As sad as it is to admit, the world is full of crappy people. Not evil people or people who are into some sick stuff, just crappy in the sense that Karen and Ken are crappy. You know, the people who complain about everything and just want to make everyone around them as miserable as they are.
The only relief is knowing that these people definitely get what’s coming to them. The most satisfying? When they bark up the wrong tree. These people messed with the bulls and hilariously got the horns.
1. Reigning Champ
“While I was in high school, I was the reigning city fencing champion in both the youth and adult tournaments. My high school decided to do a school-wide fencing unit for Phys. Ed. and the coach they brought in to teach all of the students was my actual coach. During my classes, my coach naturally brought me up to help demonstrate the various moves.
However, for some reason one of my classmates didn’t understand that I wasn’t chosen at random. He started talking about how I looked like I didn’t know what I was doing, and how he could probably completely cream me in a duel. Now, he actually was pretty good for a guy who’d never fenced before, and at the first opportunity, he decided to have a go at me. It was about to go down.
I picked him apart, not giving up a single touch, and used the opportunity to practice my parry and ripostes. I admit I took a bit of sadistic pleasure in thoroughly beating him. Afterward, my coach made a point of congratulating the other guy for doing so well against the city champ, which changed his attitude considerably.”
2. Screw. That.
“When I worked at McDonald’s, I found out we didn’t get paid for closing. We got paid until the store closed, so if it took us an extra hour or two to close, that was unpaid.
I wish I knew what I know now, because that is an open and shut case, but at the time, I was young and dumb.
My first paycheck, I noticed I had a ton of missing hours. So when I asked my boss about it, she told me we only get paid until the store closed… So that night, I walked out when the store closed. They tried to guilt me into staying because ‘the other team members need me.’
Screw. That. I don’t work for free, sorry. Especially when I’m already making minimum wage. No thanks, not gonna happen.”
3. Poolshark
“While I’d never claim I was an expert, I used to be pretty good at pool. My aunt and uncle had a pool table in their basement and my parents, for a variety of reasons, would go over regularly and spend all day there. There was nothing else for me and my brother to do, so we just played pool all day for years. Eventually, we got bored and saw that they had a book on trick shots, so we started doing that for fun.
I never really mastered the tricks, but they made for really good practice in understanding how to get the ball to do what you wanted. So anyway, for my buddy’s 20th birthday, he wanted to go to a pool hall and he invited a ton of people. Then he told me it was going to be a tournament, with drinks for individual games and a 50/50 type of deal for the winner.
He would get half regardless because it was his birthday, and he insisted I attend. We got there, started the first game, and they broke, That would end up being the only shot they got. At the end of it, I just looked at him and said, ‘I told you not to invite me…’
I found out afterward that a bunch of them had never even played pool before and I felt pretty bad, so I took the money and bought everyone drinks with it.”
4. Not the Hyatt
“Okay, so I work for an anime convention. There is an incredible amount of drama and rumors that go around; it is insane.
So this was a couple of years ago, and I happen to be waiting for an elevator with two girls who are talking about my convention’s future. It’s Sunday; it could be a ten- or fifteen-minute wait.
And one of them says, ‘Oh my god, I am soooo glad [convention] is moving back to the Hyatt next year!’
We weren’t. It wasn’t big enough to hold us anymore. And it’s always better to quash rumors before they have a chance to circulate too much. So I politely say, ‘Actually, it’s going to be here again.’
I get these obnoxious, know-it-all looks from both of them. One of them goes, ‘No, it’s not; I heard it from my friend on Security.’
Ohhh, so now it’s a ‘I know someone!’ game. But my boss is the owner of the convention; I have held hotel contracts for the next three years in my hands–I know where it will be held. But I don’t want to pull the ‘I know someone higher up than you’ move; that’s petty.
So instead I say, ‘Why don’t you email in and settle this for us?’
We’ve got the time, so she pulls out her phone, goes to our website, finds the contact page, and starts typing out an email. She hits send.
A few seconds later, my phone beeps. I’ve got a new email!
I open it; it’s clearly from her. It says, ‘[Convention] is moving back to the Hyatt next year, right?’
I type back, ‘No,’ and hit send.
Most satisfying ‘No’ by a long shot.”
5. Bowling for Beers in Baltimore
“We (me, brother and best friend) were in Baltimore for a baseball weekend in 2009 and hanging out at a bar across from Camden Yards. They had a Silver Strike bowling video game.
At our local bar back in Boston. we had one as well. I’m decent at the game but my brother and buddy were amazing at this game; bowling 300 games and whatnot.
So two dudes are playing this game and drinking. We ask them if we can play when they’re done. They ask if we want to play them. We said ‘sure.’ My brother and buddy destroy these guys. Like it wasn’t even close. These dudes said it was a fluke and they wanted a rematch but this time for a round of beers. Again, annihilation city. But they kept wanting to play, to eventually win a game.
No lie, after THIRTEEN ROUNDS OF BEERS they finally gave up. They were great guys. We saw them the next day at the same bar and they walked up to us with beers in hand already and said ‘rematch.’ To this day, we still hang out with them whenever we go to Baltimore. And to this day, they have never won.”
6. She Popped Off
“I was 18 and working at a movie theatre concession stand on an extra busy day. My coworkers made themselves busy doing things that didn’t need to be done like checking toilet paper or organizing candy instead of helping me with a line that wrapped itself around the stand.
One lady got extremely nasty with me because I didn’t butter the middle of her popcorn, she was literally screaming at me for it.
I looked and saw one of my coworkers just watching me and laughing as they pretended to clean the ticket booth window. I logged out of the POS, walked out of the concession stand, slammed the door behind me, told the customer she was being a complete witch and didn’t need more butter, told my coworker to go eff himself and walked out.
I never went back despite them willing to apparently forgive me because this wasn’t my usual behavior.”
