I (27M) live in a houseshare in the UK and
live with 3 guys, T, S & F Now, I'm FtM trans and my landlord knows this
but because he's in his 60's-70's he thinks I've been brainwashed and still refers to
me as a woman. This landlord is incredibly racist and sexist,
every time he comes to visit the house he makes comments like "I don't know why the
house being a mess is a problem, you're a woman, you should be cleaning and leave the
men to work" even though I work more hours than all the guys in the house combined. And
has made racist remarks about certain girls that S brings back home (He has a thing for
Asian girls) like "I thought S hired a cleaner, might as well make use of her once she's used
up" So last week the landlord came over, I knew
he would make some kind of remark so I recorded the conversation and put my phone in my pocket,
low and behold, he didn't fail to make sexist comments and the subject of cleanliness in
the house came up, he said "I shouldn't have to see the boys lift a finger, I always make
sure there's at least one female in the house so that's done for them, after all, what else
are females good for?" followed by "If this was the 50's or 60's, back in my day, you'd
be at home with many kids cooking and cleaning, stop whining or I'll raise your rent" when
I asked him to stop making sexist and arrogant comments. I even found out that the landlord
had lowered F's rent because he did some cleaning on his own (poor thing) Gotcha. So, he wants to have it that way and refuses
to see me as male? Sure thing! So I took my recording and went to the Agency,
it's a small letting agency that are really good with things like complaints and dealing
with landlords directly, all the people on the front desk and in the office? Women I turned on the recording and let them listen,
they were absolutely shocked and some were nervous because they thought I wanted (and
very well could) make a lawsuit out of this for discrimination. So instead of doing that I felt it was only
necessary to hurt the landlord financially. "Well, if he wants it to be like the 50's
I can make that happen, what was the woman's working wage in the 50's?" We calculated it together and it came to Substantially
a lot lower than what I was currently paying, I mean 85% lower than what I was paying right
now. The letting agency allowed me to pay what
the equivalent of a woman's wage was back then for this month and possibly next month's
rent, not only because they were absolutely horrified with what was being said, but because
it would be a lot less cheaper than me resorting to legal action against them anyway. Phone call from the landlord yesterday asking
me what the f*** I think I'm doing "Well, if you had treated me with decency
and respect this wouldn't have happened, I'm well within my rights to do this, since you
wanted things to be like in the 50's, you got what you wanted, or I can take legal action
for discrimination based on race, sexuality, gender-" Hung up So now I'm going to keep paying this amount
of rent until he can treat me like how he does the cis males in the house. Note : Even though I work 60 hours a week
I still do come home and clean up after myself, my landlord expects me to clean up after the
men in the house too, which I refuse to do because I'm not a servant, these guys work
part time hours and don't add up to the amount of hours I work. I (F/5’10) work in a parts
department. We have a technician here (M/5,2”ish) who is a miserable human being. A bully to
anyone and everyone. Consistently rude for no reason, demanding and demeaning. Our department is under massive construction.
As such, we have very little storage and the department is a mess. No trip hazard, but
cluttered. I’ve worked hard at keeping floor space safe and clear as I’m going to be
wheelchair bound shortly due to reconstructive surgery to fix a lifelong problem with my
feet/legs. Now, this doesn’t directly affect him as no one other than authorized parts
personnel are authorized in our storage areas. This technician has been horrible, especially
to me, especially since construction started and we are short staffed. If we don’t have
parts IMMEDIATELY ready for him he yells and swears. He complained about the mess and now
I have to have every part on a shelf… Queue malicious compliance. Everyone in my
department is around my height. We also have very tall shelving units. We never used to
top of the units. I’ve now moved every common part needed by technicians to the tops of
our shelves. By stretching, all parts personnel are able to easily reach these parts. I’ve also gotten the rude tech EXCLUSIVE
permission for him to be able to come back and grab parts. The finale We have a step ladder, hollow metal tube type.
