Nothing is worse than a bully. Whether it be from a cruel kid at school or a mean coworker, spending your life being beaten down emotionally and often physically can be degrading. The satisfying moments, however, can be when the bullies get a taste of their own medicine. These victims share the best times they got revenge on a bully and how it all went down.
All content has been edited for clarity.
He Got His Just Deserts
“I showed this boy in my first grade class this cool rock I found, as I was convinced it was a moon rock. He asked to hold it to admire it so I let him, and then he proceeded to launch it into the forest and laugh at me.
So I did what I had to. I grabbed my chocolate pudding container and put it in the pocket of his sweater and smacked it so hard it exploded all over him.
Even though I lost that cool rock and my afternoon snack, I kept my pride that day.”
Instant Street Cred
“It was like out of a movie.
He was making fun of me and I taunted him back. He came at me and when he got close, I put my hands up in a ‘don’t hit me’ position, but he slipped on a wet piece of wood and fell.
That’s not what the other kids saw. Everyone else saw him come at me and then my hands flew up at his face and he hit the ground. They thought I was a tough guy that decked him in the face.
I didn’t even get in trouble because the recess teachers saw how the whole thing actually played out and he got in trouble.
We became recess buddies after that.”
Brains Over Bullies
“I had a classmate who hated me for a very asinine reason (apparently I wasn’t allowed to have any friends besides her, but she could have all the outside friends she wanted). She also made it clear to everyone that she was going to go to medical school and be a pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon (not kidding), but everyone knew she only wanted to do it to show me up. Guess which one of us actually got into medical school?
Last I heard of her, she couldn’t get into medical school because her GPA was too low. Why? She spent all her time in undergrad writing Star Trek and Supernatural fan fiction and took over 6 years to finish her undergrad program, as she had to retake several failed classes. According to her LinkedIn, she wound up getting a master’s degree that was only peripherally related to medicine, spent several years working as a McDonalds shift manager, and now works in an entry-level office job that pays $40K/year on average.”
It Was Finally Payback Time
“I went through some tough times at a low point in high school, mostly due to my weight. It never really bothered me, but there was this one guy that just could not miss an opportunity to try and break me down. Let’s call him Daniel, because that is his name.
There was constant verbal bullying. He never made anything off it, just left it. It was more irritating than anything else. Secretly, he absolutely blasted my self confidence, and it took a lot to recover.
A few years later, he comes for an interview at my company – I own a few car dealerships. My HR manager does the interview, says that the guy has all the right answers, seems like a good candidate, and that we should highly consider him.
I do my homework and see that he is getting divorced, his previous employer has gone under, and his father has been diagnosed with end stage cancer. Things are not looking good for him. Daniel did have an excellent track record and was truly a great salesman – he had numerous awards and excellent customer skills.
I tell my HR manager to get him back for a follow up interview. Daniel comes in, smiling and ready, thinking this is it. My HR manager excuses himself, and I walk in, and introduce myself.
Daniel takes a minute before he recognizes me, and all the blood drains from his face.
He tries to apologize. I conduct the interview, noticing that he is stressing out and very self aware.
When the interview is over, Daniel was visibly disappointed.
Before he left, I did what any business owner will do and offered him a job starting that same day. Daniel gladly accepted. I agreed to better terms and to adding his father as his beneficiary on his medical insurance to help with his bills. I employed Daniel, and he is an excellent employee. My revenge was Daniel making me very close to a million last year, and only earning about 140k for himself. So thank you, Daniel, you magnificent, efficient, excellent employee.”
Worse Than “Bad”
“My ex was emotionally manipulative. When we hung out, he was always logged into Netflix with my brother’s account because he refused to buy his own. After we broke up, I saw that he was watching ‘Breaking Bad.’ So we waited until he got to the last season and changed the password.”
She Was Patient, But It Paid Off
“I have a friend who had an awful neighbor guy. It was just decades of bullying, calling the cops when her kids played basketball in the driveway after school, yelling at her whenever leaves from her tree blew into his oh-so-perfect lawn, you get the picture.
This guy was a fanatic about his lawn. He was out every day weeding, raking, mowing, fertilizing, whatever.