7. The New Guy
At work I’m kind of the Google Sheets ‘expert’ and I make lots of tools for different departments to use. Enter ‘new guy’ who needed to collect, aggregate and display a bunch of data. My boss was like, ‘Send Wish a calendar invite so you can tell her what you want and she’ll set it up for you.’
New Guy was having none of that and insisted he was going to do it himself.
Well, a week later, he finally has this crappy sheet that doesn’t have half the information we need, and we have to have the numbers for the State by tomorrow. So my boss asks me to fix it and new guy is like, ‘Yeah, okay, that’s not really possible. This is as good as it’s going to get!’
Two hours later, I send them both a fully functional and automated sheet that does everything we need, and we’ll be able to use it indefinitely, which means next time (and every time) the stupid state report is due, it will already be done.
New Guy was like, ‘I would have added that in if I’d had more time.’”
8. This Guy Is Doing It Right
“A neighbor on my block in Brooklyn challenged me to a pizza bake-off. I recently catered pizza for my daughter’s school and word got around the neighborhood my pizza was pretty darn good.
My first thought was, ‘this guy is a Brooklyn native, my pizza will be shite compared to his!’ But there was something about him bragging that I couldn’t resist the challenge.
He talked up how pizza was in his blood; how his dad ran the pizza place around the corner years ago. I remained silent and let my skills answer for themselves. I got a buddy to let us use one of Baker’s Pride ovens at his restaurant. We even had total strangers try our pizzas.
Every last person chose my pizza over his. I never mentioned to him that I’ve worked in pizza places almost every day for the last 30 years. I never mentioned that when I’m not working at a pizza place, I’m making pizzas at home at least once every two days. I never mentioned that at nine years old I knew that I wanted to be a pizza man. Here I am 45 and getting ready to start my own pizza business.”
9. Chased His Punk-A** Off
“I’m a very unassuming-looking guy. 5’8″, 150 pounds, and not a tattoo to be found. But back in the day, I was pretty athletic and I could hang in games with fringe D1 or semi-pro guys. I can’t emphasize how much I didn’t look like it at all. Anyway, in college, while hanging out in someone’s room, it came up that I played basketball a bit.
Out of nowhere, some dude I didn’t know started running his mouth about how he could destroy me. He just wouldn’t stop talking. I gave him every out until it basically became personally offensive. The other guys were a bit tired of this guy hanging around and they knew I could play, so we all trooped over to the gym, late in the winter, so we could settle things.
Here’s a spoiler alert: I ended up winning 11-0. I’m not sure if we played after that, but I remember it was 11-0 because I made sure to not let the guy score. And I’m a pretty mellow guy—I would have laid off and let him score a couple when it was clear that I was better, but this guy was a real jerk, so I just clamped down on him, start to finish. I blocked a ton of his shots.
He stopped hanging around nearly as much after that, so I was kind of a hero to the rest of the guys. I totally drove that snake out of our nation.”
10. Myth Buster
“I once went to a museum with my sister and her friend, who I hadn’t met before. We got to the Greek art bit and her friend started telling me how she was super into Greek myth, and I thought that was cool, because I was, unbeknownst to her, doing a Master’s in it at the time and also keeping a blog of myth retellings, which was pretty popular, and it was a relief to have something in common with this stranger.
She then got weirdly haughty and told me she probably knew more myths than I did, so, being polite, I didn’t challenge her on it and just asked her to tell me her favorite, so that we could have a conversation about it.
She proceeded to tell me the myth of Daedalus and the minotaur. I asked her how she’d heard of that one, because it’s fairly obscure. She told me she’d read it on a viral blog post on a blog about mythology.
It was my blog.”
11. Never Ever…Promise
“My sister got t-boned by a car, causing a concussion when I was younger. Long story short, we were in court with the judge, who asked the driver if he had ever sped before.
‘No, your honor, I never speed,’ was his reply.
The judge asked him a couple more times if he was sure that he never sped. Ever? The driver was adamant that he never sped and never had before.
A few minutes later, my sister’s lawyer gave the judge some paperwork. She read it, and said to the driver, ‘It seems that you have some past driving violations. Can you tell me what they are for?’
‘………… speeding’
The driver had to pay medical bills for my sister.”
12. “Old Money Sport”
“(For reference, this is clay pigeon shooting, kinda known as trap in the south.)
Well, I’m from a rural area and not exactly super ‘southern’ so when I’d go to other trap fields to practice different conditions, there’s always be a smartass or two try and place a bet with me.
This is definitely an old-money sport with some of the guns going upwards of 5,000 dollars. I had an old BT-100 that we got in a trade for lead shot and some cash on the side, while not cheap, it was still much lower than other people’s guns and people would take that as me being a newbie.
They’d learn pretty quickly though since the team I was on went to the Nationals almost every year from 11 to 18. It was always funny because some would be good sports but others would throw an absolute fit. I saw a guy damage a 10,000 Perazzi because someone else beat him before.
Even funnier part is there was a guy from the county next to us who could blow us out of the water and he always shot with an 870 pump from Walmart.
Edit: Glossary: BT100: Browning trap model 100, famous for its dropout trigger that can be replaced and repaired very quickly. Lead shot: The actual lead balls that are in shotgun shells, we made them from wheel weights. Nationals: I started going when it was in Vandalia, Ohio.
it ;ater changed to Sparta, IL. Imagine about 2 miles of trap ranges in a row. Perazzi: Famous Italian shotgun, good but expensive. 870 pump: Remington Model 870 Pump Shotgun, the stereotypical pump shotgun, it’s good.”
13. “Sure, Sure, I Heard of Grits”
“I’m a lawyer. In court once, opposing counsel decided that I had coached my witness and gave him lines to repeat, that he was lying. Short version is that he asked the witness if he spoke to me before he testified. Witness said he had. Attorney looked like he thought he had me.