This is supposed to be for parts use but rude tech constantly steals it, leaving it outside
or where it shouldn’t be. He hates asking for it, and refuses to ever accept or ask
for help reaching things. Remember the aforementioned construction? Well, we’re pouring concrete
today. The construction workers were more than happy to fill the hollow tubes of the
ladder with new concrete. So now I get to watch this jerk, who’s made
his toxic masculinity everyone else’s problem, lug this 60lb ladder around, all because he
couldn’t just be a decent human. A long time ago, I was washing dishes in a Denny’s
restaurant. As dishwashers, we were allowed one soda per shift. My work partner and I
kept our sodas on a little shelf near where the bus boys would put the full tubs of dishes.
One of them thought it was funny to put down the bus tub, pick up our soda and drink half
of it, put it back on the shelf and run away laughing. I asked him not to do it several
times. He kept doing it. But instead of getting mad, I got even. Restaurants buy cases of
frozen steaks, and set them out to thaw in big stainless steel tubs. After all the steaks
are taken out and cooked, there is usually a quarter inch of blood with miscellaneous
bits in it left in the bottom of the pan. I grabbed a glass out of the bus tub that
had ice in it, poured it full of old cow blood, added a straw and put it in the usual spot
Same guy comes running back with a tub of dishes, puts it down and grabbed the glass.
I yell across the kitchen at him “Don’t drink that!” And he just laughed at me and
chugged about half of it, like he usually did. He got a real funny look on his face,
and asked me, “What was that?” “Cow blood. Want some more?” I replied and tipped
the pan up so he could see the cascade of gristly bits and old blood running to the
bottom. He headed straight for the nearest trashcan, and I think he threw up everything
he had eaten in the last week. Took him about 10 minutes. On the bright side, the bus boys
quit drinking our sodas after that. You may think I was just a b****y kid, which I was,
but I had a reason to do what the title says. So when I was 13, I started writing about
how I feel and writing songs, poems etc about it. My mom being the controlling, selfish
b**** she was, used to take them off me when I was asleep or at school and rip them up
or hide them in her room. When I first found out she did this, I just took them back and
hid them under my bed. There was a lot of personal stuff written on them and I didn’t
want anyone reading them. Fast forward a few weeks. I got fed up with
her always hiding my things and ripping them up. So younger me decided it’ll be a good
idea to hide £5 each day somewhere around the house. The more she hid from me, the more
money I hid from her. I ended up taking £60 before she realised that I was the one hiding
her money. It stopped her from taking my stuff so I was happy about it 🤷♀️ It’s not the prettiest thing I’ve done,
but I still find it funny. In the height of Covid, I was following along with a kayak
group. They’d send out emails announcing events, updates, etc. Somewhere in this mix,
the owner took it upon himself to send out a mass email with some pretty racist rhetoric
specifically around Covid. So knowing he also runs a kayak shop, I took a screenshot and
posted it to his Yelp with a comment something along the lines of dude apparently thinks
I want a little racism with my paddle. What ensued was a crazy string of responses
from this individual claiming he couldn’t be racist because his wife is “Chinese”
(she’s not Chinese), how offended he was to be called racist (not offended by being
racist), etc. I figured I’d leave it and let subsequent readers judge for themselves….and
judge they did. Cut to a few months ago. They changed their
name, started deleting less than professional responses he left, and started leaving comments
saying oh it’s under “new ownership”, we hope you’ll give us a chance, etc. I’m not about punishing people for someone
else’s crime. So I start asking around. It’s a small area. I know people who know
people, and I want to make sure I know what’s going on before I remove this review. As it
turned out, I needed to go no further than their website to confirm there was no change
in ownership. Even with what looks like a reasonably intelligent management consulting
service, they apparently couldn’t convince the owner to take his personal footprint off
literally everything. I am profoundly petty, and I don’t like
being manipulated, let alone by someone that inept/egotistical (not 100% sure which it
