Treat others as you would like to be treated.

Of course, that old saying sounds great on paper, but you and I both know that a lot of folks out there don’t live by it.

And the person who wrote this story on Reddit had to deal with a real jerk on the phone who got overly irritated about a mistake…

So they did the rational thing and decided to get some revenge!

10 dollars and a pencil.

“A few years ago, after changing jobs, I found myself in a new office, with a new phone number.

After some orientation, training and other new-hire stuff, I finally get to sit down and do the things.

A phone call started the whole chain of events.

I get my voice-mail and answering machine set up, set up the email, and the phone rings.

“Good morning, <railroad> engineering.”

“Yeah, when can I take the GED test?”

“Sorry, wrong number.” <click>

Rings again

“Seriously, when can I take the GED test?”

“Like I said, wrong number. Bye.”

And the calls kept on coming.

This went on for weeks. 15-20 calls a day. People screaming at me for not being the adult Learning center. One day, an epiphany: “This isn’t the Adult Learning Center?” “Nope” “Do you know the number?” “Check Google” “I did, this is the number on their website.”

Oh really?

A little Google-fu of my own, and I dig up a few numbers, and give them a call.

The call with the place didn’t go very well.

They tell me that they don’t maintain their website, and there’s nothing they can do about it, and it’s not their problem. I’m just going to have to “deal with it”.

My favorite line of that conversation was “What are you going to do about it? I work for the State. You can’t do <naughty word>. Bye bye.” And you can imagine that “bye-bye” just dripped with the condescension that only hubris and decades of Karenhood can muster.

Now it was ON.

Oh. Hell. No. Let’s dance.

The next day.

“Good morning <railroad>”

“When can I take the GED test?”

“We give that on request, it takes about an hour and a half. Come on down.”

“Oh, awesome. How much it it?”

This was going to be fun!

“10 dollars. Bring a pencil. We’ll sharpen yours, but we can’t supply them. Budget cuts, you know.”

“Naw, I get it. See you in a bit.”

“Take your time. They don’t like me telling you this, but if you get here before we close, they HAVE TO give you the test. See you when you get here.”

“Thanks, man. See you later.”

Now for those of you who don’t know, the GED test takes a WHOLE DAY. It also usually costs upward of $100, depending on the state. In the state I was living and working at the time, it was around $200. As such, it was only offered at certain intervals.

Again, the calls kept on coming!

So, as I was telling dozens of people PER DAY that it was $10, took 90 minutes, and offered on request, I’m sure that they were absolutely inundated with angry people with freshly sharpened #2 pencils, waving their $10 bills, and demanding the test that the guy on the phone told them they could come and take.

Every morning, I checked the website, to see if my phone number was still on there. I also took the liberty of crawling around and getting the phone numbers for some managers.

They kept this up for quite a while!

I was happy to hand these out when people called back to complain that they hadn’t been allowed to take the test.

“Head back down there, and ask to speak to <random director> and tell them that they called the number on the website and this is what they were told.

It took them about 6 more weeks to change the website. For some reason, all of the managers numbers disappeared from the website as well.”

Check out how folks reacted on Reddit.

This person was bummed that regular folks got screwed over because of this.

Another individual talked about their own wrong number mix up.

This Reddit user made a good point.

And this person had to deal with a major screw-up at the company where they worked.

I’d call that some sweet revenge!

Nice work!