rSlash - r/Prorevenge I Stole My Bully's $40,000 Pokemon Card Collection

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

0:00 Intro 0:09 Per message 7:35 Boss from hell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...

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Starting point is 00:01:09 I went to middle school in the early 2010s, right before smartphones really took off. I got my first phone right before starting sixth grade. It was a slide phone with the pay-as-you-go plan that cost 10 cents per minute for calls or a protects message sent to receive. Even worse, sending or receiving photos cost 25 cents each. It was very expensive, and my parents only gave me 100 bucks a year for this. If I exceeded that amount, I had to cover the rest with my limited birthday and Christmas money.
Starting point is 00:01:39 Fortunately, most of my friends were good about helping me preserve the balance. They would call me and I would let the call drop, but then I'd immediately call them back on a landline so it wouldn't count as a call. Or they'd email me or message me on Skype for most things. Everything was good, until Derek joined the group in 7th grade. At first we thought he was funny, but we quickly got fed up with him because he was very unpleasant and exhibited many anti-social behaviors. He started drama within the friend group and also caused issues between us and other
Starting point is 00:02:10 kids outside of the group. He was manipulative and always played the victim when people called him out. He knew how to charm parents so getting rid of him was easier said than done. He was the one friend who didn't respect my phone situation. He frequently texted me dumb memes, even though I told him multiple times to just email or Skype them to me instead, since each picture message cost me 25 cents. Unfortunately, blocking phone numbers was a feature that wasn't unlocked on my plan, so there was nothing I could do while he spammed my phone.
Starting point is 00:02:42 One day he got mad at me for some reason and spammed my phone with memes. He must have sent me over 100 memes over text. He kept sending them until I lost service since my phone balance was depleted. I had lost all of the remaining $40 on my account. I was extremely pissed and demanded that he pay me the $40 that he had cost me and he refused and said that it wasn't his problem. I got home from school really upset and told my dad about the situation, expecting him to go and tear Derek's mother a new one and demand the money. But my dad said that it just wasn't worth the battle. I even asked him about small claims court, but he said that not all battles are worth fighting and that the effort wasn't worth $40.
Starting point is 00:03:26 My dad took me to the carrier store and loaded $50 onto my phone. The carrier even changed my phone number and managed to block Derek's number. They initially said the blocking phone numbers wasn't possible with this plan, but my dad insisted and wouldn't leave the store until they did. I was extremely paranoid about my phone number being leaked and the other kids spamming it to screw with me. Fortunately, my parents got iPhones at summer and they got me one too, and the new family plan had unlimited text plan. Nonetheless, I was pissed about the 40 bucks that Derek essentially stole from me out
Starting point is 00:03:58 of malice. Fortunately, not too long after, there was a big blowout between Derek and the rest of the friend group, and at the end of the school year, we permanently kicked him out of the group. He was an outcast the following year in 8th grade. Nobody was tolerating him anymore, and he changed schools the year after, and we never heard from him again. Fast forward to a few years ago. I was back home for a few months between graduating college and starting a new job on
Starting point is 00:04:24 the other side of the country. I went out to some garage sales one Saturday morning and I ended up at Derek's house. I recognized his mother, but I don't think she recognized me. I guess glass isn't a beard as all you need. I noticed some Pokemon napkins out for sale, and when I picked them up to look at them, Derek's mom said that her son had been obsessed with Pokemon for his whole life, and that she was tired of her son's Pokemon stuff still occupying her home for so many years. I said that I'd buy these napkins for my younger cousin who's really into Pokemon, and
Starting point is 00:04:56 I asked if she had any other Pokemon stuff. She said that she didn't know people were still into that, and there were a few boxes in the attic with her son's old stuff. She actually took me inside his house, which I never imagined I'd set foot inside ever again. And she let me climb up the attic ladder to take down several large boxes to look through. The first one had Christmas ornaments and other junk, but I freaked out internally when she opened a box jam packed with Pokemon video games in the original boxes,
Starting point is 00:05:25 though I kept my cool on the outside. The whole reason I had agreed to go inside in the first place was because I was holding out hope of this exact scenario happening. See, I knew Derek was obsessed with Pokemon. Our friend group liked Pokemon back in the day, even when other kids thought that it wasn't cool. But Derek was on a whole different level. He bragged about his Pokemon collection all the time.
