Eagle Scouts Was Getting Bullied By Some Of His Fellow Scouts, So He Turned It Around On Them On A Group Trip And Made Them Look Horrible

Matthew Gilligan

3 weeks ago

Source: Shutterstock/Reddit

Eagle Scouts don’t mess around!

I learned from a young age that a lot of these dudes are pretty hardcore…so it’s best not to tread lightly.

And this Eagle Scout had enough of some of his pals.

Check out how he took care of them!

Made these kids work for 9 months for NOTHING!

“My name is Patrick. I am 18 years old and I’m an Eagle Scout.

To get Eagle in my troop you have lead a 50 mile hiking or canoeing trip which typically lasts a week or more.

This was a big trip.

For my leadership I got a long three week trip to Alaska (which is pretty substantial since we live in a city that borders Mexico.)

One week for hiking, one for canoeing, and one for touring.

This requires we start planning at least 9 months in advance. I am one of two main leaders for this trip and there is one assistant leader to help us.

Andy – The other main leader on the trip going for Eagle.

Robert – The assistant leader assigned to help us.

Mr. Sammy – My scoutmaster.

Let’s start from the beginning.

Since the trip is in June – July we start planning in August – September.

We start out pretty smooth.

Andy and I get an idea of who’s going and how much the trip will cost per person while Robert manages payments and some paperwork.

Things are good.

Later on we start to lose track of our work and get lazy (since the trip is like 8 months away).

So Mr. Sammy starts laying into us calling us a bad leadership team.

This is where my battle with Andy and Robert begins.

Hmmm…

For some reason unbeknownst to me, Andy and Robert decided it was my fault the leadership team had temporarily fallen apart. T

hey team up and decide it’s Me vs Them (which is a really bad way to approach this trip).

They don’t talk to me and hide things from me.

When I do paperwork they decide not to take it and do it themselves.

Whenever Mr. Sammy gets mad about ANYTHING they instantly look for a way to pin the blame on me.

I decide rather than fighting with them I try to reach out and communicate to maybe save the Alaska trip dream team.

That didn’t really work.

Every single time I talk to them Robert decides to lash back at me for minor things being as rude and condescending as possible.

Andy (who hasn’t done anything for the trip) just stands behind him with his thumb up his rear.

Keep in mind most of this occurs over text.

He had enough of it.

After I’ve reached out as much as possible I decide “okay jerks. You wanna fight? I’ll fight.”

But not in the way you’d think.

Flash forward to maybe 4 months before the trip.

Up to this point Robert has done most of the paperwork (since he was deliberately hiding it from me) and has managed all of the payments.

Andy has been standing around with his thumb up his rear doing whatever Robert says.

Mr. Sammy looks at me like I’m a bag of poo left on his front porch.

This is where the fun begins.

He got busy.

As soon as I get the chance I take all of the up to date paperwork from e-mail to Mr. Sammy from Robert and copy it to my computer.

After that I see that the Excel documents this kid has made are a TOTAL cluster so I reformat them and update the information to look really uniform and pretty.

(even if your document is full of bull having it look pretty is half the battle).

From this point on the paperwork is in my control. I send and e-mail to Mr. Sammy with the subject “UPDATED ALASKA PAPERWORK (insert date)”.

From that point on the old man only accepts my copy, which Robert and Andy don’t have.

Even if they download it from my email I make sure to be the one who updates it and emails it first.

I copy my two “partners” on every single email to Mr. Sammy just to say “look at me”.

From that point on I control all of the paperwork.

Payments, IDs, the roster, the tip calendar, everyone’s contact info, etc.

I have it all under lockdown and make sure Mr. Sammy knows it in every email I send him.

The problem is now that when anything goes wrong there’s even more of a reason for Robert and Andy to verbally assault me and put all the blame on me.

But I have my battle plan. I just play it cool.

Everything Robert says I just answer “okay, is that all?”

And when he’s done I say “thanks for the feedback I’ll keep that in mind.”

I’ll give you an example of one of these conversations.

Me: (to a group chat with Andy and Robert) okay guys I updated the roster and other stuff. Robert has anyone else made a payment recently?

Robert: Maybe.

Me: Maybe?

Robert: You’re missing a lot of info on the payment roster.

This kind of carelessness is going to cost me my leadership and I won’t stand for it.

(at this point I think “that’s why I’m asking you this dummy” but I keep cool)

Andy: I agree.

(“As always” I think)

Me: That’s too bad. Would you update me on those payments so I can get it updated?

Robert: I guess. he then gives me all the payment info I need

Me: Thanks Robert! 😄

He was still taking his time…

These conversations always made me want to rip my hair out, but by playing it cool and keeping calm and being nice I never really gave them any reason to go after me.

Now they don’t have anything to give to Mr. Sammy to make me look bad. Just them being rude to me while I say things like “Thanks Robert! 😄”

This ended up making the two so mad that they spent most of their time trying to make me look bad and trying to make me mad that they didn’t spend any time working on the planning for the trip.