Attorney asked the witness what I told him, what instructions I gave him. Witness looked him dead in the eye and said, ‘First thing he told me was to tell the truth no matter what. He said the lawyer is never the one who goes to jail, that he isn’t going to jail for me, and if I lie, I’m on my own.’
Attorney looked like someone took the air out of him. Everyone in the courtroom simultaneously looked at me.
Only time I’ve smirked or laughed in court. I wanted to put my feet up on the table like I was Vincent LaGuardia Gambini, hands behind my head, and say, ‘I’m done with this guy.’”
14. Rainbow Road Is a Killer
“I was visiting Kyoto a couple of years ago (I’m an American) and my wife and I walked into a tiny bar that had five people in suits laughing and talking in Japanese. We instantly knew that this was not a tourist bar and felt pretty out of place. The bartender spoke the most English so I asked him what his favorite Shochu was, and things got a little more comfortable as we drank and the whole bar tried to talk to us.
Someone mentioned Mario Kart and I said ‘yeah yeah,’ so the bartender points to an old Super Famicom in the corner and apparently I have accepted the challenge.
I smiled to myself and my wife thinks it’s funny because I used to have some skill at this game.
Bartender selects battle mode and…the guy is phenomenal. I haven’t played in a few years and he buries me in less than a minute. The whole bar is laughing and I’m a little stunned. We’re on to the second of three rounds.
I destroy him. 3 balloons to 0. Everyone cheers except the bartender. Two shots were put in front of me and I throw one down.
Round 3. We’re down to one balloon each and I swear it’s the longest battle round of all time. I’m sweating. Shell, dodge, shell, dodge. I have him in my sights and I fire.
I miss, the shell bounces off the wall and I self-KO. The crowd goes wild.
So that’s the story of how a self-proclaimed Mario Kart expert embarrassed himself and his country in a small bar in Kyoto. We drank a lot and made a lot of great friends that night that we’ll never see again.”
15. Ping Pong Champ
“I was hanging out with a girl I was seeing at the time and they had a ping pong table near the bar. Two guys were playing and making a big show about how good they thought they were: grunting, rolled sleeves, the works.
When I handed them back a wayward shot, I made a comment about how it looked fun to play. They said that I could get the next game after a guy that was waiting, but their ‘rule’ was anyone that they added in the queue to play and lost had to buy drinks for everyone else. About six people total were playing.
I played competitive ping pong in a league back in med school and even placed highly in some New York City championships. I still play every so often in my current city and have won a few tournaments here as well.
Played possum in the beginning and went down 4-1. Won 21 to like 7 or 8. Didn’t have to pay for a drink or give up my spot until my date was ready to go. No one even made it out of the single digits.”
16. Bragging Rights
“In college, my buddies and I always got ‘the new fighting game’ when it came out and would put in a couple hundred hours or so on it basically messing around with it (in online or practice mode) before dropping it. But DURING that time we’d have ‘fight nights’ a couple times a week where we’d all get together at someone’s place and duke it out, loser switches controllers.
It’s not like I never won but I was always just middle of the pack and after two years of this, literally, no one would consider me to be some ‘fighting game wizard’–quite the opposite if anything.
Then, for the first time ever, the group decided to pick up a 3D fighter (instead of a 2D one): Soul Calibur (3, I think?) and unknown to anyone in our play group, I’d grinded Soul Calibur I for 10 hours a day, every day, for three or four years. Mind you, against five people who were doing the same and were just as good as me.
It honestly wasn’t even fun. After the first half hour, they were playing with 200% health while I was playing with 50%, picking random character select and I still hadn’t passed the controller once.
And thus it was tacitly agreed that we would all play 2D fighters from then on.”
17. She Knew How To Play to a “T”
“I dated a guy in college who was incredibly book smart–working on his master’s with the intention to pursue a Ph.D. I was doing the good ole five-year plan for college and quite content with my level of brain power compared to his.
What he underestimated was my fondness for word games, especially Scrabble. I like to think I’m quite good. Well, in the three years we dated, we only played Scrabble once and I beat the crap out of him. The icing on the cake was when I got a 50+ word score for playing one letter.
He literally wiped all the letters off the board and had a mini hissy fit, claiming that I cheated. I got out my trusty Scrabble dictionary and proved his loss.”
18. Head of the Class
“Just graduated as a teacher and I’ve been working as a Casual Relief Teacher. I play lacrosse which is a small sport already and even smaller here in Australia. I tried out for the last World Cup team and made it to the final cut.
I was team-teaching with another teacher who worked at the school. Before the period, he spoke to me and said ‘hey mate, we are doing lacrosse today. It’s a bit of an odd sport and hard to teach so just wait over there and then you can just help with supervision and discipline.’ then walked off.
Being a CRT from an agency, I didn’t really know how to speak to him/speak up. I tried to speak to him and say that I played but he didn’t give me a second so I just listened and did my thing.
Few minutes into the start of the lesson, I grabbed a stick and ball and just started to work my way around the class giving them pointers and hints.
The way he was teaching was completely incorrect and I didn’t want to say anything so when the kids broke off into groups, I kinda just taught them correctly.
He pulled me over at a drinks break and asked how I knew so much and was good at performing the skills. I told him how I play lacrosse and my playing history. He asked why I didn’t speak up and say anything and I said I tried to tell him.
Anyway, I ended up running the rest of the class and even ended up sitting down with him and going through the correct and easier way to teach the game and skills.”
19. Serving Up a Side of Rage
“I was working as a GM in a struggling restaurant–struggling despite excellent business because the owners would do stupid stuff like take trips to Italy to source the ‘perfect’ panini press. They also wouldn’t staff properly, I was the only FOH staff open to close, six days a week, on top of ordering/inventory/other managerial duties. I was wildly overworked, but I sucked it up because the base pay was good, plus tips.
