Everyone has limits; that when they're pushed to them, they just break and snap. The outcome can have various results, but most of the time, it's not pretty. When this happens, people can react in angry and dangerous ways. Just ask these people.
People on Reddit share the moment when they decided they were done being nice. Content has been edited for clarity.
“Too Afraid To Speak Up For Myself”
“Worked at Target when I was in my late teens (I’m 31 now) and thought I was doing as good of a job as I could be. When it came time for the yearly review, they told me I was ‘consistently inconsistent,’ and gave me a six-cent raise.
I was really upset, but at the time was too afraid to speak up for myself. Barely a month later, I was doing the same quality of work as before and was named employee of the month. So it’s ok to tell me I suck in order to justify an insulting raise, but then make me employee of the month?
Two weeks later I found a new job and instead of giving them two weeks’ notice, I called in before one of my shifts and said I’m never coming back.
Suck it, Target.”
Putting An End To That Family Tradition
“My brother’s wife was always the type to just randomly hit you in the shoulder. I’ve asked her to stop before but she would just reply, ‘It’s funny to see your reaction.’
I’ve known her since high school, and am 27 now. Last year was their wedding. After the wedding was over and we all went out for food, she obviously punched me again while everyone is at the table.
I leaned towards her and just whispered, as not to bother anyone else, ‘You’re family now. That means that if you punch me again, I will punch back, and I won’t stop the first time.’
She never even tried it again.”
Imagine If It Wasn’t The Same Kid
“Someone smashed the pumpkin I had on my front porch for Halloween. I was so mad that night I took an old purse and took a giant dump in it. I then put it on the same step my pumpkin was, then hid in my room and watched out the window.
I don’t know if it was the same kid that smashed my pumpkin that later tried to steal the purse, but the happiness I took from that moment of a kid reaching his hand in the purse while he was walking away to steal the money more than made up for the anger of a smashed pumpkin.”
“She Thought I Was Joking:
“I’m self-employed but wanted to get out of the house a bit, so I took a seasonal job at JCPenney. I have extensive retail management experience, but they just needed a cashier. Cool. I did a few shifts, hated it, but bought new Christmas stuff to replace what I had left behind with my ex at deeply discounted prices. I was already thinking of just quitting (because it was peanuts compared to working for myself), but that day the management team presented me an official name tag and acted like it was a huge deal.
I was scheduled to work 4-midnight on Thanksgiving and expected to be back at 8 am on Black Friday. I was dressed in a black blazer and skirt combo, so completely professional. Immediately, management yelled at me for not wearing a red shirt. Originally, they had said they would provide one but never did. I told them I wasn’t spending an hour’s wages on a red shirt for a seasonal job, especially when other jobs usually provided me hundreds of dollars in clothes if a certain image was expected.
My tolerance for stupidity had already been exceeded, and I wasn’t yet on the floor. I was asked to do go-backs, and I kept my section of the store immaculate while the rest looked horrible. There was an abandoned cart full of stuff in my section, so I whisked it all back into place in just a minute. Apparently the lady who had abandoned it was really upset and demanded to know who had taken her stuff, but it was so chaotic no one knew, and I said nothing. I just listened in passing as I grabbed the go-backs while she ranted at the manager, but nothing could be done for her.
Toward the end of the night, I got put on the register. These pillows were marked buy one, get them 50% off. This younger guy wanted to purchase them and struggled to understand the deal. I explained, he understood. Cue his dad who butted in and said he thinks the sign means buy one, get one free. I said he could visualize it like that if it helped him understand. So he then insisted in a really rude way that if they returned one, that they would get their full money back. I said no.
He tried arguing with me about it, but I shut that down by walking over to the sign, pointing at it, and explaining in full detail why he was an idiot. I wasn’t nice, and I was openly hostile. This would have put me in hot water if I had actually planned to stay with this job, but already I had had the worst customers of any Black Friday I had worked. I felt bad for the younger guy though, because he was definitely embarrassed.
So I was exhausted, ready to go home, and ready to just forget getting out of the house. Right at midnight, the other girl at the cash wrap starts doing a transaction for a Karen who was in the fitting room for the past half hour. I cash out my register because that’s my job. Meanwhile, this girl starts doing a credit application. I said forget this and went to go clock out because I had to be there early. I already knew that girl, in particular, didn’t have to be back until afternoon. I had to wait to be let out of the locked building. I thought it was over.
