It's incredibly annoying when customers, coworkers, or even bosses treat us like doormats. I often daydream of being petty in return, so I recently asked the BuzzFeed Community what was the pettiest thing they've ever done at work.
And I was living for so many of your responses. Here are some of the most memorable:
1. "I incorporated a penis into a wedding cake. It was a dual stroke for my old boss and the bridezilla. The bakery I ran was a nightmare, and after giving the owners a month's notice, they started very verbally giving everyone raises in front of me. Part of the reason I was leaving was because they offered me a $17/hour raise if I stayed, after not giving me one for three years — where was that money the last three years? They also started to allow my front staff to collect tips, which I had been fighting for for five years. The bride for my final event was a nightmare, so I snuck a drawing of a penis in the middle tier of her cake which was covered with scroll work. The wedding was my last day, so I delivered it and never looked back. I heard someone in the wedding party noticed and the bride had a fit. There was my raise."
2. "I am a classroom scheduler at a university. One faculty member, in particular, treated me like a doormat, constantly asking for 'little favors' last minute, and never thanking me. So one semester, I put her giant lecture in the worst classroom on campus — five flights of stairs with barely any room to maneuver between the front desk and the board. She didn’t get any better, but it did make me feel better to listen to her complain about the room all semester."
3. "I quit a particularly toxic job after just three weeks. Excessive emails was one of my reasons for leaving, so in my exit email, I dropped the worst offender’s email address as the sole contact for all future and ongoing queries. I flooded her inbox with over 200 extra emails a day, and she deserved every single one of them."
4. "I used to work at a department store with a woman who was incredibly mean. She was nasty to the younger staff, always demanded people buy her lunch, and was just generally obnoxious. She always used to keep her purse on top of a tall shelf in our back office. One day after she had been really rude to me, I went and took an ESA alarm sticker that we used on the perfume boxes and placed it sticky-side up on the shelf. When she came back from lunch and put her purse on the shelf, the alarm sticker stuck to the bottom. For the next three days, she sent the door alarms off at every store she went in and out of, and had no idea why."
5. "I plugged a mini wireless keyboard to my boss's computer. When he had a customer, I would add an additional letter when he typed his password, locked him out of the computer every time!"
6. "I was told I was finally getting a hard-earned promotion at my current company over a year ago. A few weeks later, my manager and skip level manager told me I was being denied the promotion because of something I said. They wouldn’t tell me what. Out of spite, I went to HR and reported a previous incident of when my skip level manager angrily grabbed my arm during our company all-hands. I got the promotion, and that skip level manager is no longer with the company."
7. "One day, I was very strapped for money so for lunch all I had brought was a big jar of applesauce. Someone ate all my applesauce and left the empty jar on the table. I did what anybody would've done — I opened the refrigerator in the break room and proceeded to throw out everything, while yelling at anyone within earshot, 'If I'm not eating, nobody was going to be eating.' I was summoned into the manager's office afterward. The whole thing was captured by the camera directly above the refrigerator."
8. "My husband was the sole IT guy for our small school system. I had a principal who was harassing me daily. So, my husband changed my principal’s passwords. It still makes me smile 20 years later."
—Anonymous, 54
9. "My friend and I were finally leaving a very toxic job after many years of abuse from our boss. We created fake emails to leave very detailed negative Google reviews of the shop. The boss advertised everything was fresh and made that day, though really it could be four days old baked goods. We called the shop out for this and so many other things. It got to the point where our boss was stress-reading the reviews to us in meetings. In my last two weeks at the job, I was tasked with retraining every employee with these reviews, which were written by us, exclusively in mind for the training. Instead of training the employees, I just talked shit with them about the job, our boss, all the inside drama, and secrets at the shop. I also disclosed everyone’s salary, so everyone could know how disgusting our boss was about who they gave raises to because he only gave raises to his favorites. More than half the staff left within three months after I left."
10. "I used to work in retail management but was looking to transition to a new career because customers are largely awful. I managed to find a new job and had turned in my two weeks notice at my current employer, so I was in that nice period of just coasting at work. Late one night, around fifteen minutes before closing, a customer came in to return an item that had clearly been worn multiple times. I was the only one working in the store at that time. I informed the customer that I could not process the return since the item was clearly used. She proceeded to curse me out, call me every name in the book, and then demanded to speak to my manager. Again, I was the manager. So, I decided to be petty. I walked into the back room, put on a baseball cap and sunglasses, then walked back to the counter and said, 'I’m the manager. How can I help you?' She got pissed and stormed out."
