There’s nothing like finding a job you love.
Even if the hours, the work, the bosses, and the pay are all exactly what you want, well…there’s always something to complain about if you look hard enough.
This person adores their job.
Let me start by saying I L-O-V-E my job. The location, the benefits, what I do, and MOST of my coworkers.
We’re a medium-sized tech company, and our office is within walking distance from my home, and we’re in my home city.
They also love the location, which is where they grew up.
I know my home city has plenty of problems, but I still love it to death as it is full of such wonderful memories for me, and I vastly prefer it over the other places I have lived around the country.
During lunches, we all eat together in our office.
I’m a person who has always struggled socially due to difficulties communicating, but I try to make an effort with small talk since people tend to like me more if they’ve gotten accustomed to my antics (yeah, I know, not ideal).
A couple of their coworkers rub him the wrong way, though.
Two of my coworkers, though, seem to be in it to rain on my parade for everything I say.
They constantly poo-poo on the city, saying it’s overrun with crime (it’s not), the food is bad, the attractions suck, esp. if I ever mention something I like about it.
No other thing I enjoy is safe from such conversation: the books I like, the food I enjoy, the movies I watch, the cartoons/anime I binge, they always find a reason to crap all over it, even if they brought up the topic and asked me what I liked.
In their eyes, the books are bad, the food makes me snobby, the moves are garbage, the cartoons/anime are immature, even when some of them are insanely popular things.
They’re rude conversationalists, too.
One of them also will walk up whenever I’m telling a story and just loudly interrupt to ask a question to whomever I’m talking to.
I’m definitely not good when it comes to interruption, and am working on improving my control, but this is just to an extent that I find RUDE.
If I did that to someone, I’d hope they call me out on it, but I’m too cowardly to do so since I’m all too aware of how many social faux pas I commit on a daily basis.
The other one has expressed some political-ish views that I find gross: they thought that if someone was stealing food from a convenience store they should be sent to jail for years, and if someone breaks into a car it should be ok for the police to shoot at them.
I know crime, incarceration, and police brutality are controversial issues, but JEEZ!!!
In case anyone is wondering about cultural context, this is in America and we are all nonwhite men under 35, two of us with immigrant parents and the third (the one with the political views) has a work visa.
He noticed that they like certain snacks at the office.
So none of this is anything I can really do much about to make it stop, at least not without causing myself to lose a lot more in the process.
So I’ve started resorting to subtle sabotage & mind games to get some payback at these coworkers to make myself feel better.
Our office is across the street from a grocery store where we buy snacks 2x a week.
Whenever we do so, 3-5 of us go and get snacks for the whole office.
I’ve noticed that these two coworkers enjoyed some snacks that no one else seemed to care about: a specific kind of jerky & a fancy cheese spread.
Now, he makes sure those snacks don’t get bought.
About a year ago, whenever I was on one of these grocery runs I’d wait until they grabbed their preferred snacks and put them in the cart, then when no one was looking I’d throw them back onto the shelves.
I know that these two coworkers often mentally go to another dimension when I start talking, so I’ll start droning about some BS topic that I don’t care about so they’ll tune me out, then poof the jerky & cheese are gone.
Or, you know, just disappear.
If I’m not doing the grocery run, I’ll wait until they get back and the rest of us are helping put the snacks in the office fridge/cabinets, then I’ll find ways to make the snacks disappear.
Sometimes I’ll just tuck them away and eat them before anyone else gets a chance.
Sometimes I’ll give them to the office on the floor below as a gift.
Sometimes if I’m working late until the office cleaning people arrive, I’ll give it to them while striking up a conversation.
Literally anything to ensure that those two coworkers don’t get their snacks.
They’ve definitely noticed the absence, but I’m subtle enough that they haven’t figured out its me.
To leave some false breadcrumbs away from myself, I’ve made it so that sometimes when I’m one of the people shopping for groceries but they are not, their snacks arrive safely.
Neither one thinks a person is doing it.
At first they just keep rationalizing it different ways each time, but over time they started losing their minds a little over it and keep getting bummed that they can’t enjoy their snacks.
This has been going on for just over a year, with their specific snacks disappearing about 75% of the time.
I know I’m a crap person for this, but its my perfect little revenge for these coworkers who also inconvenience me in such a harmless yet hurtful way.
Petty, indeed, but pretty fun, right?
The top comment says this sounds like a fun little game.
This person has a suggestion for more mischief.
And this commenter says this story is perfect for the sub.
People are really invested.
No one thinks he’s going too far at all.
I can’t stand people like this.
They just have to rain on everyone else’s parade.
If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.