The store manager approached and snapped at me about leaving behind the other girl. Now, at every store I had worked at, the policy had been to let non-management personnel leave on time if they had completed their work and they weren’t needed. I didn’t know of such a policy requiring me to stand there because it wasn’t like they trained anybody on closing procedures, and I hadn’t worked a closing there yet. She then made me stand there, still locked in, as she went back to her office to count money.
I was fuming at that point. Another person on the management team walked by and gladly let me out, and she was chirpily telling me how great I had done that day and how happy they were to have me. I told her to not expect me back in the morning. She thought I was joking. If you know anything about retail, someone not showing up for Black Friday can throw everything off and ruin the momentum for the entire weekend.”
She Wasn’t Going To Deal With That
“A few years ago, I took a day trip to the beach with a bunch of people. We got to the beach at nine am and stayed until four. At this particular beach, there is a restaurant and bar with a DJ and dance floor. As we were packing up, I noticed the couple we drove up with was still at the bar.
I asked my boyfriend to go get them and I’d head to the car to start cooling it off thinking it would be nice for everyone else to get into a cool car rather than a boiling one. When they got to the car, the girlfriend was smashed and being a brat. For 15 minutes, she complained about how we ‘ditched them’ at the beach and how rude we were and just on and on while I’m driving them home.
Now I’m a generally laid back person, but I couldn’t believe how selfish and entitled she was being and it was directed at me. So I lost it on her and basically screamed that if I had ditched them at the beach, they would still be there not in my car. If she wanted to continue to be a brat, she and her boyfriend could get out and take an Uber home.
She shut up and didn’t say another word the remainder of the drive. Her boyfriend thanked me for the ride and apologized when I dropped them off. She apologized the next day as well. But it gets brought up now and then because it was so out of character for me to snap like that.”
“Seriously The Worst”
“When I was a teen, I found $1,000 in an ATM. This was one of those ATMs that had a place where the money would drop to. This was the early 90s – I don’t think they just drop it anymore – they all retract back into the machine if you don’t take it. But during this time, that technology didn’t exist.
I went to the bank to return the money. I was sick of this bank, I had to always wait in line, never enough tellers, and people were pretty rude. This bank was seriously the worst.
After waiting for 15 minutes, with one teller and the line still 10 deep, I said to myself, Forget it, I came to return this money, I tried to be honest, but they are making it impossible for me.
I went and bought a stereo. It was alright.”
Even His Brother Agreed
“In high school, my friends and I would hang out over by the bleachers of one of the baseball fields, pretty far from the quad and most of the other kids. We were sitting in a circle on the grass just talking, and some freshmen we didn’t know started chasing each other around and almost kicked our stuff a few times.
My friend said nicely ‘Hey, can you please be careful?’
One of the kids sneered at her and said ‘Why? Like your fat self could catch me.’
Before I even processed my own reaction, I immediately stood up and sucker-punched him in the side of the head. He dropped like a sack of potatoes and started yelling. He ran over to his other friends, one of whom was apparently his older brother, trying to get them to come to beat me up.
But the brother just shrugged and said, ‘You were being a brat, you deserved it.”
My friend was grateful for me ‘defending her honor,’ and the kid I punched never bothered us again.”
“You Need Something?”
“Senior year of high school, I was walking down the hall with my friend just walking slowly and talking. I hate when people walk slow and block the hall so we are against the wall. For some reason, these two girls start walking behind us complaining about how slow we are. One decides to push us apart from each other so she can walk by.
The rest of the hallway is completely empty. So I trip her.
She almost eats it and when she makes eye contact with me I say to her in my very deep voice. ‘You need something?’
She and her friend didn’t need anything. My friend thought it was funny as heck.”
She Put Her In Her Place
“I used to work in retail. One night, a customer asked me when a jacket would be discounted. I told her that I couldn’t say for sure because we weren’t told when certain items would be reduced in price. She called me a dumb girl and an idiot and asked me to put it on hold for 24 hours in case it got discounted overnight. She claimed to be an Instagram Influencer with over 5,000 followers and she said she would lose ‘deals’ if she didn’t get the jacket.
I put the jacket aside for her but not before doing a system search and finding out that there were only three left in this size in the entire country.
Fast-forward 24 hours, and she hasn’t come to pick up the jacket. I was feeling extra petty and had a terrible day the day before, so exactly 24 hours after I put it aside for her I decided to buy it. I browsed around the store for a while before going to pay, and of course, the girl was up there at the checkouts. If she had been ranting at my colleague about the jacket, I would have given it to her to save another from the wrath of that witch. But she was going on about the car park and appeared to have forgotten about the jacket.