11. "I work at a gym and if someone is being a jerk, I will change their account number on their card so that the next time they come in, they'll be held up at the door trying to figure out what's wrong."
12. "When I was working for Domino's we had a regular that would always order five minutes before we closed for delivery. He was always hard to reach once we arrived, rude, and never tipped. One night, he ordered like five 20 oz sodas. Nothing else. I double bagged them and shook them violently for about three minutes before I knocked on his door."
—Anonymous, 39
13. "I worked as a service manager at an auto dealer. We had a drive-in to drop off your vehicle, and you're supposed to leave your keys. One customer took the keys out of the ignition, even though they used the drive-in plenty of times before. This was in the mid-90s, so it was just a plain metal key. I looked up the key number, made a key, and charged $5 on the invoice. When the customer came to pick up the car, the customer had a temper tantrum over the charge in front of a lot of other customers. I took off the $5 and gave them the key. Over the years, that key cost them hundreds of dollars because I kept charging extra for any service performed."
14. "My boss was someone who pawned all of her work on others, but took the credit for jobs well done. For one event, I was assigned to manage accommodations for a 2500-person conference. I booked everything: Meals, flights, rooms, cars, swag, etc. I told my boss that she needed to call the university to give the final okay to charge her purchasing card. I told her four times verbally, emailed her another four times, to which she responded, and even texted her an hour before the deadline. Again, she responded back. Still, she failed to give the final approval. I knew I would be blamed, so I resigned before the event would happen in three months. When the event date neared, every single charge for flights, hotels, cars, purchases was denied because of her failure. 2500 people were pissed!"
"She looked like a fool and still attends therapy because of the humiliation." —Anonymous, 36
15. "I'm a nurse in a very busy ER. Sometimes the patient rooms get really dirty because we use a lot of supplies while treating patients, especially if we have to perform blood transfusions or CPR. We are fortunate enough to have house keepers to clean the rooms, though there was one house keeper who was so disagreeable. She refused to tasks that were absolutely in her job description. One of these tasks was to empty patients' plastic urinal bottles. After a patient left the room, she simply wouldn’t clean the room until the nurse emptied the bottle. One day I was extremely busy and hadn’t got around to emptying the bottle in one of my rooms. I asked her to please clean the dirty room because I had a lot of medications to give and it'd really help out if the room was clean soon. She rolled her eyes and turned the other way. I was furious that she refused to be a team player. So, I went in the room and emptied the urinal bottle...all over the floor and toilet."
16. "One of my coworkers would unplug another coworker's computer or internet connection, and we would watch him trying to figure out what was wrong. He'd then ask IT for help, and that was even funnier, cause the IT guy couldn't figure out what was wrong too."
"It was hilarious to watch, like a Laurel and Hardy comedy." —Anonymous, 62
17. "When I worked on the ninth floor at the American Express headquarters office around 1980, my supervisor was VP of Personnel, and a real asshole, bigot, and womanizer. At one point, I was on the multi-line phone ordering flowers for his mistress on line one, and a birthday gift for his wife on line two! One week, I was fed up with his temper tantrums and unpredictable nature, so on the day he was leaving for a business trip, I went to the travel agency downstairs and told them that he gave them permission to destroy his business card, the plastic card that he used for lunch expenses, trip expenses, everything. He threw a fit when he found out his card was destroyed, hours before his flight. I still remember how he screamed and slammed his desk. I was inwardly laughing hysterically!"
18. "My old boss fired me because he didn’t like me. He would say I wasn’t doing my duties, even though I sent him photos of my completed tasks. He fired me anyway, and said he wouldn’t give me my final check either. I knew he was in the running to be promoted to a corporate position, so I spent all of my unemployed time making horrible reviews and calling his boss as different people to complain about the way he managed the facility. My co-workers I’m still in contact with told me that he’s still the general manager, so I guess he didn’t get that promotion. Oops."
19. "In my mid-twenties, I got a good paralegal job in a small town. I worked for one attorney and sat next to another paralegal who worked for a second attorney. We shared a large office. When I was onboarding with the paralegal I was replacing, she gave me some strong, terrible perfume. She said she would arrive 40 minutes early everyday to put some underneath the chair of the other paralegal. She explained the other paralegal was sensitive to fragrances, and it made her feel just bad enough so as not to be as much of a bother during the day. In my enlightened ignorance, I thought it was petty and cruel. I can use my communication and negotiation skills and work together with my new office companion. Now, I understand if someone tells you the only way to survive a job is to perfume gas someone...they are probably correct."
