rSlash - r/Prorevenge I Destroyed a Building to Get My Revenge

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

r/Prorevenge In today's episode, OP works as a safety officer on construction sites. It's his job to make sure that all crane operations are performed safely. One of his coworkers steals his job right from under his nose by sucking up to the boss. OP realizes that this guy is incredibly incompetent at crane safety, so he basically just steps back and waits for the guy to screw up. The idiot coworker hooks a crane up incorrectly to a roof and almost destroys an entire building -- AND the people inside! Get $90 off and a free gift at Sunbasket! Go to sunbasket.com/rslash - Enter the promocode "rslash" at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to R-slash Pro Revenge, where OP risks his own life just to get revenge. Today's episode is sponsored by Sunbasket. Because of COVID, I literally haven't gone to the grocery store in like two years. Obviously because I don't want COVID to kill me, but also because I do voice work. So I don't think my fans would really enjoy my content if I catch COVID and I have to record episodes like, Welcome to R-Slash Pro Revenge! That's why I love, love, love services like Sun Basket. Sun Basket is a meal delivery service that delivers healthy meal straight to your door. They offer organic produce, sustainable seafoods and meats, and best of all, it's honestly really tasty.

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Right now, Sunbasket is offering $90 off and a free gift when you order. Go to sunbasket.com. Slash, r-slash, and inner-ther-promote code r-slash at checkout. Our next reddit post is from Evidently Apostate. I'm a millwright who specializes in rebuilding natural gas turbines. I run with a very top caliber crew where everyone has a role to fill. My role is overseeing anything that's lifted with the crane. My technical title is Rigger. If a load falls, it's MY fault. If someone gets hurt while I'm in control of a lift, it's MY FALT! If equipment is damaged while I'm in control of a lift, it's MY FALT! The incident in question happened

about two years ago, but we'll need to go back a couple of years farther to get the backstory. I was a fresh member of the crew, and I had demonstrated competency in rigging, so after roughly six months with the group, my superintendent put me in charge of all rigging. I wow geez, I wasn't the fastest rigger, but I was safety focused and insisted on doing it right every time, even if it took a little bit longer. This meant that my superintendent didn't have to watch over every rigging task because he could go relax because I had it under control. Another millwright joined the crew about the same time that I did.

We'll call him Larry. We didn't get along at first, but after a few months we became friends. Larry was the act now think later type, much like the super intended eye travel under. Larry was prone to making mistakes because of that attitude, but he was very fast and worked like a mule at all times, and I respected that. He wasn't especially skilled in any one area, so he had no special position. This meant that sometimes he was put on less glamorous work, and I soon learned that he was very jealous of my position as the rigor. Sometimes he would make comments like, I'm gonna take your job! Not in the sense of like getting me fired, but bumping me down a wrong and him taking my

spot as rigor. He came up behind me while I was looking over my checklist to point out something that I may not have checked yet. If my supervisor was nearby, he would make sure that he heard. At this point, I should mention this. I stick out like a sore thumb on this crew. I was raised in a very strict Christian cult, but in my mid-20s I realized what was going on and left at great cost.

I lost my family and friends because of the strict shunning rules of the cult practices. Some of the stricter things have stuck with me, like I've never been intoxicated. I don't use tobacco and I don't use recreational drugs. I speak professionally. Without slaying our colloquialisms for the most part. These traits stick out from a crew of men that travel the road and work in harsh environments away from home for months on end. But Larry, he fits right in. Larry quickly became the superintendents puppy. He would bring the superintendents his

favorite alcohol, stay out late after work with him, even roaming with him on the road. I, on the other hand, leave work, hit the gym, cook my food for the next day, and make sure I get at least six hours of sleep so I can perform the next day. I realize that puts me at a disadvantage socially in the workplace, but I prefer to let my work speak for itself. Anyways, fast forward about 18 months. We're starting a project just before COVID hits. About two weeks into the job, I have to attend a mandatory class through my union. It's a 40 hour class and in a different state, so I'll be gone for pretty much an entire week with travel time.

I get permission from my supervisor and leave, with Larry rigging in my absence. A few days later, I'm laying in bed stressing out about the final test that I have to take the next morning. If the test isn't passed, the entire week is wasted. I always psych myself out before a test, but in reality, I don't have anything to worry about because I'm a good student and I test well. My phone goes off. It's a text from Larry.

