Most of the time, I feel like people can just ignore the jerks in their lives and be the better for it.
Other times, though, they insult such a good person that the rest of us just can’t let it slide.
OP is a volunteer firefighter who has done all of the hard training and works for a tough and kind lieutenant that everyone adored.
I’m not sure if this is “Pro” or not, but I got revenge on a d***** bag I used to volunteer Fire Fight with. This was in the early/mid 2000’s. I decided to going the local Fire Department as a volunteer firefighter.
I did it for about 5 years and it was great. Training consisted of 3 months of Fire Training (2 nights a week and all day Saturday) and then you would go to EMT training (another 3 months of training).
One of the Lieutenants, Amy, was a short, middle aged woman who was so full of fire she could make a grown man cry. One of those people who commands both fear and respect where ever she went.
Honestly a great Lieutenant and great person. When she wasn’t being a drill Sargent, she was extremely kind and generous. She would often bake people cakes and treats and deliver them to the various stations in our Department.
He began helping to train new classes and enjoyed that too, though there was one recruit he really didn’t like.
I was about a year and I was asked to help train some new recruits, and in this new Academy class that I was asked to help with, there was a cocky kid that we will call Aaron.
Aaron talked big during the training and acted like he was the all American hero. Like he was going to be the lead bad boy in Back Draft 2.
He performed moderately well in training but far from the top of the class. He gets assigned to Amy’s station, which is a pretty quiet station in the Department.
After the guy had finished his training he ran into the nice lieutenant, who said that she had recently taken her station out for a nice meal and big desert.
A few month after he starts, Amy swings by my station one night to say hi. She brings us the “Motherlode” cake from Claim Jumper (massive 6 layer cake).
She explained that she had treated her crew to a night out a Claim Jumper, which must have cost a lot of money. I think she took out about 8 people and bought a whole cake to top it all off.
They had eaten the first 2 layers so she gave us the remaining 4. We thanked her profusely and she left.
Then, curious, he looked up the not-great new guy’s social media. What he found there confirmed his worst suspicions, but when he realized he guy was also taking advantage of the nice lieutenant, he knew he had to do something about it.
Back then, the big social media platform was MySpace and I decided to look up some of the people in the department to make friends. I came across Aaron’s page and I noticed some photos of him and the rest of his crew at Claim Jumper with Amy.
However, when I read the comments, he bragged about how he had purposefully ordered the most expensive dinner, appetizers and drinks since Amy was buying.
He bragged about how he was going to take advantage of her “stupidity”. This alone made me because she was doing this super nice and generous thing. What an ungrateful, selfish jerk.
Then I read the rest of his profile. He had videos and memes on his page glorifying himself as a cool firefighter, bragging about running into burning building and how he was such a hero.
He was flirting with girls, blatantly trying to impress them with how brave he is. Bear in mind, he just graduated from the Academy 3 months prior and hadn’t even gone to EMT school.
He had never been to a house fire and all he basically did was carry gear for the other fully qualified fire fighters. It was too much for me to tolerate.
So, he did what any good friend would do – he put the guy’s own bad behavior on display.
So here is the revenge. I printed off copies of his MySpace page, including his comments about Amy and toxic bragging. I made multiple copies and took them to every station in the Department.
We all had pagers (I’m old) and a small keyboard at each station to send out text messages. I made an anonymous, all staff page to everyone in the department.
I had to keep it brief since I couldn’t fit a ton of characters, but I sent out his MySpace info and to told everyone about how he treated Amy.
He tried just backpedaling, but when that didn’t work, he quit.
Within an hour, Aaron had cleared out his MySpace page of all posts, photos etc. A couple of days later, he deleted his account. It’s a good thing I made so many copies 🙂
Immediately after this happened, he stopped coming to volunteer and a few weeks later, I heard that he had quit.
OP says good riddance to bad rubbish.
I later talked to Amy and admitted I was the one who sent the page. I told her I hated how he treated her and she thanked me. She seemed really sad and hurt by what he had done.
But being the tough short lady that she was, she quickly got back into being an actual cool firefighter.
She later started dating and married a Fire Chief that also helped at the Academy. I’ve lost touch with her but I hope she did well. She seemed pretty happy last time I saw her.
Does Reddit think he handled it correctly? Let’s find out!
You would have been disappointed had this joke not come up, right?
While this person figures it was best to weed this one out for other reasons.
Because we’ve seen a few too many of those in the past.
I mean, yikes.
A lot of people were stuck on the cakes.
This could only go one way.
I’m certainly glad the other guys didn’t let it slide.