if anyone has lived in between a first and a third-floor condo or apartment you will know that it is the WORST place to be if you expect silence. With kids or music, you will always have some noise that filters through the floor or ceiling.
I don’t know WHAT they were thinking or expecting when they moved in there. I was blissfully unaware that the condo had been sold until one day about a month later I brought home a powered subwoofer and hooked it up to my home theater sound system (around 6 PM). I promptly put on an action flick with some big explosions and sat down to enjoy the new and improved immersive sound.
After a little bit of gunfire and 2 explosions, I hear the doorbell. I get up and immediately hear the doorbell again. I walk the 5 ft to my front door and open it to see my entitled neighbor (I’ll call her Karen) standing on my doorstep.
Me: ‘Hi. Can I help you?’
Very agitated Karen: ‘My Husband and I are TRYING to enjoy a QUIET and peaceful dinner.
Can you PLEASE turn down whatever show you are watching? We can hear everything that’s going on!’
Me: ‘Oh, uh… sure. Sorry about that!’
She turned around and walked away. I closed the door, turned the subwoofer down a ways and the main volume down a bit, and thought nothing of it. Shortly after the next round of gunfire and explosions, I hear the doorbell and then some rapid-fire knocking at my door.
I paused my movie and then I opened the door to see Karen again.
Me: ‘Uh. Hi. What can I do for you?’
Karen: ‘We can STILL hear everything from your show! You need to turn it down now!’
At this point, I was a little fed up with her crap and decided to call her on it.
Me: ‘You say you can hear everything. Can you give me some of the last dialogue you heard?’
Karen: ‘I DON’T KNOW! I just know you are watching that show called (insert show name here).’ (She was TOTALLY wrong).
Me: ‘No. I am actually watching (insert movie name here) and here are the last 3 lines of dialogue.’ I gave her those lines.
Me: ‘It seems you can’t hear my movie as well as you are claiming.’
Karen (with blazing eyes and red in the face): ‘I DON’T CARE! It’s TOO LOUD! You need to turn it down!’
Me: ‘Actually noise ordinance says I DON’T have to turn it down until 10 PM.’
Karen: (getting huffy) ‘FINE! I guess my husband and I will have to go OUT to eat to get some peace and quiet!’
Me: (In my most cheerful voice and waving) ‘Have a good night!’
I then turned my subwoofer up a little and the main volume back up to its previous level and enjoyed the rest of my movie. (The neighbors did end up going out that night for dinner or whatever).
At our next HOA meeting, Karen stands up and complains long and loud about the noise.
How she can hear kids jumping on the carpeted floor (we had a 4-year-old) and crying (we had a new baby), and hear us walking up and down our hallway and hear our music and movies and tv shows and how the Hispanic neighbors on the first floor play their music on Saturday morning so loud they can’t sleep in and argue so loud they can hear every word, etc. This went on for 6 months.
EVERY TIME she complained the HOA told her ‘If it’s between the hours of 8 am-10 PM, we can do nothing. If it’s after 10 pm and before 8 am, you can call the police.’
Then the HOA would send out a letter by U.S. mail asking everyone to be cognizant of their neighbors and laying out the local city noise ordinance.
I finally stopped attending the HOA meetings after month 3 of the same bull crap. She never failed to visit at least once or twice in the week after these notices and twice she taped them to my door. I also learned during this time that they were members of our church and had actually been assigned to visit us each month (they never did).
Cue the revenge.
Around the 6-7 month mark of her constant complaints and harassment and even a couple of visits from some VERY apologetic police officers after 11 PM at night (they said they could hear NOTHING outside of my condo door), we decided to upgrade our flooring. We knew this would inflame our entitled neighbor, but we didn’t care as we were tired of the constant stream of complaints from them.
We chose to extend the entry tile all the way from the front door, down the long hallway to the master bedroom door and we wanted to tile the bathrooms as well. We also went with a light coffee-colored bamboo hardwood in our great room.
So, demolition first. We tore out the carpet and tack strips and pried the base-molding trim off the walls.
As I’m removing the last of the nails from the walls and subfloor (about noon on a Saturday), wouldn’t you know it? BAM! BAM! BAM! From the front door.
Me: ‘Yes?’
Karen: ‘Can you keep it down? I’m trying to have a Pampered Chef party!’
Me: ‘Sure.’
I promptly finished pulling or driving in nails and then proceeded to smash my hammer all over the subflooring like I was driving LOADS of new nails for the next hour and made sure to turn on my stereo to the local hard rock station and turn it up for the next 4 hours.
(FYI the 1st-floor neighbors were already blaring some GREAT Mariachi music. They did this every Saturday and Sunday as they cleaned their condo from top to bottom.)