20. "I'm in Accounts Receivable/Collections and sometimes some of my customers ask me to email them invoices that I know I've sent several times. Now, after about the third request, I just attach all of the previous emails I sent. I also BCC their bosses!"
—Anonymous, 50
21. "I was in my 20s and really hating my office job with a small bank, so I quit. There was a large, very secure file cabinet that held all the files for everything and everyone. On my way out the door of my last day, I took the file cabinet keys, threw them in one of the file drawers, closed it and pushed the three lock buttons. I heard that it took some time and expense to get it open. I still haven't decided whether or not I feel any remorse."
22. "I had a coworker who was trying to start up a pyramid scheme business on the side and was constantly distracted at work. She would even call in sick to work on her new 'business.' One day, she called in sick but posted all over social media the day before that she would be painting the interior of her new 'business' all day. When we got notified that she had called in sick, I drove to the town that her new 'business' was in and filmed her and her husband painting. She put in her two weeks a few days later."
—Anonymous, 38
23. "I was remodeling a bathroom and on day one, the customer was already unhappy with my company before I arrived. He told me how his son was an architect and started pointing out things that I should do and how to do them, which of course I already know because I’ve done them a thousand times. A little after that, he told me he was thinking of leaving to pick up his son and bring him back with him to oversee what was going on. I already had a lot of work to do at that point, so putting on a friendly face for a new guy whose job is talking about work but not actually doing it just wasn't in the cards. So, I pulled my truck and trailer forward and blocked his entire driveway — I told him it was so I can get closer for the 400 lb. bathtub that I was moving. After about two hours, he decided he wasn’t going to go get his son after all. I finished that project today, he ended up being super happy with the results, and never even mentioned his son again."
24. "When I was in the Marine Corps, we had a community fridge in our barracks. Of course, being around a bunch of 18–19 year-olds, nobody had respect for anyone else's food and would eat whatever they wanted, whether it was their's or not. After a few instances of my food going missing, I decided it was time to teach people a lesson. I went down do the post exchange and bought a bottle of Gatorade and added a healthy dose of Ipecac Syrup, vomit inducing serum for accidental poisonings, to it before placing it in the fridge. I headed out for an appointment and returned a few hours later to our Gunnery Sergeant screaming at everyone in the conference room. It turns out six people had drank out of it and they were puking everywhere. We never a problem with people taking stuff that wasn't theirs after that."
25. "I worked at a Bob Evans several years ago in a medium sized college-town and had the worst general manager. To make a long story short, she had major anger issues. I was aware of this very shortly after I was hired and knew that eventually, I would become the target of her rage. The assistant manager felt appropriately protective of me in this regard. Crap hit the fan hard when I didn't come in for my Mother's Day shift. There was a misunderstanding because I usually had Sundays off, and the manager went off on me. My assistant manager secretly recorded approximately 11 minutes of the confrontation, making sure to keep the screen black. I was aware of this, and happily let him roll. Two months later he quit, and I followed three weeks later. Once he heard I left, he posted the video to YouTube and tagged corporate in it with the caption, 'And they wonder why they can't keep help with managers like this.'"
"The company tried to get the video removed three separate times, but nobody was visually implicated in the video, so YouTube let it stay up. Corporate eventually investigated and asked the employees who still worked there exactly how the work environment was. They did not hold back. The general manager ended up getting court mandated anger management classes. The video completely froze her managerial career as she was unable to even transfer out as a condition of her not immediately being fired. So worth it." —Anonymous, 27
26. "I worked as a host and my boss, who was ten years younger than me, was so rude and mean. Her boyfriend worked at our job too. One night, I was out and so was her boyfriend. We drank, flirted, and I ended up having sex with him that night. I honestly did it because she was such an asshole to her employees. He was cute, too."
—Anonymous, 31
27. "My manager approached me and said I qualified to move up to a senior position with a raise. So, I kept my numbers up for about five months and was even coming in on my days off to shadow her. It seemed like it was taking forever to get any real news of my promotion, so I reached out to one of the district managers to find out when I could officially take over the role. I found out my manager was only using me to do extra work for her. I gave my two weeks notice on the spot and called out every day from that day onward to make sure they would be short-staffed. I later found out from former co-workers that my ex-manager was let go for compliance issues shortly after I left."
