When somebody slights us or takes advantage of us, we often don’t just want to walk away. In many cases, we want to get revenge and we want it to be sweet.
Revenge is something that everyone desires to a certain extent but it is also something that many people tend to look beyond. When you attempt revenge, there is always a possibility that it will not work in your favor.
That is why we have some stories here for you of sweet revenge that other people were able to pull off flawlessly. Read these stories and feel good again.
15. Hope You Like The Smell Of Fish
A couple of years ago, I participated in a student exchange program in Belgium and obviously I had to quickly find an apartment after my arrival.
I was very lucky and found an incredible offer: a nice big loft with a roof garden, reasonably cheap and very close to my university. The only downside was that current occupier was not the official landlord: he had a long-term lease but was forbidden by contract to sublet the apartment himself.
He was himself going on a student exchange program and had to quickly find someone to rent his apartment (which is how he explained the rent was so cheap).
He seemed like a wealthy, trustworthy guy so I didn’t mind having an ‘off the books’ deal with him. This ended up being my demise.
When I moved in, the apartment was not in excellent condition.
All the utilities were included in the rent, which was a big plus for me considering that it was January and electricity prices in Belgium are pretty high. The central heating was broken, but the landlord was ‘kind enough’ to buy me two small electric heaters that I could use in the living room and in my bedroom.
Strangely enough, my landlord had some kind of defect/disease that stopped him from having a sense of smell (he warned me other people would be able to smell if I had smoked in the apartment).
I never smoked in the apartment (although I am a big smoker) because the landlord told me he was very opposed to smoking. As is customary in many European countries, he had asked for a deposit of around 1,600 euros (2 months’ rent) to be paid back in full on the condition that there were no damages.
Although not in a written contract, I still give him the deposit because he left all his appliances (including CD / DVD collection and speakers, furniture, television, consoles, etc.) which I considered to be collateral.
As months went by, I paid my rent to his mother (still in Belgium) on time, had a great time and did no damage to the apartment.
I had a minimal but courteous email relationship with the landlord, who never complained about anything I might have done.
The landlord came back a couple of days before I was preparing to move out.
He came to visit the apartment and check for damages and I was expecting him to hand me a brown envelope with the 1,600 euros he owed me after he had noticed there were no damages whatsoever.
When he entered, he had a clearly fake and exaggerated disgusted look on his face. He explained that the apartment was dirty and that I needed to clean it before I received the money (which was not part of our verbal agreement).
I had cleaned the apartment entirely to the best of my ability and to an extent any landlord would have found more than reasonable.
He proceeded to show me all the wall stains (almost all of them already there), dust under the oven (yes, under the oven), rust on some pipes under the sink, etc. Basically, he wanted me to clean the apartment as if he was about to sell it and, remember, the apartment was definitely not cleaned when I moved in. He offered to pay and go get some cleaning products for me, which he would bring back shortly.
I assumed he would also help me clean with his girl, but nope.
He came back and basically ordered me and my girl around like maids while he and his were doing nothing.
This was, still to date, the most humiliating and frustrating experience of my life. I knew that I had to obey his commands because I would never get my 1,600 euros back if I didn’t.
I probably could have legally challenged him somehow but I was leaving the country a few days later and I preferred to swallow my pride and move on with my life.
Scumbag landlord, after 2-3 hours, seemed pleased with my work and instructed me to meet him at a café the next day to hand over the dollars.
I arrived at the meeting early the next day, hungover as heck, ready to get my ca-ching and get the heck out of Belgium (my flight was the next day).
He did not have the deposit with him. After I left the day before, he had called the utility company and realized that he had an outstanding statement of around 2,000 euros.
Apparently, those little electric heaters consumed a of a lot of energy. I could/should have anticipated this, but as the utilities were ‘included’ and I had never thought of checking the evolution of my electricity consumption on the meter (which I had to unscrew a plank of wood to access anyways).
Scumbag landlord, after having made me clean his apartment from top to bottom, was asking for the 400 euros I owed him. He was even threatening to show up at the airport the next day and stop me from leaving if I didn’t! After calling the utility company myself, we went together to their offices and realized the balance was actually something around 1,400 euros (not the landlord’s mistake).
I only received 200 euros in return.
I had never been so furious in my life and could barely stop shaking for the next few hours. I wanted so much to get revenge, but I only had one night left in the apartment.
I was also legitimately scared that he would show up at the airport (I should mention that he was a big guy and a Muay Thai fighter).
I had to somehow delay the effects of the revenge so that they would be only noticeable after I was gone.
This excluded the obvious damages to the property, which was my initial idea. That’s when all the pieces fit together in my mind and my evil plot was hatched.