It reads, I love you Bud, but I'm cutting your throats. I reply, what are you talking about? When you get back, I'll be the rigor, and you can do the awful work from now on. I'm not proud of the response that I came back with, but it's how I truly felt in that moment. Be careful about cutting the throat of someone smarter than you. I'm far from the smartest person you'll ever meet, but I do enjoy reading, studying, and learning. And being smarter than Larry wasn't an accomplishment by any stretch of the imagination. The next morning I passed the test and went back to my old job, where Larry

had, in fact, you served my position as rigor and was lording it over me as I went about doing tasks that he would normally do. And to be completely honest, it was kind of like a vacation at first. I got paid nearly 40 bucks an hour to clean parts or torque flanges with no stress, sign me up. But I was upset. I was upset because I knew that I did my job better than he would. I knew that he got along better with the superintendent because of their similar personalities, but I didn't feel that I should lose my position simply because Larry had more in common with our superintendent

than I did. Regardless of that, I was now dealt these cards and I had to play them. Just three days after I got back from class, the job was shut down. COVID-19 was just now sweeping the country. Out of an abundance of caution, the plant shut the project down until further notice.

We were sent home for about three days, and then called out to an emergency shutdown where a turbine had crashed. We rolled out and we run the job 48 hours later in the middle of nowhere, Alabama. We get right to work. On this particular unit, you pull the entire roof off in two sections with the crane to open the enclosure.

Compared to many things that we lived in a project like this, this roof weighs very little. The turbine rotor may weigh over 100,000 pounds, but the roof usually weighs about 7,000 pounds. It's lightweight. But still, it's quite large, and there are critical parts of the roof that can be damaged if it's not lifted carefully. The typical procedure is to be on top

of the roof after it's unbolted, to be in a full body harness and tied off to an approved anchor point capable of holding at least 5,000 pounds per OSHA regulations. We then slowly take the weight off the roof with the crane until it's floating, and then climb down off it and continue the lift until it's set on the ground or on a truck to be moved.

The superintendent tells me to go on the roof with Larry in a system. He says, do whatever Larry tells you to do. Okay boss, I put on my harness, climb to the top, and begin to assess the situation. The rigging to lift the roof is on four five-ton chain falls, which is capable of safely holding 20 tons. This is well above the weight of the roof. The crane is also well overrated for this lift, even with the boom extended all the way out in order to clear the other buildings on the weight of the ground.

Larry has it all rigged up, but he has no tension on the wire rope slings. Then I noticed his critical mistake. He forgot to account for boom deflection. When a crane takes the weight off a load, the boom flexes down. Depending on the crane setup and the weight of the load, it can mean that while your crane hook might be centered in your load with no weight on the hook, once you get the weight of the load actually on the crane, then the crane hook could be anywhere from a few inches to a number of feet off-center.

This means that when the load comes off the ground, it swings. Swinging is bad. Always bad. Enough swinging weight could tip over the crane. It could crash into equipment. It could crash into a person. It's very dangerous. At this point I start to win calculations in my head. If this swings, is this enough weight to tip over the crane? No, not even close. Is it enough to break a chain fall? No, not even close. Are there any people working around us that could get hurt? Nope, it's just us.

Is there any equipment that could be damaged if it swings? Yes. An electrical control panel, which has had all the power killed to it, has been disconnected, and it's in the swing path. I decide to let Larry hang himself. He looks at me, and he asks me what I think. I tell him, this is your show, boss. He asks me what I think. I tell him, this is your show boss. He asks me what I mean.

I look him in the eye and I draw my finger across my throat. He gets nervous because he knows exactly what I mean. He starts double checking everything and he still doesn't notice the boom deflection. After a couple of minutes, he decides that I must be talking out of my butt and he proceeds with the lift. I stop him, and I remind him to tie off with this harness. He doesn't realize, but we're about to go for a ride. Wait, hold on.

Is OP and everyone else standing on top of this roof while it's getting lifted up? Is that right? Okay, so I don't know if that's actually the case, but when OP was telling this story, I just imagine that people were standing on the ground or to the side of the building or something, but yo, if he's actually standing on top of the roof, then he thinks it's about to go swinging through the air, then this story's getting pretty metal. Okay, okay. Generally, when I'm rigging, I first find out what the thing that I'm rigging to weighs. It's a vital piece of information. If I know what it weighs,

I can have the crane operator track how much weight he has on the crane, and I'll be able to know when the object should start to pick up. If we get to over 10% more than the object should weigh, there may be something stopping it from moving, and we need to stop and reassess a situation. Rigging could fail, the object you're lifting up could jump into the sky. All kinds of

mayhem could ensue if a hidden bolt holding something together breaks because you used too much force to lift it. I ask Larry if he knows how much the roof weighs. He doesn't. I do, but I don't tell him. He starts signaling the crane to slowly hoist up. The operator complies and starts lifting. I'm watching the boom get pulled more and more off-center. We're probably two feet from the center of the load at this point. This means that a swing could travel nearly four feet. I stop Larry and I ask him to see how much weight is on the crane. 11,000 pounds. That's 4,000 pounds more than what it should weigh. The roof is in a bind because we're not picking it straight up, but instead at an angle. It's either...

