Kashana Cauley dedicated The Survivalists to everyone who’s ever fired her, which is funny and petty in the best way. What do you think Cauley was telling them and do you think she succeeded? What’s the most petty thing you’ve done to get back at someone who’s wronged you? (Let’s keep it fun/silly but above all, PETTY!)
I worked with a cardiac surgeon who was a jerk to anyone he saw as his subordinate; i.e. everyone. He was older and often became confused by tech interfaces (but refused to ask for help), and while he was an immensely talented surgeon, he was a dreaded entity on the unit because of his volatility.
After watching him dress down a surgical resident for 'insulting the dignity of the physician role' for singing and dancing with a pediatric patient, I grabbed his phone the next time he left it on the staff bar and changed his ring tone for the hospital page operator to a snippet from a pop song. It probably went off fifteen times a day and he was flustered and embarrassed every time. I was human furniture to him, so he developed his own conspiracy theory that this was identity theft (??) or ransomware(???), and it was at least a couple of months before I had an opportunity to stealthily remove it.
I wrote my resignation letter in medieval Gothic calligraphy, complete with unnecessarily fancy illuminations and marginalia, and left it on my boss's desk. She found it and thought it was a beautiful gift which she then had framed. I never told her what it said and instead handed in another printed version. To this day, I believe she still has my resignation letter framed in her office.
I had a job where we traveled in two team and drove in two cars. I was the only woman and the a newly hired woman of color who wasn’t warmly welcomed.
We were in a small town in North Carolina where we needed to drive to dinner. First night, the 3 men took both cars to dinner and left me stranded at the hotel—my dinner came from a vending machine. On the last day, when we working in a conference room, I took a set of car keys, picked up my bags at the hotel and drove back to Charlotte alone. I heard one of them waited at the hotel for hours. I was reported to management for not being a team player..😂
So my boss fired my friend during the Covid lockdown, the most stressful part of the pandemic. She was my work bestie, and I was so mad. My friend is dyslexic and neurodivergent AF, and a lot of their complaints were simply due to the fact that she didn’t know how to be a fucking constantly productive machine with zero room for creativity (they really misrepresented the job description when hiring her). Anyway. I was so pissed that I made it impossible for them to keep any of the new hires to replace her for the next year and a half. All I did was tell the truth about what it was like working there when they asked. I told all the stories even before they started. One guy lasted only a few months before he got the hell out. Then I made sure to talk about salaries, which convinced another person to leave after less than a year. Long story short, I helped my friend get an interview at a much better company and she’s really happy there making significantly more money than at the company that fired her during the worst part of the pandemic. She’s really happy and she likes her job. Toxic work environments can go eff themselves.
my neighbor was in the habit of throwing dirty diapers from their third floor window into our apartment driveway.
i was mostly intrigued. slightly entertained. but also indignant enough to put on a pair of gloves and try to launch one of those diapers back through their window.
terrible aim that i have, the diaper didn’t fly any higher than the second floor and rolled into the bushes.
A guy once left me a 19 cent tip when I was serving at a fancy Italian restaurant. He literally wrote in .19 to the credit card receipt. It didn't even make an even dollar amount!
This was back in the days of phone books and his name was distinctive enough to find his address there. I kept eggs in my kitchen for a year and right before I left town, I egged his house with rotten eggs.
I had a sociopathic colleague who did little actual work, intimidated underlings (sometimes to tears), and attempted to manipulate peers and managers with pretended progressive ideas and charm. He told fanciful stories that often began with a kernel of truth. I anonymously tipped off the IRS that he was cheating on his taxes.
I once worked behind the bar at a restaurant in DC that went to great lengths to brand itself as a “socially conscious and activist” space. As you can probably guess, the behind-the-scenes treatment of the workers did not align at all with what they were projecting to the public. Someone incorrectly inputted my reported cash tips during a pay cycle, so my paycheck stated that I had received $2000 in tips in two weeks (instead of $200). This set up a cycle of my subsequent paychecks totaling zero. I asked the manager about it during my next shift and emailed everyone involved in payroll. No change. This was mid October. I kept asking, kept emailing. Still ignored. By New Year’s Eve, I had not been paid at work since early October beyond the shift cash tip out, which I later found out I was getting shorted on because I never closed and wasn’t around to watch the distribution. At 11:00 pm on New Year’s Eve, just as the restaurant had reached maximum capacity and there was a long line of people waiting to get drinks at the bar, I removed my apron, placed it on the counter, told the shift manager I was done, and calmly walked out while squeezing through the crowd, leaving them short staffed and totally unable to deliver on the promise to customers of a well serviced New Year’s Eve. I then reported them to the IRS in February for my inaccurate W-2. Only then did I get a phone call from the management, begging me on my voicemail to call them back and help them sort through it. I deleted the message and blocked the number. And I never went back there as a customer on principle.