28. "When I worked for a large auto company at their corporate office right out of high school, I was the junior secretary who had to fill in for secretaries who went on vacation. I had to make sure their bosses had their water jugs filled, pencils sharpened, and a Wall Street Journal on their desk every morning. All the executives were great, except one. He was nasty to me and so petty each and every day. Once, he held up a pencil, said the tip was crooked, and asked me to resharpen it. To get back at him, I tore out every one of those cards in magazines that you use to request information and checked off every category then put his name and address on them. He ended up getting tons of junk mail at his home every day for months. I heard him complaining to another exec that he and his wife were getting really upset about all of the junk mail they were receiving. It made my day that he was being inconvenienced."
29. "My company owed me under-paid commission for over a year, about $40,000 between 2020 and 2021. I had to take them to court to actually get paid what I was owed, despite them acknowledging the underpayment. So I may or may not have went into our customer management system and changed all of our customers' phone numbers by one number, and all email addresses by a single character."
"Good luck getting ahold of customers." —Anonymous, 37
30. "During The Great Flood of 1993, I was working in downtown Des Moines, Iowa. Because of the flooding, we couldn't use the water in our building for things such as toilets and sinks. My boss, who was extremely mean and condescending, brought in a little Port-A-Potty from her lake house and put it in the restroom for us to use — we were instructed to only urinate in it. Signs were up all over the restroom not to go 'number two.' I seized the opportunity and took a big dump in there, knowing she was the one who would have to clean it up. I didn't tell a soul."
31. "I worked as the IT and one person constantly had problems when the company paid me for days when we had snow, I had no electricity, I was out sick, and everything else. She could’ve claimed the same benefits but instead chose to just complain about me. So, I went into the computer system and pulled up her saved resume and inserted the words 'heavy smoker.'"
—Anonymous, 62
32. "I was working retail in Myrtle Beach and we had mostly tourists. One lady from Canada bought over $300 worth of clothing. She mentioned that she needed the tags hanging out, so I folded everything the way she asked and started making a pile on the counter. I even folded the shirts extra nice. After a while, the woman gave me a dirty look and proceeded to slowly re-fold everything. She also wouldn't let me bag her purchases. Finally after what seemed like 20 years, we completed the transaction, and I handed her the receipt. As soon as she looked down to tuck the receipt into her purse, I reached into one of the bags and created a tornado with my hand — all of her carefully folded clothing twisted into a giant pile, tags all tangled up. She grabbed the bags and I wished her a nice day."
—Anonymous, 39
33. "I worked with volunteers, and one volunteer was so hateful and verbally abusive to everyone. He often bragged about how awful he could treat people, including his own family. During The Gulf War, he started forwarding emails from his son who was on active duty in Iraq to a long list of people, including me. His son's emails were highly critical of the mission, his command, fellow soldiers, and included rants against the President. His father even bragged about how disliked his son was for 'telling it like it is.' One day, the volunteer ended screamed at me on the phone because I didn't return his call within 15 minutes of him leaving a message. I had enough of his abuse. I Google searched the Pentagon, found a name and title that sounded pretty high up, and faxed the son's email with a note that said that I was afraid that this soldier was not protecting our country. I left only the father's email address on the copy that I sent to the Pentagon."
34. "I've had the pleasure of working with many college deans. There was one who was quite the micro-manager. What time she arrived to the office would dictate how intense she was going to be that day. On one particular day, we all came to work to see her car here already and knew it would be a tough day. Before I even had a chance to sit down and turn on my computer, she started peppering me with work-related questions. I politely told her that once I put my purse down and turned on my computer, I could provide the answers she needed. Right after that, she walked out to go to the restroom. When she came back in, she had a tail of toilet paper hanging out of the back of her suit pants that was at least two feet long. I chose not to tell her. I let her walk around the office with that tail of toilet paper hanging out. My co-workers and I got a good laugh for about an hour, until one of our student workers saw her walk by and politely went into her office to let her know."
35. "I worked on a military base under a manager that was extremely lazy, rented movies all day, and made us do all the work while he napped in the back or watched movies on his government computer. We used common access cards to log in to the computers and they had a gold chip on them to read your info. The manager left his card under his keyboard, so I took a piece of clear tape and put it over the chip so it wouldn't read. The next day, he tried his card and it didn't read. He switched keyboards, called IT support, but nothing got it going. He had to go to the ID office get a new card. He wasted half the day at the office to get a new card, just to have the clerk peel the tape off his card. They looked at him and said, 'Guess someone at work doesn't like you!'"
