In March 2020, due to the health crisis, our company instituted a work-from-home policy for all of its employees. Most of us had laptops to work on; anyone who didn’t was issued one.

The WFH situation dragged on, and on. It went from “We’ll be back by summer 2020” to “Maybe not until October 2020” to “God only knows”.  

Sometime in early 2021, I found out that a longtime employee, Chris, had been laid off. I was saddened but not surprised. My somewhat ditzy coworker Bonny, however, could NOT understand why it had happened.

Bonny: “Why would they let Chris go? He’s been with the company for years!”

Me: “It sucks, definitely, but Chris’s role was Desktop Support, so…”

Bonny: “So? What’s that got to do with anything?”

Me: “With no one working at the office, there were no desktops to support. They were essentially paying Chris to do nothing for almost a year.”

Bonny: “I still don’t get why they’d lay him off. So unfair.”

Me: “He was literally doing nothing. That’s not his fault, but I see their side of it.”

Bonny: “But we’ll go back to the office eventually, and they’ll need him then!”

I gave up at that point. As it turned out, in mid-2021, the company announced that anyone who wanted to keep working from home could do so indefinitely. Therefore, Chris STILL wouldn’t have had much to do if they’d kept him on.

Let’s go back to the year 2001. Cargo pants were fashionable and the penny was still in production. I was only fourteen years old, so I had no car, but it was fine; my parents lived close to the best ice cream place in town, which I walked to often. Amazing ice cream within walking distance? What on earth could be wrong here?

Well, to get to and from said ice cream, I had to walk past the gas station where an employee had taken to catcalling me every time I walked past. I could not get the yummy delicious ice cream without being treated to hollers of, “Nice t*ts! Why don’t you lick something else?” and so on and so on. For weeks.

Let’s just say it’s very stupid to harass people from your place of work; they know where to find you. And since I was only fourteen, I didn’t think to go to the manager of the gas station about his employee’s conduct, and I didn’t want it to turn into a he-said-she-said, no-harm-done situation. Because, again, it was the 2000s — how lame were security cameras? I was fourteen and angry and wanted my revenge to be painful.

So, I started my quest to collect pennies — as many pennies as I could get my hands on. You had pennies, I had nickels, dimes, and even quarters, and I would trade for them. It took about a week to collect just over $2 in loose pennies. People were so willing to part with them.

One ruined walk for ice cream later, and I knew my target was at work. Home I went to gather my hoard of pennies. Into those massive cargo pants pockets they went. One short jingling walk later — during which I wasn’t 100% sure my pants weren’t about to fall down due to the weight of 200-plus pennies in my pockets — I arrived at my destination and in I went.

I grabbed what I needed for a simple $2 transaction, a pack of Skittles and a red Gatorade, and to the till I went.

My target looked rather smug. I don’t know, maybe he thought his many unwanted invitations to [perform a sex act on him] had succeeded. That is, right up until I started pulling fistfuls of pennies out of those pockets and simply dropping them on the counter. They weren’t in a Ziplock. Nope, loose pennies all over the counter.

Of course, the right to refuse an overwhelming amount of coins is and was a thing. I believe anything more than fifteen pennies was considered excessive at the time and could be refused. And so he tried.

Employee: *Defiantly* “I don’t have to take that!”

But I was angry and my revenge would not be denied, so I shot back.

Me: “Oh, but you will. You clearly wanted my attention with all your hollering over the past few weeks. So, you’ll take those pennies or I’ll have a chat with your manager.”

And so he started counting, and I stood there repeating back all the “lovely things” he had been saying to me and interjecting random numbers in for good measure. He wasn’t smart enough to make piles of ten, not that I expected smart from a boy stupid enough to sexually harass women outside of his place of work. So I kept him there. His coworker opened another till to help other customers, but she made no moves to help him.

Once the transaction was finished, I took my purchase, and before I walked out the door, I told him:

Me: “If you ever catcall me again, it will be $5 in pennies, and I will be chatting with your manager.”

Ice cream trips were so blissfully free of catcalling after that.

I know that 99.9% of cashiers don’t deserve that mountain of coins. I just wanted to share my story of that 0.01% who got what they had coming.

This story is part of our Even-More-Highest-Voted-Stories-Of-2023-(so far!) roundup!

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I rent a small house with my family. There is a stray cat in the neighborhood.

My landlord recently took pictures of the stray cat sitting in our yard and started using it as an excuse to charge us a $350 pet fee and to up our rent by $35 a month as a “pet monthly rental charge”.

Despite our efforts to prove that the feline was not ours, including affidavits from our neighbors who were actually feeding the stray, the landlord continued to insist that we pay this additional fee.

We took it to court, and we won… only for the landlord to send us a letter saying he was forced to increase rent across all of his properties due to an increase in expenses related to unexpected court costs.

We’ve had it. We’re moving out.

I am the night manager of a fairly busy restaurant. It’s a typical mid-January night and the temperature is around minus thirty. (It doesn’t matter if that’s Fahrenheit or Celsius; they’re both very cold.)

This couple comes in around 10:30 pm. Straight away, the guy starts acting like a d****ebag dudebro, and his date is just as bad. She complains about everything. She expects her ten-ounce wine glass to come full to the brim when the menu says it’s a six-ounce server. The guy snaps his fingers to get the waitress’s attention and says, “Chop chop!” to get served faster. They are rude to me and everyone else in the place, they write a nasty note on their CC receipt, “Sorry, no tip for bad service,” and, of course, they don’t tip.

They walk out the door at the same time that one of the other waiters is leaving, and because it’s thirty below, neither of their cars will start. I grab my keys and move my car next to the waiter’s car, pop the hoods, hook up the cables, and have him started quicker than you can imagine.

Then, the man from the couple walks over as I’m returning the cables to my trunk and asks for a boost.

Customer: *Demanding* “Me next!”

I laugh as I get in my car and repark it. At this point, it is closing time, so I walk back into the restaurant and start to lock the doors, the man trailing after me.

Me: “I’ll charge your car as much as you tipped.”

I pointed out an indoor ATM area in the bank across the street. They had to take a cab home.

Our daughters are two years apart. When [Older Daughter] was in kindergarten, she and her classmates took part in the school’s annual Christmas pageant. At the start of the pageant, one of the teachers announced:

Teacher #1: “Now, parents, don’t just watch your child’s performance and then leave. Stay until the end of the show.”

That was fair; a mass of people getting up at the end of each act would be disruptive. The trouble was that our younger daughter (who was only around three) got restless and fussy at the end of her sister’s turn on stage, and we knew that we couldn’t stay. So, we bundled her up and headed over to [Older Daughter]’s classroom, where she and her classmates were blowing off a little steam.

Her teacher physically blocked the doorway and hissed:

Teacher #2: “Oh, no, you don’t. Go back and watch the rest of the show. [Older Daughter] is happy here.”

Me: *In disbelief* “That’s all fine and dandy, but her sister is tired and needs to go home.”

She refused to budge.

Teacher #2: “Then have your husband take her.”

Me: “Excuse me? We’re taking both of our daughters home, now. Move.”

She very begrudgingly moved.

Season of peace and goodwill, my a**.