The story's making me nervous. Okay, it's either not going to move or we're about to fly. I brace myself. Hoist up slowly. Larry calls over the radio. Boom! The whole roof shoots a good two-feet into the air and swings wildly towards the control panel.

Larry and I are riding on top of the roof like pirates in the crow's nest in a hurricane. We crash into the control panel, bending it over at a 45-degree angle, destroying most of its components. People start pouring out of the nearby trailers to see what the commotion is all about. The crane operator is yelling over the radio, asking, what the hell just happened? I'm smiling. Larry is shaking. He sees me smiling, and he knows that I knew.

We get the roof set on the ground, and we're met by our superintendent. He's chewing into Larry's ass hard. He comes up to me and he asks me why I let it happen. I said, I just did what Larry told me to do. Our superintendent is no dummy. He's seen a thing or two and he knows exactly what went down. Larry was demoted and I was reinstalled as the rigor immediately. And a few shifts later, everything was smoothed over. Larry and I are actually good friends now. We've been through a lot together and we have each other's backs these days. He's now the foreman on our crew and he lets me do my thing.

Failing your way to the top is still a valid way of progression in my field, but I'm happy for him, he's actually good at it. And I guess that's all there is to say about that. Opie, I've read a lot of stories where people go to great lengths to get revenge against someone who wronged them. I've never read a story for someone of someone who's willing to stand on top of an improperly bolted roof that's about to get lifted into the air and swung into an electrical panel all while a complete idiot is in charge. Like as soon as it clicked that you were actually standing on top of this roof, that you

knew was going to swing through the air I was like oh my god, O.P. is a serious dude. I mean yeah, clearly you know your stuff, so you made calculations and you determined that it was a safe risk. But still, that's gonna be a hard pass for me, dog. I'm also wondering how high up this roof is, that you're swinging around on, where you like two stories up,

where you 10 stories up, where you 20 stories up, I don't know how this stuff works. Like, it wouldn't even matter if this roof was attached to the ground and I was zero feet off the ground. I still wouldn't want to be attached to a swinging roof that was about to slam into an electrical panel. Just hard pass. Because, sure, the electrical panel is off,

but what if the guy who's in charge of turning off the electrical panel is as stupid and incompetent as Larry is? Then can you be certain that it's off? Did you check it yourself? In any event what I'm trying to say is, wow OP, you've got some serious balls. I think if I were in your shoes I would have been like, okay Larry take it away and then like scramble off the roof and watch from the ground. Our next red post is from Takehody. I've worked at a certain home improvement store for close to a decade now, about 8 years roughly.

The first 7 was in North Carolina before I moved further up north to be with my best friend and her husband, who I learned was pregnant with my first godchild. As such, I transferred up to a store in the area, and I put my nose to the grindstone. I worked garden previously, and I did that for some months before I started to be moved from department to department as the store was low on staff. However, I wasn't working full time. My old HR had dropped the ball and this store believed that I wanted part time. Having already moved, I grabbed a part time overnight job at a gym to make ends meet, and

I continue to work, all the while asking repeatedly for full time at the main job. But I never got a definitive word back or a change. Several months into this, my goddaughter was born. Since I live with my friends during this time and during the time of COVID, I spend quite a lot of time helping to raise her and we all became close. I would take my allotted time off to help look after her and there was little problem. Half a year into this change

and I'd made a good name for myself. I didn't have a lot of friends per se, but I was respected for my work ethic and my willingness to help out anyone in any department who asked me. Enter the new assistant manager. She was abrasive to staff and was used to getting her way. The first I heard of her was when she outright fired a girl working the front desk because

of a playboy tag on a jacket. Myself and several other employees organized a walkout and protest of this and succeeded in getting the store manager to reverse the decision made by the assistant manager. This was not our first walk out because we'd done this in the past when another assistant manager, this assistant manager's predecessor made sexist comments about a cash year. Shortly after this, I was given full time working in the receiving department for a container supervisor. We often didn't get along, especially as my godchild got older, and I took on babysitting duties while our parents worked and slept. It wasn't something that I minded, because I adored the child. I often talked about my

goddaughter with my co-workers, and I loved to show pictures and tell stories. However, this enthusiasm was not shared by my higher ups. My supervisor was upset that I couldn't work overtime to help him because we were the only two in receiving for the store. Either because my second job made me too busy or because I had to babysit. And soon after the second walk out, I was made aware of a rumor circulating around the store that the child was. In fact, my own daughter who I had fathered outside of my friend's husband's knowledge.

