Over the weekend, Reddit user chipdumper asked people to share their "most memorable story of petty revenge." Here are 17 of the absolute best ones:
1. The pumpkin payback:
"I have a friend whose pumpkin/fall display at the end of his driveway would be run over by the neighborhood jerk every single year. My friend decided to put a stop to it. He withdrew money from his savings account to buy the largest pumpkin he could find, along with several large bags of concrete mix. Then, he filled that puppy up and made a really pretty display. The jackass broke the axle of his car when he hit that pumpkin, and he couldn't drive away. My friend had his car towed away, too."
2. The Starbucks surprise:
"I used to manage a Starbucks, and one day when one of my baristas asked a guy his name, he just flipped the fuck out, belittling her and calling her stupid, but didn’t give a name. Anyway, I took over the pick-up counter and placed his drink there with no words written on it. (It was a busy store with a lot of people waiting.) I just kept putting drinks out for about 10-15 minutes, and finally the douchebag walked up, picked up his lukewarm drink, and goes, “Is this mine?” I just respond, “I don’t know — it doesn’t have a name on it."
3. The advertisement assault:
"My friend did some work for a guy who never paid him. My friend is so petty, he placed fake for-sale ads with too-good-to-be-true deals, like a nice boat for $1,000, with the guys number. On top of that, our city is big on garage sales, so he posted ads like, “Moving out sale, everything must go, cheap! Will be held inside the house — just walk in or ring the door bell,” with the guy's address on the ad. He also signed him up for numerous 'free gym memberships' and responded to things like car dealership ads with this guy's phone number."
4. The party pisser:
"I lived in an apartment with a roommate, and we had neighbors who would throw crazy weeknight parties pretty frequently. One day my roommate, who had to be awake early, had enough and decided to piss on a metal pizza pan and stick it in the freezer. After a crazy party, he pulled the pan out and flipped it upside down, giving him a frozen disc of piss. He then slid that disc under their door, where it would melt on their fully carpeted entryway. We woke up to them shouting at the people who had crashed there about who pissed on the floor and what the fuck was wrong with them. I wish I could say they toned down their parties, but they didn't and eventually got evicted."
5. The tech torturer:
"A coworker owed me $50 and refused to pay, so being in IT, I reduced their email storage capacity to hold only around 10 emails, and I removed them from distro groups so they missed important group emails. Also, every day for like three months I went into their account and checked the little box, 'Must change password at next login.'"
6. The beach bullies:
"We were kids staying at the seaside on holiday with our family. My little sister would always make a pretty sandcastle, but the next day we'd find that it had been kicked down and she'd cry. We wanted to find out who was doing it, so one day we stayed behind to spy. We watched as a bunch of jerk older boys came by and kicked her castle down, laughing smugly. So the next night, we covered a big beach rock in sand and decorated it. Like clockwork, the jerk kids came with their smug faces and this time kicked a solid rock with all of their might. The yowl and the look on their faces was the best revenge ever."
7. The ketchup counterattack:
"My coworker sometimes throws out her lunch in the garbage can at my desk instead of her own, because she claims she can't stand the smell of ketchup that's been sitting out for a couple hours. I've asked her to stop several times, but she now just waits until I get up to go to the bathroom to hide my garbage can — with her soiled lunch container inside — under my desk so I won't see it. Every time she does it, I wait until she goes to the bathroom, take out the little plastic container that she had ketchup in, and put it way in the back of her bottom desk drawer. There are six in there now, and the oldest is over a month old. So far, she hasn't noticed the smell. Gonna keep doing it and see how long it takes her to notice."
8. The popcorn payback:
"I had a boss seven or eight years ago who I hated. She was the fakest and most entitled person I had ever met. One day, she decided that she didn’t like the smell of microwave popcorn, so she waved her magic office wand and had it banned. Fast-forward a month or so, I was browsing Amazon and found one of those USB sticks that emits a smell when plugged in — the smell of buttered popcorn. I bought it and plugged it into the back of her computer, and she had the sweet smell of PopSecret in her office for six fucking months. She complained almost every day. It’s the sweetest revenge I’ve ever tasted."
9. The shit storm:
"My girlfriend told me that the neighbor across the street was instructing his dog to go shit on our lawn. I doubted it, but was home sick for a few days and saw it for myself. I asked the owner to stop it, and he said the dog wouldn’t 'listen.' When I asked him to at least clean up the shit, he said his dog was only peeing. We had our own dog, and I took a week's worth of his land mines, plus the neighbor's dog's shits for the week, and walked across the street and threw them all over his front yard and walkway one night. Somehow the neighbor's dog listened after that and never shit in my yard again."
