They sometimes say that you should not get mad, you should get even. In other words, get a little revenge every once in a while because you deserve it.
When you consider getting revenge, you likely think through the entire scenario in your head and how it will eventually play out. You might also be a little nervous that the revenge will backfire and it will end up costing you more than you expected.
In the stories of revenge that we have for you below, people were talking about some of the most difficult things they went through. It’s a great way to get a good feeling of revenge for yourself, although you don’t have to go through it personally.
1. Discriminate Against Me And Give Me Bad Grades? Deal With The Principal
“I had a teacher who was unbearable in middle school. Here’s some info you need to know: I have a diagnosed small bladder with a doctor’s note and severe anxiety and asthma that has hospitalized me before.
On the first day of class, I hadn’t once thought that I would have a problem with this teacher. She was obese, wore long skirts that hung down to her ankles, slippers over socks that were over leggings, with a basic short sleeve shirt and a sweater.
I thought this was just an old lady that would spend her time at her desk while the students read from books.
It was some time into the first semester that I asked to go to the bathroom for the first time and was told to wait.
Figuring that Mrs. M had just forgotten about my urgent need to pee, I told her it was an emergency and I needed to go now. She let me go. This continued for a while until I eventually confronted her about the signed doctor’s note that was on file and signed by the principal and vice-principal. She told me all I had to do was raise my hand, and she would let me go.
I did the latter, and she still told me to wait. I raise my hand again 10 minutes later, legs crossed so hard my toes were numb, and she didn’t answer me for a solid five minutes despite having turned away from the board several times and skimming the class as she asked questions.
At some point, I couldn’t hold it anymore, and I just stood and left. I went to the bathroom, and when I knocked on the door for someone to let me back in, she told them to let me stand out there.
I went to the office and told them. They said it was fine, and I could stay with them until the bell rang. When the bell rang, I went back and got my stuff only to see people giggling and going ‘Ooooooh’ as they left. She proceeded to ask me why I just walked out of her class like that, and I told her I had to pee, I couldn’t wait, and there was a doctor’s note on file.
She was understanding, or so it seemed, because the next time I raised my hand and said ‘Bathroom,’ she said ‘No.’ The guidance counselor was not having this and called a meeting with ALL my teachers to be sure they were up to date on this, to which most answered with, ‘Yeah, we know this.
Who doesn’t by now? Who wouldn’t?’ That was never a problem with her anymore.
At some other point in this endeavor with this teacher, she proceeded to give me Fs, which I at first shrugged off as “I guess I forgot to do this one?
Or did I fail it?” Then when they were straight 0s, I confronted her, telling her I did turn these things in, as I had pictures that I had shared with my friends from time to time when they needed answers.
Mrs. M insisted she didn’t have them and said I could look through her Turn Ins. Sure enough, I found all my papers, in a neat stack, at the bottom of the box. How bizarre that the papers that were turned in late and on time were all at the bottom of the box?
She insisted that they must have all been late, and she was taking off points. I didn’t care, as long as I at least passed each semester with a minimum of a D grade.
For some project in her stupid history class, I vividly remember bringing in pencils, colored and not, crayons, sharpies, and a poster.
I brought in everything. Someone did the written part, someone did the typing part, another did the research, and I did the WHOLE poster. There was a lot of writing on the poster, a lot of coloring, and a lot of drawing.
I was the artistic one, and no one else wanted to do it. Even so, someone got sick, and I ended up doing half the research anyways. Despite my telling the teacher that I had anxiety and asthma, she made me present with my group.
I did fine but still had to go to the clinic to use my inhaler. Later, I find that I have a D on the project while everyone else in my group had Bs. I was so tired of her crap, I told my mother, and she took it to the guidance counselor.
Upon being confronted about why I had a D on a one-for-all-graded project, I was quickly pulled aside by Mrs. M to be told she corrected it.
By this point, I had so much anxiety about going to Mrs. M’s classes, that I would, consistently, go to the school’s clinic having an asthma attack from the anxiety and found out later on that I also had high b***d pressure.
The nurse, being my bestest friend for obvious reasons seeing as I saw her at least every 2 days, as we were on block schedule had put two and two together, I was almost in her clinic for my second period of every second day and went to lunch like normal. She calls up my mother and the guidance counselor, and upon them both hearing the reason why they called the principal and vice-principal (my mother had become great friends with everyone in the office by this point).
This teacher had been bullying me so intensely that the thought of going to her class sent me into a panic attack that had, several times, sent me to the hospital in an ambulance. I was so terrified of going to her class that I threw myself down the stairs of the only two-story building in the school.
