When I was a waitress, if a middle aged woman was ever rude to me (they almost always were) I’d happily offer them the senior discount, 65 and above only. It felt so good to see their eyes bulge out of their sockets and their mouths drop open in shock.

1

I’m staying at a really nice hotel this evening while in town on business, and stopped by the bar in the lobby to get a glass of ice to take to my room.

The bartender was in the middle of making a complicated drink, so I stood there and waited until he was done. Meanwhile, an obvious tourist wearing crocs and a fannypack sidles up to the bar and beckons the bartender while he’s muddling tarragon and orange zest or something, “I need a glass of water.” He calmly stated that he will be with her in a minute, to which the response was an exasperated sigh. When he was done, he asked me how he could help (I was there first, after all), which elicited another sigh. I thanked him and headed for the elevators. Just when the doors were closing, a thick hand pried them open and in walks fannypack.

Here’s the petty part: as I mentioned, this is a nice hotel. So the elevators require your room key card to be scanned each time a floor’s button is pressed, but the RFID scanner is only on one side – my side. She pressed 5, but it wouldn’t take because she hadn’t scanned her room key. She insistently pressed 5, muttering something about the shitty button not working, while I kept silent. The doors opened on my floor and I stepped out, and the last thing I heard was the elevator say, “going down” followed by, “sonofab*tch!!!”

2

So this happened when I was about 6 years old.

My mum would sometime put a small box of raisins in with my lunch. We weren’t that well off and a little box of raisins was a treat to me.

Well they kept disappearing and I knew they had been there and I would be looking forward to eating them at recess.

I informed the teacher and found out that a lot of lunch food was going missing.

Next assembly the principal said that whom ever was stealing the food had better stop as it was a serious offense, but that if anyone was truly hungry to go see her and she would not punish them for the previous thefts and that she would get them something to eat. She really meant it as well.

So it continues and it was always the best stuff in the lunchboxes that went missing.

My mum had had enough of this by now and decided to punish the culprit herself.

Next day she says don’t eat your raisins if they don’t go missing and she substituted the raisins with our pet rabbits poo.

Well they go missing and the teacher found a pile of vomited rabbit poo in the cloakroom.

Never found out who was stealing my raisins but it never happened again.

3

So I live in an apartment building that has a shared laundry in the basement. There are 10 washers and 10 dryers. I had a single load of laundry to do before a flight tomorrow morning. So I headed downstairs with my basket.

Two machines are running when I get down there. There’s also a single couple taking up EIGHT washers to sort their laundry.

I asked politely if they could divide one of them up into 1/7ths and put it in with their others so I can use a machine. They decline (apparently they have a system…) and tell me to wait however long it takes for the next person to claim their stuff to get the next machine.

At this point, I realize it’s time to get petty.

I wait until they leave and then go hit the pause button on all of their machines. I need to stall. Then I wait for the next washer to free up. I transfer this innocent bystander’s ratty old towels immediately, pay for their dryer and leave a note to which dryer it’s in. Then I start my washer, and I hit “run” on my machine. I wait a few more minutes and then resume all of their washers.

They come back down in the 40mins it takes to run and is mildly confused by why their machines are taking longer than usual. They suspect no foul play. By this point, my washer is finishing up, so I grab a laundry cart and empty it out. I then proceed to take my laundry and divide it into 8 different dryers (like 2 shirts and a couple socks per dryer lol) and set them all running, one by one, as they watch in bitter disbelief.

And then I settle down in a chair to watch my $12.50 of petty revenge spin.

4

My boss is an inept, whiny, pusillanimous twatwaffle. Because he’s a brown-noser with his superiors, it is of course most important that he be a condescending jackass to his department staff. He makes small problems big, and big problems become major issues. He makes my (utterly amazing) supervisor cry. He makes snide remarks about how he doesn’t have to be so generous with our compensation (which, due to company structure, actually has little to do with him). He is a Class A A**hole.

Being that he is my boss, I am unable to tell him precisely how useless and pathetic I find his existence to be. My ire must be expressed in pettier ways.

Once a week there is a specific report I run, make 15 pretty copies of, and provide for him to present in a staff meeting with his superiors. Knowing his constant fear of offending or disturbing the executives in any way, today I printed 14 lovely color copies of the report, and one black-and-white report from the printer that has a wonky roller, so the print is kind of smudgy. Oops, the color ink must have run out!

