Awesomely Passive Aggressive Ways People Got Revenge

Sometimes, the most satisfying kinds of vengeance are the sneaky, calculated slow-burners. Here are some awesomely passive aggressive ways people got revenge.

March 9, 2023・

11 min read

When it comes to revenge, public displays of aggression aren’t always the best choice. Sometimes, the most satisfying kinds of vengeance are the sneaky, calculated slow-burners, and they’re just as entertaining to hear about as they are to carry out. So, get ready for off-the-charts pettiness, as we explore some awesomely passive-aggressive ways people got revenge.

Fake Treasure

In 2018, a Reddit user shared the tale of how he got rid of a pesky coworker. The coworker constantly made fun of the original poster for no good reason at his construction job, and even attempted to get him fired without cause.

One day, the OP heard the jerk mention that if he ever won the lottery, he’d quit the job on the spot. So, the OP bought a load of fake gold coins, secured them in an antique box, and hid them in a wall of the house they were working on.

When the arrogant coworker found it, things went exactly as planned. The overjoyed employee approached the boss, called him a loser and quit, believing himself to be suddenly rich. The boss had been planning to fire the employee anyway, but he was happy to expedite the end of his contract.

20 Pounds of Revenge

In 2017, a bartender shared a sneaky revenge story with the internet about an unbearable regular. The customer would often sit for hours, drinking, verbally abusing the staff, and – worst of all: never tipping!

One night, she asked the bartender for a drink recommendation. He suggested she try a ‘vodka paralyzer’, which contained lots of heavy cream among other fattening ingredients. She loved it and began to order it all the time, often guzzling 7 or 8 of them per night.

The bartender watched in passive-aggressive pride as the customer slowly gained weight from the high-calorie drinks. Revenge, in this case, weighed approximately 20 lbs extra.

An Order of Instant Revenge

In August 2019, a man placed an order for instant revenge at a McDonald’s drive-thru. While he was ordering his food, an impatient woman behind him began honking and flipping him off for taking too long.

In an unexpected twist, he kindly paid for her food at the pay window. He proceeded to the pick-up window and collected his order. Then, he showed the receipt for the second order and took the lady’s food too. He smugly drove off, leaving the woman with something to really be annoyed about.

Revenge is Best Served Cold

When Redditor Thejustinset’s fellow Starbucks worker took a customer’s order and asked for his name, the customer refused to oblige. But he didn’t just refuse to give his name; he belittled her and called her stupid, too.

So, the barista made the man’s drink and, with nothing to go by, left the cup blank. With no name to call out, she left it on the pick-up counter. 15 minutes passed before the customer angrily stormed over, picked up his now-cold coffee, and gruffly asked if it was his. Thejustinset replied: “I don’t know, it doesn’t have a name on it.”

An Urnspection

In this next story from 2018, a young woman taught the UK’s Department of Work and Pensions a valuable lesson in internal communications. Soon after Hatti Broxton’s mother passed away, she notified the DWP, and received an acknowledgement in response.

However, seven months later, a benefits inspector called her and told her he’d be coming by to assess whether her mother was fit for work. Hatti, irritated by the obvious (and frankly, insensitive) disorganization on show, allowed them to pencil in a visit to see her mother.

When they arrived and requested to see Hatti’s mom, she asked them to “hang on a minute”. She fetched the urn containing her mother’s ashes, and said, “This is Louise Braxton, you’ve come to assess her?”

The inspector apologized profusely, hopefully encouraging the DWP to check a little harder whether the people using its services are alive next time.

Clean Revenge

Delving back into the pettiest depths of Reddit, user RaChernobyl lived in an apartment block with a shared laundry room, where she kept her detergent. One day, she realized her detergent was being used by someone, so she left a note asking them not to.

They ignored her polite request. In retaliation, she topped up the blue detergent in one of her bottles with blue dye, and topped up the clear detergent in the other with unscented bleach.

The next morning, she heard outraged shouting from the laundry room. When she went to investigate, the room was empty, but the source of the commotion was obvious: the trash can was filled with wet, bleach-stained clothes. A few days later, she spotted someone in a blue-stained T-shirt, revealing the culprit and confirming that revenge was accomplished.

Phantom Shopping List

In March 2019, a blogger by the name of ‘Baby Sideburns’ found a creative way to take out her frustration over her husband’s laziness. She gave him a shopping list and sent him out for the items. Only, those items didn’t exist.

Baby Sideburns’ turned her phone on silent, while her husband cluelessly searched for seedless strawberries, unsour cream and organic pop tarts, among other nonsensical essentials. Needless to say, at least for that week, her husband would think twice about neglecting his share of the chores.

Exposed

When student Darryl Docherty wrote an essay in 2018, one of his friends thought it’d be funny to insert a curse word into the document when he wasn’t looking.

Eventually, Darryl’s friend Lee confessed to the prank, and Darryl informed him that the prank had cost him the grade he’d needed to get a university offer. Lee felt terrible and wrote an apology email to the teacher who graded the essay, taking full responsibility.

But it turned out, Darryl had actually spotted and deleted the word from his essay before he submitted it. Aside from making his friend feel terribly guilty, Darryl’s revenge peaked with a social media post, exposing his friend’s deeds and apologies to the thousands who saw.

Cheating Husbands

Of course, some people are even more deserving of feeling guilty. Namely, cheating husbands. Luckily, scorned wives who know how to dish out vengeance in spectacularly petty ways are in no short supply. One wife posted this huge sign on her front lawn letting the whole world know that her husband was a cheater.