We then rented a hardwood floor nailer that, in addition to compressor noise and to LOUDLY driving a nail into the flooring and subfloor, also had to be struck with a large dead blow hammer.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
It took us 2-3 days to install the coffee-colored bamboo hardwood flooring in the great room and we were SURE it was driving Karen absolutely BATTY. We ended up installing an AWESOME tile inlay down the hall, had tile running from the front door to the master bedroom door along the great room side of the divider wall, tile in the dining room, kitchen, and both bathrooms. We got the base molding on (more nail gun and compressor fun) and caulked. The new floors looked amazing and the bonus was, every time a hard shoe (like my daughter’s favorite Sunday shoes she wore EVERYWHERE, EVERY DAY) or high heel (My wife chose to learn how to do everything in 4-6 inch stilettos during this time) struck the floor it was like the impact echoed through our perfect floors.
All this was due to our neighbor complaining. It was also in preparation to sell our condo as we had grown out of it by this time. We sold it within 1 month of listing at $160,000. During closing, the real estate agent for the new owners told us that the floors absolutely sold this place. We also sold at the very top of the real estate boom right before the real estate market crashed.
We later learned from some of our neighbors that within 9 months of our selling our condo the 2nd floor entitled neighbors moved out and sold their condo for $30,000 less than we had (and took about an $8,000 LOSS) and sent a letter of complaint to the HOA stating their condo was unlivable because of the noise from our incredible floors.”
3. You Think We’re Paying For That Bill? Not On My Parents’ Watch
“This didn’t start out as a quest for vengeance.
We just wanted mail delivery to our house. Vengeance came as a by-product, but it was truly delightful nonetheless. This happened back in 1982, for the record.
My folks moved to a very rural area on a gravel road. No one had previously lived here, so it was a battle just getting mail delivery in the first place. My folks went several rounds with the local postmaster.
He was… somewhat enamored with his power and very much a ‘rules to the letter’ kind of guy. Every I must be dotted, every T crossed, and if there’s so much as a semicolon out of place you’ll have to start all over again. He seemed to have made it his mission to make getting mail delivery to a new address as difficult as humanly possible.
Ultimately, my folks managed to fill out the paperwork to his satisfaction and he begrudgingly allowed us to put up a box and receive mail delivery at our new home.
Dad was extremely careful in the placement of our box and making absolutely certain it was the exact height, precise placement from the road, etc. to avoid annoying our local postmaster any more than we already had.
There are (or at least were) very specific rules about rural mailboxes. Dad followed every single one. That first mailbox was perfect.
The man who drove the road grader was as annoyed as the local postmaster, as he now had a new driveway to accommodate. We suspect that’s why he had it out for our mailbox.
After the road grader had demolished three of our mailboxes, Dad got angry.
Previously, he’d used the most basic design, just a post in the ground with a box on top. Now, he was motivated.
Dad got ahold of a nine-foot-long section of metal pipe. It’s four inches in diameter (outer measurement) and has three-quarter-inch thick walls. I have no idea what this was originally intended for. But I know how Dad used it.
He dug a hole five and a half feet deep. He welded an upside-down tripod shape (think open umbrella) to the bottom of the pile and dropped it into the six-foot-wide hole. Each welded on ‘leg’ was about three feet of some kind of rebar and there were five such spokes. He then dropped some huge rocks on top of the tripod shape to hold it in place.
The empty spaces around the huge rocks were filled in with gravel and he dumped sand to fill in the air gaps. Then he filled the rest of the hole with dirt and mounted the mailbox on top of the post.
Three days after Dad installed the new mailbox, we heard the road grader coming down the road. Our house is a quarter-mile from the road, but we heard the loud clang from inside.
We also heard the cursing and swearing from inside. No one went down to look until they heard the road grader drive away. When they did, the box itself was slightly dented on one side, but it was still firmly upright and functional.
Three weeks later, we received a bill from the township for a bent grader blade. It was accompanied by a letter informing us that we had caused damage to city property because our mailbox was installed incorrectly.
It would need to be moved and we were liable for a bill of a couple of thousand dollars worth of repairs.
Here’s where it becomes pro-revenge instead of petty. Recall the fact that the local postmaster was annoyed with us over our battle to get mail delivery? Mom had made a point of each time we re-installed the mailbox, taking photographs down to the post office and having the local postmaster sign off approval of the height, placement, etc. She’d done the same with dad’s super-post and had documented, signed approval of the box the day before the road grader had bent his blade trying to demolish the box.
She submitted copies of the invoice for the grader blade (and the letter stating that the damage was our fault because our mailbox was incorrectly placed) to the post office. She also submitted copies of the official post office approval of the box to the township.
The jerk of a postmaster was also quite prideful and became furious that his authority was being called into question by some podunk township.
As far as he was concerned, the township wasn’t questioning my parents, they were stating that his judgment was wrong.
I don’t know what went down between the postmaster and the township, but we received a second letter from the post office, reiterating their approval of our mailbox. We also got a formal apology from the township and notice that the road grader’s contract had been terminated because he’d lied about damage to city property.
It was worded with a tone that said ‘please don’t sue us because a contracted employee damaged your property.’
For the record, that post Dad installed nearly forty years ago is still standing. We’ve replaced the box on top many times. That post, however, has now wrecked two cars and a truck in addition to that long-ago road grader.”