Starting point is 00:05:49 Back then, he had every single main series game in the original box, and in mint condition, as he always had to add. I went to his house once and he showed me his collection, and he yelled at me for touching one of the games. Nobody was allowed to touch them except him. He had many older Nintendo games in excellent condition, but Pokemon was his favorite. He had a couple of incidents with his mom damaging or throwing away his things, and it wasn't out of malice just ignorance because she didn't think that games are collectibles had any
Starting point is 00:06:20 value. Fast forward to the present day. I was thinking about this exact collection when I asked his mother, do you have any other Pokemon stuff? And she ended up bringing out the mother load. We opened all the boxes she had me bring down. Within the boxes there was the beloved collection of Pokemon games, all very well preserved, as well as several other Nintendo consoles, hundreds of games, two dozen binders full of Pokemon cards, and there was also a box of mini LEGO sets with the original boxes and everything, including many old Star Wars sets.
Starting point is 00:06:54 When I saw Django Fett, I knew I struck gold. I told her I liked old LEGO sets as well, and I asked her how much for the five boxes of games, cards cards and LEGO sets. She thought for a moment and said $100 a box or $400 for all 5 boxes. I told her I'd take everything. I loaded the 5 boxes into my dad's truck and immediately drove home. I knew that there was potentially tens of thousands of dollars of goods here. This was a score of a lifetime, and I finally felt vindicated for that 40 bucks Derek had taken from me all those years ago.
Starting point is 00:07:30 I ended up giving all the stuff to my uncle who's a hobbyist eBay reseller. He was willing to go through the effort and sell everything individually. And despite my insistence, he said that he wouldn't take more than a 10% cut of the profits after all the fees and taxes. We went through and logged every single item along with the estimated value,
Starting point is 00:07:49 and the total of the whole lot was about $40,000. $40,000 was a poetic number since this was 1,000 times the value of what Derek stole from me all those years ago. My uncle sold most of it before the end of the summer and ended up writing me a check. And even though the final amount was considerably less than $40,000, it was still a life-changing amount of money for me. I was able to pay off my remaining student loans and put the rest towards a down payment on a new car. Well, I'm glad Derek got screwed over, but I kind of feel bad for the mom because once Derek finds out she's probably gonna get in earful, but maybe she deserves
Starting point is 00:08:29 it because she raised her son to be a douchebag, so... Our next reddit post is from present platypus. I'm a 30 year old woman, and I've been a people pleaser to a fault my whole life. I've been working in marketing for 10 plus years. Over the years, I've had my fair share of bosses who were good, average, and some who sucked. There's one boss in particular who stood out as awful. This story is from about five years ago. Pamela, a woman in her 40s, was the VP of marketing and sales for a mid-size retailer. She started at the company a few years after I did. And if rumors were true, she was the fourth pick for the position and was simply hired so the company could appease shareholders
Starting point is 00:09:10 I was a manager under Pamela and my job had a ton of responsibilities In short, I did all of Pamela's work and all the administrative grunt work to keep the department afloat I managed all this because I had access to her email and many times I sent emails on her behalf to keep the department functioning. Pamela spent most of her time showing up after 10am, taking business lunches and then planning company parties. I consistently questioned why she spent so much of our budget on these events when we didn't really have the budget to pay for any of it. Pamela told me to take money from future months' budgets to pay for the current months
Starting point is 00:09:50 overspending. So, at the start of every month, I had an original budget, and by the end of the month, I had to turn in the edited budget, edited under Pamela's direction that made it look like Pamela's spending was under control. This is important for later. I definitely made mistakes here and there being in charge of so many tasks and I constantly found myself working 12 hour days split between being in the office and working after my kid went to bed.
Starting point is 00:10:16 I also found myself working on the weekends. During Pamela's first major holiday season, sales were terrible. Pamela kept changing her mind on the visuals for the stores, kept bringing on new advertising and PR agencies to bring in sales. In reality, all of these agencies consisted of her personal friends. She also ignored all of our planned promotions and favor of her own better ones. At this time, I'd been dealing with an ongoing infection and I had to be hospitalized. The doctors and my husband said that it was due to the stress of work and I had to take a break.