Once I got to the car I went online and bought the other jacket before driving to the other side of town and buying the third and last one in the country (it was near the end of the season so chances are there weren’t going to be anymore).
The whole thing cost more money than I would’ve liked, but I stopped a horrible person from getting her way for once, so I don’t regret it.”
“She Was In Full Karen Mode”
“I was on an overnight flight a few years back from Chicago to Frankfurt (roughly eight hours). We are all settled in our seats and the boarding process was really smooth, setting the scene – it was calm.
All of a sudden, this woman and her children come stomping down the aisle. She was in full Karen mode. They do the suitcase juggle get it all stored and start sorting their seats – she’s right in front of me on the aisle, her two kids are sharing her row, and her last kid was in my row in the window seat.
She immediately is concerned with getting shut-eye and starts looking for alternative sitting situations. Mind you, she is in a huff like the world was ending. She grabbed a flight attendant and inquired about the empty row behind me (we were in the back of the plane), AND asked if she could sleep there. The flight attendant (bless their heart) explains that’s where they sleep during the flight and she could not have it. She wasn’t having it and actually tried to tear down the curtain and sneak back there. They obviously caught her. Then she tried to coerce her kid in my row to switch seats with her because she needed the window to sleep!
At this point, I’m over the entertainment, and this troll of a person is super annoying, so I gently jam my huge water bottle in the joint of her sea. Why did I do this? Well, she sucks and I’m not giving her the ability to recline into my space. Once she admitted defeat, she tried to recline only to be stuck in an upright position. She thrashed for a good five minutes, called over the attendants who immediately realized what I had done. We just winked at each other not saying a peep.
I still laugh about it randomly. Single-handedly the worst thing I’ve ever done to someone.”
“Just The Order And Assumption”
“I got bullied a lot in high school. In particular, my math class because I’m simply weak with numbers so I was in the lowest capability class with kids who just didn’t want to try because it wasn’t cool.
Whenever we used calculators, our saint of a teacher would get a huge box of them out and we’d go up to the front and grab one. We were supposed to put them back at the end as we were leaving, but most of them just gave their calculators to me to put back as opposed to taking three extra steps to take it.
I’ve just finished doing my unofficial job as Keeper of Calculators and I’m grabbing my bag to leave. This guy comes back in and says ‘Forgot this, put it back,’ handing me his calculator. No ‘please.’
Not even five seconds of eye contact. Just the order and assumption.
Something in me broke and I picked it up and heaved it at the guys head. It hits mid-chest. This was coupled with a firm and simple ‘no’ in a raised voice. I then realize what I’ve done, and sheepishly turned to my saint of a teacher.
This man has watched this class bully me for a long time now. Watched me not respond to it. Let me sit in the back with headphones in as long as the work’s done so I can try and improve my grade in peace.
This angel of a teacher looks at me, and in one fluid motion winks, and tilts his head at the door telling me to get gone before trouble erupts. He knows I don’t throw things at people and probably never would again.
I never did. I kept putting the calculators away at the end though.”
“I Was Known As The ‘Cool Kid'”
“Middle school. A new kid named Kyle was already bugging everyone. He was from Kentucky and he gotten expelled from five schools. He was known for being really rude, especially to the girls. He was saying stuff like ‘Women should be in the kitchen,’ and all that. But that wasn’t it.
He would bully everyone, think he was all that and a bag of chips. The day after he arrived, he kept looking at my test for answers. He literally was crazy. He was whispering, ‘I know you’re covering it. I’m just trying to torture you.’
I don’t know what he had said but I snapped. I turned and slapped him on the face. It’s a bit of a blur but here’s what I recall was a lot of yelling and cussing.
‘YOU ANNOYING PIECE OF TRASH. NO ONE HERE CARES ABOUT YOU. YOU ARE A WORTHLESS ANNOYING BRAT WHO SHOULD GO BACK TO YOUR LITTLE FARM IN KENTUCKY!’
He shut up and I got suspended. However, after I told my dad he wasn’t mad. He was proud. He said he didn’t like my language and seemed pretty mad but said that he was glad I stood up for myself. Kinda mixed messages.
At least I got him to shut up for the rest of the year and was known as the ‘cool kid’ for a week.”
She Finally Stood Up For Herself
“I have followed the rules my whole life, and rarely ever stepped out of line. School was no different. I worked hard, studied all the time, and made good grades. I was also mousy, shy, and had terrible self-esteem, so I was a great target for bullies. I was afraid to stand up for myself and pretty much kept my head down.
