Petty revenge base

Well after we bought it my mother in law called and said, she has stuff there and it’s hers and she wants it. she inherited it from her other brother who passed away, she said the chainsaws, one of the tractor (the shit one) and a shop vac was hers along with a bunch of misc stuff in one of the sheds, tools she will never use and don’t even know what they do. My wife was a little taken aback. We told her she should have come and gotten everything before we closed, we use some of the tools but have our own so I don’t really care. We wanted to take down the shed that has her tractor in so we told her we can sell the tractor and we’ll give her the money. She said no she wants to keep the tractor. We told her a few times we were planning on getting rid of that shed to build a garage and we need to get rid of the tractor and we can bring her the other stuff next time we come down. She was threatening to sue us if we sold any of “her stuff” as she’s not ready to part with it. My wife was really upset. I told her not to worry I’ll take care of it.

The next weekend we were upstate, I had rolled the tractor out of the shed, and put together her mom’s stuff. My wife asked me what I was doing. I said just putting your moms stuff together. She asked why, I said so we can give it to her or sell it or she can sell it but it’s gotta go. I’m starting the garage tomorrow. She said “whatever it can sit out side I don’t care”. That night after everyone fell asleep, I hatched my plan, I had hooked up my trailer. I loaded the tractor which doesn’t run so I had to winch it on real quiet like as to not wake anyone. I loaded her tool box, all the misc tools in the shed, chainsaws, shop vac into a big ass wooden crate about 4’x4’ 3’ tall, because fuck her. And hit the road, it’s 2.5 hours to my mother in laws house, I was trucking. I got there at about 2 am. I quietly backed into her driveway, thankfully I’m a pro trailer backer upper, put the ramps right next to her car, put down the ramps and had to jack up the trailer a bit to get it to slowly roll off using the winch. Jacks are fucking loud, but I put down a sweater to try and deaden the noise, I put the crate on a dolly and rolled it off down next to the tractor. It was heavy as hell, so I knew I had to get my dolly back so she can’t move it, so I jacked it up to slide it off, easily 300 lb box. The entire time I can’t believe I haven’t been caught, she lives in a nice neighborhood and I just started doing sketchy shit at 2am the cops didn’t show up? Whatever. I must have been there for 20 minutes max, I was hustling and had arranged everything for easy offload.

I get out of there laughing my ass off, a grin ear to ear. I know I’m in trouble with my wife in the morning… I was almost home, it’s 5:45 and my wife is calling, she asked where I went? I told her I went to get breakfast for everyone. So I stopped, bought a bunch of bagels and coffee and donuts. Just giggle to myself like a serial killer at 6am on a Saturday. I get home and she asked why I still had the trailer hooked up, I says oh I wasn’t sure if I was going to the lumber yard or not and I didn’t feel like unhooking it. I’m trying to hide my excitement for the call, jacked up with adrenaline. 8 am rolled around, nothing, 8:30 nothing. Luckily it was a little chilly so no one had gone out side to see the tractor is gone. 9:15 the call came, I see her look at her phone and roll her eyes, ugh, she hates her mom. I tell her to pick up, as soon as she picks up you can hear her screaming, my wife is like what the fuck is happening. I walk over put my hand out, put the phone on speaker and say “you wanted your tractor, you got it” and hung up. I had to explain what I’ve done to my wife and she was dying laughing. Thankfully. Black hole called about 10 more times all going unanswered. She then texted, I’m calling the police. My wife is starting to panic a bit. I tell her don’t worry, I’ll handle it. About 1pm a long island number comes up as xxx town police, oh shit. I pick up. “This is officer so and so, I’m here with black hole, she said you dumped stuff on her property. I calmly said “that’s her stuff, she wanted it” officer “is this your tractor” black hole “yes but I don’t want it here, I want them to take it back” he says something like do you have a storage agreement or anything? She says no. I explained the situation to him and said there’s nothing I can do as there wasn’t anything wrong unless she wanted to press trespassing charges, but you’d have to prove he was on your property. Anyone could have dropped it off. At this point the officer had realized this lady is bat shit crazy, and didn’t want to deal with this. I thought I might actually get in trouble. Anyway she didn’t talk to us for like 6 months so really it was a win win for me.

I found peace with myself long before and mostly didn’t care and just took it. But it was stupid and i hated how he always encouraged the jock culture of making fun of “the nerds.” We would constantly do basketball or soccer/football. Thing about my specific condition is i don’t do explosive and reactive sports at all - so i would have to sit down every few minutes to catch my breath. You would think what’s wrong with that - but i was shamed about being the weakling of the class every week.

I like sports, though. A lot. I was just always told by my parents and doctors to take it easy - and growing up i noticed i had no problem whatsoever with endurance and steady, long distance efforts. As long as i don’t go into red, i could keep it up for quite a while.