I had an absolute nightmare boss once - controlling, irrational, volatile. I heard through the grapevine he was going to be fired and to celebrate I baked a cake and brought it to work. That day he intercepted me on my way in (couldn't wait for me to reach my desk before he started micro-managing) and he saw the cake and asked if it was my birthday. I looked him dead in the eye and said, "nope", and walked away. It was the last interaction we ever had. My coworkers and I were eating that cake with no regrets two hours later.
When I was newly out of high school, I worked at a retail/drug store that had also had a sewing/fabric/craft section in my farming, small town community. I came to work that day and was assigned the sewing section. I had a sewing background, so this was a perfect place for me to work. However, that particular days, I came down with a nasty case of the flu. It was a Sunday, and when I told my supervisor I was really sick with a fever, he refused to send me home. So I had to help fussy customers all day. One of them reported me as "rude" to her. I then called in sick for the next week, because, well, I was! A friend who worked with me stopped by to see me, and said, What happened? Why were you fired!" No one had told me I was fired. I had to find out second hand. My only pettiness, is that I now have three undergraduate degrees and law degree. Hope to publish my memoir, soon.They WILL be named!
I love the energy of that dedication. I always said if I won an Oscar I was going to dedicate it to the high school drama teachers who rejected me from every play (I'm now 43 and not an actor, but there's still time LOL).
Definitely one of the most petty things I actually did was after a commitmentphobe ex who was "trying to be friends" with me told me he "didn't like hearing [my] dating stories" (dude, then we're not really friends, eh?). It was April Fool's soon after and I texted him a photo of my hand with a giant costume jewelry rock on it and made up a story about how I'd only been dating a dude for a few weeks but since I was about to go travel (that part was true) the fictional man decided to "lock it down." Trash Ex completely melted down and I have to say it felt goooooood. (I finally ditched that dude out of my life a couple years later and met my husband within weeks).
I created an Outlook Rule that would automatically send a co-worker's emails to the recycle bin. So when she would ask me, did you receive my email, I would say, "No, actually, I did not." She was furious.
I keep track. Every now and then (after five or 10 years -- not constantly) I Google people who have wronged me, usually ambitious people who took advantage of my good nature or naiveté in their race to the top. Or their paths cross with someone I know who mentions them in passing. It may take years or even decades, but their bad character traits eventually cause their downfall, sometimes quite spectacularly. This is more satisfying than getting even because I don't have to feel guilty about their reversal of fortunes. And I did try to warn others about them, if I had the chance.
When I got divorced my Ex husband was just awful to me. He called me a Jezebel and made my children think I was the one that wrecked our family. I never fought back until 2 years later, coworkers, a new boyfriend, and friends were telling me I should do stand up comedy. I took a workshop. My performance at the showcase was recorded. I riffed on my Ex’s wearing a toupe, getting his abdomen liposuctioned anc two years later he’d gained the fat back, as well as prostate problems and being all the time, as well as difficulty getting it up. I got so many laughs! I posted the video on YouTube. He saw it and was incensed as were my adult children. A few of his friends saw it and commented it was funny. I left it up for a month, then took it down.
I sent flowers to my ex's new girlfriend with no card. He thought she was cheating, which I knew he would due to his insecure nature. I told him many months later. He was so mad. I knew it caused a lot of problems in their relationship. I still don't feel bad about it.