After sharing the idea with my girl, we went to the nearest fish store and bought something like 10 euros worth of fish leftovers usually purchased to make fish stock or soup (my best estimate is something like 2-3 kilos of fish bones, and fish gunk).
For the next couple of hours, I blended the fish with a lot of water, cived out the chunks, and filled up spray bottles with a murky but very liquid fish mixture.
I sprayed that fishy water everywhere, but I really mean everywhere. Under the oven, behind the furniture, on the floor, the walls, the ceiling, between the drawers of his desk, under his mattress and even on the clothing he had originally left in storage when I moved in.
There is no way he could smell the fish, and he probably would not have received complaints from the neighbors until they were rotten and stinking out the whole building.
To this day, I do not know how my fishy revenge turned out.
I can only imagine that his friends told him he smelled like crap and/or that his apartment smelled of rotting sea creatures, by which time it would have been too late to reverse anyway.
It probably cost him a whack of to professionally clean his house and I sincerely hope he is still paranoid about smelling like fish but nobody wants to admit it to him.
2. Steal My Car? Have Fun Being Homeless
This story happened approx. 4 years ago to a friend of mine. He and his wife (girl back then) took a house loan, bought a new Chevrolet Camaro and in general they were preparing for a life together (he has proposed to her).
Because of their lack of free time due to their hard work to pay off the loan they didn’t have time for themselves, nor for the abnormal amount of other things such as the housework.
So they hired a maid. His first impressions about her were good and they decided that she’s the person they will trust, and they handled her their house keys because they were at work most of the time she came around to clean their house.
First few weeks she worked hard and always paid attention to detail and nicely cleaned their house from the bottom to the very top.
She was also instructed not to let anyone in and to always lock the door when she left.
After 6 months of her working there, strange things began to happen. Not in any anomalous way, but things started to disappear (being stolen). It all started with small things like AA batteries which are barely noticeable missing.
But soon things graduated as phone chargers, perfumes (the more expensive ones) and some electrical gadgets went missing.
My friend thought that he simply lost them, but soon the maid raised suspicion as the things went missing when my friend wasn’t present when she was detailing their house.
But without any evidence blaming her wasn’t in place. Also, he found out on some social media, that she has got some serious debts at least in thousands of dollars (aliments, divorce court settlements, etc.)
So he decided to install security cameras.
And he didn’t tell the maid.
5 weeks forward and he had enough evidence to press charges on her as the things she stole were valued at 250$+ (In my country anything stolen above 250 bucks is considered a crime). He got furious when his flash disk containing private documents as well as some of his billing and his official work documents were stolen.
But he wanted her to get even more into the stealing so he can squish even the last cent out of her.
So he came up with a plan. He told the maid that he and his girl will be gone for a week for a honeymoon and that he will be going by taxi not to pay extra money airports charge for the parking.
That means his brand new Chevrolet Camaro will stay parked in the house the maid has got keys of. They rented an apartment through Airbnb just a few blocks away from his place and he placed a GPS tracking keychain into his car so he could see when his car is through the phone app.
He then placed the car keys in a visible spot on the house so the maid will notice.
All that was left is wait for the magic to happen. And his intuition was right. After 2 days of almost constant watching the GPS tracker’s location, the car left the garage. All of a sudden the car was cruising at 90MPH on the highway. My friend immediately called the cops.
They caught the maid something like 20 miles (30KM) away.
And now revenge can take the place.
He decided to press charges on the maid. At the court, the maid told the judges my friend told her to drive the car to some “untold” location (she acted like she forgot where it is) and the one that should go to the jail is him because he wrongly accused her and he just wants to get change from her to pay his loan.
But the tables turned. My friend and his lawyer showed the court all of the video evidence of her stealing his stuff valued HIGHLY above 250$ (it was like 40.000$ including the car). So it was a crime. She starting swearing and telling every single lie she could think of. The security had to calm her down. She is facing 5 years in jail and she was charged 5.000$ including all the stolen property but the car, his lawyer and some other court staff.
The price was excluding the car because it was returned almost immediately).
A few days later police did a house check on her and most of the stolen stuff was there.
There were also some other things reported missing from other customers of her. Due to her previous debts and the new ones she owes she will very likely become homeless when gotten out of the jail.
3. Using A Nanny Cam to Catch A Food Thief
A couple of things about me that made it really suck to have a food thief:
-I have a lot of food allergies, so I can’t just get lunch at the cafeteria or at a nearby restaurant
-I have a new baby, who I’m breastfeeding, and who I pump for when I’m at work.
Do you know how hungry pregnant people are? Yeah, the caloric requirement for breastfeeding is 100-200 calories higher. I am always hungry.
-Because I have a new baby, half the time I don’t manage to show up at work with lunch. I either run out of time to pack one or if I did remember, I leave it on the counter.
My solution to all of this was to leave lots of nonperishable snacks in my office.
