December 12, 2025 at 2:35 pm

A Teenager’s Phone Was Taken Away By Her Mom On A Vacation, So She Drove Her Mom Nuts By Playing The Flute Early In The Morning Until She Got Her Phone Back

by Matthew Gilligan

girl playing a flute

Shutterstock/Reddit

Folks, we’re 99.9999% sure that you’re gonna get a big kick out of this story!

It comes to us from Reddit’s “Malicious Compliance” page and the teenager who wrote it is not someone to be messed with.

Read on and find out what happened!

Want to ground me? Fine! Deal with the consequences.

“This happened a while ago. At that time I was currently 13-14 years old.

I was on a family vacation with my best friend. On this trip we were supposed to stay 5 days at the lake and then come back home.

My mom is (most of the time) a mayor jerk so I was not surprised when she started having a bad attitude with me.

After being 3 days on this trip, I was exhausted, I had spent all day on the lake and was really, really tired, all I wanted to do was to lay down in the camping tent and sleep the day away.

Her mom wouldn’t give her a break.

My mom decided that this was a great time to ask me for help, she wanted me to carry my brother to the lake, bathe him, and bring him back to her (he was around a year old or so).

Obviously I was so out of myself that I told her ‘no’ and that she could do it herself (there was around a 10 minute walk to the lake).

She started screaming at me, as to how bad of a sister and child I must be ’cause I ‘never helped her’ and yadda, yadda.

Then after screaming at me for half an hour she asked me if now I was ready to help her, I responded ‘no’ again and that she hadn’t gone out of the van all day and that she must’ve been filled with enough energy to do it.

This lady has some anger issues.

Then she goes to scream at my dad to pack things up, take away my phone from me and that I was grounded until she said so.

Also she made me go alone with her in the car ride (we went with 2 cars because we didn’t fit) and proceeded to lecture me the 2 hours back home about respect, how I should behave, that I should help around more in the house and to have more family time and also that I could be doing other things and to ‘get a hobby’ because for her I was apparently all the day on my phone.

Cue the malicious compliance.

I decided that if she wanted all that then I could manage.

We arrived home at around 11 pm and she went to sleep at 3 am (for some reason).

This was going to be interesting…

At 9 am I was up and I decided that my new hobby was to play to flute at first thing on the morning, I proceeded to play the flute so bad and loud that my brother started crying (I was playing the flute on the yard and they were on their room, all the way across on the house and with their windows closed).

She couldn’t tell me anything because when she came to the yard to tell me off but I was so polite and gave perfect reason that I was far and I was getting a new hobby as she had told me.

The house stayed squeaky clean for two weeks but every day I made a point to go to sleep before everyone so that every day I woke up a little bit earlier and ready to blast my flute each day for around one hour until they couldn’t bear it anymore.

This was getting on their nerves!

I think I even reached playing the flute at 5 am. By the end of two weeks the punishment wasn’t over but I was slowly driving my mom insane by messing with her sleep schedule and I knew that.

I also started lecturing my parents because they didn’t have proper manners and they couldn’t tell me nothing because they KNEW I was right.

I spend all the day stuck to either my mom or dad and talked their ear off and made everyone watch those horrible educational films no one likes, made them participate in family bonding time (like making cookies) proceeded to leave as much of a mess as I could and when they told me to clean it: Sorry, but I already have cleaned the house today, could you do it?

I was eating their brains, their sanity and their free time, either by nagging them or by cautiously waking my brother up but doing it in a way quiet way so that they wouldn’t find out and having them to deal with a baby all day long.

The last day (around 2 weeks and a half) my mom was so fed up that she gave me the phone back.

It has been around 2 or 3 years since then and I haven’t been grounded since then.”

Reddit users shared their thoughts.

This person had a lot to say.

Screenshot 2025 12 07 at 10.04.08 AM A Teenagers Phone Was Taken Away By Her Mom On A Vacation, So She Drove Her Mom Nuts By Playing The Flute Early In The Morning Until She Got Her Phone Back

Another individual wasn’t impressed.

Screenshot 2025 12 07 at 10.03.39 AM A Teenagers Phone Was Taken Away By Her Mom On A Vacation, So She Drove Her Mom Nuts By Playing The Flute Early In The Morning Until She Got Her Phone Back

And this Reddit user didn’t hold back.

Screenshot 2025 12 07 at 10.03.46 AM A Teenagers Phone Was Taken Away By Her Mom On A Vacation, So She Drove Her Mom Nuts By Playing The Flute Early In The Morning Until She Got Her Phone Back

She drove them nuts with her flute playing until they finally snapped!

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.