With my constant absences, despite having to let me do makeup work, she wouldn’t let me, and when she did, she refused to take it, claiming it was late despite being makeup work. (This is important.)
Having been very sick just a week before and having been gone for a week, my mother had gathered my late work and brought it home for me.
I did it while sniffling, sneezing, throwing up, and glued to the toilet. It took me another two days to return it. But for every day that you’re absent, you have two days to return it. I was gone for a week, so I had two weeks.
It was a few days after I had gotten back that the intervention above happened. Upon hearing I still had Mrs. M’s work in my bag, finally finished just the class period before, the principal decided I’m going to go give it to her…
I stop outside of her class, in the middle of a test, and I knock. A student opens the door, and I walk in, following through with the plan. I tell her this is the late work and that I’m still sick and heading home right away.
She takes it, barely looks at it, and says, “This is late. I’m not accepting this.” It was a week and a few days early. At this, she tosses it into the trash. Little did she know…
I look to the door, and through the little window, the principal is standing there, shaking his head, looking mortified, disgusted, and absolutely done with this woman.
He used his key to open the door, walked through the room, and asked the teacher on the other side of the fabric sliding wall to watch her class. He tells Mrs. M he needs to talk to her. I let them walk far ahead of me, and when I made it to the office, I could hear him going into this woman in his office in harsh but calm talking.
I didn’t know I had been switched out of her class until two days later when I returned. That D I had in her class was suddenly, almost magically, an A in the new one.
Every time she ever saw me, she would either quickly walk away, glare at me, or just ignore me altogether.
And when she had a boy in her class (he shares the name of my mother), and she commented on his name and how there was this annoying parent that got her in trouble because their “unintelligent daughter” couldn’t pass the class, he looked at her and said, “A tan-skinned woman about this tall?
Salt and pepper hair? A lot of sass? That’s my aunt.” Her crap-eating grin disappeared, he went to the office, told the staff, and they ripped her a new one AGAIN, and I got to hear it because my cousin called me, and told me to come to the office.
I was dying trying not to laugh. My cousin refused to be switched out of her class, and instead, sat there and did very little work and got straight As. She is too terrified to screw with my family again.
I don’t know what punishment they gave her, or what they said, but she’s terrified of anyone with our last names. Any time she steps out of line in the presence of one of my family members, my mother will be there.
Even if it’s only in her fears.
Now 1) No, she did not get fired. She had and still has tenure. Unfortunately, favoritism, or in this case, hatred, isn’t something I can particularly prove. 2) It’s been 6 years, and she STILL works there.
3) I have a lot of younger cousins, and if anything happens, she’s going to be dealing with my mother.
SIDE NOTE: The textbook I had rented for her class? I had given it back to her as I had to.
It was considered “missing” and there was an obligation over my head for a year until it threatened to hold me back from graduating middle school. When I told the staff who I gave it to, they waived my obligations.
But I still had to deal with them all through high school. You have no idea how hard it is to keep track of a tiny receipt that says this obligation had been waived, had to go searching for it two times just so I could get my yearbook, but I had it ready by high school graduation.
So she did manage to screw me over, even after I was out of her class. Even after I was out of her school.”
2. Officer Or Not, You’re Still Going Down
“This story takes place in Asia.
I was a Private in the military when I was 18, serving as an engineer in charge of infrastructure maintenance, including roads and vehicles. This suited me well since your boy is scrawny as heck and couldn’t really hike a combat load too far.
From time to time, I was rostered to perform admin duties, which meant I had ample time to read up on military protocols, which would be important later on.
Being great with tech stuff, I helped out the other Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) a lot and reaped a lot of good karma.
There was this particular trainee officer, whom we shall also call Jack. Jack was in his late 20s, fresh out of officer school as a regular. Over here, rank matters a crap-ton. Even the senior warrant officers in their 50s would bend the knee for a fresh baby-faced officer, especially a regular.
Now, Jack was seriously buff and had all sorts of expensive gear like Oakleys, and activity trackers (which were darn expensive back in the day). And he loved to show all this off, coming in to work in non-regulation marathon shirts, gym shorts, and the like, while also wearing those darn mirrored Oakleys indoors.
A typical jock, if you will.
So there I was one morning, taking attendance during my admin duties. I had to personally call anyone who wasn’t on-base during roll-call to confirm their status for the day. There was a new addition to the list, an Officer-Trainee Jack who was still not on base.