I know there is no way he will present a slightly blurry, black-and-white report to anyone in the room – he’ll distribute the pretty color ones, and keep the ugly one for himself. I took care to further smudge some of the ink so he can’t read the smaller figures, too.

Have fun in staff, a**hole.

5

Some backstory: I’m the only female in an office full of men, and we have a bit of a weird situation with technically 4 different companies operating out of the same space. Anyway, it is up to myself and to one other guy to answer the phones. He’s somewhat new but it has been explained to him multiple times that this is part of his job when it’s clear (due to area code or company name) that it is for the company he works for. I’m making an assumption here but he’s not happy about it and me thinks he has figured that since I’m the only girl, I should be the defacto receptionist for the entire office. It is a bit of a boys club and gender stereotypes sometimes play out. For what it’s worth, I’ve also had a few conversations with him to PLEASE answer the phones when I’m out of the office or when I’m on another line, but he just won’t do it. It’s infuriating. He just lets it go to voicemail even though there are like 5 people here working away. So not only does it ring 6 times, annoying everyone, that client or colleague that was calling got shuffled to voicemail during business hours.

So, we have one general voicemail message that I have to record for when no one answers the phone that lists the folks in the office and an extension to get directed to that person’s individual voicemail. At the end, I include a “for all general inquiries, please dial 107”, which is my mailbox extension. Well, today I changed this general inquiries extension to his mailbox. So now, every time his lazy, entitled ass doesn’t answer the phone, the likelihood of him getting a voicemail has gone way up. TAKE THAT!

6

I am a student at Uni and today was laundry day for me. I’d finished the wash cycle and had begun the dry cycle and headed back to my room. We are able to monitor the wash/dry cycles from our student link, and I was doing just that. Now the (shitty) way the dryers work is that if you open the dryer door before the cycle has completed, it will automatically terminate the cycle. I’d been doing some work and looked at the tab where I can monitor the dryer and noticed the cycle had ended about 5 minutes ago, which I thought was strange because it had only gone on for about 25 minutes total and it usually takes about 50 minutes. I go down to the laundry room and see my clothes in a wet heap on the floor. Some a*hole had decided they didn’t want to wait for another dryer to become available and took it upon themselves to dump all my shit on the floor so that they could dry their clothes. Luckily for me, as I mentioned, this had only happened about 5 minutes ago, so their clothes were still just beginning the cycle and still very wet (wetter than mine.)

I took their clothes out, the same as they did to me, only I dumped them all behind the washers where it is very dirty and dusty and probably hasn’t been cleaned in years. (almost put them behind the dryer but then I thought better because fire) I took my clothes to the laundromat across the street to make sure the other person couldn’t somehow escalate things and am now beaming with satisfaction over imagining them at first having no idea where their clothes are and then finding them in a difficult to reach area covered in dust and filth.

7

A long time ago when one of my kids was in elementary school, I volunteered to chaperone the fourth-grade end-of-school outing to a pool. The kids were nine or ten years old. My job was to sit in a chair and make sure no one got out of hand. I was seated and quiet and therefore invisible to the kids.

A group of four girls set up camp in front of me. At one point, one of the girls left to do something and the other three promptly started talking smack about her. The ringleader grabbed a paper plate and started writing down, “Reasons why we don’t like so-and-so.” They wrote and snickered and had a grand time at the other girl’s expense. Then they tucked the paper plate under a knapsack, linked arms and went off to grab some lunch.

As soon as they left, I snatched the paper plate and buried it deep in a garbage can. When the girls returned, they noticed the plate was gone. Oh, my God! Where did it go?? They started to panic. They asked some other kids if they had seen it. No. They tore the place apart looking for it. Never did find it.

Eventually, the party ended and we packed up to leave. I don’t know if any lessons were learned but I certainly enjoyed watching those little girls squirm for a little while.