She played the long game. She planted mint several feet from the property line where he couldn’t see it. That stuff can send roots a long way. It took a couple of years, but eventually mint started popping up in his lawn. She said the look on his face the day he noticed it was priceless. He’s never going to get rid of it.”
Indirectly, She Caused His Downfall
“In 6th grade, I had a bully named Mike. He was a big dude who, in hindsight, was clearly having some issues at home. I was an 80-lb girl who could barely look people in the face.
Mike really liked to walk up behind me at lunchtime and punch me in the head with no warning. This was in the early 1990s, when fighting on playgrounds was considered normal and even healthy, so no teachers would intervene.
I started dreading lunchtime at school, and also started stealing my dad’s cigs. I discovered that if I hid in the girls’ locker room at lunchtime, no one would come in, and I could smoke in peace (or at least puff out my anxiety and develop an addiction). My habit was to run the butt under the tap to make sure it was out, then throw it in the trash can. This is important.
One day, I tossed a butt in the trash and then went to Social Studies, where Mike sat next to me and called me all manner of foul names for an hour until Science class. About 10 minutes into class, the fire alarm went off. We all went outside and the fire department came. When the all-clear sounded, we learned that it wasn’t a drill – the trash can in the girls’ locker room was on fire!
Cue me losing my mind, convinced I was going to be arrested and sent to juvie and doomed to a life of crime.
A solid week passed before my anxiety leveled off and I realized that no one had connected me to the fire. Around that time, I also noticed that Mike had disappeared.
Other bullies stepped in to take his place, and life moved on.
Fast forward to 10 years later. I was walking down the main street in my town, and heard someone calling my name. It was a man in a dingy ‘wifebeater’ shirt, sitting on a park bench, drinking a 40 (at 10am on a Tuesday). He waved at me, then realized I didn’t recognize him.
He called, ‘Hey, it’s me, Mike, from middle school!’
I just about lost it. But I figured we had both grown, and maybe we could have a conversation like adults, so I sat down next to him, and he shared his 40 with me while telling me his life story. Mike had been in and out of juvenile and adult prisons. He had ‘three or four, I forget’ kids with various women, whom he could not support and did not see. Mike hadn’t held a steady job in his life and made ends meet by a combination of dealing, dishwashing, and other shady or low-paying work.
Mike attributed his life’s decline to ‘a fire in the girls’ locker room in middle school. I kept telling them I didn’t light that fire, but no one believed me, and they sent me to juvie. That’s where it all went downhill, man.'”
His Revenge Was Giving Him The Opposite
“A kid that bullied me in high school ended up an addict. I saw him 10 years later as I was leaving a drive through and yelled his last name. He turned and I saw the scratch marks on his face and a big burn type gash in the middle of his lip. I asked him what had happened and he told me he got kicked out of his home. Instead of laughing at him or belittling him, I handed him the bag of food I just bought for myself. He almost cried because, according to him, ‘never in a million years would I have thought that after all I put you through, that you’d help.’ I told him we were stupid kids and that life happens. I visited him once a week and just talked with him and kept telling him to get off the substances. I moved away a short time after that, so I didn’t know what had happened to him.
One day, I got a friend request from him on Facebook. He had kicked his habit and was working as a barista for one of those corner coffee shops. He is now married and living a life worth living.
At the end of the day, no matter how much grief he put me through, he was his own worst enemy and anything I could’ve done to him or said to him was nothing compared to what he did to himself. I’m glad he’s better and living a better life.”
The Bully Got Schooled
“I was the nerdy kid who always watched documentaries and read upwards of 2 books a week. My parents got divorced when I was pretty young, and my brother of the same age as me (we’re Irish twins) has mild autism, so I dealt with a lot of bullying.
The main culprit was this kid named Dan (fake name for obvious reasons). He was generally a prick, but thought it was really funny to make fun of my weight (I wasn’t particularly chubby, but kids are mean and they take what they can get). So Dan bullies me for the duration of elementary and middle school (it started around 4th grade and went up until 7th) and then he moves and changes buses. Gradually, I see him in fewer and fewer classes until I haven’t seen or heard from him for years.