10. The roommate retribution:
"My college roommate had a bad habit of leaving her things in piles on our bathroom floor until there was almost no space to walk to the bath or toilet. One day she left $40 scattered with the mess, so I put the money in one of her lesser-used bathroom drawers. Originally I put it there to protect it from our third roommate and her friends. When I came home the next day and noticed that she was clearing her mess in an effort to find it, I decided not to tell her where the money was until our bathroom floor was spotless. Afterwards, I decided it would be too awkward to tell her the truth, so I left the money wadded up in her hamper. She was ecstatic when she found it on laundry day. After that, her bathroom piles never got quite as big."
11. The birdseed backlash:
"I caught my flatmate telling lies about me to some mutual friends, so I made plans to move out the next month. In the meantime, she went out of town for a week and left her car parked in its usual spot in the parking lot. I threw birdseed on it every morning and evening, so when she came home, the birds wouldn't leave her car alone."
12. The clown car:
"There's a new truck in my apartment's parking lot that's always taking up multiple spots. I drive a much smaller car, and, being a petty and passive-aggressive person, I've been waiting for my chance to get revenge. Well, a few days ago, I got home quite late, and there were zero spots open in my lot. The big truck was double parked again, but there was juuust enough room on their driver's side for me to sneak in there with my little clown car. I carefully pulled in, making sure not to touch anything. My passenger side mirror was half an inch from their driver's side door. I giggled to myself all the way back to my apartment and set an alarm and waited. The following morning, I woke up before the alarm to loud door slamming and stomping around. I looked out my window, and I saw the double parking culprit walking around both vehicles, taking pictures, texting someone, and taking more pictures. I was shaking with glee. They finally swallowed their pride, climbed in the passenger side and over the center console, and Austin Powers 20-point turned their butts out of the spot. I've never been so proud of myself and my shitty, petty, passive-aggressive ways."
13. The fire hydrant fake out:
"When I was a kid my family lived in a house on a street with GIANT oak trees. Because of the slope of our yard, leaves from half the street would end up in the yard. My mother had really bad asthma and allergies and made us kids rake up the leaves. This was not an easy task. They would get several feet deep if we didn't do it often enough. One day we raked the whole yard into these giant piles for the city to come pick up. It took several hours. The next morning, however, they were scattered all over. We raked them again over several more hours, and it happened again. Apparently the neighborhood bully was knocking them over just to be a dick. The next time we made a super huge pile around the fire hydrant, hoping he'd kick them and hurt his foot. Nope, this time he decided to do a run and jump."
14. The cooking lard cheesecake:
"At my previous job, we had separate refrigerators for different shifts, but our food was constantly being stolen or messed with. One day, my buddy and I decided to make a nice cherry cheesecake — out of cooking lard. We finished it off with a graham cracker crust and cut a couple of slices out of it since we knew the thief wouldn’t be brazen enough to take the first bite. We never found out who the thief was, but we never had to worry about anyone messing with our food ever again."
15. The guessing game:
"My brother did something to his annoy his then-girlfriend, so she took the labels off all his canned food in the cupboard. Are you opening a can of beans? Or a tin of tomato sauce? Or cat food? Kinda hilarious."
16. The arcade avenger:
"I used to go to an arcade and play a certain basketball game. I was climbing the all-time wins leaderboard in said game (very close behind No. 1) when one day my account vanished! None of the other accounts did, and I learned that somehow the No. 1 player — who worked there — had a hand in it. I waited until he played another game and watched as he put in his account code. I then waited 30 minutes until he was done, logged into his account, and tanked a game pretty hard. When I was done, his record dropped to 210–1. Unfortunately, I didn't see his reaction, but I got way too much satisfaction from it."
17. The reverberating retaliation:
"I had a roommate in college that would blare their TV in their room and talk loudly on speakerphone well into the night. I was young and not confident enough to confront them about it. But after a semester, I had had enough. One time before going out, I put my speakers up against our shared wall and blasted Enya’s 'Only Time' on endless repeat. I also locked my door so they couldn’t come in to turn it off. I got back around 3 a.m."
So, what's your most memorable story of petty revenge? Spill the beans in the comments below!
Editor's note: Responses have been edited for length and clarity.