8

I was nearing the end of my shift at [fast food sandwich store], when this group of 3 people comes in and hangs out around the cash register, not ordering anything when I ask them. They’re acting a little suspicious, so as I watched them as I was wiping down the counters, and I catch one of them steal maybe $2 or $3 from the tip jar and start giggling about it. I’m not very confrontational, and would probably pay $3 just to avoid having to accuse them of stealing (they seemed like the type that would flip out at me for that), so I decided to just let it go instead. In the future, I’d probably ask anyone I caught stealing to just leave, however. Anyway, after loitering for a few more minutes, they decided that they were finally going to order, and I made them a normal sandwich, at least until they asked for banana peppers. At the store I work at, all of our vegetables come already prepared and in a bag, and for some reason, the banana peppers always have a fair number of slices that are nothing but the stem and a speck of fruit around that. Normally when I grab a slice that’s 90% stem, I throw it away, but this time I decided to load them up with stem pieces. Maybe 6 or 7 stems for the 10 slices of banana peppers in total. They must not have noticed, because the stem pieces look a bit different, and are really nasty when you bite into one because they’re all hard.

Right after that, their card kept declining, and rather than paying with cash instead, they got all annoyed at me, claiming that the card swiper must not be working (it was, and had been the whole day). They didn’t pay with cash for about 5 minutes, all the while they were blaming me for their card declining, which eliminated any remaining trace of me feeling bad about it. This was probably the pettiest thing I’ve ever done.

9

First off, I’m handicapped. My mom and I stop by a busy grocery store, where the handicap spots are usually always full. Miraculously, a spot opens up right then. Just as we’re turning in to park, some lady decides that the best place to leave her shopping cart is smack dab in the middle of said spot. I look around to see that there are TWO cart pens nearby. My mom honks at the lady and she turns to look at me. I point at the cart, but she just keeps walking and gets into her car.

So her car is almost directly behind us and the way we’re situated blocks her from getting out of her spot. Instead of pulling up to the cart, removing it, and finishing parking, my mom slowly disembarks and returns the cart to its respective spot. At this point I can see the lady getting impatient. She even tries to back up and squeeze through to no avail. When my mom gets back in, I remind her of her unanswered texts. We get some laughs in and we finally decide to pull up into the spot and let her through, but just as we move, a nearby car starts to backup, blocking her in yet again. From her sideview mirror, I can see that she’s fuming at this point. When she finally gets out, she speeds out of the parking lot.

Maybe next time she’ll think twice about leaving stray carts.

10

At the lunch period at my school (which allows us to go off campus) I usually go to a nearby gas station with a few friends to get food. Usually, I get a simple burger and a soda for the afternoon. Now at this place, I am pretty well known to the employees and am a good friend with a few of them. I saw that they had a new hire and decided to take my stuff to his isle. After a few minutes of waiting, he was being trained by the manager. I had finally made it to the register. Now on this day, I decided I felt like having a cookie with my lunch. ‘No problem’ I thought ‘I’ve got some extra money’. So I put it down and this little a**hole thought that it was a good idea to scoff and make a comment. I can’t remember exactly what he had said, but it was along the lines of “Do you really think you need that?” And tried to put it away. Now I’m not fat, but I am overweight, but I decided that I had a little shot to fire back.

The manager working with him, let’s call him Jay, had heard what he said and was staring daggers already into the back of his head. So I simply looked up to him and said: “Hey Jay, how’s the wife?” I saw this kid’s eyes shoot open like dinner plates as he puts it back on the counter. “ Her backs’ still hurting.” I walked out of there knowing that that little sucker was doomed. He’s now tried it while working with 2 others, as I stated I know everyone there, and I’ve gotten him in trouble both times.

11

So I’m in a student organization, and one of my jobs is to check the citations on the articles that the organization publishes. Sometimes the articles come from the members of the organization.

I’m checking an article from one of our members. And it’s shit. He would cite to entire books (instead of the actually relevant parts), would include “[ADD A CITATION FOR THIS SOURCE]”, etc. This wouldn’t be a problem if I wasn’t required to basically do this douche’s research for him—I had to read the books and find the relevant information, I had to find sources myself for all of the “add source here” cites. I know him personally, and he’s a total douchebag who is constantly complaining about the quality of the work of other people. He knew exactly what he was doing when he did this.

This a**hole comes through and makes a big bowl of oatmeal every morning in the microwave. He usually leaves the room while it’s cooking. So while he wasn’t looking, I took his oatmeal out of the microwave, added more water, and put it back in. Enjoy your oatmeal soup, d*ck.