Then comes sophomore English class. Dan is still just as much a prick, if not more so because now he has a bunch of prick friends, and thinks it is VERY funny to talk over the teacher and just generally be a distraction. Now, I don’t care if people don’t want to pay attention in school. School stinks and nobody wants to be there. However, I DO care if other people are creating an environment in which others are unable pay attention. So a few months go by and Dan and his friends carry on acting like hooligans, not doing work or paying attention during readings. Then come midterms. In our school, midterms were 10% of your grade for the class overall, so for people who weren’t doing so well, they made a huge difference. We get our review packet and our teacher pairs us off, and, of course, I get paired with Dan.
It’s not obvious right away that Dan doesn’t remember me, but it doesn’t take long to figure out. So we’re going through these questions, and as we go, I realize: he doesn’t know ANY OF THIS STUFF. So as we go, I kind of just… tell him nonsense. I feel a little guilty now, since I’m not 16 anymore and am able to realize that what I did was extremely petty. But at the same time, it was all stuff he would have very easily picked up on if he had paid any attention at all (I knew it all already and I even had an extended absence for 2.5 weeks leading up to the midterm).
The day of the midterm comes, we all take it and it seems pretty standard – nothing extraordinarily difficult. He’s bragging to all his friends about how he’s going to get the highest grade in the class and how he can’t wait to get the scores back to rub it in their faces. I’ll never forget his face when we got our tests back the next week and he found out he got a D.”
He Finally Stood His Ground
“A few years ago, I was eating alone one day at a fast food restaurant in my old hometown. I was visiting relatives and was kind of hungry, and just needed a pick-me-up to hold me over before I got home. Suddenly, I see my old bully that terrorized me for years sitting with his buddies, still acting like he was in high school with his pretentious dude-bro/macho attitude. He thought – and probably still thinks – that he can beat up anyone he wanted.
I heard him laughing and a couple of his friends mentioned my name. I felt brave for once in my life and I didn’t think I would ever have the chance to do it again. So, I gathered all of the courage I had. I stood up, walked over with the most menacing look I could come up with (I was basically born with an intimidating face), and I confronted him and his friends. Here’s what basically went down.
Me: ‘Hey, heard you guys laughing and talking about me, huh?’
Bully: ‘What is it to you, fat boy? You gonna cry like you used to in high school?’
Me: ‘[Bully name], how old are you now?’
Bully: ’22…?’
Me: ‘Then act like it, because sooner or later, you’re gonna end up like your deadbeat father if you don’t wisen up.’
He gets up, angry, thinking I want to ‘scrap’ as he called it. I declined because I didn’t want to stoop to his level. So I walk out quite calmly, taking what was left of my meal, and got back on the road.
To preface, his father was an addict and was known by the whole town as one. He never sobered up, to my knowledge. No wonder he used to bully people, his father was a failure and he was scared that he was going to turn out like him. I haven’t seen him since, but, more than likely, he’s probably just as bad, if not marginally around the same.
I never really got revenge, per se, but I got closure. I finally stood up for myself for the years that he ridiculed me and made me feel like I was less than nothing. And I didn’t need anything more.”
Karma Did The Work For Her
“I was relentlessly bullied in elementary school. I was made fun of for my skin, eyes, hair, the usual. This one little rich girl specifically told me that because of my my ethnicity, that I was ugly and that no boy would ever like me. She also assumed that I was poor because of my family’s background (we were by no means poor). I eventually moved schools.
Over 10+ years later, my boyfriend and I are at a restaurant and our waitress is the mean girl who bullied me in elementary school. We immediately recognized each other but said nothing. I was confused why she was working in the first place, let alone a restaurant. The last I had heard of her, her parents had sent her to some very expensive university, got her her own house, paid her bills, paid for everything, blah blah blah. They must’ve cut her off. She had attitude the whole time serving us, purposefully making me repeat myself, messed up my order on purpose, and made flirty eyes with my boyfriend the entire time. At the end of our meal, she has the nerve to ask for my boyfriend’s number right in front of me. My boyfriend of course shot her down. I remember his exact words were,
‘Can’t you see I’m with my gorgeous girlfriend? Even if I wasn’t, what makes you think I would want you? You’re a disrespectful, miserable person, and I would like the check please.’ (I hadn’t even told him who she was yet, I was waiting until after we left).