It details the husband’s smutty affairs with two other women that took place while his wife was caring for her husband’s sick mother. If naming and shaming is your thing, bright, bold, unmissable signage is the way to go.

If your budget is a little smaller, but you still want to publicly expose a cheating significant other, opt for the D.I.Y version. “Welcome Home Cheater” on a white sheet is a perfectly-suitable alternative to a hot meal waiting on the table.

Another cheated wife posted a message in the local newspaper congratulating her husband’s mistress on her pregnancy, which is a sure way to get word of their affair out.

Finally, it doesn’t get more humiliating than having the guilty party stand by one of the city’s busiest junctions, wearing a sign around his neck bearing the charges. In plain view of the whole town, potentially including colleagues and bosses? That’s gotta sting. But that’s why it’s so great.

Here in Canada...

In 2017, Reddit’s “pettyrevenge” subreddit served up a super-satisfying story about shoddy service. When the bill arrived for a meal after the server had been incredibly rude and unhelpful, the OP didn’t want to leave a tip at all. But, to avoid an argument, he tipped 10%. The waiter angrily explained, “here in Canada, it’s customary to leave a minimum of 15%.

”OP apologized for not knowing the custom and asked if he could re-process it. The server complied and took 10 minutes to get the bill cancellation approved. When he returned, the patron gladly took the new bill and selected the option to give the server a solid 0% tip. As the waiter stood there in disbelief, OP’s partner said, “here in Canada, we don’t really like a**holes .”

Food Theft Vengeance

Another great story was shared in 2019 by a Redditor who was tired of her cereal being stolen at work. To stop the thief, she stuck a sticker over the seal that said “Not Yours.”

When she next checked, however, the seal had been torn open and the words “Hide It Better” had been written on the sticker. She politely responded with another sticker saying, “Fair call. Enjoy”.

Only, she’d poured a heaping amount of salt into the cereal before leaving it behind for the thief to “enjoy.” Someone responded to the OP’s story with a similar experience. This person’s sushi was similarly being pilfered from the work fridge, so he performed some “sushi surgery”.

He replaced the avocado in each piece with a huge chunk of wasabi. The culprit would be pretty easy to determine after that – after all, the person with their nose and eyes running like a fire hose does tend to stand out.

But possibly the best of all these food-theft vengeance tales came from Redditor asdf_qwerty27, whose ex-roommate would incessantly steal his food. Requests for him to stop, annoyingly, only seemed to spur him on.

So, the Redditor baked a cake laced with habanero peppers, and mixed wasabi into the frosting, leaving the final product in the fridge, labeled ‘Do Not Eat!’. Predictably, the roommate got drunk and tucked into the cake. When insane amounts of spice hit, he proceeded to violently puke. The cake burned even more on the way out. And that’s not to mention the bathroom trips the next day…

Hide the Filth

When a neighborhood’s Home-Owners Association cited a homeowner for trash cans that were visible from the street, the homeowner was forced to erect a privacy fence. He did what was asked of them... just with a little attitude. When the fence inevitably gets cited, what’s next? Some topiary?

Neighborhood Bully

For anyone who's ever encountered a childhood bully, it’s time for some vengeance therapy. The person who shared this tale with the internet reminisced how it was always his and his siblings’ job to rake the leaves in the front yard of their childhood home.

They’d always leave the leafy piles out front for morning collection. But, two days in a row, the neighborhood bully came by, after all their hard work, kicked the piles, scattering leaves everywhere.

The siblings decided to create another pile for him – but this time, they placed it on top of a fire hydrant, concealing it. They hoped he’d just hurt his foot when he kicked the pile, but instead, they watched from their window as the bully ran and dove – head-first – into the pile.

Stinking Revenge

Sometimes, revenge causes a real stink, as was the case with the friend of a user from the “ProRevenge” Subreddit. OP’s friend figured out their neighbor was flushing used diapers down the toilet, causing foul-smelling blockages for everyone else in the apartment block.

OP’s friend got some rather devious payback by securely plugging his own plumbing and flushing all the floor’s toilets in quick succession. This caused the diapers and raw sewage to be expelled back out into the guilty neighbor’s apartment. Unless you want to end up as the sole proprietor of a fecal aquarium; don’t flush diapers.

Stay Off My Grass!

Another pretty extreme form of revenge was taken by one individual who was tired of inconsiderate drivers ruining his grass verge. So, he put down a wooden board, full of nails, to keep his grass preserved, and keep any intruding tires well and truly flat.

Sandwich Maker's Revenge

Sometimes, petty revenge is a little calmer, and more domestic. Take this the wife's revenge for her husband rudely calling her a “sandwich-maker”, for example. When he bit into his sandwich at work the next day, he noticed his ‘sandwich-maker’ had left the wrapping on the cheese. And when he opened up the sandwich to remove the plastic, he saw the words “Not Sorry” written in sharpie.

But husbands get petty too. This particular husband left for work annoyed with his wife one morning, and took his revenge in a truly diabolical fashion… by only making his half of the bed!

I Said No Onions!

Another form of harmless passive-aggression was served up by an annoyed customer whose order was wrong. A complaint doesn’t get much clearer than, “I said no onion” on the plate, written in the problematic ingredient itself.

Poop Shaming

For too long, inconsiderate people have let their dogs poop on lawns and walked away without facing the consequences. Thankfully, one man figured out how to put a stop to this.

After a phantom pooper struck time and time again, he set up a camera to catch any owners and their four-legged friends in the act. He was successful, and he printed out stills from the CCTV, placing one on a stake–right next to the pile of poop – for the whole neighborhood to see.

I hope you were entertained by these brilliant tales of passive-aggressive revenge. Thanks for reading.