We all know what it's like when a rude person tries to ruin our days just because theirs are going poorly. Well, there's nothing better than getting sweet, sweet revenge on people who try to bring us down. Here, people share stories of a time they got back at someone who was rude to them.
Thank you to everyone who shared their story.
(Content has been edited for clarity)
Well, You Can Stay Out There
“About a year ago, I got back at this really macho guy when I was working as a manager in a big nightclub.
The venue has a great smoking section that looks out onto the street. One night the venue was packed, so I did my usual roam, making sure that there were no problems. However, it was too packed to walk through the smoking section, so I walked down the street instead. I could still very easily see the smoking section.
One guy stared me down, called me over, and started swearing at me for no reason. He was telling me that, ‘garbage like you could never even get into a venue like this.’ I don’t wear a uniform, but I did have a radio and run the security team. He obviously had no idea I was the manager. However, I didn’t want to have security get into a fight inside with him.
The guy kept telling me he would punch me out and was clearly trying to look macho to impress someone. So I agreed and told him to come and meet me outside, he could even have a free swing. He put his drink down, took off his jacket, and stormed outside. Once he walked outside, I walked back inside and told security not to let him back in. The look on his face when he realized I ran the place was priceless, and then the realization that he couldn’t get back into the club was amazing.
It was the easiest and most fun removal I have ever done.”
That Woman’s Words Came Back To Haunt Her At The DMV
“I used to work for the Department of Motor Vehicles and I had a ridiculous customer come in.
The place I worked at had pretty limited parking. I had left for lunch, came back and was having a hard time finding a place to park. I finally found a spot, so I drove up to it and put my signal on showing that I was waiting for it. In my experience, people usually respect this and continue on. Not this time.
Just as the car was backing out, after I had waited a few minutes, a car came from the opposite side of the lot, made eye contact with me and then shot right into the parking space. I was so mad because now I would be late after looking for a new spot. As I drove past the woman who had taken the spot, I just shook my head and she responded by shrugging her shoulders, smiling, mouthing the words, ‘Oh well,’ to me, and then ran her finger from her eye down her cheek as if to mock me crying about it.
I continued to work, got in trouble for being late, but had actually forgotten about the incident. That was until little Miss Spot-Stealer got called to my station. The look on her face was priceless!
Keep in mind that I’m not your average DMV worker. I understand that stuff happens, so I waive penalties all the time and treat my customers with respect because I believe that what goes around, comes around. I know how bad it is to wait for the DMV all day. I’m usually so nice about getting penalties taken off of people’s accounts that I get in trouble for it at times.
So, I greeted the spot stealer as nice as I would anyone else. In fact, it may have been nicer than I normally would be. She may have thought I didn’t recognize her. Her registration was FAR past due, with hundreds due in penalties. I let her tell me her whole sob story then finally told her that she owed in full because she was aware of her due date. She argued it a little until, out of site from my manager, I mouthed the words, ‘Oh well,’ and dragged my finger from my eye to my cheek, mocking her tears. At that point, she put her head down and proceeded to take out her card and pay the full amount because yes, we do take debit cards.
What goes around, comes around.”
He’d Seen (And Tapped) The Whole Thing
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“I was sitting in my car, taking some photos with my new phone and testing the different settings.
As I was fooling around, I saw this woman who stopped at a one-way street with only one lane. She waited there for about 10 seconds, doing nothing. I thought that was very unusual, so I started recording her. Another driver drove up behind her and honked since she wasn’t moving. She then reversed and hit the other guy’s car with her big BMW. Of course, four guys jumped out of her BMW and started yelling at the guy behind them.
As we all know, if you can’t prove it wasn’t your fault, people rarely get treated fair in court. In Germany, the person who rear-ended someone will always be blamed unless they can prove it wasn’t their fault. So, I already know I’m looking at a case of classic insurance fraud.
The poor guy they hit looked really worried because he knew he couldn’t prove his innocence. I just sat there in my car and waited for the police.
Once they arrived, I left my car and listened to the police get statements from both parties. I just stood there and listened to the woman complaining about how this idiot hit her from behind and her brand new car was damaged.
After the police took their statements, they took mine as well. They informed us that there was no chance that two people could disprove four in court. Two of the guys in the BMW even said they didn’t know the woman driving. They claimed that they were pedestrians who saw the accident. Naturally, this would increase credibility.