However, to fund their lavish ‘business’ trips, costs had to be cut at the store. They decided to do this by bumping me down to minimum wage for tipped employees–effectively cutting my salary to 1/10 of its previous level.
They were also too chicken to tell me until I got my new teeny paycheck and questioned the mistake: ‘oh yeah haha forgot to mention that blah blah cost cutting blah valued team member please work with us through this difficult time.’ I had worked for two weeks at this new lower rate without my knowledge. Pretty sure that’s illegal, but hey, a lot of illegal stuff goes on in the restaurant industry. That’s not when I rage quit, though….
A couple of hours later, I’m fuming and have decided I can’t work for the lower rate, just waiting for the chance to give my notice. They called in a delivery guy who was fired a few weeks before and start talking about hiring him to do our Facebook posts and handing out flyers around town. Whatever. Then they offer him close to my old salary as ‘Promotions Manager’!
WTF? I was running the place for $2.13/hr and you’re offering this dude almost $20/hr to walk up and down the street saying ‘Eat at (Name)’? And yet, it gets worse.
They bring up our negative Yelp reviews and flyer guy suggests asking friends to post positive ones. Then doucheboss starts laughing and says ‘Hurdur better not ask KnickersUp to post one, it’ll be boohoo don’t eat there, I can’t pay my rent this month because they cut my pay without telling wahhhh.’ I wasn’t supposed to hear it I think, but I was five feet away, so of course I did.
I RAGED! Quit, told them to screw their job and good luck keeping the place open without me.
They quickly realized I was right, neither of them knew how to do more than pick up the takings once a week and begged me not to quit. So desperate were they, they allowed me to tell them exactly what idiots they were for the half hour my rage burned and just listened nodding and apologizing.
Once I had cursed myself back into calmness, I walked out 30 minutes before dinner rush, leaving them with an unstaffed floor and no clue how to even open the register.
God, they were morons. I loved that they actually listened to me tell them exactly how stupid they were. No repercussions on my side; the restaurant industry isn’t known for checking references. The store closed down about 18 months later. Surprised it made it that long.”
20. “Fight With Your Brain, Not Your Fists”
“Started dating a girl a few months back and her ex was being just a huge jerk to her, threatening to fight me if he saw me, trying to start rumors, etc…
Went out for drinks with the girlfriend and, of course, he shows up. Starts to get in my face at the bar and gets kicked out. Rushes the door guy to get back in and is carried out and banned from that bar for life.
Then I had another genius thought… What if I could do this at the bar next door? (It’s a small-ish town. There are really only two bars worth going to for nightlife, and they’re right next door to each other.)
So, we go next door. He’s waiting outside for me but there are the usual ‘don’t do it bro!’ friends around him so I make it next door without having to fight. Of course, he comes in, starts his act and actually tries to fight me this time. He gets pulled off by a few people and is also kicked out of that bar for at least a while.
Fight with your brain, not your fists.”
21. 6X8=48
“In primary school, I’d say grade 3 or 4, we had a head-to-head times tables tournament. The teacher would ask a random multiplication question to a pair of students at a time and the winner progressed.
I wasn’t exactly an expert at times tables, but I was an expert at 6×8. For whatever reason, 6×8 just wouldn’t stick in my head when I was younger, and I had to spend additional time to bring the answer to the forefront of my mind.
I was decently prepared for any other multiplication problem, so while waiting my turn, I was constantly repeating in my mind ‘6 times 8 equals 48, 6 times 8 equals 48, 6 times 8 equals 48’ over and over again.
Lo and behold, when it was finally my turn to be quizzed, the teacher casually selected 6×8–to which immediately. Instantly. Without a single moment of pause. Not an iota of time had lapsed from the teacher finishing her sentence – I yelled ‘48!’
The astonishment spread as I became a human computer in the eyes of my peers. Even the teacher was taken aback.
I went on to win the tournament, having already won in the minds of my would-be opponents. It was more than victory, it was complete annihilation.”
22. More Like ‘Ego Attacks’
“So there is this old SNES game called ‘Tetris Attack’ that’s a ‘Panel del Pon’ port with a ‘Super Mario World 2’ theme. I played the heck out of that game when I was growing up and I was pretty good at it. I’m actually still half-decent and I only play every few months when I visit my family.
Anyhow, I was kinda-sorta seeing this guy and I have NO idea how the topic came up, but he challenged me to beat him at ‘Tetris Attack.’ I had sincere doubts that he had ever played before despite his posturing, and…it turned out I was right.
I trounced him and he actually said, ‘How are you so good at this stupid game?’ Practice, my dude. Years of practice.”
23. “You Don’t Know Who I Am, Do You?”
“Wasn’t me, but there’s a story about an old geotechnical engineer who used to work for the company I work for.
Several senior staff had to attend a meeting with the client, and some government regulatory staff were being awkward and not approving the design.
This geotech guy is pretty much quiet the whole meeting. Throughout the discussion, the government guy keeps referencing this research document and shooting down anything anybody suggests.
Near the end of the meeting, geotech guy asks government guy if he has the research paper with him. He responds yes and places it on the table.
Geotech guy asks government guy, ‘Who is the author of the paper?’ Then slides over a business card. Turns out it’s geotech’s own paper that government guy has been referencing to defend his argument.
Government guy went bright red and apparently approved the design the same day.”
24. Swindling a Swindler
“A local mall had a portable climbing wall with a ‘make it to the top and win $100’ sign. The route was actually pretty challenging. As I walked by, the guy asked me if I’d like to try ‘nobody has made it to the top, you think you can do it buddy?’
At the time, I was ranked a top-12 climber in my age group and kind of laughed to myself.