The conversation went as such:
Me: “Good Morning Jack, this is Private OP calling from so-and-so. Please let me know if you would be on-base today.”
Jack: “What did you call me?”
Me: “Uhm, Jack?”
Jack: “I think you meant Lieutenant Jack, SIR.”
Me: “…So would you be on base today?”
Jack: “Yes, and you’d better show me some respect there, PRIVATE OP, was it?”
Me: “Thank you for confirming your status. Goodbye.” -hangs up-
I was seething. This guy had yet to go for his commissioning ceremony and yet demanded to be called “Sir?” According to protocol, a trainee had only a temporary rank.
By virtue of having to be trained by NCOs of a lower but permanent rank, all temporary rank assignments were officially given zero weight next to a permanent rank. As such, even a goshdarn Private held a ‘higher’ rank than an Officer-Trainee.
Unofficially, most NCOs and enlisted would not dare to offend a soon-to-be Officer, for fear of being condemned to the crapper. But not your boy OP, I took no crap from anyone.
On Jack’s first day, he came in and immediately called a special meeting, ranting about how there was a lack of discipline in the section, and he had already personally witnessed a “goshdarn private” disrespecting him.
To start off, he instituted daily morning drills and exercises. Foot drills. In a service and maintenance unit. Seriously. But as per usual, the other senior NCOs started with the ring-kissing and lauded his ‘initiative’ as a “great idea,” promising to look into this “goshdarn private.”After a quick glance at the duty roster, I was called in by THREE senior NCOs, who furiously demanded to know what happened. Being on good terms with them, they dropped the act once I was in the private briefing room and I related the whole incident to them, including how I said my ‘pleases’ and ‘thank yous’ as per the usual script.
They determined that I technically did no wrong, so they couldn’t punish me. But I was warned to be careful in the future. From then on, I’d make sure my butt was covered every time I bent the rules or anything.
I was by far, the model soldier in the unit for the year as far as anyone knew. Always on time, always properly attired, all procedures followed to the letter. I also took extra pleasure in calling for “Officer-Trainee Jack” over the intercom as and when I was on admin duty.
Still, Jack found many petty ways to screw with me after he shortly received his full rank, such as ordering me to clean his room and running other errands. Knowing I was scrawny as heck, he ordered lots of insane Physical Training (PT) exercises as well.
I had my own petty counters, such as wrapping his (fake!) Oakleys on the drawer lock while cleaning his room, so he would wreck them when he opened it. Making sure his drinks were cold when they got back (with extra spit), filling his bottle with water from the urinal flush, putting ants in his protein powder, etc. Also, always wriggled out of PT by volunteering for admin duties or otherwise.
The worst of his petty revenge plots was that he reported me for theft of equipment. I had packed some decommissioned supplies in my personal bag with permission from the Logistics NCO. Somehow, my bag was ransacked and anonymously reported to the Commanding Officer (CO).
A repeat of the 3-NCO debrief happened again but I KNEW it was Jack. That smug jerk kept loitering outside the room with a crap-eating grin on his face but was sorely disappointed when I was let off. This was when I knew I had to escalate before one of his subsequent plots eventually succeeds.
This is where the petty revenge ends and the pro revenge starts.
Having failed to get me punished, Jack fired the first salvo. He used one of the techniques I would steal in my later revenge plots, which was to socially isolate the target.
Jack suddenly became real generous, buying drinks and snacks for my team as well as the other NCOs. Of course, he excluded me and made it dang clear that anyone who supported me ended up on the same crap-errand duties I did.
Soon, nobody associated with me except the senior NCOs, who knew what was happening but didn’t want to risk their pensions stepping in. Knowing my team was chronically late for duty, he instituted a rule that all enlisted men who were late for roll-call even once in the year would be punished with a 4-hour punishment PT – but he never enforced it as long as my team supported him.
I knew what it meant though and kept up my impeccable punctuality, even at the cost of having to abandon some team members who were running late and needed a lift from me.
Now, being in an engineering unit, almost everyone was a motorhead – spending their downtime tuning their personal vehicles and swapping parts/tips.
Everyone treated their cars better than their wives here. Typically, we turn a blind eye to the personal use of work tools and parts – some NCOs even fill up their tanks with leftover petrol after exercises, which was hugely illegal but “I didn’t see anything.”
Anyway, Jack didn’t own a car, so he loved borrowing NCOs’ personal cars to run errands on-base. The junior NCOs reluctantly complied with handing over their babies’ keys, but were generally okay with it as he often returned with free drinks.