was in this case, probably both). I responded to the “new ownership” comment
clarifying the actual arrangement. Then I posted pictures of their website with a “tip”
showing just how little you need to do to confirm. The manager tried to get my updates
removed. So I reposted progressively making it worse every time. This went on for days
until they took down all their responses to my original review. I forced their hand to take certain features
off the website. They also had to disconnect from the original group I was following because
ownership is pretty obvious when you’re directing sales through said group. One friend in particular has deep connections
to the kayak community in the area. So I also called her directly to let her know all their
old problems with the original owner are just as relevant now because ownership has not
changed. In all honesty, had they left my review alone, I probably would’ve forgotten
the whole thing. Lie to me to try to save face, and I’ll make sure everybody knows Every year my city has a marathon. Due to the race
route, it's impossible to cross certain streets for hours at a time. There's no detours, half
the city is literally blocked in from the rest. And every year the notification of when
this race happens is poor/nonexistent (yes it happens at the same time every year but
not on the same day/weekend, it can vary). If you're lucky you get an intersection that
has a cop working traffic who will find a lull and wave you through. I get this is on
the city and organizers more so than the participants, and it's only once a year, but there's lots
of races in our city and none of them are as poorly executed or block roads as much
as this one. Well this year I'm pregnant and was craving
breakfast from a particular cafe, which is on the other side of one of the streets that
gets blocked off. They were having a special menu they only do one month a year, and the
rest of the weekends I couldn't make it due to scheduling conflicts. So my husband and
I get up and start driving and turns out, it's marathon day! We drove as close as we could get and I had
my husband park (legally). There was no cop directly traffic. The cafe was less than two
blocks away. The organizers, as usual, thanked us for our "support", "patience", and "sharing
the road" and told us the street was blocked for another few hours. Well, I decided if
the marathoners could walk in the street, there's no reason we couldn't walk across
really quick too. I got a lot of dirty looks, and "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"s and runners having
to dodge around us but honestly it took less than 10 seconds and affected maybe a dozen
runners. If we're sharing the road I can have a turn too, right? We're all pedestrians!
A story from my days as a grad student in chemistry - late 1984 or early 1985. Reporting
a revenge dispensed by another. First-year chemistry grad students shared
a large, multi-desk office that included a refrigerator for storing food (no chemicals).
One morning one of the other students discovered that overnight an apple he was keeping in
the refrigerator had been stolen. After asking around to determine that none of us had taken
it, he devised a revenge - he left a note in the refrigerator saying (as best I remember
all these years later) "The apple you stole yesterday had MALIC ACID in it! You mess with
a chemist at your own peril." The next day a night janitor reported to the
health center, stating that he had been poisoned. But no punishment was meted out to the grad
student "poisoner" - malic acid is the naturally-occurring chemical that makes apples taste tart, and
the apple had not been adulterated. You mess with a chemist at your own peril. Setting:
1982 Los Angeles metro area. I was 6-7 y.o. girl. My grandpa bought me a cool toy airplane.
It was a green dual propeller fighter plane, made of metal. I took it to school one day
for show and tell. I had researched the plane and who flew it during which battle, etc.
and was ready for my report. I took it out at recess. This little sh!t
Victor asked to play with it. Then he wouldn't give it back. I cried and complained to the
teacher. The principal got involved and said I must be lying because "girls don't play
with that stuff". He refused to look at my proof-the report I wrote for the presentation.
So Victor, smirking, got to take it with him. I was not able to do my report and got a 0
on the assignment. I was ahead in reading and other subjects, usually a teacher's pet.