Starting point is 00:10:51 As I recovered, I realized how much I was hurting myself, my family, and even the company I worked for. Eventually, my old habits got to me, and I got on my phone and checked mine and my boss's emails. What I found made my blood boil. First, I got a lovely bouquet of flowers from upper management wishing me well. And I knew that Pamela organized the delivery because she sent me her favorite flowers. I noticed that at the top of Pamela's inbox from the past three days were emails clearly not related to work. Turns out Pamela had been emailing her
Starting point is 00:11:25 personal friends complaining that I can't just shake off sepsis and get back to work. She also complained that she couldn't find any of my notes, spreadsheets, or documents for any of the work that she was technically in charge of. To be clear, all these documents were on our shared hard drive and labeled very clearly. Finally, I found an email that she sent to a friend from her previous company asking for advice for how to bring in sales and a safer job. In this long thread, this old colleague asked if there was anyone managing most of the work, and of course, Pamela said that I was.
Starting point is 00:11:59 The colleague explained that, clearly, it was my mismanagement that was causing issues and that I could be blamed if sales didn't pull through by the end of the season. Pamela mentioned that I was in the hospital. The colleague warned Pamela that she couldn't outright fire me because it might seem like retaliation. But if Pamela could prove that I was stealing from the company or misusing company resources, then she would have the grounds to have me fired, and use me as a scapegoat. Upon my return, Pamela called me into her office and said that she was worried that I
Starting point is 00:12:30 was taking on too much, and she wanted to take some work off of my plates. She announced that she would take over managing the department's budget. Additionally, Pamela told me under no circumstances was I allowed to talk to accounting about anything regarding budgets. Also, if I had any concerns about the department or the workload, I wasn't allowed to go to HR. I had to discuss this directly with Pamela. Oh yeah, I could see where this was going. Unfortunately for Pamela, I had a good relationship with Lois who was our main accountant. Lois always said that she would do everything within her power to help me out whenever I asked. Knowing this, I grabbed the stack of invoices off Pamela's desk to give to
Starting point is 00:13:10 accounting, which she told me to do. I also printed out the emails that she had sent to her friend and put that in the stack, and I also added the unedited budget which Pamela hadn't cooked yet. I found in my filing cabinet the hard copies of old budgets, with Pamela's handwriting on what numbers to change to balance our budget. Finally, I added an email from our first round of budget adjustments where Pamela suddenly threatened to fire someone if they didn't do what she asked. So I walked over to drop off the invoices to accounting, and I bumped into Lois. Lois mentioned the invoices, and I sternly looked at her and said, Pamela is the only one in our department that Lois is allowed to talk to about our budgets and invoices.
Starting point is 00:13:55 Lois saw the suspiciously thick folder that I had placed on her desk gave a firm nod and lovingly kicked me out of her office. Within the week, Pamela was fired. From what I understand, she's been continually job hopping for the past few years. The CEO brought me in to personally apologize for everything I went through and gave me a paid one week vacation to take at my discretion. Given the other issues I had with this business, I left after another year. Which brings me to today. I am once again a manager for sales and marketing. I have a wonderful boss who trust my business decisions and
Starting point is 00:14:31 backs me up on practically everything. We're currently hiring a team for me to oversee. Today I look through the applicants and I found Pamela's resume sitting among dozens of others. I stared at her name, wondering how many other people have her name as well. Upon review, yup, it's her. She definitely fell down the corporate ladder. The old job that she used to have above me was the highest job title she ever earned.
Starting point is 00:14:58 And to no surprise, she embellished her work on her resume, claiming the work that I managed as her own. She also claimed that she generated an 87% sales growth during the holiday season at our previous company. As a people pleaser, who firmly believes in giving everyone a chance, it has never been so satisfying to click disqualified. Maybe I'll send a personally written rejection email. Yo, this woman gave you her email so that you could
Starting point is 00:15:25 do her work. And then from the same email account, writes an email to people about how to fire you. What a- Oh my god, these people are so dumb. It honestly just blows my mind that people this incompetent can rise to the level of manager of a major company. Also, OP, I appreciate that you got revenge here, but you are a way nicer person than I am, because I would have happily brought her in for an interview just to watch her squirm. That was our Slash 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.

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