In high school, I had a crush on this guy named Mick for years. Mick was a star athlete and captain of about four different sports, so all the girls had it bad for him. He would cozen up to me and be super sweet and flirty some days, and then suddenly he would act like he didn’t know me and make fun of me in front of his friends. Took my naive little self a while to figure out that he would flirt whenever he wanted answers, or to cheat on his homework. When he didn’t get them, he would ridicule me for points with his friends. I normally bent over backward for people I liked, but helping them cheat was something I never did and still hate to this day.
In my senior year, we were in AP English talking over whatever Dostoevsky novel we’d been tasked with reading. Our teacher decided to make us do a group project. I loathed them because I usually ended up doing all the work while my classmates faffed around and freeloaded off me. I was already steamed thinking about the possibilities when my teacher assigned me to work with Mick and two of his friends.
I decided I would try to be assertive for the first time ever. When we set down, I immediately started dividing up the work and talking to my group mates about it in an attempt to find a fair balance of work.
Mick scoffed at me and said something like, ‘Yeah, what made you think WE’RE going to do anything when we have you?’
Then his buddy Dan said, ‘Yeah, go be a dumb girl and fawn over your shoes or something,’ and they all laughed.
I don’t remember standing up. I don’t remember when they fell silent at the look on my face. I was full of this hot, thumping rage that obliterated everything in my field of vision. I honestly think I blacked out for a second because my teacher was suddenly at my elbow asking, ‘Hey, are you okay?’
I leveled my finger at Mick’s face and in a voice I didn’t even recognize said, ‘Get. THAT. Away from me.’
The entire class was frozen and watching us by this point. My teacher looked between us for several seconds, then said, ‘Mick, why don’t you boys work on this one on your own?’
Then he ushered me across the room where I did the project by myself.
Never got in trouble, and my teacher never said another word about it. Mick never bothered me again.”
“The Assistant Principal Heard What Was Going On”
“These three dudes had been stalking me for like eight months and just following me to my classes while making obnoxious, pervy comments. Every time I told them to stop following me and leave me alone, they’d just laugh and continue with their shenanigans.
I ended up grabbing and throwing one of the dudes (the most obnoxious one) despite that fact that he probably had a good eight inches on me (I’m 5’2 and on the skinnier side) in the middle of the science hall in front of a ton of teachers and students.
The assistant principal heard what was going on, and we all had a talk in his office. The three of them ended up with in-school suspension and I got off scot-free.”
They Were Using Their Power
“I absolutely hate the grocery store next to my current workplace. They are just slow and take forever for anything.
I am a Paramedic, and one day during the morning was rather busy. So we only got some sandwiches and something to drink from the grocery store because my coworker and I thought dispatch would send us out any minute.
When I got to the checkout, I was already fed up with them. They needed 15 minutes for our two sandwiches, and there were about 10 customers on one single checkout and as regular they did not open a second one. Additionally, the lady that doesn’t know how to handle discounts, coupons, or refunds is sitting there.
So I shot my coworker a text message, who sat in the ambulance if he could let my pager go off from the ambulance so it seems that we were busy. The pager went off, so I asked to skip the line, paid, and went on my way. We didn’t have another transport or emergency for the next two hours.”
David Was Put In His Place
“I used to work in a daycare with toddlers. There was this one boy, ‘Nick,’ who was the sweetest of the bunch – smart, sweet, reasonable and civil. He was best friends with this other boy, ‘Chris,’ who was also very cool.
Anyways, this notorious rambunctious kid, ‘David,’ is infamous for being a destructive tornado and decided to bug the duo. Normally, Nick would ignore his behavior and leave but nope.
David decided to bite Chris, so Nick punched David in the face and said ‘Not today. Take this bad guy.’
After that, David never bothered them again.”
“That Day, I’d Absolutely Had It”
“In seventh grade, I was sitting at my desk reading a book on my little e-reader. The kid at the table behind me wouldn’t leave me alone, mockingly going ‘Hey there, I love you, why don’t you love me back, why are you ignoring me, why aren’t you talking to me?’ interspersed with kissy noises.
That day, I’d absolutely had it so I turned around and just backhanded him across the face with the tablet. He left me alone after that, and I didn’t get in trouble.
Last year, my best friend ran into another kid from that class and told him I said hi, and he was like ‘Dang, remember that time she slapped that really annoying guy across the face? That was great.'”