This was fine by me even though I had to play attrition with these guys every night for months over text message.

All I cared was that I was looking good, and I was. They weren’t which made them even more mad.

When it comes time to distribute the food we need for the trip I also take that over not letting the other two touch it so they can mess it up and blame it on me.

To be fair I could’ve done a way better job at this but I did get the job done and we had all the food we needed for 2 weeks away from civilization (almost).

After 9 months of ripping my greying hairs out for having to deal with these two annoying people we are finally flying from our hometown up to Alaska to go on this trip.

Andy and Robert decide to sit back and blend in with the crowd of scouts in khaki uniforms which is perfect for me.

I step up making it obvious that I was in charge and leading the scouts through each airport.

When we land I make sure to get everyone dressed into their hiking clothes in the airport and packed for the hiking trip. (It was past midnight in the airport so no one was around to watch us change.)

After that we take a bus to the trailhead.

The Scoutmaster noticed what was going on.

At this point I have stepped up as much as I can for Mr. Sammy and he noticed pretty well.

He also notices Robert and Andy blending in with the crowd not doing anything.

I speculate that they probably didn’t want to associate with me because they expected me to mess up and didn’t want to be a part of that mess up. Jokes on them.

I’m looking pretty good at this point.

1st day of hiking. We run into a problem.

Two of these stupid younger scouts have forgotten they’re dehydrated meat so now we have to divide up the other meat but first have to figure out who has it (I didn’t keep good track of who had what food item which I’m willing to admit is my fault entirely).

I notice that after like 36 hours of idleness Robert and Andy have sprung into action to document what food item EVERYONE is carrying.

You might think I’d try to stop them but I just thought “hey they’re finally doing something.”

I offered them my help multiple times which they refused so I simply sat back and watched.

After they documented everything they called me over to talk.

I knew I was about to get a meaningless lecture from a pasty Jewish kid and his Mexican buddy short enough to be Speedy Gonzales.

It went down exactly as I thought it would.

They told me basically…

“This is all your fault and you need to acknowledge that. You didn’t even help us fix it and you really need to start stepping up because you’re making US look bad.”

They continued to go on bus that summarizes what the said.

I simply asked “is that all” and then went to bed. I could practically feel the heat from their foreheads as they got angrier and angrier.

But everything went well.

To make a long story short I did really really well leading the hiking trip according to scoutmaster Sammy.

After we had finished he came up to me and told me I’d done a great job.

As far as he was concerned I had earned my leadership requirement for Eagle but Andy hadn’t and Robert wasn’t doing well either.

He asked me to supervise they’re leadership for the week long canoeing trip and week long touring section.

At this point I had them right where I wanted them. I knew Andy and Robert didn’t have what it took to lead a trip this big, so I sat back and watched them struggle. It was great.

The canoeing portion went awful. Andy and Robert broke our propane stoves on the first day!

The food was awful and they never planned ahead one bit.

I offered to help but always got turned down. I knew they would do that.

After canoeing came the touring part of the trip which went even worse.

For a portion of our touring trip we stayed in a public park in a small town.

Andy and Robert decided it would be a grand idea to leave their stuff outside of their tents at night where anyone could see them.

These guys were idiots.

Come morning time and their backpacks were GONE!

Not only did they lose their scout uniforms but also their cell phones and wallets! I acted like I cared but on the inside I was laughing my rear off.

Later we stayed in an army barracks in Anchorage.

Mr Sammy told Andy and I to get the scouts to bed by 10:00 but we both totally forgot.

Come 10:20 I was doing laundry for everyone while Andy and Robert were messing around in a community room.

People were laughing and playing cards and even showering.

Mr. Sammy has just returned from dinner with an old friend and he was FURIOUS to find people still awake.

I could hear him chewing out Andy in the hallway.

He came into the laundry room and yelled at my friend and I.

“PATRICK! WHY ARE YOU TWO STILL AWAKE!”

“We are doing laundry for the scouts sir.”

“Oh… okay.”

AND HE WALKED OUT WITHOUT PAYING ME ANY ATTENTION!

He then proceeded to chew out Andy harder and harder for letting people stay awake.

He ended up getting all of the blame.

Watching him get yelled at was like seeing fireworks in 1830.

Beautiful.

Now, almost a year later, I am an Eagle Scout.

In case you didn’t figure it out, Andy and Robert didn’t get credit for leadership on this trip.

9 MONTHS OF WORK DOWN THE DRAIN!!!

Andy hasn’t even started writing up his Eagle project (which is a ton of awful paperwork in my troop).

He actually didn’t come to any meetings for like 2 months after the trip.

Robert has been scrambling endlessly to make up for his lost leadership which is really fun to watch.

Now I just drive my brothers to the meetings on Tuesdays and get to watch the pair give me dirty looks. It honestly makes me feel ecstatic.

9 months of dealing with their bull every night and 3 weeks of taking it face to face in the woods and it was all worth it!”