So, they made all false statements to the police, but that’s exactly what I wanted to happen. I then told the police, ‘Oh, wait. Just one more thing,’ and I told them that I had a video of the accident. I showed it to the police and the woman and her passengers just stood there with their mouths open. The police were informed that she was at fault and that the ‘pedestrians’ were really her friends.
The innocent guy then hugged me and we became good friends. As it turns out, he actually lived near me, and we spent the evening drinking and gaming.”
The Cashier Came To Their Rescue
“A cashier once had my back when I was in a massive line at a store.
I’m next in line, but the person in front of me has a ton of stuff. A helpful clerk sees the mess and opens another register saying, ‘I can help the next customer.’ Well, that’s me.
However, the checkout counter has two sides – a right and a left. The way it’s set up is for people to come to the right side, but the left can be used as well. As I was stepping over to her counter, this idiot from the very end of my line came sprinting over to her counter, pushing people aside with his partner in tow. He arrived right before me. They had a mountain of items in their cart, which he started throwing on the checkout counter. I was standing there on the other side with my one item, burning with rage.
The checkout girl waited until he stacked all of his stuff on the counter, looked at me, looked at him, and said to him, ‘I’m sorry, sir. You’re on the wrong side. You’ll have to go to the end of the line,’ which was now massive.
I put on my biggest grin, made eye contact with him as long as possible, and loudly told the clerk how awesome she was.”
They Hit Her Where It Hurt The Most
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“I’m a manager at a grocery store, so I get awesomely rude customers daily.
Every Wednesday is the senior discount day. You have to be 55-60 to qualify for the discount. Needless to say, Wednesdays are tense. There are lots of seniors and lots of other people who don’t want to deal with the seniors. I don’t generally mind the old folks. Most of them are pretty cool and have some interesting stories and cute jokes.
This Wednesday, there was one particular customer who was being a huge pain from the moment she walked in. She was tall and blonde in high heels. She was very made up and dressed to the nines. She was probably in her late 30s to early 40s. She came storming up to customer service and said, ‘There are NO parking spots. This is ridiculous. I’m going to request to corporate that you expand your parking lot since you don’t seem to have the initiative to request that yourself.’ So, we were already off to a great start.
She came storming back up about 45 minutes later. ‘I am in a HUGE hurry and every line has someone in it. I need to check out here.’ We had three lines open, and each one had ONE single customer. ONE.
I said, ‘No problem, but I’ll get you at a checkout. You have too many items to get here.’
She had a HUGE hissy fit. ‘I don’t have time for this,’ she said. ‘Let’s GO.’
As I was checking her out, there were constant complaints from her. She told me, ‘You only have one brand of makeup? That is ridiculous. I only wear MAC. I was going to settle for Revlon, but you don’t even have that. Now I have to make a whole separate trip,’ and, ‘Please don’t put my bread on top of my eggs, the eggs could roll over and crush the bread.’ She also told me, ‘Please bag my avocados separately; I need to use those for a face cream tonight. They need to be perfect. I have a photo session for work tomorrow. I’m in a magazine.’ She was unbelievable.
Finally, at the end, I had enough.
As she was about to pay, I said, ‘Don’t forget, today is the senior discount day! You get five percent off!’
She stared at me, ‘What?’
I smiled broadly and continued, ‘Every Wednesday, senior citizens get five percent off their bill. I’ll go ahead and take it off. You are 55-60, right?’ She was staring at me, debit card in hand, cheeks getting red. I lost my smile slowly and said, ‘Oh, you don’t qualify? Sorry about that. Maybe next year! Thanks for your honesty.’
I haven’t seen her in the store since.”
Think Before You Say Stupid Things
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“Just the other day I was at a Chinese buffet and the three people in the booth next to me were questioning the waitress (she appeared to be Asian-Hispanic) about voting for the president and who she planned to vote for. She had trouble understanding them and communicating that she could not vote.
They immediately began taunting her. They told her she shouldn’t be here if she couldn’t vote, she didn’t even know who the president of the United States was, and then took a picture and said they would post it on Facebook.
I later found out the waitress was on a school visa and couldn’t vote, but was unable to convey that to them.
After the waitress walked off, one of the girls at the table (the one who took the picture) looked up and asked me where I worked because I looked familiar. When I replied the local university in the social work department, she commented that she had recently been in my office to apply to our program. I replied, ‘Yes, I remember you, and I’m also on the admissions committee,’ which I followed with a wink. The color drained from her face and she knew she was done.”