12

So I’m driving down the lane looking for a spot, and up ahead this Guy Fieri lookalike removed his groceries from his cart, pushed the cart kind of, sort of in the general direction of the corral, proceeded to his car, and then drove away. Well, considering he wasn’t really parked anywhere near the corral, the cart went astray, until a huge gust of wind changed it’s direction and put it straight on the path into my car.

Luckily, I’m far enough away that I can actually get out of my car and stop it before it crashes straight into me, so I put my car in park and I go to do that.

Just as I start walking towards it, the car behind me started blowing their horn at me. As far as I can tell, she can see what I am doing. I turn around, point to the cart, so she blew her horn again and gave me the finger.

Okay then. There’s an open parking space immediately to my left. I ignore the cart, get back into my car and pull it into the parking space. Car behind me then floors it and drives straight into the grocery cart.

Didn’t even try to hide my smirk as I walked past her assessing the damage.

13

For the last 3 years I’ve worked for a control freak. He micro-manages to the smallest detail. (I spent a weekend trying to find 200 yellow notebooks because he insisted that they all be in company colors.) We always struggled to get the slightest headway on anything because he had to create a complicated process to manage the simplest tasks. One of them was our sick line. We were on a deadline to report absenteeism for our region. It’s a call center with 3000+ employees all over our state. He insisted in maintaining control over the Google voice account and personally reviewing each message. It took hours. This usually meant I spent my lunch eating at my desk creating a report while most of the office was out at a restaurant. We argued about it, but he wouldn’t budge.

He announced that he found a new job, and I ended up moving up into his position and he had to train me for a month. One of the first things I did was assign the sick line to a small group of workers who would do the report as they listened to the calls.

On the night before his first day at his new job, I un-snoozed the calls to the line, so they rang his personal cell phone, as he set it up. Instead of employees getting a voicemail to leave a message for their manager.. they woke up a very grumpy man who had to be at his first day of work at 6:00am. I got a really nasty email from him. I smiled like a criminal all day long.

14

I work at a rental car place and interact with all kinds of customers, mostly ones looking for a deal and constantly asking for discounts. You signed up for the $9.99/day special and want a discount on top? NO. This particular couple would not let it go. After telling them there are no additional discounts for the millionth time, we finally went outside to do the vehicle inspection and get them the hell out of there. Of course, they are already upset this is going to cost them about $50 bucks (and they already got a free upgrade to a full-size car instead of a compact) so they were pointing out every little blemish. The husband then yells that the car is filthy on the outside and for the money, they’re paying, it should be spotless. I offer to wash it for them again to which they huff and agree. They continue to complain about how dirty it is when there is literally just a few spots of dirt by the wheel well, and I remind them that I have already offered to re-wash it for them. I take the car around back, soap it down, rinse it and pull it around front, dripping and shiny. I then rip a huge fart in the car, shut the door, hand them the keys with a smile on my face and apologize for the inconvenience. Then thank them again for the business and bid them farewell on their nice, long road trip with my fart.

15

One time a guy who sat next to me in class called me a bitch and I’d heard him complaining about his white Nikes getting scuffed so I dropped my pen and when I bent down to pick it up I scribbled on his shoe.

16

Driving down a major highway, during stop and go (long weekend) traffic. It’s brutal. As we’re puttering along (in the far left lane), we see this asshole in an SUV (AinSUV) tailing another car and the driver is yelling and honking (for no apparent reason). The only thing we figure he’s pissed about is that the guy has left a reasonable (for this kind of traffic) space between him and the next car. I don’t know why AinSUV thinks his drive is going to be 10x faster if the guy moves up a couple meters – but this small gap is enraging him. We watch in disbelief and end up passing them. Then. The AinSUV ends up behind us. We know he’s going to be a douche, so we move over a lane. He follows us – and ends up berating us in the same way. Tailing us (like the closest I’ve ever been tailed), yelling and honking at us. Honestly – I live in a major metropolitan area, and I’ve never seen such aggressive behavior on the road. Anyway – eventually this guy passes us. But what moron, AinSUV failed to think of, was that he was driving a COMPANY CAR, with full name and website. Obviously, I took a couple pictures of the license plate and the company info and emailed them to complain about AinSUV; you know, “I would want to know if I were in your position; this is how your brand is getting represented, blah blah”. The company owner emailed me back, apologizing for AinSUV and told me it would be ‘dealt’ with. I don’t know if he was fired, but in my petty revenge fantasy, he certainly was.

17