One of my first bosses in New York City corporate media was a screamer. He'd only scream at the young women, though. It was disgusting. I was miserable, scared all the time, drinking on my lunch breaks. I got fired--not for drinking, but just for generally being "not cut out for it." Well, a few years later that boss had started working for a service website and I was at a lifestyle website and he reached out to me to pitch me one of his experts. I wrote back from my personal account, an 800-word "fuck you, you piece of shit loser." And I BCC'd everyone we'd worked with who hated him as much as I did. A few years later, I ran into one of his friends from that first job who told me that he used to stay up at night and read my email over and over again because it "confirmed his worst fears about himself," until finally his wife forced him to delete the email. I generally try to be kind, but I can disembowel someone with my words if I'm pushed. I will never regret spilling that guy's guts all over the floor in front of our former coworkers. It's a good sign he felt bad about it. I just hope he learned a lesson, and went on to a better boss to his employees going forward. But no regrets.
I generally think when we get fired from toxic workplaces the chances are high that it's because we just can't quite bring ourselves to be toxic enough. Sure, performance may be a factor. But the way you really succeed in places like that is being a backstabber. So if you can't "cut it," it probably means you can't bring yourself to do it. Yes, Aretha, said she wanted to win at all costs. But I don't think that's true. I think she couldn't quite go all the way there and that, in the end, was what really got her fired. So thanking everyone who ever fired her feels like Cauley's way of saying "you're still stuck there and I'm free." But who knows.
When I graduated from college and followed my new husband to a small Alabama town for his steady job and to make my mark on the world, I applied for a news job at a local radio station. I did not get the job but was sexually harrassed by the news director in the interview process. But sexual harrassment wasn't really a thing yet back then, so I just let it slide. Two years later I was the marketing manager for an upstart cable television company. This same jerk came in to interview for the sales director's position. He didn't recognize me, but I had not forgotten him. He did not get the job:) Entirely petty but immensely satisfying.
Masks off, kittens, time to face big cats, for real!
I´m still standing, fighting their war bullshit, fiercely, like a buccaneer, tooth and nail!
Let´s go on a safari! No, not on a brutal, totally legit manhunt like in Bucha, a controversial war crime massacre I also touch on in my piece, in that democratic Nutzie U What! Come on, folks, keep us company, only 30 bucks!
I worked with a cardiac surgeon who was a jerk to anyone he saw as his subordinate; i.e. everyone. He was older and often became confused by tech interfaces (but refused to ask for help), and while he was an immensely talented surgeon, he was a dreaded entity on the unit because of his volatility.
After watching him dress down a surgical resident for 'insulting the dignity of the physician role' for singing and dancing with a pediatric patient, I grabbed his phone the next time he left it on the staff bar and changed his ring tone for the hospital page operator to a snippet from a pop song. It probably went off fifteen times a day and he was flustered and embarrassed every time. I was human furniture to him, so he developed his own conspiracy theory that this was identity theft (??) or ransomware(???), and it was at least a couple of months before I had an opportunity to stealthily remove it.
I wrote my resignation letter in medieval Gothic calligraphy, complete with unnecessarily fancy illuminations and marginalia, and left it on my boss's desk. She found it and thought it was a beautiful gift which she then had framed. I never told her what it said and instead handed in another printed version. To this day, I believe she still has my resignation letter framed in her office.
I had a job where we traveled in two team and drove in two cars. I was the only woman and the a newly hired woman of color who wasn’t warmly welcomed.
We were in a small town in North Carolina where we needed to drive to dinner. First night, the 3 men took both cars to dinner and left me stranded at the hotel—my dinner came from a vending machine. On the last day, when we working in a conference room, I took a set of car keys, picked up my bags at the hotel and drove back to Charlotte alone. I heard one of them waited at the hotel for hours. I was reported to management for not being a team player..😂
So my boss fired my friend during the Covid lockdown, the most stressful part of the pandemic. She was my work bestie, and I was so mad. My friend is dyslexic and neurodivergent AF, and a lot of their complaints were simply due to the fact that she didn’t know how to be a fucking constantly productive machine with zero room for creativity (they really misrepresented the job description when hiring her). Anyway. I was so pissed that I made it impossible for them to keep any of the new hires to replace her for the next year and a half. All I did was tell the truth about what it was like working there when they asked. I told all the stories even before they started. One guy lasted only a few months before he got the hell out. Then I made sure to talk about salaries, which convinced another person to leave after less than a year. Long story short, I helped my friend get an interview at a much better company and she’s really happy there making significantly more money than at the company that fired her during the worst part of the pandemic. She’s really happy and she likes her job. Toxic work environments can go eff themselves.
my neighbor was in the habit of throwing dirty diapers from their third floor window into our apartment driveway.
i was mostly intrigued. slightly entertained. but also indignant enough to put on a pair of gloves and try to launch one of those diapers back through their window.
terrible aim that i have, the diaper didn’t fly any higher than the second floor and rolled into the bushes.