After taking my $100 from the guy, I then proceeded to call the rest of my climbing team. One by one, they went to the mall and claimed their $100.
After the fourth person, the guy got suspicious and took the sign down. We later told him we were all nationally-ranked competition climbers and he got a good laugh. The company who owned the rentals was the one who lost the money, he just worked the booth and wasn’t the one who lost the prize money.”
25. Penny for Your Thoughts?
“I used to deliver pizza for Dominoes. It was my last shift and there was this house that was always rude (I called to ask what the house looked like and they said ‘I gave you the address’ and hung up), never tipped, etc.
I got to their house and they gave me a check for 1 cent less than what the total was. I said, ‘I am going to need the extra penny.’
They grumbled off and took their time hoping I would give up but I just sat there holding the pizza. They finally came back all pissed off and gave me the penny.
Note that they had no intention of tipping. They gave me the penny and I chucked it out into the street and left. They saw me do it. It was SATISFYING.”
26. Sunk Him
“My wife and I were taking an evening cruise for adults in Portsmouth Bay. The ship drove around the shipyard, where my submarine and several others were stationed.
My wife and I are having a quiet drink when a really loud know-it-all starts spouting misinformation about each submarine we are driving by. Calling them all the wrong class, wrong names, etc.
When he literally points to my submarine and says ‘and that is a 637 class,’ my wife finally speaks up and says ‘actually that is a 688.’
The guy gets all gruff and says ‘well how would you know?.’ My wife smiles, hugs my arm and says sweetly, ‘That’s my husband’s submarine, it is the Minneapolis St Paul, SNN-708.’
He turned beat red while his date laughed.
27. Putting a Karen in Her Place
“During an insanely busy weekend before Christmas, a Karen was complaining to every associate about how messy our store was. The manager had relieved the girl at the fitting room and was helping to hang stuff. Karen pulled her crap and was trying to make a point that we were messy and a horrible place to shop.
At this, the manager told her roughly, ‘Ma’am we’re messy at the moment because we’re a popular store. And the biggest reason we’re messy is because of women like you who can’t be bothered to pick up after themselves. It’s not the associates making the mess. It’s people like you. Your type has us outnumbered.’
First time I actually witnessed someone deflate.”
28. You Never Know Who’s Watching
“I was waiting to put in at a boat ramp in Florida one day. It was a single ramp. The guy trying to take his boat out of the water was having a tough time backing his trailer down. His wife (I assume) and two kids were waiting on the dock.
Some a-hole waiting to get out of the water starts screaming at him and heckling him. The first guy finally gets his trailer down the ramp, meanwhile, the raging a-hole had docked his boat and started up the dock towards the poor boating newbie family guy screaming and yelling.
Raging a-hole punches family guy and knocks him off the dock into the water.
Two burly dudes that nobody was really paying attention to walked up, literally grab raging a-hole as family guy was falling in the water, throw him on the dock and handcuff him, then flashed their FL DNR badges. They were undercover watching the boat ramp.
There was applause and cheering from the folks waiting to put in and take out.
Family guy just wants to get out there and go home, so he declines to press charges. The DNR guys apparently thought ‘aw hell’s no,’ proceed to tear the guy’s boat and car apart and ended up charging him with a BUI and every single nitpicky thing they could find wrong his boat.
It was a good day.”
29. Classic Hustler
“While in undergrad, I brought a new college buddy over to an old high school friend’s house to hang out. At the old friend’s house were a couple of other old friends, just hanging around, drinking a few beers and playing pool.
My new buddy was pretty unassuming. When he first meets people, he can be pretty quiet and seems a little out of place. After he gets to know people, he opens up and is a blast to be around.
My old buddies, for some reason, decided to hustle my new buddy in pool. I mean, super textbook shark moves. Let’s play a friendly game, and if you think you’re any good at it, we can play for money, etc.
Well, the thing that I knew and they didn’t was my new buddy is a guy who played on the circuits for a while, winning pool tournaments across Texas. He lived and breathed pool, and, of course, saw these guys coming from a mile away.
And I just watched it all go down. Figured, if they are going to treat someone that I bring over that way, they deserve what they get.
He roped ’em in like only Ali could. Missed super easy shots, made it look like he lucked in just enough to keep the game interesting and pull out the ‘lucky’ win.
Then, they played for money. I can’t even remember how much per ball, but he played two or three games, slowly seeming to get better or lucking out just enough to keep them engaged while still taking a little of their money.
Then, the last game happened and I’ve never seen someone come alive more quickly. He sank shot after shot after shot. Shots I couldn’t make if I practiced for a year straight. The entire time, taunting them and updating how much money they owed them. I don’t think my old friend had a chance to take a shot at all.
Afterward, my old friends were furious: ‘How could you bring this guy over here and let him hustle us like that?’
‘How could you try to hustle a new friend of mine just minutes after I bring him over and introduce him to you,’ I asked. ‘You earned this one, man.’
It ends happily, though. The old friend who owned the pool table and my new buddy ended up becoming good friends and are still in contact about two decades later.”
30. Macho Guy Is Lucky He Didn’t Let Him Drown
“I was a competitive swimmer for 14 years, including four years of NCAA, but I’m on the shorter side so people don’t assume I was any good.
Was at a friend’s house on a lake one summer and a macho guy challenged me to race to a buoy in the middle of the lake, to prove… something, I guess. The lake is deceptively large, about a half mile across, so I warned him that if he isn’t a strong swimmer, it could be dangerous.
He was running out of gas after about 2 minutes, so I offered to let him off the hook, but he insisted he would finish. I went to the buoy and was swimming back when I found him floundering, so I lifeguard-swam him back to the house.
His ego took a deserved hit that day.
Don’t get cocky around water, even if you think you’re a strong swimmer.