I was not used to getting poor grades, or being called a liar, so the incident was devastating
for that reason more than the loss of the plane. My mom came to pick me up from school and
I told her what happened. She immediately parked and stormed the principal's office
and tore him a new one. We showed him my notes for the report. He apologized and went to
look for Victor. Well, Victor was gone by then. The principal said there was nothing
the school could do to make him give it back. I was p*****. I was like "can't you give him
detention until he returns it?" But they were wimps about it and told me to drop it. Victor
would make airplane noises and make his hand into a little airplane around me when no-one
else understood what he was doing. He was a little sociopath. I hated him but was pretty
powerless about it. Fast-forward about 6 months. My mom started working 16-hr shifts on weekends
only and I would get babysat for the whole weekend (spending the night). I was at one
couple's house for about a year but they tried to baptize me against my will without telling
my mom. She was p***** and fired them. She had to work the next weekend and was desperate
for a babysitter. Fortunately a friend pointed her in Consuela's
direction. Consuela (let's call her C) was a 50-something year old grandma with 100 kids
at her house she would watch at all hours. She had a bunch of teen and 20-something y.o.
boys of her own. She was originally from Mexico and they spoke almost exclusively Spanish.
C was a hard-working woman (she also had a full-time job during the weekdays) and did
great with the kids. But she had a temper. Her boys were slovenly
and would mope about. She would holler at them. When she hollered we all fell in line.
Or you got the business end of her wooden spoon. Sometimes she would yell at me but
I didn't understand as my Spanish was pretty rudimentary. I was taking it in school and
had quite a few Spanish-speaking friends, but when C would yell I would get stressed
and not understand. I usually would just hide under the bed and stay out of sight. I realized
after a while that C was mostly bark and got used to her after a while and learned how
to not p*** her off. She called me her "good girl" and I rarely got in trouble. But I harbored
some hard feelings towards C as you can imagine. One Saturday after about 6 months of staying
at C's house on weekends, mom drops me off and who do I see in living room, but Victor.
I was like "oh h*** no, now I have to be around this little sh!t AND try to avoid getting
yelled at all weekend. Ugh." But then a plan came to me. I observed that
Victor didn't speak much Spanish (he was half-Mexican but lived with the non-Spanish speaking parent
after a divorce) and he was out of his element. Gone was the smirking butthead. He had big
eyes, full of fear. The first time C went off on one of her boys in front of Victor
he was stunned. The son got fired from his job and when he told her she chased him around
the house with her spoon. He was twice her size and was completely cowed by her. Victor
surmised that if that big guy was scared of C, then he better stay out of her way. C was a great cook but she used the cheap
cuts of meat and cut corners to feed all those kids. The next day after Victor started coming
(a Sunday), she gave us sandwiches for lunch. As an adult I love avocados, but as a kid
I thought they were grody. She handed us a chicken gristle with a huge slab o' avocado.
One simply does not refuse to eat C's food. It is a sure-fire way to get hollered at.
Victor ate his in the other room, unobserved by anyone. I took a few bites in front of
C to show her I was eating it. I looked for a way to dispose of, like give it to the dog
or something like I usually did when I didn't like what I was given. But the dog was out
with one of C's sons. Then the plan all came together. C's son who
was home watching TV got up to go to the bathroom or something. I lightening-fast hucked the
sandwich under the son's easy chair where it would not be seen. Then I go about my day
and go back home that night. I see Victor at school all week and he went
back to his smirking BS about the airplane business from before. That Saturday we were
back at C's house all weekend and he's the meek little angel like last weekend. C goes
in the TV room and say's "what's that smell?" (in Spanish). I froze up. I was scared, but this was it.
This was my moment. I was all innocent "pee-yew! What is that?" She made her son get up from
the easy chair and lifts it to find a nasty moldy sandwich. It was hot outside and C didn't
have air conditioning. So that sandwich was a fetid, moldy mess. C whirls around with
a crazed glare and looks around at us kids. Everyone scatters but me. I said innocently
"Tia I saw Victor in that room with his sandwich last week. Maybe he dropped in on accident?"