A guy once left me a 19 cent tip when I was serving at a fancy Italian restaurant. He literally wrote in .19 to the credit card receipt. It didn't even make an even dollar amount!
This was back in the days of phone books and his name was distinctive enough to find his address there. I kept eggs in my kitchen for a year and right before I left town, I egged his house with rotten eggs.
I had a sociopathic colleague who did little actual work, intimidated underlings (sometimes to tears), and attempted to manipulate peers and managers with pretended progressive ideas and charm. He told fanciful stories that often began with a kernel of truth. I anonymously tipped off the IRS that he was cheating on his taxes.
I once worked behind the bar at a restaurant in DC that went to great lengths to brand itself as a “socially conscious and activist” space. As you can probably guess, the behind-the-scenes treatment of the workers did not align at all with what they were projecting to the public. Someone incorrectly inputted my reported cash tips during a pay cycle, so my paycheck stated that I had received $2000 in tips in two weeks (instead of $200). This set up a cycle of my subsequent paychecks totaling zero. I asked the manager about it during my next shift and emailed everyone involved in payroll. No change. This was mid October. I kept asking, kept emailing. Still ignored. By New Year’s Eve, I had not been paid at work since early October beyond the shift cash tip out, which I later found out I was getting shorted on because I never closed and wasn’t around to watch the distribution. At 11:00 pm on New Year’s Eve, just as the restaurant had reached maximum capacity and there was a long line of people waiting to get drinks at the bar, I removed my apron, placed it on the counter, told the shift manager I was done, and calmly walked out while squeezing through the crowd, leaving them short staffed and totally unable to deliver on the promise to customers of a well serviced New Year’s Eve. I then reported them to the IRS in February for my inaccurate W-2. Only then did I get a phone call from the management, begging me on my voicemail to call them back and help them sort through it. I deleted the message and blocked the number. And I never went back there as a customer on principle.
Writing a book that gets a lot of accolades is a GREAT way to do it!
I had an absolute nightmare boss once - controlling, irrational, volatile. I heard through the grapevine he was going to be fired and to celebrate I baked a cake and brought it to work. That day he intercepted me on my way in (couldn't wait for me to reach my desk before he started micro-managing) and he saw the cake and asked if it was my birthday. I looked him dead in the eye and said, "nope", and walked away. It was the last interaction we ever had. My coworkers and I were eating that cake with no regrets two hours later.
When I was newly out of high school, I worked at a retail/drug store that had also had a sewing/fabric/craft section in my farming, small town community. I came to work that day and was assigned the sewing section. I had a sewing background, so this was a perfect place for me to work. However, that particular days, I came down with a nasty case of the flu. It was a Sunday, and when I told my supervisor I was really sick with a fever, he refused to send me home. So I had to help fussy customers all day. One of them reported me as "rude" to her. I then called in sick for the next week, because, well, I was! A friend who worked with me stopped by to see me, and said, What happened? Why were you fired!" No one had told me I was fired. I had to find out second hand. My only pettiness, is that I now have three undergraduate degrees and law degree. Hope to publish my memoir, soon.They WILL be named!
I love the energy of that dedication. I always said if I won an Oscar I was going to dedicate it to the high school drama teachers who rejected me from every play (I'm now 43 and not an actor, but there's still time LOL).
Definitely one of the most petty things I actually did was after a commitmentphobe ex who was "trying to be friends" with me told me he "didn't like hearing [my] dating stories" (dude, then we're not really friends, eh?). It was April Fool's soon after and I texted him a photo of my hand with a giant costume jewelry rock on it and made up a story about how I'd only been dating a dude for a few weeks but since I was about to go travel (that part was true) the fictional man decided to "lock it down." Trash Ex completely melted down and I have to say it felt goooooood. (I finally ditched that dude out of my life a couple years later and met my husband within weeks).