He Got Back At That Loser In The Most Personal Way Possible
“I worked at a hotel several years ago and had to deal with insufferable losers about a dozen times a day.
The best revenge I ever got was a guy that stayed with us four days a week for the entire five years I worked at the hotel. The big utility company in our area was having financial issues and he was the leader of the auditing team that was sent in to straighten it out.
Anyway, I would interact with the guy at least a few times every day I worked, and he was ALWAYS very rude and condescending. As an example, one of his co-workers would ask me for a local restaurant recommendation and he would chime in with, ‘Yeah, because minimum-wage workers are known for their taste in fine dining.’ If someone asked me something personal, he would say something like, ‘Ask him what life choices he made to be here plunging toilets and writing down my preferred wake-up call time. Maybe he can share his wisdom so we all avoid his fate.’ Stuff like that. He was just the worst to everyone on the hotel staff and was always very demanding.
Since I saw him every day, I noticed that he had developed a relationship with one of the younger women on his auditing team. I saw their romance blossom from flirting to full-on groping and grinding in the hotel lobby. One day, he had just finished delivering one of his delightfully terrible bon mots to me, and I was fuming. Then he screamed at one of my co-workers because she had a Filipino accent and he said he only wanted his room cleaned by ‘white Americans.’ I vowed revenge.
His wife called in to speak to him later that night like she usually did, and I said, ‘Oh, I think he’s sleeping in Ms. So-and-so’s room tonight. One moment, please,’ and then I connected his wife to her room. His wife must not have told him what I had said because he didn’t try to get me fired.
They got a divorce. They didn’t have kids, but according to another guy on the auditing team, his wife got the house and custody of their dog. He stopped staying with us shortly after the phone call.”
A Small Price To Pay For Almost Killing Someone
“I was riding my bike to work one day, and when crossing a street (in the legal zone with a walk sign), a woman ran me over. She drove through the crosswalk looking to turn right and ran right into me. She stopped after I got bumped hard enough by her fender to take a spill and have some bruising all down my side. She gave me an exasperated, ‘my bad’ wave and continued to talk on her cell phone. She completely ignored me as I picked up myself and my bike.
I walked right up to her open window, grabbed her cell phone from her ear, and chucked it into a nearby parking lot as hard as I could. I swear that was the farthest I have thrown anything in my life. She gaped at me in shock as I struggled back onto my bike and slowly rode off, fuming yet victorious.”
The Mom Was Somehow Worse Than The Kids
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“When I was 15/16, I worked at a local video rental place. The boss was too cheap to pay more than one person per shift, so I had the slow Wednesday and Thursday night shifts all to myself. We were in this wicked rich, yuppy town, and 90% of our business consisted of local soccer moms bringing their kids in for a movie night. Most of these women were terrible people, overlords to their spoiled flock, who would throw credit cards around without thinking twice and would condescend everyone they deemed ‘beneath’ them.
We had a very basic computer system at the time and there was a built-in function that wouldn’t allow someone to rent another movie if they had over $10 of late fees on their account. The employees had the ability to overwrite this, at their discretion, or to lower the fees if they thought it appropriate.
Anyway, one day this woman comes in with a bunch of kids. If I remember correctly, she had five or six roughly 12 to 13-year-old boys. The kids were running around, pulling things off the shelves, making lots of noise, punching each other, upsetting other customers, and upsetting me. The woman didn’t do anything about it, she basically sat there gossiping on her cell phone, not caring about the scene her kids were causing. Being a very timid person by nature, I didn’t say anything and just figured I’d clean up the mess when they left.
So the woman finally came up to the counter with maybe eight different movies, a few video games, and a bunch of candy. She was standing there on the phone still and just shoved the stuff at me across the counter. She didn’t even acknowledge my presence. So I looked up her account and boom. She had $120 worth of late fees and four titles rented for six+ months and still not returned.
So I tried getting her attention while her back was turned. She gestured me off. I stood there and did nothing. She finally hung up a minute or so later, turned to me, and said something snarky like, ‘Well, what’s taking so long?’
So I explained, ‘Ma’am, you have a very outstanding fee on your account and I can’t let you rent any more movies until this is paid and the missing movies are returned.’ She lost it. She started ranting about how her daughter rents things in her name, never returns anything, doesn’t pay fees, and that she has done no wrong. The fees, according to her, should be cleared and she should be able to rent. I nodded but said, ‘This account still owes $120 and I can’t allow you to rent until it’s paid. Company policy, ma’am. I’m sorry, but I don’t make the rules.’