She said nothing and walked away. She had someone else drop off the check.
My boyfriend happened to know the owner of that restaurant that we were at, and talked to him about our rude server. The owner admitted he had problems with her before and thanked us for letting him know.
We’ve been back to that restaurant frequently because it’s one of our favorites, and let’s just say, a certain someone doesn’t work there anymore.
Even though I didn’t purposefully go out of my to get ‘revenge’ on her, karma is cruel and did the work for me.”
“Don’t Mess With My Sister”
“My sister was bullied by our neighbor’s father, who went so far as to attack her when she was only 10. Thirty years later, she returned to our small town and quietly bought the land his business leased. When the lease came up for renewal a few years later, she said no and gave him 30 days to remove all his equipment, buildings etc. He went bankrupt and his retirement plans were ruined. He threatened to attack her, but she recorded his threat and the police stepped in to warn him to never contact her again. That guy was such a prick. Don’t mess with my sister.”
“The Ultimate Slap In The Face”
“I graduated from high school in the ’80’s. I had grown up poor but when my mom remarried, she married a guy who did well for himself. So when we moved into his house, I was a poor kid suddenly going to a school full of rich kids. One of them in particular was a girl who was really stuck up. She had a very imperious attitude and generous parents, while with my mom there was no way she was going to allow us to behave that way.
About 6 years after high school graduation, I’d dropped out of college, was living on my own in a tiny apartment and working as a waitress. Of all the people to show up at the restaurant and be seated in my section, this same girl walked in. I asked a couple of waitresses to take the table, but they were busy. Finally, I realized what I would do. I would take on the role of my life, win an Academy Award. I went to the table and pretended I’d never met her before in my life.
She kept insisting that I must remember her, right? She kept saying her name and I nailed the performance. ‘I’m so sorry, I just don’t…no…I, uh…I’m trying. I believe you, yes, I went to that school but I am SO sorry, I don’t remember you,’ and so on.
She was flabbergasted. I kept overhearing her say to the people she was with, ‘I can’t believe she doesn’t remember me.’
That day I learned that to be forgotten is, for some, the ultimate slap in the face.”
It Was Only An “Accident”
“When I was a kid, I was a Boy Scout. Our Boy Scout troop was not a good one. I was one of five boys my age (6th grade) and the rest of the boys were all high schoolers. They LOVED to pick on us and give us grief, but most of them were pretty decent about it.
However, there was this one guy who absolutely was not. He was such a prick and his greatest joy in life was beating up on us little kids. But he was also HUGE and would have pounded one of us flat if we’d tried to fight him. Our scoutmaster, by the way, was only concerned with making sure that his son became an Eagle scout and let the rest of the kids do whatever they felt like.
Anyway, one weekend in March or April we went for an overnight backpacking trip. This kid was along, and sure enough, he tormented us in every way he could.
The next day, we started hiking out. I just remember that it was an early spring day here in North Carolina, and it was one of those days where it’s cool in the shade but you warm up quickly if you’re doing something physical, like hiking. I took my jacket off and tied it around my waist while I walked. After a few minutes, this big dude comes over and starts giving us a hard time. That’s when I had an idea. I suggested that we stop and take a breather. So we stood around for a few, long enough to cool down. I untied my jacket from my waist and put one arm through, then I walked over to the other guy and put my other arm through, making sure to punch the guy in the mouth while I was doing it.
It was a very satisfying blow to the face. I immediately apologized and explained that I’d just been trying to put my coat on and had accidentally hit him. Not only did he believe me, but because it hadn’t happened in a fight, he kept going on and on about how it hurt. I was delighted.”
Play Dirty, Get Dirty
“In a high school soccer game, this prick I was guarding kept sneaking in dirty shots (kicks and elbows) when the referee wasn’t looking.
After that had gone on for a while, he turned his back to me so he could receive a pass. He kept banging his body into mine (right behind him) to clear out space.
I timed it just right, and as he tried to hurl himself backward into me one more time, I sidestepped and gave him a little shove … and he stumbled out of control, arms flailing, and fell flat on his back.
I wasn’t a very physical player, so my teammates who saw that were surprised. The best part was when some of them just cracked up laughing.”