with big sweet "good girl" eyes. She lazer-focuses on Victor who runs for his
life "VICTOR! GET BACK HERE!" He climbs a tree and she can't get to him. He spent some
time in the tree and wouldn't come down. She went inside to call his parent to come get
him. I made eye-contact with Victor and made airplane noises and smiled. In that moment
he knew I had orchestrated the whole thing. I never saw him at C's house again. I would
see him at school and he never messed with me again. Epilogue (Inception revenge): When C came back into the backyard to tell
Victor his parent was coming, a dead mouse got flipped into her shoe (flip-flops). She
was mortally afraid of rodents. I watched, fascinated, (likely smiling evilly) waiting
for her to notice. She noticed my gaze, looked down and saw the mouse in her shoe. She screamed
and hollered. Later that day I caught her looking at me, scrutinizing me. I think she
understood the depths of my planful evil in that moment.This one will need a bit of context
before even starting, partly to explain the title itself, and beyond that will also be
a generally long read, so apologies in advance for that xD Ok, so when I was going to school still (dropped
out at the start of year 12, for reasons that will become clear through the story), I had
a couple of things happen. For a bit of context of where I started, I
always had issues with bullying from like... Prep basically, which resulted in me flying
into a rage and storming out of the classroom a LOT. Like to the point where I think the
highest grade I ever achieved was a B cos of how frequent it was. But that wasn't the
only thing working against me. Anyways, skipping ahead through all my primary school years,
I was in grade 6 (Not "Year" 6, as I'll be referring to the later grades; it was a "maturity"
thing they mentioned to us in year 7 when we were starting high school), and I decided
to make the jump from primary school; I was equally happy to stay back a year, but figured
what the heck, why not make the jump? Anyways, cos I was a bit behind my "peers",
I had an interview with a member of a department at the high school I attended (The name has
changed now but at the time it was called Sebas, cos of the suburb it's in). Now, this
department was called the "Integration" department, and its stated purpose was to *help* students
with disabilities or learning difficulties. Keep that in mind as you read this story.
So the member who came out was the actual head of the department. We'll call her Lynne
for the purposes of this story. now, everything was all good, at least for now. She came and
spoke to me, explaining what life was like at high school, and I decided to make the
jump. I got enrolled in the school by my foster parents (different story that belongs in some
other subreddit, though there will be some context later on for that here as it pertains
to the tale), and started attending sebas in 2007. Now, everything was all good; I did the usual
13 year old thing; saw a cute girl, had a crush on her, ended up embarassing her (but
in a way that thankfully didn't tank anything about her school life) in professing my love
to her... You know, the usual dumb stuff :'D Things were all good in year 8 as well, which
was 2008. [VHS/CCTV video fast forward effect] 2009 rolls around, 15 year old Kaelani's living
the year 9 kid life... And then I get assessed for potential mental disabilities... Lo and
behold, signs of Aspergers Syndrome. Few months go by, and yep, it's confirmed, yours truly
is an Aspie. Now you'd think that would be a good thing for me, right? Clarity is achieved
about why I struggle so much with school work, and why I'm so affected by the bullying. Which
is true to a point... but then comes the cash register sound effect. I'm a "disabled student".
That means $22,000, 2010 money by this point, per term for having me at the school. (Current
value that would be $28,364.20 with inflation) So Lynne sees dollar signs... I'm no longer
a student to her, I'm a source of income. Now, around this time, a group of 3 girls,
only one of which I still remember the name of, but don't need names for the story, start
noticing that I'm actually kind of good looking... (Or I'm just the only boy they ain't managed
to get behind the music building yet). So they start following me around, and I do everything
I can to get them to leave me the h*** alone, up to and including literally spitting in
their faces. Like I tried to be as disgusting as possible to turn them away... Nothing worked.