Edit: thanks a ton for the W and the votes, but I want to emphasize here how quickly this kind of thing can turn dangerous. I was a lifeguard at the time, and there was another lifeguard present, but even so, this was a dumb idea. DON’T DO DUMB STUFF IN WATER.”
31. Nothing Wrong With Showing a Kid Up
“I (38F) am a government auditor. One of the programs I oversee is a sort of boarding school for teens with a delinquency history; it’s very athletics-heavy.
I’ve put on like 30 pounds of body fat since getting this mostly sedentary job and drifting into bad nutrition habits. But I’m meaty underneath and above-average strong.
Prior to this job, I had a side gig as a personal trainer and posing coach. At the program one day, I needed to interview a student who didn’t want to leave his weightlifting class. He told me he’d talk to me if I could deadlift the bar he was working with, like 90kg. The staff was visibly annoyed that this guy was giving the state a hard time, but I was wearing stretchy pants so I gave it a quick setup and pull.
The interview followed and now it’s an ongoing joke at the program that when I ask for interviews, they ask if I need chalk or anything for the mandatory deadlift.”
32. She Has a Lot of Mansplaining in Her Life
“I’m a female mechanical engineer and I often get people working at Lowe’s, car shops, car dealerships, etc that like to talk down to me or like I don’t understand basic concepts.
For instance, a guy at Lowe’s swore up and down that bolt threading and pipe threading were the same thing.
Another guy swore there were no diamond-tipped hole saws and tried to sell me a Dremel for the same job. I then found one in the tile section.
I’ve had mechanics swear up and down that the air filter in my car needed to be changed when I had just changed it weeks before and my filter is circular and not square like the one they brought out to me.
The best are the car salesmen though because they don’t seem to really care about my opinion, especially if my husband is there. I’m usually the car-buying decision maker, although my husband knows a ton about cars, so they try to sell to him.
It’s always hilarious. I usually just let them talk and clarify later with my husband, I’m not out to embarrass anybody.”
33. At Least He Took It Like a Champ
“I have studied memorization techniques and mnemonics. I decided to have a bit of fun with my teacher.
He wanted us to write down a list of 20 items. He was the type of guy to quickly call you out for not paying attention in class. I sat there memorizing the list in my head (knowing full-well he would see me not writing anything down).
He chewed me out for not taking notes–as predicted. He took the bait. I said, ‘I have it all in my head.’ I KNEW he would call me out the next day and have me recite the list.
The next day he turns to me in the middle of his lecture and has the biggest smile.
‘So RollerDerby88, what were those items from yesterday?’ he smugly asked.
I immediately proceeded to list them in order without hesitation. Then listed them backward. His smile grew bigger and bigger and the rest of the class was cracking up!”
34. He Doesn’t Need to Google “Embarrassing”
“Astronomer here! So if we were to just meet on the street, you probably wouldn’t guess I was a scientist (I am a woman who enjoys dresses when the weather is nice) and this was doubly true when I was a few years younger in my 20s and single. Especially at bars.
So at the end of college, I was doing a summer internship in Mountain View, California where if you went out there’d be a lot of Google boys who would literally sometimes wear ‘Google’ shirts so you’d know they’re extra obnoxious.
I remember getting stuck chatting with one, and when he asked my major he sneered with the ‘Do you really know the subject?’ attitude. He even asked me if I knew what the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle was. And when I explained his 20 questions, he said ‘It’s probably not so hard because they go easy on women because they don’t want to scare them off.’
Then he proceeded to tell me about a lecture he attended in Mountain View that he’d been lucky enough to visit, as a Google employee, by Jill Tarter who runs the SETI Institute. He proceeded to tell me about the Allen Telescope Array they were building in northern California because I ‘might not know about it.’
I gave him a minute for his spiel but then said I actually was working for Jill that summer at the SETI Institute, on interference mitigation for the Allen Telescope Array. And did he want to hear what she was really like, or see some pictures from the ATA site? I’d also just met Frank Drake, and he was really nice!
Oh man, was that guy not happy! But hey at least he stopped talking to me like right after.”
35. Her Attitude Is the Opposite of “Human Resource”
“We had an HR lady who was extremely power hungry.
She is walking around with the president of the company who flew in from Japan. She rushes him through the warehouse. Just spits out ‘oh these are the warehouse guys we don’t have to stop and talk to them.’
He stops, walks over and starts talking to me about my last vacation. Then asked how buying my house went.
You could just see her fuming behind him as we talked for almost 45mins. I’ve had multiple meetings with him; we knew each other really well.
I don’t think he liked her and drug it out on purpose but I was thrilled to see her just standing there bored and mad.”
36. Taught Him a Real Lesson That Day
“I know a big high school bully who thought it would be funny to punch this male teacher in the teacher’s back when the teacher was walking in front of the bully.
He picked the WRONG teacher. Teacher instinctively reacted and punched the bully back. Bully went down hard.
Bully got suspended and nothing else happened to him or the teacher.
About eight years later, the bully came back to the high school and asked to talk with the teacher. He actually THANKED the teacher for what happened that day.
Bully said to the teacher that that punch completely changed the course of his life. He was running with a rough crowd and thought he was big and bad. He thought nothing of beating people up. After the incident and getting punched by the teacher, he realized that he underestimated how quickly things change when you go up against the wrong guy.
He completely changed how he approached the world, got out of trouble, got a good job, and was about to get married. And he credits that incident with changing the course of his life: punching the wrong person.”
37. This Ain’t Fiverr
“In high school bio, as a final project, we (in groups) had to create a Bill Nye-style informative video on a unit previously covered in class.
My group was done recording and I just had to do the editing (transitions, effects, titles, etc.). And anyone who has ever done any type of movie or trailer knows that post-production is twice the time and effort as shooting.