(And also a lot of candy, because I also have a three-year-old and therefore work is the only place I can shovel Skittles into my mouth without a little hand extending into my field of vision and a little voice saying ‘pwease?’) Snacks that were specifically free of my allergens.
Some of which were specialty foods because of this. The type of specialty food that just doesn’t taste as good as food that contains the allergen, and also costs twice as much.
Because I’m not getting a lot of sleep right now. I deserve nice things.
So, because I’m not getting a lot of sleep right now, when I first came back from maternity leave, assembled my snack hoard, and started having things go missing, I genuinely thought I was just losing my mind.
Boxes of candy were running out faster than I thought I was eating them. I’d come in in the morning and things wouldn’t be where I’d left them.
At one point I brought a bag of chips to work, folded the rim of the bag down so I wasn’t plunging my arm elbow-deep into a grease pit, and then put a bag clip on it when I went home, and when I came in the next morning the bag was unrolled and re-clipped.
I went, ‘Wow, I must be more tired than I thought,’ rolled the bag back down, and the next morning it was unrolled again.
Just little things like that, almost every day, that made me go “wow, the post-baby brain is worse than I thought!”
And then. And then! Then I got the flu. I got the flu, and I was out for a whole week.
Left behind at the office was an almost-full box of Enjoy Life cookies, which are not enjoyable but are free of all major allergens, and are also $5 a box for, like, 12 sad little sand pies with some cinnamon on top.
I ate one row of these cookies. And then I was out of the office for a week. For one week, I was not eating any of my snack hoard.
But someone else was. Because I came back to work, opened my box of cookies, and found one. There was one single, solitary cookie left.
And, on further examination, the one box of candy that had been opened was nowhere to be found, and on top of that, the thief had done me the courtesy of opening a new box for me, except that they actually followed the “push here to open” instructions instead of just ripping one end of the box open like I do, which they should know at this point because by this time they’d been stealing from me for two months.
The combination of these two things- the sheer freaking audacity it takes to open a new box so you can continue stealing from someone, on top of the consumption of almost a whole box of specialty cookies that aren’t even GOOD- enraged me enough that, after going to my boss and getting some vague promises about checking if the security cameras in my wing of the building are functional or not (what??) I went straight to Amazon and ordered myself a nanny cam.
Not for my baby. For my snack hoard.
Conveniently, it arrived the day before Valentine’s day. I set it up on top of a file cabinet looking down at my desk.
On the desk, I laid out a fantastic spread of bait snacks. I got all my thief’s favorites, and then I took it one step further. I bought myself a Valentine’s heart, broke the seal to make it more inviting, and left it out on my desk.
The next morning, I came into some very obvious snack carnage. My thief had slowly been getting more brazen (again, who OPENS a new box of something?? And opens it DIFFERENTLY than the person they are stealing from??) but this was just on another level. Individually wrapped things had been dumped out of their boxes.
Bits of the packaging had been thrown away. And, yup; they’d eaten some of the Valentine candy.
For shame, office thief! Don’t you know that’s from someone who loves me??
I played back the video. All was quiet throughout most of the evening, and I was just watching the shadows lengthen as the sun slowly set through the hallway window. And then! Shortly before midnight! The night janitor arrived!
And went right ahead and took a 12-minute break in my office, sitting in my chair, eating my food.
I started taking screenshots. I got him shoveling candy into his mouth with full palm-to-lips intensity. Pouring things out onto the desk to pick his favorite flavors.
Not even bothering to put them back where he found them. And yes. Eating my Valentine’s candy.
Screenshots went directly to my boss in an email. I went directly to my boss’s door to hover and grin and ask if he’d read my email.
And I got assurances of a strongly worded email to the cleaning company and the barring of this particular employee from our place of business.
I was also, tactfully, asked to please take my unauthorized spy camera home, which I did.
I thought this was over, until the girl who works the concession stand dropped by to thank me.
Apparently, the food thief would start his shift just as she was closing down for the night, and would try to get free coffee in that “creepy guy” way.
And then one of the reception staff came by with the same sentiments. I’d never met the guy face to face, but apparently, as a woman, it was not a fun experience to have. I’d shown my screenshots to a few coworkers (“who’s eating u/5RabbitsInALongCoat’s food” had become office gossip by this point) and word had spread fast. I worked an earlier shift, so I didn’t recognize him, but people who’s shifts overlapped with his did.
I hadn’t told my husband about what I’d done because, when I came home raging about the blatant theft that had gone on while I’d had the flu, his only response had been “you really shouldn’t be leaving food at work, then.” But, when I came home with the nanny cam and explained where and why I’d gotten it, his reaction surprised me.
“You know, I think this is the first time I’ve seen you stand up for yourself.
I’m proud of you.”
