The prior boyfriend of the gal I’m seeing broke her heart in the most horrible way I’ve ever heard of. Every time I see some sign of how unimaginably badly he hurt her, I feel a deep, visceral urge to go find him. I’ve asked her never to tell me his last name.
The guy needs therapy, but he deserves a major Wrath-of-God ass-beating.
I think walking away from revenge at all time is too encouraging to bad people. If people are out doing major harm, they need eventually to suffer for it. That’s really why we have the law, but there are many situations that the law does not cover, or in fact provides cover for the harmer.
While I would generally recommend against seeking revenge, I have been driven to do so once or twice.
I once worked in jewelry sales at a big name store in a mall. They paid an hourly rate plus commissions. To get commisssion, you had to do three things: greet the customer, show the merchandise, and close the sale.
I worked with a snake-y saleslady who would stand in the doorway saying 'Hello" to everybody and then try to claim half the commission for having met the “greet the customer” portion of the sales requirement. I felt she was taking unfair advantage of a somewhat vague policy.
Anyway, I was working on a large-ish sale (1000.00), waiting for the credit app to be approved and to finish the sale. The app was approved while I was at lunch, so she rang the customer up for me… under her commission number. She had nothing to do with the sale and stole the whole thing. I complained to my boss who didn’t back me up at all. I even offered to split it, which I felt was more than generous. He said he just didn’t want to get involved. It was totally unfair. The combination of unclear policy and ineffectual boss was too much for me. I put in for a transfer, but was told it would take several weeks.
While waiting for the transfer, I began to realize exactly how much the lady had been ripping me off. She ‘accidently’ rang up all kinds of sales under her number. The big sale rip-off made me wonder about her, and I began to realize she was ringing up my sales and repairs under her number to an alarming degree. Especially the repairs. They are generally small and don’t attract the attention the sales do. I had been a fool to think my sales were safe when I wasn’t in the store.
I became enraged and planned action. I decided she would never make another sale at all while I was in the store. I went into high gear. Some days I would feel sorry for her and decide I would let her have all the sales made, say, between 10 and noon. If noone bought during those hours, well, too bad for her. I ‘accidently’ rang up her repairs under my number. I ‘helped’ her all the time (on the rare occasions she had a customer) by bringing extra merchandise and making suggestions, thereby earing half her sale.
After a couple of weeks, she began to notice her commisssions were way down. She said “Wow, I must be spending too much time on inventory.” She never knew what hit her. I got my transfer and went away happy.
I learned that commission sales can be nasty if you can’t trust the people you work with to be fair.
Evil Captor–that’s a wild story.
I’ve contemplated revenge, not so much for the revenge itself, but to get certain people to leave me alone. As in, “If they know what I’m capable of they won’t mess with me.” However, I haven’t found the right way to go about it, so I guess I’m not really capable of as much damage as I had hoped. haha.
Though I’ve wanted to on occasion, I’ve never gone out of my way to get revenge, other than reporting illegal or unethical activities to the relevant authorities and to anyone else who might be thinking of doing business with the person in question. I don’t really consider that ‘revenge’, since I’m not setting them up in any way, just letting everyone know the things that they’ve done.
I did Nelson laugh at a former boss when, after a client publicly berated and humiliated him for his own incompetence, he was so mad that he accidentally backed his prize penismobile into a utility pole.