Imagine going to a college where half the students are concerned about saving the environment, and the other half of the students are learning to be heavy equipment operators in the construction industry.

As you can probably imagine, these students wouldn’t really get along, but in this story, there was one particular student who went out of his way to be extra obnoxious and annoying. One way he did that was with his truck.

Bragging about his antics on social media really backfired when some environmental enforcement officers came to campus. Even thought they weren’t there very long, it was just enough time for one student who cared about the environment to point the officers in the obnoxious student’s direction.

Keep reading to see how the story plays out.

Roll coal on me, and you’ll be rolling your stupid dirty truck home on a trailer

This happened three or four years ago in the small town where I was going to school. A quiet little place out in the boonies where the local pastimes are trucks, hunting, trucks, fishing, hunting, and trucks.

The college was a branch campus, specializing in a strange mish-mash of programs more or less related to the construction industry: on one end were the environmental programs, where I spent my time, and on the other were the heavy equipment operators.

Needless to say there were some conflicting ideologies; half the campus hugged trees while the other half bulldozed them.

Now, we get to know the bad guy of the story.

As with the bigger schools, there was a facebook page for our little campus where people would submit memes, photos, and rude stories about campus life, and the comments on these posts were as bipolar as the campus culture.

Among the regular contributors was a 19-year-old jerk with a jacked up early ’90s diesel Dodge Ram, who took every possible opportunity to make fun of us ‘Prius drivers’ in the environmental programs.

These jerks usually ended with a chorus of “Roll coal, bro” from his other truck-driving friends.

Here’s an explanation of that saying.

Now, for those not in the know, rolling coal is a uniquely Neanderthal-ish practise. Essentially, you tune your diesel engine to run extremely rich, so that when you put the pedal to the floor, it pours big clouds of black smoke into the sky.

The effect is complete when your cloud of exhaust washes over one or more hapless pedestrians, leaving them choking on it and cursing your name.

Yes, people actually do this for fun.

Everyone knew who this guy was.

Everyone on campus knew who the idiot with the Dodge was.

Chances were very good if you spent any amount of time there, he’d rolled coal on you at some point.

Other trucks were known to do it occasionally, but no one seemed to get the same kind of sadistic glee out of it that he did, or had his truck tuned quite so rich.

He was at it again.

Now, one day my friends and I were heading out into the field to do a group project.

As we were making our way across campus, on a beautiful sunny afternoon, who should appear behind us but this jerk. I heard him approaching and knew instantly what was coming.

Sure enough, I turned around just as he stomped on the accelerator, spewing a huge cloud of black soot over my entire class.

A chorus of middle fingers followed him, but he just tore away from us and headed down to the heavy equipment parking lot, amused with himself and probably planning some sort of snide remark on social media.

OP wanted revenge.

Frustrated but not really knowing what to do, I moved on.

Until a couple days later, when fortune dropped the perfect revenge into my lap.

Our class received a visit from some environmental enforcement officers, i.e. the folks who go around making sure that you’re not dumping your sewage into the storm sewers or fishing without a license.

There were only a handful of these guys around due to the generally tiny amount of money that governments commit to environmental enforcement, and we happened to be the lucky recipients of an hour of their time.

OP had a question.

I listened to them talk with a growing feeling of giddy, childish glee, and as soon as they finished and asked if we had any questions, I put up my hand.

“Yes,” I said, “I was wondering if you also enforce automobile emissions regulations.”

“Yes, we do. It’s not a big part of our job because it’s so hard to catch them in the act, but we have the power to ask someone to start their vehicle for us and to levy fines and revoke licenses if we find they’re in violation.”

Sensing what I was up to, my friend had already pulled up facebook on her phone and located the jerk’s profile. Conveniently, his profile picture was a shot of his truck spewing black smoke into the air.

OP explained what was happening and where to find the truck owner.

I quickly summarized the situation for the enforcement officers, complete with visual evidence of the act, and with serious faces they promised us that they would visit the Heavy Equipment building shortly.

Social media was eerily quiet for the next couple hours, but when I got home that night, sure enough the jerk had posted an enraged message to the facebook group, full of bluster and bravado against the people who had sent the enforcement officers after him.

Through the grapevine, we eventually found out what happened: the officers had gone directly to his classroom and asked the entire class to step outside, where one by one they had to start their trucks and hold the accelerators to the floor for a couple seconds.

Here’s how it all worked out.

A handful of them ended up with fines.

The jerk, being the worst offender of the group, received a fine and also had his license plates confiscated. He had to come back to school later that day with a trailer to bring his truck home.

My friend and I spent weeks retelling this story with judicious glee, and due to the infamy of that jerk – I doubt there was anyone on campus who didn’t know him – we never failed to attract an interested group of listeners.

He asked the perfect question to the perfect people to help solve the problem. Well done!

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a man who was totally humiliated when he learned the real reason his friends had ditched him.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person thinks people who roll coal are childish.

Another person shares how it works in SoCal.

This person loved the revenge.

Another person shares how he got revenge on someone who rolled coal.

I had never heard of rolling coal before this story, and I count myself lucky for that. It sounds awful.

That guy definitely got what he deserved. He was obnoxious and intentionally trying to make others upset. To top it off, he was dumb enough to brag about it on social media.

It’s really cool that the environmental enforcement officers made all of the heavy equipment students start their trucks. The revenge ended up being on multiple students, but the obnoxious one who was the biggest problem definitely had the biggest consequences, which were well deserved.

I doubt that he learned his lesson though.