I created an Outlook Rule that would automatically send a co-worker's emails to the recycle bin. So when she would ask me, did you receive my email, I would say, "No, actually, I did not." She was furious.
I keep track. Every now and then (after five or 10 years -- not constantly) I Google people who have wronged me, usually ambitious people who took advantage of my good nature or naiveté in their race to the top. Or their paths cross with someone I know who mentions them in passing. It may take years or even decades, but their bad character traits eventually cause their downfall, sometimes quite spectacularly. This is more satisfying than getting even because I don't have to feel guilty about their reversal of fortunes. And I did try to warn others about them, if I had the chance.
When I got divorced my Ex husband was just awful to me. He called me a Jezebel and made my children think I was the one that wrecked our family. I never fought back until 2 years later, coworkers, a new boyfriend, and friends were telling me I should do stand up comedy. I took a workshop. My performance at the showcase was recorded. I riffed on my Ex’s wearing a toupe, getting his abdomen liposuctioned anc two years later he’d gained the fat back, as well as prostate problems and being all the time, as well as difficulty getting it up. I got so many laughs! I posted the video on YouTube. He saw it and was incensed as were my adult children. A few of his friends saw it and commented it was funny. I left it up for a month, then took it down.
I sent flowers to my ex's new girlfriend with no card. He thought she was cheating, which I knew he would due to his insecure nature. I told him many months later. He was so mad. I knew it caused a lot of problems in their relationship. I still don't feel bad about it.
One of my first bosses in New York City corporate media was a screamer. He'd only scream at the young women, though. It was disgusting. I was miserable, scared all the time, drinking on my lunch breaks. I got fired--not for drinking, but just for generally being "not cut out for it." Well, a few years later that boss had started working for a service website and I was at a lifestyle website and he reached out to me to pitch me one of his experts. I wrote back from my personal account, an 800-word "fuck you, you piece of shit loser." And I BCC'd everyone we'd worked with who hated him as much as I did. A few years later, I ran into one of his friends from that first job who told me that he used to stay up at night and read my email over and over again because it "confirmed his worst fears about himself," until finally his wife forced him to delete the email. I generally try to be kind, but I can disembowel someone with my words if I'm pushed. I will never regret spilling that guy's guts all over the floor in front of our former coworkers. It's a good sign he felt bad about it. I just hope he learned a lesson, and went on to a better boss to his employees going forward. But no regrets.
I generally think when we get fired from toxic workplaces the chances are high that it's because we just can't quite bring ourselves to be toxic enough. Sure, performance may be a factor. But the way you really succeed in places like that is being a backstabber. So if you can't "cut it," it probably means you can't bring yourself to do it. Yes, Aretha, said she wanted to win at all costs. But I don't think that's true. I think she couldn't quite go all the way there and that, in the end, was what really got her fired. So thanking everyone who ever fired her feels like Cauley's way of saying "you're still stuck there and I'm free." But who knows.
When I graduated from college and followed my new husband to a small Alabama town for his steady job and to make my mark on the world, I applied for a news job at a local radio station. I did not get the job but was sexually harrassed by the news director in the interview process. But sexual harrassment wasn't really a thing yet back then, so I just let it slide. Two years later I was the marketing manager for an upstart cable television company. This same jerk came in to interview for the sales director's position. He didn't recognize me, but I had not forgotten him. He did not get the job:) Entirely petty but immensely satisfying.
I just unfriend people silently then wait to see if they notice. If and when they notice, I let them figure out why I’m pissed. La la la!
My friend, we´re gonna beat them no matter what, in Jesus´ name. The Pentagram no more!
https://liborsoural.substack.com/p/rome-never-fell-the-empire-never
You´re gonna love my peace!
Masks off, kittens, time to face big cats, for real!
I´m still standing, fighting their war bullshit, fiercely, like a buccaneer, tooth and nail!
Let´s go on a safari! No, not on a brutal, totally legit manhunt like in Bucha, a controversial war crime massacre I also touch on in my piece, in that democratic Nutzie U What! Come on, folks, keep us company, only 30 bucks!
https://liborsoural.substack.com/p/safari-gullible-travels-south-africa