However, Jack loved revving these modded cars and driving them really hard over speedbumps for the thrill of it once out of sight of the section office. Knowing this, but unable to capture video proof (no cameras on-base), I initiated some repainting works on the speedbumps along his favorite route, painting on the fluorescent strips right before his usual morning coffee run.
As expected, Jack smeared that crap by driving some poor NCO’s car hard through the bump, with a sickening scrape. I reported that further repair works were needed due to destroying the paint at 0915H to the maintenance NCO, who quickly connected the dots.
Soon, all the junior NCOs were flooding out to the carpark, discovering the horrendous scratches and scrapes on their undercarriages.
From that day on, all the junior NCOs avoided Jack, while their cars were perpetually “in the workshop” or “borrowed by the wife,” etc. In actual fact, they simply parked the cars at the other end of the base and hitched rides on our trucks in.
Jack got so desperate once that he even asked me for MY car keys. Blank stare and an incredulous “What the heck?” look were all that were needed to convey my message.
Jack showed up one day at work in a freaking Maserati with an admittedly sick-looking low-body kit.
Being motorheads, everyone flocked out to gawk at his car and beg for rides. My work in Revenge Part 1 was about to be undone, I had to come up with a plan to stop him, fast.
I took out some leftover gasoline, leaving them near the carpark.
My intention was to tempt him to steal the gas and report him later. Unfortunately, I should have foreseen that nobody puts cheap gas in a Maserati, but I was a younger, dumber OP back then.
On to Plan B.
I knew that there was an old road in the base that none of the more experienced drivers take, due to its abrupt change in grade. Many fenders have gouged deep marks in the road, so it was almost exclusively for trucks and SUVs.
Jack hasn’t been here long enough to have to use that road, so I grabbed my truck and repaired that section of road, hiding all the gouges.
The next day, I parked my truck across his preferred road, claiming I had to do maintenance.
(There was like only a 2-inch pothole to repair, but whatever.) I redirected him to the alternative road and ‘kindly’ (read: sarcastically) told him that it’s good he drives slow since he was a new driver. That angered him immediately, with him revving the engine and charging down the detour road.
Soon after, a satisfying bang was heard.
I did my repairs leisurely, logged everything, and headed back to the office to watch the show.
Jack was in the maintenance room, holding back tears, begging the senior technicians to fix the car as he admitted to borrowing it from a friend who went on holiday.
I swore this unexpected revelation gave me the biggest smile. The car was still driveable, although the hood, bumper, and body kit were damaged. The senior techs did all they could, but concluded that they simply didn’t have the parts to fix a Maserati – Jack was going to have to take it to a workshop, by which they gave him a number of contacts to third-party workshops who could repair it with cheap parts for below USD 8,000 before his friend gets back and finds out.
Was I going to let him off that easy with an $8,000 bill? Nope. I felt horrible that he was about to screw over a friend who trusted him with his gosh darn Maserati too.
So I wrote an accident report, stating the license plate and the scene of the accident, kindly also recommending that speedbumps be installed, along with slow-down signs on the road.
This triggered an investigation from HQ into just how fast the car was going, as well as the identity of the owner. HQ somehow got a hold of the actual owner’s records and informed him that his car was in an accident on-base.
Jack. was. so. screwed. His friend was livid and insisted on sending his car to an official workshop, which costs I-don’t-even-wanna-know how much higher. Jack started asking around for personal loans from other officers and NCOs while calling banks. I’m not sure how he paid it off or if he ever did, but heck, that was an interesting month where he did not even dare to look at me.
From what I heard, he never drove a personal vehicle again after that accident and the NCOs felt safer bringing their cars back to the section carpark. He would still ask for rides like a jerk though.
By now I had been promoted to Corporal and was in charge of my team – who were still afraid to stand with me when Jack was around.
Jack was still a threat – he had also recovered from Revenge Part 2 and started up again with the petty crap. It was nearing Christmas, and Jack was super sure I was late at least once – since every single member of my team had been so.
Jack decided then was the time to enforce his 4-hour PT exercise rule, sacrificing the whole team to get to me.
I stayed in the office. Jack phoned me to get my butt out and hug the ground. I refused and started printing out my time logs.
Jack busted in angrily, and I dumped the stack of logs right in front of him, showing my perfect attendance. After getting nowhere in insisting that I work out “with the team,” he got the CO and other officers involved as it “looked bad for team morale” to have me just sitting there.
I retorted that it would “look worse if an officer didn’t keep his word and indiscriminately punished people. There would be no incentive to clock in on time, in this case.” CO took my side, which infuriated Jack to no end.