So, being trusting still at this point, I turn to Lynne and tell her that "[Girls] keep
following me around everywhere, calling me 'cutie' and refusing to leave me alone!" Lynne's
response? "Why don't you just have some fun with them? It's part of the high school experience
after all." NOT the right thing to say... That severely eroded my trust in her. It evaporated
first day of year 11 though... Now, for context: On the last day of year
10, I was told these would be my classes: year 10 literacy and numeracy (basically english
and math for kids that aren't able to keep up with the general classes), with VCAL classes,
with one of those I believe being automotive from memory. Sounds great, right? Well year
10 me thought so... I was so excited the entire holidays... Then I got my schedule day 1 of
year 11. Cue the "Starlord hears the truth of his mom's death" scene. VCE history. VCE
English(!), Year 10 GENERAL maths. Now cos the acronyms there are super local,
these are how they shake out: VCAL is Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (hands on),
and VCE is Victorian Certificate of Education (Insane amounts of writing). As you can imagine,
having NOT been informed of this change when there was still time to revert it, I lost
my proverbial S### at this. Especially since Lynne KNEW I couldn't handle VCE. but nope,
she still put me in VCE... Cos with VCAL, she would have lost the $88k cash for having
me at the school. So the stress piled up over the year, especially in math and english,
with the latter being with my year 8 english teacher, but in this class, he was like the
Flash with how fast he would fill, wipe and refill the blackboard. I had the fastest writer
in the department as my aide for that class... She would just barely get notes on what he
wrote finished when he would start clearing the board, while I, using an old as laptop
loaned from the IT department, was just finishing the first thing he wrote on the board that
he's just filled. Now, Lynne either didn't see or didn't care
that I was being given stress upon stress upon stress, but my foster parents and my
mom did. context for me being in foster care: My father
decided, when he couldn't handle me as a 6 year old, that it would be a good idea to
give me to DHS (Department of "Human" services, the aus version of CPS for you americans),
and then stonewall mom until there was no hope of getting me back without fighting the
government, and also spin 6 different stories involving... Let's just say "Underage activities
of an adult nature", purportedly initiated by me, a then-6 year old kid... In the year
2000. Anyways, I got dumped into foster care and the first "home" I was at, I was malnourished,
and exposed to a child predator as well. Mom caught wind of all this and gave DHS an ultimatum
here: She chooses my next home or my story goes to the media. Early december 2003, I'm
shipped off to a new home, this one shortlisted by mom and picked by me as final say. These
are my foster parents mentioned throughout. now, returning to late 2011, mom and Anna,
one of my foster parents, hatch a plan to bring me home when I turn 18; nobody can do
anything about it when I'm 18, cos then I'm legally an adult. And lucky me, born just
a month after the start of the school year! So over the course of a few months, Anna slowly
packs a pair of suitcases with clothes and stuff that I won't miss. Fast forward to the last few days of my school
life... I think like... mid to late feb 20s? Anna reveals the plan to me: I'm coming home,
but it has to be kept quiet from both Lynne, who's trying to get me into youth accomodation,
where the Disability Support Pension I was now recieving would be almost entirely taken
as "rent", and from DHS. Anyways, with a single day to go, I say my goodbyes to the ones I
consider important: Matt and Brandon (I think that was his name) from the library, who I'd
befriended over the years cos of how much I hid in the library, and the bus drivers
who did the school runs, along with my friend Jake, who I exchanged numbers with, along
with my best friend Mitchell, who I gave my prized blue USB stick to, with a digital letter
typed up with an explanation of what was going on, and my number so we could still talk. This was all on the final day, and I still
smile remembering the moment that puts this whole entire story squarely into this subreddit:
The piece de resistance! Me, with the second half of the contents of my school locker,
the first half having been taken the day before, stuffed into my backpack until it felt like
somebody digging their fingers into my shoulders... I did the usual thing, saying goodbye to the
Integration department staff who were still around, and the absolute oscar award-winning
lie that constituted the setup for the perfect revenge: Lynne says "See you monday, Kaelani",
and me, playing the "happy it's the weekend" student, replying, "See you monday! :D" Little
did she know, just 24h later, I would be boarding a train with my mom and my younger sister,
bound not for Skipton, where I'd called home for the past 8 and a bit years, but rather
for Rosebud, with my family. Lynne wanted to use me as a cash cow for the
last two years of my high school education, but I couldn't handle the stress of even 2
VCE classes, let alone the required 4 classes to pass with a VCE completion. That's year
11 only btw... not sure about year 12. But yeah... I got sweet revenge on that short
stack of greed :'D