So it’s not a surprise i fell in love with road cycling when i first saw the Tour de France on TV. I was super skinny, couldn’t sprint, but i could climb a long mountain any day, pacing myself and blowing nearly anyone off my wheel on endurance. I got myself a road bike and never told anyone at school about my rides.

Here comes the revenge.

We had a class “sports day” and there was a bus arranged to take us to the top of a mountain about an hour away, where we were to go on a hike. Our PE teacher said that if anyone wants, he will cycle up there and we could join him on the climb instead of the hike. I was the only one to volunteer. He was surprised and commented something to the effect of “keeping up” and “not gonna wait for you” but i insisted.

He couldn’t know i was more than capable to climb that mountain because he only saw me struggling with sports with him. He also couldn’t know that was my home hill, literally starting a kilometer from my house. I did that climb 100+ times and knew it blind, knew my pacing and while i was no Tadej Pogacar i knew i could probably drop my PE teacher at will there. For cyclists out there the climb is 12,5km, 6,9% gradient, super regular. For non cyclists: a perfect climb for a lightweight rider with good pacing and stamina.

So the day arrives and i did my warmup, nutrition and everything as if it was a life or death mountaintop time trial and rock up at the school in my full racing kit and my racing bike. I was 17, weighed 55kg and totally prepared. He was a typical middle aged overconfident ex soccer player probably weighing 90kg, on a standard mountain bike. Super perfect situation.

He sets a relatively hard pace on the 10km flat before the climb and i don’t speak or take the front. I take my good time to get back on his wheel after intersections and he probably thinks he will drop me the second we start going uphill.

Then the climb starts and it becomes very apparent to me (but not to him) that he is near his limit but that it’s at least 5km/h slower than what i could do on that mountain.

But i don’t attack him. That would not be satisfying. Instead i start bantering how someone’s getting dropped today and it would be embarrassing if the whole class sees how i beat him. And then i take over the pace and slowly, slowly start turning the screw on him.

I went only a little faster. Then a bit more. I knew after about 3km he was in the red. So i ease off, keeping him just slightly over his limit for the next half an hour. I wanted to make him suffer but without dropping him. I let him recover for a tiny bit if he starts looking too bad, but then i would slowly push the tempo up to make it as painful to him as possible. It was Tour de France level mind games, i don’t think i’ve ever enjoyed myself on my bike more.

We made it near the top together and i let it rip on the last 300m or so and it was that typical humiliation attack every amateur group ride cyclist knows. He dropped like a stone. I got my revenge and was very happy with myself. He said something about his heavy bike and i kept my mouth shut.

But it got better. On the top, he was clearly dead. So much so he had to vomit in the parking lot and even if only a few classmates saw it, everyone knew. He had to sit out the hike after and i just quietly sat there with him (because i didn’t need to do the hike, like he promised) and just looked at him enjoying the sweet revenge.

I didn’t say anything after that, nor did he. He never made any comments to me in PE class again.

Lesson: don’t bully your students - they might surprise you :)

Her snoring is not only loud it's concerning because she chokes in her sleep too. The first time I heard it, I almost fell out my bunk to rush down and check on her thinking she was having some kind of medical emergency.

I talked to her to see if we could come up with a solution and she basically shot me down, because she thought since she was sleeping fine it wasn't a big deal.

Also it's really hard to change roommates unless something major happens, and snoring isn't considered one of those. Despite me voicing my lack of sleep.

I did my best to live with it, but I was fed up when I got done with a long work day (got up at 9am and didn't get officialy done with work til 11pm) and had to be up at 6am. And the snoring only allowed me 2 hours of sleep.

So I decided to record her. The next day when I was going to the room for a break she was there and said she was gonna take a nap. I was like okay, and as she laid down I started playing her snoring. She immediately shot up and looked at me like I was insane. When all I did was stare at her she asked me to turn it off.

I just said "Well this is you snoring and you said it's not a big deal, so why should I?"

She gets really mad says a few choice words and leaves the room. For about 3 days whenever she tried to rest I played her own snoring back.

Finally I got called in for a meeting with our manager, because roommate was mad at me. I explained my side of the story (because roommate failed to mention that she refused to address her snoring and made it seem like I was just playing loud noises for the heck of it).

Roommate is angry that the manager didn't fully take her side and even told her she was being difficult by not trying to address her snoring and brushing off my need for sleep.

We ended up getting moved with new roommates though.

The month leading up to the visit, my senior kept making leading comments about how he didn’t want to drive, or asking me if I had gone to that area before. I didn’t want to add ‘chauffeur’ to my responsibilities so I kept rebuffing him. One day I overheard him talking to my manager about how we still didn’t really have a plan and he would “figure something out”. I waited like 3 days for that “something” to get to me, but all I got were more of the same.

So a week before the visit, I started leaving my car at home and commuted every day. I woke up an hour early and all that. I didn’t mind the extra hour because I was fueled by spite, and it was an opportunity for me to catch up on my podcasts.

