Some coworkers make the job harder just because they can.

What would you do if a colleague constantly dumped their work on you, making your shift unnecessarily difficult? Would you confront them about it? Or would you find a way to make sure they learned a lesson they wouldn’t forget?

In the following story, one dishwasher found himself facing this very decision and opted for the latter. Here’s how it played out.

Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.

In my youth, I worked the evening shift as a dishwasher at a restaurant that did brisk business, both lunch and dinner.

The dish machine they had was a giant conveyor type that was almost fully automated. You put the rack of dishes in and sent it on its merry way, and a few minutes later, everything exited all sparkly. The soap and sanitizer were pumped out of reservoirs, and all you had to do was keep feeding the machine with dishes, and it would do the rest.

The day shift dishwasher was in the habit of leaving multiple tubs of dishes for the evening shift to clean before the dinner service had even started, and when we on the night shift complained that he was making more work for us, he started leaving even more.

He was a difficult person, to say the least.

Fed up, he set an elaborate trap.

One night, I had had enough. I conspired with my dishwashing partner to fix him once and for all. The first thing we did was shut the machine down early so that he had about ten tubs of dishes to do first thing in the morning.

Then, after I had cleaned out the machine and shut it down I went to the sink and returned with a bottle of dish detergent and poured it all over the inside of the machine. It was a clear liquid, so I knew if I left the machine open overnight, it would dry clear by morning and be practically unnoticeable.

Next, I mopped the floor clean and then headed to the walk-in fridge and returned with a pound of butter. I took the cast iron grate off of the floor drain, and with the mop handle, I stuffed the entire block of butter deep into the drain and replaced the grate. The trap was now set.

The guy was overwhelmed, and it kept getting worse.

In the morning, that guy had to process all those dishes in order to get ahead of the lunch rush. He started up the machine as usual, and gradually, the excess soap I had added the night before began to do its job.

Now, I was not there to see it, but I was told by one of the line cooks who worked both shifts that so many suds poured out of the machine that he had resorted to trying to hose them out, which only made more.

Soon, he was running back and forth knee-deep in dish suds and water, and try as he might, he couldn’t wash them down the floor drain because I had fixed that up special for him.

Surprisingly, there were no consequences for us from management. Apparently, the restaurant owner even had a pretty good laugh about it. All I can say is that we never again got more than one tub of leftover lunch dishes to do before the dinner rush.

Wow! That must’ve been crazy!

Let’s see how the people over at Reddit relate to this story.

Good question.

Too funny!

He sure did!

Let’s hope he did.

Now, that’s the perfect revenge!

Wonder how long it took him to realize that the night shift set him up.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.