It seems that in every school project, there’s always someone expecting others to do all the work and then get credit for it.

In this case, one of this man’s colleagues asked to see his report so she could take it as inspiration for her own.

He just didn’t expect her to almost copy it in its entirety.

So he decided to make sure her report would look different from his.

Let’s read the story.

She tried to plagiarise my work. I went nuclear.

During my freshman year at university, I had been working on a group project with 4 other people.

We had completed an experiment as part of a physics module, and each needed to write a report (approximately 2,500 words) to be assessed.

As the deadline for this module fell slap bang in the middle of a really active few weeks, I took the uncharacteristically organized decision to write and submit my report a few weeks early.

Job done! Free to party over varsity week!

He did his part as a good student.

One of my colleagues left everything until the last minute, and called me in a panic two days before the due date.

She asked if I could share my report with her so that she could ‘understand how to structure the report and present the data.’

Me being a bit dopey (and probably still a bit intoxicated from a week of partying) sent her my report in its entirety.

Her request sounded suspicious, but he didn’t think she would do what she did.

The following day (the night before submission), she called me again, and asked if I could proofread her report and make any minor adjustments I saw fit before she submitted.

I agreed, and she emailed the document over.

Much to my horror, she had basically copied and pasted my entire report.

I couldn’t believe that she was moronic enough to send me the report to look at given that she had plagiarised the whole thing!

She basically wanted him to rewrite his own report so she could use it.

This is where I became quite vengeful and petty.

I first used the ‘find and replace’ function on word, and replaced commonly used words from our experiment with vulgarities.

I then replaced a step-by-step methodology from our experiment with a step-by-step recipe for spaghetti bolognese.

The data table was replaced with the box scores from the NFL games that weekend.

I took the time to change the author’s names in her references to characters from Harry Potter (ie Weasley et al. 2009, Dumbledore and Grindelwald 2008).

He went all out and he wasn’t done yet.

To top things off, I rewrote her conclusion as a confession that she had attempted to plagiarise the report.

I sent the revised document to her, and fully expected to receive an angry phone call in response.

I did receive an angry phone call – 3 weeks later when she was called in for a faculty meeting due to academic misconduct.

Apparently being the dingbat she was, she had not even proofread the document I had sent her, and had submitted it.

She hadn’t just failed the module, but was under threat of expulsion.

While trying to blame me for the content of the document, she had inadvertently admitted to attempted plagiarism.

Upon returning to the faculty 5 years later as a research fellow, I discovered that the director of teaching had kept a copy of the report and routinely showed it to students as a warning not to plagiarise!

She quickly learned she wasn’t in high school anymore.

Let’s see what Reddit has to say about this petty revenge.

This reader pays him compliments.

She did!

This could indeed have been avoided.

This commenter shares a few kind words.

Someone shares a story of their own.

Now everyone can learn from this situation.

Who sends out an important report without proofreading it first?

She was lucky she wasn’t sent to Azkaban.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.