Three days of this, my manager noticed and I fed him this fake story about how my brother was in town and I lent him my car so he could see the sights with his girlfriend. I also drafted an email that I sent to my manager and my senior asking the supplier for ways to get to them because “our transport plans fell through.” My manager was livid with my senior, asking him if this was his idea of “figuring something out”. He also berated him for being irresponsible and leaving much of the work to his junior, calling it “shameful behavior”.

My senior begrudgingly drove us to and from the supplier’s place. Oh, and my brother “went home” the day of our visit, so I rolled up to the office the next morning in my car.

Giselle hated me from day one.

And what's more, she lived in the other half of the duplex.

You know all the nightmare petty landlord stuff you see on this sub? Giselle ticked off all the boxes...HOA-style Karen obsessed with "the rules"....yelled at my friends for parking an inch over on her side of the duplex, my phone or doorbell rang if my place wasn't stone quiet a minute after 'quiet time', rental checks I dropped in the same mail slot I always did somehow got 'lost', appliances and things not fixed in anything resembling a timely manner, etc etc.

It was more annoying than awful. I told myself I could live with it, as I was going to be moving closer to my job after my lease ran out.

Later, I found out why she hates me: She had wanted a friend of hers to move into the duplex I got. But the owner said no because her credit check was awful and mine was sparkling. So, she just wanted to make my life miserable out of pure spite.

As the end of the lease drew closer, I noticed my water heater was leaking. I dried the floor around it and then put some towels down. Then I emailed Giselle (I had wised up and started a digital trail by then). No response. A week later, I re-forwarded the email with a friendly "..you may have missed this, but this could be a real problem...". No response. Another email with "I had a friend who is a plumber look at it and he recommended immediately..." Finally she responded with "I will look into it." and nothing else.

She was just trying to run the clock out on me.

It had been about a month now, and I was just a few weeks away from moving out. I saw Giselle watering her flowers and approached her and mentioned it. She blew me off but finished the convo with a threat: "I hope you're keeping it clean around there. I'm a stickler when it comes to the final inspection. If you want to get any of your deposit back, you better be ready to pass a white glove inspection."

Okay then. That's how we’re going to play it? Fine.

I was trying to figure out how I would get petty revenge. About a week later (right before my last rent check was due), I happened to see the owner in the neighborhood. Giselle was nowhere to be found.

And that's when it struck me how I could make all this work.

I went out to say hello and tell him thanks for renting to me, that I appreciated that. He was very friendly, said he was sorry I was leaving, etc and if I needed anything to let him know.

Checkmate.

I asked him if he had a few minutes to come in and do the security deposit inspection. He said sure, and we went into my place together. As we were walking around looking at things, he was all positive. Yup, looks great. Yup, no issues there.

Then we came to the water heater. I paused dramatically and gravely said "I hope we can come to some kind of understanding about the floor around the water heater." I opened the closet doors and showed him. I told him what I’d been doing to fight the leak. I pulled up the sopping wet towels I had put down the night before, and I told him I have had experience with mold and that it was nasty stuff.

He got quiet and said, "have you told Giselle about this?" Why yes, I did, and here are copies of the emails I sent to her. He read them and then noticed I had kept them in a file folder. He looked at me and said "Are there other things that haven't been fixed?" I showed him a few other emails I had collected.

He got beet red in the face and said "okay. I think with what I have seen I'm fine with releasing your full security deposit."

In that moment it struck me. I had one more rent check due ($750). How about instead of me writing you a check for $750 and you writing me a check for $500, I just write you a check for $250 and call it even? He shrugged and said sure. He signed the paperwork and then left.

A few days later I dropped my check for $250 in the mail slot. Later that evening Giselle pounded on my door, foaming at the mouth about how I didn't write a full check. She can get me evicted if I don't write a check for the full amount right freaking now.

I explained (conveniently omitting that the owner had done the inspection) that $750 less my security deposit of $500 was the $250. Giselle's eyes widened as her brain tried to comprehend what I had said. She nearly exploded, yelling at me about 'that's not how things are done' and 'you have to obey the rules like everyone else’ and ‘she has final say because she does the inspections.’

Friends, she literally had spittle flying out of her mouth she was so enraged.

I calmly told her that the owner had done the inspection and signed off on the payment arrangement and told her to talk to him. And to get off my porch and quit bothering me. And I very slowly closed the door on her.

Again, her brain froze, and she went into lockdown trying to process what I had just said. That was an image I'll remember forever.

Before I moved out the owner came by to ask if he could come in and fix the water heater for the next tenant. I said sure. As he was working, we talked a little and he mentioned that his daughter was moving into my place, and that she was going to take over the onsite landlord duties.

I asked about Giselle. The owner simply said she's going to be moving out. She decided she couldn’t afford to pay the full rent anymore.