So there I am: just finished and submitted onto YouTube and this guy who’s been calling me names all year comes up to me and asks, ‘Hey man can you do my video editing because I don’t how to do it?’
I told him ‘No.’ Then he proceeded to offer me $5 for a week’s worth of headaches and work. I just walked off without saying anything. A satisfying silence ensued.”
38. Idiot-Slapped Them
“I worked customer service for a big tech company. A pair of nightmare customers called during Christmas week to demand we fly two tablets to their home by private helicopter for Christmas morning.
Their tone was abrasive, dismissive and entitled. After much work on my end to calm them down, they demanded to speak to management.
I patched them over to senior advisors. The head advisor idiot-slapped them with logic and policy: ‘We see you placed your order after our Christmas cut-off date. No special deliveries can be made as all our couriers are working overtime to deliver to customers who had the foresight to order early.’
Thus, they were banished.”
39. More Like “Guitar Zero”
“My college has a dedicated gaming room in its central building; there are TVs for people to plug whatever into and use.
I went in one day and saw someone playing Guitar Hero. He was playing on expert, so he was decently good, but not perfect. I sat down, chatted him up, and eventually, he challenged me.
Pro-Face-Off on “Through the Fire and Flames” (get more points than your opponent). I’m not perfect at TTFAF, but I figured what the heck, it’ll be fun.
Well, our fearless protagonist got a little too big for his boots on that one, because our man couldn’t hit the intro. The higher your combo in GH, the more your score is multiplied, all the way up to 4x.
If you don’t hit the intro in TTFAF and can’t keep your 4x through the fast strumming at the beginning, you’re immediately behind somewhere in the echelon of 30k to 60k points. The solos didn’t fare him much better.”
He blamed his gear.
40. He Designed a Good Plan
“Knew a crazy kid in elementary school. Kid jumped across the table and tried to choke me out. I got suspended because I instigated it by saying he was ‘cuckoo for cocoa puffs,’ when the only thing that kid ever talked about was Cocoa Puffs and he was wearing a Cocoa Puffs shirt that day.
Senior year of high school, kid was in my design class. Needed to get a C or better on the final.
Over the year, I found out the kid was taking my work off my share drive (high school IT was dumb and each kid’s folder was public) and copying it.
For the final, I purposely messed up the drawing in my folder, but the kid didn’t double-check it. He turned it in and failed and had to go back and be a super senior.
TLDR. Kid Choked Me. Waited 10 years. Made them fail high school.”
41. The Kid Was Putting a Roof Over Their Heads
“I had a rough childhood with an addict for a father. My mom struggled to make ends meet and my first job was paying for the mortgage.
After several months of working (again at my first job), I finally had some money to spend on myself and decided to get a computer and a decent internet connection. At the time, the best internet I could buy was part of a dish combo package. I bought a dish and brought it home to install on the house.
During this time, my dad was still living at home with us but he was hardly there and my parents had all but separated at that point. My dad promptly asked me what I was doing putting a dish on his house. I let him know that I pay the mortgage now and I make the decisions on what we do with the house.
I was young but it was a very empowering moment for me.”
42. He’s the King of the City! Still a No Though
“One of my jobs is in a hotel/restaurant/bar.
A guest came into the bar after having been refused service at our sister hotel down the road.
He was very drunk and had been rude, abusive and threatening to the staff.
He insisted we serve him as he was a guest, but we’d already been phoned by our sister hotel so they could let us know what the situation was.
We refused, but offered him some water and suggested he go up to his room.
He then went on about how he had nearly bought our hotel and that he was practically our boss so we should serve him or he’d have us fired.
We refused.
He told us he was a very rich man and would tip us hundreds of pounds if we served him.
We refused. He was getting abusive at this point, so we again suggested he have some water and head up to his room.
He went on to tell us that his brother was the mayor so we should serve him.
We refused and told him he should go on up to his room yet again.
He then said he was going to the pub across the street but all the pubs/restaurants in our town have a ‘barred from one barred from them all’ policy. We telephoned the other pubs to inform them of the situation.
Many of them got back to us and said they had been offered money, been threatened with losing their jobs and also told the story of the mayor. All of the pubs stuck to their guns and refused to serve him.
Eventually, he came back to the hotel and went to his room.”
43. Sounds Like a Toxic Work Environment
“Had an old boss who was a complete and total bastard. He was actually my boss’ boss and wasn’t supposed to interact with us unless it was through our boss, but he just loved trying to make everyone under him squirm. The company had forced him to go to training twice because of how he spoke to people.
One day, I get a call at home from him and he just starts unloading–cursing, name-calling, and insulting over some technical issue he just found out about. After a couple of minutes, I just looked at my phone and hung up on him.
The next day, I get called into a meeting with his boss, who basically wants to know who I think I am hanging up on this guy.
I calmly explain that no one gets to yell at me on my time, in my home, on my phone. You have to wait for me to be on the clock to pay me for that privilege and I’ll gladly take that money–If I’m busy being yelled at, I’m not busy with anything else.
Seemed to work.”
44. Folding Clothes Doesn’t Help With Computer Sales
“When I was in high school, I worked at a popular warehouse club selling computers on the weekends. I was hired by the store manager via a referral of a friend. I loved computers and they thought I’d make a good salesman, so my job was to stay in the computer department and sell computers; nothing else.
Well, one of the shift managers didn’t like that and started to insist that I needed to go fold clothes for a while. As in, half my shift. I told him that the store manager had instructed me never to leave the technology department, but he insisted. This went on for several weeks.
The store manager showed up one weekend when both the power trippin shift manager and I were working. The store manager walks up with the shift manager close behind. The store manager slaps a stack of green bar paper (this was a while ago) down onto a shelf and points to some highlighted numbers.
He looks at the shift manager and says, ’Do you see this? This is our average technology sales numbers for the weeks you are on shift. See this number over here? This is our average technology sales numbers for weeks you are not. At this point, it would be more cost-effective for me to simply fire you. What do you think of that solution?’