As a compromise, the CO personally took me for a leisurely jog around the compound as part of routine PT instead of a punishment. I took the chance to play up my part as a victim to the CO, listing several incidents in which Jack had tried to get me in trouble.
Having witnessed his outburst earlier, the CO agreed that Jack had a personal vendetta but had few grounds to terminate him. The most he could do was transfer him to another base, which I agreed to immediately.
“But wait, OP,” you ask.
“How is a lateral transfer wrecking his career?” Well, that half of the story happens 6 months later, when the bigwigs decided to shift my team to, you guessed it, Jack’s base.
When we got to the new base, I was shocked to hear how everyone sang Jack’s praises.
Oh, he was the golden child, he had brilliant ideas and was on track to make Captain soon. Jack’s attitude in the new base had changed 180 degrees. He was all friendly, helped out, continued buying drinks, and was never tough.
I guess he learned his lesson back in the old base and now tried his best to win the popularity contest before he screwed people over.
Jack was entirely too happy to see me, hinting that once he made Captain, he would have the power to affect personnel transfers and oversee promotions/demotions.
In fact, he was already acting Captain and would be doing my performance appraisal.
Screw that! I insisted, as was my right, to have another officer do my appraisal. That other lazy officer apparently farmed out the job to Mr. Helpful Jack anyways, who gave me a crap grade – which I protested up the chain of command and got it revised to something more reasonable but not what I expected to get.
Having almost been ruined by Jack, I had to act fast and take him down before he made full Captain.
During one of my admin duties, I dug out Jack’s records and pored through every section religiously. Jack apparently didn’t lie on his records (I called up to check), but the records were entirely unremarkable.
Barely passing out of Officer School, unremarkable testimonial, nothing. His academic records were horrible – he would not be able to secure his current salary in the private sector, for sure, but not a roadblock in the military.
I had zero allies in this new base and was grasping at straws, stalking him to catch him doing something – anything, outside of regulations.
Non-regulation shirts? Probably just a slap on the wrist. Coming in late and leaving early? Ditto. Spending all day working out in the gym instead of working? Nah, the other officers here would likely cover for him given how little work they do too.
Personal indiscretions? Nothing. Dang, he was good. I was stumped.
Then, it came to me. Jack had been driving our military trucks when he wants to do hands-on demonstrations for the enlisted men on how “it should be done,” looking all bad and whatnot.
However, none of the other officers ever drove our trucks, much less stepped out of their air-conditioned office if possible. Why was this so?
OH RIGHT, YOU NEEDED A MILITARY LICENSE OF A DIFFERENT CLASS TO DRIVE A MILITARY TRUCK.
And officers did NOT go through that course by default. Of course, Jack was no different and had no military license in his records. Well, well, well. I volunteered for the publicity team for our next recruitment drive, which included taking a video of one of our trucks being driven.
Being the golden boy and an attention grabber, Jack kindly accepted the nomination of the other officers to star in the video. I acted all butthurt about having to make him look good and all but got the video published in the public domain.
Then I submitted my report that a “routine review” had uncovered how Jack drove military trucks on multiple occasions without a military license. No amount of cover-ups could be done by his buddy officers since the video was published long before they somehow rushed to get him a backdated temporary license.
The issue was repeatedly repressed at each point in the chain, but I would simply report it further up the chain after the deadline to respond expired, as was protocol.
I don’t know much about what happened after that, but Jack never made it as Captain.
The other officers and NCOs also no longer saw any benefit in licking his boots, as he was apparently barred from promotion and had a pay freeze for an unspecified amount of time. Soon after, he resigned and apparently became a pretty crappy freelance artist.
I hope he fails.”
3. Can’t Bother Cleaning Up Your Trash? Oh, You Will Be Whether You Like It Or Not
That’s one way to do it!
“Back in the early 90s, I went on a camping trip with a bunch of friends, and a younger friend of a friend had invited his high school buddies who were a bunch of belligerent jocks.
That night, around the campfire, the jocks are exceedingly intoxicated and fighting each other occasionally and making a heck of a mess. The next morning, my friends and I were up earlier than them and collected all the trash into bags.
When they woke up, we asked them if they’d be willing to take just one bag with them to dispose of it (most of it was cans from the pee water they’d brought). They laughed and said they didn’t give a crap and that they weren’t taking any trash.
While they were distracted, we put all the bags of trash in their trunk, as the little bit of camping stuff they did have was still in their back seat.
Perhaps not the most satisfying revenge, but they probably had quite a stench in the car after a week or so.”
