Long story short, we had a totally corrupt and universally hated Human Resources manager. It was unanimously agreed that if we found ways to make his life a little less happy, we’d do so, but trust me, he deserved so much more. He was a racist, homophobic misogynist who purposefully ruined a marriage because he could and took pleasure in ensuring anyone non-white would never get a promotion.

Every time I flew for work, I got one of those in-flight magazine ad postcards, checked every box, and added [HR Manager]’s name and the company address.

He got literature for wigs, incontinence products, erectile dysfunction problems, hair restorers, Hair Club for Men, penis enlargement, sex toys, women’s sexy underwear — you name it, he got it.

One coworker who visited other establishments would sign him up for magazines about gay bondage gear.

These companies also sell their data to similar organizations, so this stuff just kept multiplying, and the mail room people kept happily sharing [HR Manager]’s perceived “interests” with the rest of the company.

The mail room staffer delivering mail came to my office and showed me a flyer.

Mail Room Staffer: “He’s looking at wigs now.”

Me: “Oh, yeah, I signed him up for all that.”

She lost it, but she swore herself to secrecy.

[HR Manager] got a reputation for losing his hair, being both incontinent and impotent, losing his memory, ordering cheap mail-order brides, being a massive pervert, and a whole lot more.

I also taped an Acme plastic duck call to his precious, trashy Cadillac and watched him drive out of the lot sounding like Donald Duck with a massive hernia.

[HR Manager] blasted a message out to the entire office saying he’d taken it in to be fixed and was the laughing stock of the dealership, and he wanted whoever was responsible to own up now or there would be repercussions. It took the CEO to remind him that was an abuse of power and maybe he shouldn’t be doing that.

[HR Manager] was finally fired after being accused of making a new young woman worker uncomfortable to the point where it was an HR offense — which is awkward when you’re accusing the HR manager!

I am posting on behalf of my friend. [Friend] isn’t an IT worker, but they work in an accounting firm, and this awfulness happened to the poor IT worker there.

[Friend]’s supervisor has a company laptop. This laptop decided to die in the middle of the workday. Just out of nowhere, ZOOOOP, black screen. The charger LED was also not turning on anymore, so [Supervisor] decided he needed to bring it to IT.

However, because his laptop was so dirty, he felt he should clean it up a bit; otherwise, IT would blame him for the laptop breaking during use. It wasn’t as bad as some of the nightmares we’ve all seen, but it was covered with dust, streaks, pet hair, etc. And obviously, it was definitely his fault the laptop wasn’t working anymore, as he clearly didn’t take care of it.

[Friend] watched as [Supervisor] cleaned his laptop using paper tissues and his own spit. And then, he handed it to IT.

Decades ago, I got yet another visit from a couple of representatives from a particular church. I was standing in the doorway with the screen door between us as they began their pitch. I do find these people annoying and try to save them (and myself!) time by letting them know that I am not the least bit interested as promptly as I can without being full-on butthead rude.

While I was waiting for a break in the conversation so I could spare us all wasted time and effort, my daughter’s black cat walked up next to me, sat down, looked up at me, and meowed.

I had heard that some of these cults were superstitious about black cats. The representatives were paused in their rhetoric upon the arrival of the black cat, just staring at it incredulously. In one of those rare quick-thinking moments, I looked down at the cat and said, “I think the remote is on the sofa.”

As if on cue, the cat stood up and walked around the corner. The representatives just stood there speechless, and I politely told them I was not interested and slowly closed the door.

I never had another representative from their church show up at my door the rest of the years I lived there.

Thanks, Missy the cat. You will always be held in high regard for your actions that day.

I didn’t intend to freak out the door-to-door people. I was just cracking wise, like I do all of the time. I am just not that clever. It just happened to cause them alarm, and since I never had any more visitors from that church, I consider it a happy (though accidental) side effect of a joke.

This was back in the 2000s when desktop PCs still had optical drives.

Caller: “I’m the administrator of [Long-Term Care Facility]. I need to update my software, and I don’t know how.”

Me: “No problem. Can I remote into your system?”

Caller: “Yes.”

I did so, but we seemed to come to an issue with the update straight away. I realised that her disc tray was being shown as open, so I remotely closed it.

Caller: *Yelling* “What are you doing?! You closed my cup holder! My coffee’s spilled everywhere!”

She then tried to get me fired for incompetence. I used to tell that story to scare the new hires, and no one ever believed me. Then, I’d pull up the ticket and play the call recording.

My long-distance partner and I have the displeasure of having a mutual ex-friend. My partner was briefly [Ex-Friend]’s roommate for a while and suffered the worst of the “friendship” because of it.

[Ex-Friend] is either a narcissist or has a lot of narcissistic tendencies; we’ve done several online checklists and tests, and they tick off nearly every box every time. In public, they seem shy to the point of social anxiety and pleasant, but in private, they are rude, entitled, and quick to anger over nothing at all. (They once got rather nasty when they couldn’t hear the TV well over a very quiet phone call.)

They are/were also extremely possessive of my partner — often getting angry when he hung out with anyone, especially with me — and gaslit him into believing that many activities that they did that made [Partner] very uncomfortable were normal, prompting him to not speak up for a few years. Their behavior made us suspect that they really wanted something more from their relationship with [Partner] despite saying they were aromantic.

[Partner] and I could collectively write a whole novel about their behavior — and then would likely be accused of making up the world’s most unbelievable cartoon villain — but I’m only including the most egregious incident to date to keep it brief.

After [Ex-Friend] “moved out” of [Partner]’s place (and his mother’s; she owned the house), they kept coming over for dinner. 

By this point, [Partner] had started talking to me and other friends about [Ex-Friend]’s behavior, and we were all collectively beginning to realize how toxic the friendship was. Therefore, [Partner] was far less tolerant of [Ex-Friend]’s behavior, which upset them greatly and made them pine for “the good old days” (when [Partner] was too afraid to speak up in his defense and get into a fifteen-hour-long argument with them).

On this occasion, they had finished off the last of [Partner]’s mother’s gin by pouring for themself a little too generously. (For those who are more acquainted with alcohol than I am, they basically poured themself triples and quadruples with each glass.)

[Partner] and his mother didn’t think anything of it when [Ex-Friend] went to the kitchen, but when they heard the clinking of glass and something pouring, they got curious. After all, they’d just finished off the gin for the night. Why was there the sound of a drink being poured? [Partner]’s mother went to investigate.

As it turns out, [Ex-Friend] had gone into their cabinets, digging around toward the back of them, and had unearthed a very strong spirit (my partner did not elaborate on what this spirit was) meant for mixed drinks like martinis. They had poured themself their usual generous triple. Without permission, of course.

They were forced to pour it back into the bottle they had taken it from and then sulked the rest of the night.

This is by far the incident that was the most entitled, but as I said, [Partner] and I both have years’ worth of stories to tell about [Ex-Friend]; their behavior is simply so cartoonishly toxic that I suspect someone will accuse me of inventing the stories.