The source of the rumor was unknown, but my assistant manager had made disparaging remarks to me in the past about men taking care of children, so I had my theories. As for holiday plans, I asked often advances as soon as our electronic system allowed it, but they were canceled with that explanation, both for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I had never missed a major holiday since I moved north, and I had asked the same days off the year prior, and I'd gotten them before the assistant manager arrived. Strike one. And soon after this, my supervisor, whom I work closely with every day, had a positive

COVID test, forcing me, as per company, rules to self- closely with every day, had a positive COVID test, forcing me as per company rules to self-isolate until I could get a positive or negative test myself. During this week, I was harassed repeatedly by text and phone by both my management and my supervisor to track down a home test ASAP. All the while, I had to inform everyone I was in contact with, including my friends, family, and roommates that I had been exposed, risking their own holiday trips and plans. Strike 2. Thankfully, my test was negative.

A week after this, the Northeast got slammed by a snow and ice storm. I made it into my shift, but near the end of my shift, I was made aware that my friends husband had been injured and stranded in a car accident on the ice. So I left to help get them home and get their car to a service station. To add to that, they lost power in their home with an infant leaving me as the only person they could turn to with a vehicle and power.

I will admit that I had very few sick hours remaining, but I informed work that I would be out on a family emergency. For that week, I called out each day citing an ongoing family emergency, with snow and ice still coating the streets, and power still down throughout our city. And every day, I was hounded by calls from management, demanding I return to work regardless. This would have not only risked my own safety, but would have stranded my family at my apartment with no way to get supplies or get home once the power returned. That was strike three. I was done. Early in the morning that

following Sunday, I walked into work and placed my resignation letter on HR's desk. This is important later. I intended it to be immediate because I live in an at-will state. Was it petty? Yes, I'll freely admit that. I had it to be immediate because I live in an at will state. Was it petty? Yes, I'll freely admit that. I had given eight years of my life to this company and I asked for a very little in return. As I was leaving, I crossed paths with my supervisor who asked angrily if I was finally coming back into work. I told him about my decision to leave, ignoring his provocations, and left to go home and sleep. Several hours later, I received a gift that would ignite my semi-accidental revenge.

I received a single text message from my assistant manager. We'll see how long you can take care of your love child without us. Well, well, well. Looks like I found the source of that rumor. My friend had been made aware of this rumor from the start. I didn't hide anything from them, and I didn't want any kind of rumor, however unlikely to reach them from anyone but me. They are my closest friends and compatriots, and have given me the greatest gift in the form of my god child, whom they insist I call my niece like I'm family.

The word love child feels like a slur against her, and I am not cool with that, and neither are they. However, they informed me of the monumental screw up that my now former assistant manager had made. It was time for corporate HR to be made aware of the situation, so I began to compile my evidence. The text from my supervisor, the call records and messages left, and this holy grail of a text message. If I was gonna leave, I was at the very least going to

give some blowback on the team that had been so willing to target me. What happened after, I learned about second hand from friends that I still had at the store. So I can't entirely verify all of it, but the assistant manager, she played herself. The following day, management and supervisors had a meeting where the assistant manager lied and said that I'd been fired for job abandonment and immorality. And, unless I'm grossly misinformed about the nature of American retail work, immorality is not a fireable event. To my supervisor's credit, he defended me to the assistant manager, and he was fired on

the spot. The store's HR rep, having earlier gotten my print determination letter on his desk, made it known that I had indeed not been fired, but that I quit. Then the assistant manager attempted to fire him as well in front of the staff. And from there, it just spiraled. According to my source, the entire department began to walk out or outright quit, having had their own problems with the assistant manager. The appliances department, everyone quits, the gardening department, they left with their manager to work for a competitor because they had been working on this well before my saga began.

The front desk department walked down in protest as it came out that the assistant manager had threatened and blackmailed several Muslim part-timers to not wear their head scarves if they wanted hours. The lumber department's all quits. The pro desk department joined the front desk protest because one of their number, a Seekman, had also been threatened. As for the cashiers, both head cashiers quit, and the other train cash iers just walked out. As for the operations manager, he told the district manager and quit outright before the guy arrived, walking out with the HR rep and my old supervisor. The last I heard, the assistant manager was seen sprinting to her car when she heard that the district manager was coming, and the store manager was forced to shut down

the store for two days. I've been in contact with everyone involved, compiling evidence, because some of us are hiring lawyers. I suspect the company will attempt to keep this quiet. I just never suspected that anything like this would happen. Ugh, this lady thinks that she's the assistant manager, but she's acting like the assistant to the manager. Is anyone else getting strong Dwight's fruit vibes from her? That was our Sasha Pro Revenge, and if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day. I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.