The guy stammers and stutters like a toddler caught bullying another kid on the playground.
Fortunately, the dude wasn’t fired, but the store manager made it clear that when I was on shift, I was not to leave the technology department unless I was on break or there was a fire in the store. That shift manager never said another word to me.”
45. “Je Ne Parle Pas Anglais”
“I live in Northern Vermont so we have a ton of tourism from French-speaking Canadians coming down from various parts of Quebec.
I am a bilingual American and I hold two degrees in French, the Master’s being in North American (Quebecois) language and literature.
While bartending one day, a customer from Quebec tried to pay her bill in Canadian money, which is about .73 cents to the American dollar. The Canadian bills didn’t even add up to the bill total If the two currencies were on par. So I politely explained all of this in English when she starts replying in French that she doesn’t speak English.
To the delight of my entire bar crowd, I then politely but forcibly explain all of this in perfect Quebecois French. Her face at that moment is almost (almost) worth the pain I feel every month paying back my student loans.”
46. Real-Life “One Punch Man”
“When I was in the military, we had a ‘gut punch challenge.’ I chose not to participate. I have very ‘heavy hands;’ I’ve broken a couple of the punch-strength things before.
There was one guy who kept egging me on. I just kept saying no. But finally, he started talking too much crap. So I let him go first. He reared back and I just absorbed the hit. Honestly wasn’t a bad punch.
My turn. I sized him a couple of times with practice line-up swings. He mocked this. I gave him one more warning. He laughed at it. So I pulled back and blasted him. Square on the belly button.
He doubled over and his face went pale white. Lips blue. Air completely out of his system.
He spent a couple minutes struggling to catch air. Then, unfortunately, the worst part happened; When he rolled over, we all saw it: He crapped himself.”
47. VP of Entitlement
“A co-worker friend of mine was flying back from a sales conference in Vegas and he was able to upgrade to a first-class seat. We had this witch sales VP that was on the same flight–she was the snobby, entitled type with a full-time nanny and giant McMansion in the suburbs and she generally treated people who worked for her like servants.
She sees him in a first-class seat as she is making her way to coach and asks him how he got that seat (he used his points to upgrade). As people are getting settled in, she makes her way back up to the first-class cabin and asks to speak with the lead flight attendant. She tells him that one of her underlings is sitting in first class and that she needs to switch with him since she’s higher on the corporate ladder.
The guy can’t believe what he’s hearing, but she won’t take no for an answer. Finally, he tells her she has to go back to her seat or she will be escorted from the plane. She made a complete ass of herself in front of the whole first-class cabin.”
48. Got ‘Em
“There was this game called ‘Crossfire.’ It’s an FPS game that’s still around I think.
Back in high school, this one kid wanted to play me 1v1 because he heard I was good at it from what my friends said. He talked a big game and had a pretty good k/d from his public games.
We played and I beat him with a pistol only. In this game, you start with weapons so there’s no economy in it. So he’d always have his main weapon every round.
He didn’t know that I was on the #1 team in Canada, LifeLine, and was the #1 sniper in N.A. at the time. I was playing against top teams all over the world at that time and would regularly play pick-up games with top players daily.
The next day he pretty much found me and asked me to teach him. I basically told him to play more 5v5 scrims and pick up games with and against better people. And to focus on things like crosshair placement, entering open areas on angles, and using angles to your advantage whenever possible.
He never played again. I don’t think he realized there were levels to the game. And that rank meant nothing there, there were amazingly good people with super low-level accounts because all they did was play pick-up games and scrims.”
49. Clearly He Doesn’t Understand What “Former” Employee Means
“One of my new employees came from a competitor who is, shall we say, not as put together as we are. Her former boss had actually called me to yell at me about ‘poaching’ his consultants. Which, in and of itself, is weird enough. However, a few weeks after she started, the dude rolled up to our office. He had apparently been calling her to get her to finish an analysis for him and she just ghosted him.
I went to the lobby to see what he was doing here. He started in on me again and then she happened to walk by. I didn’t fully understand the conversation but at one point he literally ‘demanded’ she do this analysis. She just said, ‘or what?’ and waited a few beats before turning on her heels and walking away.
I did the ol’ hand on his back point to the door universal symbol for ‘leave or a large security man will make you leave.’ Never heard from him again.
50. It Was Doomed From the Start
“I worked for eight years servicing communications equipment on-site–five of those years were as the department manager. When oil was found in our area, we got so busy we could barely even think. Most of my team were pulling 12+ hour days, six days a week and we were struggling to hire people quickly enough.
One day, the CEO texted and said he hired an assistant manager for me, which was something I desperately needed. I was dirty as hell from my previous job and swung by the store to pick him up and take him to one of our sites where he would be doing paperwork.
The moment he got in the truck, he immediately started talking crap. He started telling me about how everything we were doing is messed up and the department manager <my name> was a total moron and he would have my job within a few months.
I just sat and mostly listened. He obviously didn’t know anything about my industry and every time he would say something wrong, I would try to politely correct him and he’d either backtrack or insist that I was trained wrong.
When we got to the site OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WEST TEXAS DESERT, he complained about the layer of dust on everything and ‘ordered me’ to clean up the entire site.
When I sat down at my desk, the guy continued to complain my ear off about everything that was wrong and chastised me for sitting down at my desk when he told me to clean up the site.
So I called for a taxi, filled out a notice of termination and handed it to him.
He looked absolutely shocked. Then he defiantly protested that only <CEO> could fire him. I said and <my name>, right? He sheepishly nodded. So I stuck my hand out for a handshake and introduced myself.
I can teach anyone how to service equipment, but I don’t have a clue how to teach someone not to be an a-hole.”
