Landlords can play dirty, but some tenants have clever ways of fighting back.

When one renter was unfairly kicked out of her apartment to make room for her landlord’s friend, she found the perfect way to make her cruel landlord’s life a little harder — one penny at a time.

Read on for the full story.

Paid in Pennies

In the late 90s, I lived in a pretty sweet apartment with a cool little turret room. It was a studio, but it was just me and a cat, so it worked perfectly.

But it wasn’t a complete fairytale.

I loved the location, but the landlord was… difficult.

When I first signed the lease, she acted like it was cool that I had a cat.

The landlord didn’t stay cool about it much longer.

But one time when she came by with the bug guy, she saw my cat and demanded I pay her a pet deposit.

I was like, “You didn’t mention that before, but cool. Whatever.”

Things toddled along for a few more months when I got a call.

The landlord was up to no good once again.

The landlord wanted to come by and show her friend the work she did on the place before I moved in, because she was proud of doing it herself.

Okay, cool. Whatever.

Landlord and friend come over, walk around the apartment for a few minutes, friend is gushing about how much she loves the place and what she did with it. Yeah! Me too!

Then came another disturbing call.

A couple of weeks later, my landlord calls and says, “I want you out by the end of the month.”

I’m like, “Huh, wha?”

The landlord tries to think of some flimsy excuse, but eventually the renter learns the truth.

And she tries to say it was because I didn’t tell her I had a cat when I moved in, despite us having that discussion and me paying her the pet deposit when asked.

I explained this to her, she was adamant, tried to gaslight me, and insisted I had to get out.

Turns out her “friend” fell in love with the place and was in need of a new spot by the end of the month. She never told me this directly, but the downstairs neighbor heard them talking about it on their way out.

Luckily, the renter landed on her feet, but she still couldn’t resist causing some mischief on her way out.

I ended up finding a much better place to land in a better neighborhood, so I wasn’t screwed, but I was still incredibly ticked over the whole thing, due to the fact that she was so dishonest about it.

So I delayed paying her that last month’s rent until move-out day because **** her.

So she put her clever plan into motion.

On that day, I decided to go down to the bank and cash in the rent amount (like $350 — it was the 90s) for pennies.

The bank gave me rolled coins, which I promptly opened into a couple of Kroger bags.

And you wouldn’t believe the landlord’s reaction.

I moved all my stuff out the day before, so I just met her there for a walkthrough.

When she asked for the rent, I handed her the bags full of pennies.

She got red-hot ticked and screamed at me, said I was going to have to wait there while she counted it (first she tried to get me to count it and roll it), to which I replied, “Nah. I know how much is there. Call me if it’s short.”

Call it petty, call it poetic — either way, she got her closure.

What did Reddit have to say?

This commenter would have handled things a bit differently.

One part of this story isn’t quite adding up.

This commenter thinks the renter should count her blessings that the landlord didn’t know more about the law.

Nothing sounds sweeter than revenge in the form of a rattling bag of pennies.

She might have lost the apartment, but at least she walked away with a good laugh.

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