"I learned the tape trick from the people at the ID office." —Anonymous, 36
36. "I had a manager that was always rude and condescending. He was also allergic to cats. Whenever he was particularly rude, I would rub my cats all over my under shirt before work. He would be sneezing all day long."
37. "I had to travel to Los Angeles for a job that ended at 5 p.m. and it took me five hours to drive back home because traffic was so bad. I finally needed dinner, so I stopped about 30 miles from home at 9 p.m. and ate. When I tried to expense my meal, my boss rejected it because I was so close to home. For the next six months, I felt totally justified leaving early and charging my full eight hours. He paid way more than the cost of my meal."
—Anonymous, 36
38. "I was tired of a co-worker being so loud on his phone, so I unscrewed the phone receiver before he came into work and placed a piece of salami with mustard inside the mouth piece. Over the next two days, it started to stink and the guy just couldn't figure out what smelled so bad. I was dying."
39. "Several of us were to be let go due to downsizing because of financial woes. On my last day, I was entering all of my billing for the month. I left my desk to go to the bathroom, and upon returning, my computer had been taken. I thought, 'What the hell? Here sits my drink, beneath my desk sits my purse, obviously, someone was working.' They couldn't even wait to move my computer to another office?! So, instead of alerting anyone that I hadn't entered all of the billing, I gathered up my things and went home. More lost revenue for the firm!"
40. "I once filled out a form for 'How to cure bed wetting' in my old foreman's name. The place actually sent him a 'kit' at work. He was so proud they sent him something that he gathered everyone around before he opened the box. It could not have worked out better for me. He pulled out the cover letter and started to read it out loud, 'Dear Mr. Davis, we are sorry to hear about your problem with bed wetting...' That was all it took. Everyone in the room fell out of their chair laughing. He never lived that down."
"That joke carried on for over 10 years. Best prank I ever pulled." —Anonymous, 54
41. "I work in a small hospital with a co-worker who I'll call Jill. Jill appears innocent and pure, but she talks about everyone behind their backs, myself included. She's got mad manipulating skills. Jill's badly wants recognition from upper management. She wants to be employee of the month and year, and be awarded both in front of hospital staff. She has yet to receive either. Jill is the supervisor in her department and has one person under her — we'll call her Cathy. Jill hired Cathy about a year after she started working at the hospital. Since Jill is back in school for another degree, Cathy has picked up a lot of the slack in that department. I suggested that Cathy be employee of the month since she's worked so hard in Jill's absence. Upper management agreed. When the day came and it was announced Cathy had won employee of the month, Jill was not happy. The look on her face was pure enjoyment for me."
42. "I worked in a male-dominated industry and I found it difficult to have my voice heard. I asked for certain further education which was promised but never materialized. When production officially began and I started punching a time clock, I was never paid for the time before or after my 'official' shift. I was expected to be there to open the building as I was given keys. I was also expected to hang around after work to meet and talk with other department heads. I made several complaints to the HR department about this missing time. I even mentioned it to the owner. The response every time was, 'I'll look into it.' I spoke to other managers and found out they also were not paid for that missing time. I complained again, and I was fired shortly after for my 'performance.' Before I filed for unemployment, I called the Department of Labor and tipped them that the company was withholding due wages."
"They were investigated, fined, and made to comply with labor laws. 53 people and all future employees benefited from that phone call. Mess with me, please!" —Anonymous, 35
43. "I worked at a mom-and-pop discount bookstore for a couple years in my early 20s as an assistant manager. I got along with the store manager because she had a wicked sense of humor and a zero bullshit tolerance. One time, we ended up with a bad batch of plastic bags. They were super flimsy to the point that we had to double bag even small purchases of just a few paperbacks. She got fed up and made a run to an office supply store to get a new box of bags and we kept the flimsy bags as emergency backup. So one day, this guy came in and was insufferably rude to me, and to the manager when she came to rescue me. Normally, I did the cashier duties because I was faster, but my manager darted over to check him out and sent me off with a wink. The customer was still griping about the fact that there wasn't a male manager to speak to, and I watched as my manager ducked down to grab a couple of the flimsy bags. I had to walk away because I knew what she was going to do."
How did you get petty revenge at one of your jobs? Let me know in the comments.
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.