She started going off again, saying ridiculous things like, ‘I know the owner and he’ll wipe out the debt in a heartbeat! You’d better let me rent or I’ll complain to him about how terrible his employees are.’ I told her he’s out of the country (which was true), he couldn’t be reached, and she still owed $120. She complained some more but finally pulled out the card.
We had this ancient machine that, for reasons unknown to me, would only read a magnetic strip correctly if you wrapped the card in a plastic grocery bag. I have no idea why but it was the only way it worked. So, as you can probably guess, I ran the card with no plastic wrap. Denied. I tried it again just for looks. Denied. I printed out a receipt, and asked if she had cash. She didn’t, and she was fuming about the card. I showed her the receipt saying ‘card not accepted’ and feigned indifference.
She walked across the street to the bank, came back a few minutes later with the money, and practically threw it at me. I took the payment and said, ‘Now, about those overdue movies. I don’t suppose your daughter would like to return them for you so you can rent these movies?’ I got the worst death glare I think I’ve ever received. The woman abandoned her stack of movies and stomped out.
Not sure if we ever saw her again but at the time, 15-year-old me was so proud of myself for staying cool under pressure and messing with this woman.”
That’s Pretty Much What You Get
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“I went to go get my exhaust fixed one time, it was no big deal, a pothole poked a hole in it.
When I went to go pick up the car a couple hours later, I was treated to a woman SCREAMING at the guy behind the counter. She was positively fuming because she had been waiting nearly 30 minutes for her car to be fixed. She even went so far as to call the guy an ‘insignificant, lazy immigrant.’
The guy looked at her, then looked at me. He threw me my keys and said, ‘Here you go. Your Magnum’s ready. No charge.’
He looked her directly in the eyes and went, ‘Looks like it’s going to be more expensive than we originally thought. Would you like us to call you a cab?”
I returned shortly afterward with pizza for the shop.”
Lady, You Forgot Your Cart
“I watched a lazy shopper park their grocery cart right behind another person’s car instead of putting it in the cart return. I got out of my car, ran up, got the cart, and put it behind her car. I then ran off and watched her have to get back out of her car since she couldn’t back out, and then finally proceed to put up her cart the right way.
I felt like a champion of the people.”
Gimme All The Cookies You Have
“At the end of a long commute home, after a hard week, I went to a Millies Cookies store just before closing time. As I walked up to the counter, not five feet from it, some guy ran from behind me and tried to cut in front of me. The girl working there insisted I was first.
Outraged at what that guy tried to do, and noticing there were not many cookies left, I said, ‘Hi, I’ll take absolutely everything you have.” It cost me close to $60, but it was so worth it.”
You’re Never Going To Work Here
“I was working as a shift leader in a Dunkin’ Donuts and dealt with my fair share of rude people. One particularly memorable day, a group of ladies came in during our busiest hour, just past noon. The line was almost out the door and we were short staffed, so it was pretty hectic. While they were ordering, one of them asked for a job application and started filling it out on the counter. She handed it back before they were done ordering. I stashed it on a shelf under the register and started making their food. They had a huge order and we did our best to get it out quickly, but it was obvious from the looks on their faces that we just weren’t quick enough for their liking.
They sat down to eat their food, and the girl who just turned in her application got back in line. I spotted her right away. She was standing with a glaring face, crossing her arms and tapping her foot, trying her best to look obviously (almost cartoonishly) angry. So I motioned for her to come up to the counter since I knew she had a complaint and I wanted to get it fixed right away. I assumed that in the shuffle we had messed up her sandwich or something like that; anyone who’s worked in fast food knows that these things happen when it’s chaotic.
I asked her what was wrong, and she pointed to her BOTTLED Mountain Dew and barked, ‘THIS IS FLAT!’ It was a bit accusing, as though it were my fault that the bottle of soda she just opened was flat. So I took it and told her to get another one out of the cooler, then check it to make sure it was good. After all that, she asked for a refund. I said, as politely as I could, ‘Ma’am, I replaced your soda. I’m sorry if there was an inconvenience but I don’t think a refund should be necessary.’ So she stormed back to her table and started complaining loudly to her group about not getting a refund.
So, since I was having an awful day anyway and really could not see a woman like this ever working for us, I grabbed her application from the register, walked it over to the lobby trashcan nearest to her table, crumpled it up and threw it away as she watched. The look on her face was priceless.”