Is anyone here petty? Be honest. Do you like to get your own back on people over small things to prove a point? Do you like giving someone a taste of their own medicine?And do you prefer to do it such a way that the other person will be wondering whether it was you, or whether it was deliberate? Do you like to bring up something someone said in the past at the right moment in order to point out how they're full of shit? In any case, I think people are a lot more petty and passive aggressive people out there than what we are led to believe. So it's important to recognise such behaviour.
Take myself for example - if someone bangs their car door into mine when parked next to me (pet hate), or parks terribly at my expense, I may leave a nasty note on the car! Here's a few stories of my own pettiness. Tell me if if you think it's mean, or if it's fair game. And if you do not think such behaviour is mean, then tell if you think it's immature?
Tale one
I work as a security guard and the staff where I work are supposed to have their bags checked by me or a manager before they go home. Anyway one day as this staff member walked past me, he said to two other members of staff "I'm just gonna have Eoin (manager) check it because it's just so awkward doing it with him". I'm not saying he did this deliberately to annoy me, but he could've at least realised that I was going to hear it.
A few minutes later I could see that he hadn't found a manager, and that he was coming back to look for me to do the bag check. So I walked away. I went towards the back corner of the ground floor, and went up the fire exit stairs to the other section of the store. I knew that the girls in customer service (who he just made the remark to) would tell him which way I went. By the time he realised that I wasn't downstairs he went back towards the front of the store in order to use the escalator to go upstairs... the only other place he thought I could be. But I'd gone into the camera room! From there I watched him looking for me for about 3 minutes before he gave up and left without doing any bag check!
He definitely realised what I was up to by the time he left. But he couldn't have been sure. I could easily have deniability if he confronted me. Just as he would have deniability if I had confronted him about what he had said.
Tale two
On another occasion I was directing traffic for a drive-thru McDonalds that had just re-opened after the covid lockdown. So as you can expect, the line of cars (queue) was so big that it began from well outside the entrance to the property itself. Outside of the property there was a road that joined into the road (T-junction) that the queued cars were in. At this T-junction some cars would come along and chance their luck and try and nip in this way to safe themselves an extra 15 minutes of queuing time. My standing spot was at the property entrance, about 30 yards away from this T-junction (with me?). So to prevent people from skipping ahead I would make eye contact with the person trying to skip in (from my standing spot) and wave them on. Mostly they'd just drive on, but sometimes they'd play dumb or ignore me, so I'd walk over, and in which case they'd either try persuade me to lmake an exception, or try getting me to jump through their hoops having me explaining things to them... all in the hopes of skipping ahead.
So what I did eventually with the likes of such people (after I was sure they were being difficult), is I would walk over and let them think that I was going over to deal with their dumb explanation, but instead I would stop on the footpath right at the T-junction (opposite their car). Instead of making any eye contact with them, I would make eye contact with the car in the other lane (the one they're trying to skip in in front of) just to make sure they'd be awake. Then I would not do anything until the space began to open up, and only then, would I quickly signal that car forward to fill up the space. As the space was being filled I would quickly turn my back and walk back to my standing spot. Often both cars would move for the gap at the same time, only for person trying to skip to be blocked off... the car trying to skip would never be able to get in from the angle it was coming from.
That is how you give a response instead of a reaction. It would take some of them so long to figure out what I was actually doing! Lets just say some of the reactions I got were well worth a watch. They weren't annoyed that I wasted their time, but because I didn't entertain their argument and thus made them feel small. On one occasion, as the car that had to move on later passed by, the person shouted some nasty stuff out the window. But such abuse didn't bother me as it was only an acceptance of defeat.
Tale three
I know this one might sound a bit troll like, but when my sister and I used to share the main toilet in our house, she used to leave her skid marks on the porcelain. I used to always tidy my own marks after myself while they were fresh. But as regards her marks, I used to take the view of "why should I have to tidy her shit stains?". But by not doing so I just became more annoyed. One night she had been away for a few days and my father happened to go into the main bathroom. He gave out to me for not keeping it tidy after seeing the shit stains she'd left from a few days before! The only reason I didn't give out to her about it in the first place was because I didn't want to embarrass her! From then on I'd no sympathy for her, and she kept it clean after that for fear of embarrassment.
Tale four
After I'd been working in a filling station for about a month, there was a girl who had just been hired, who one day was given the task of emptying out the grounds contents from the two coffee machines. When I was busy serving customers I saw her bring one of these containers up from the shop floor and dump it into the bin behind the till. It should've seemed strange to her to dump this into a bin that contained only receipts.
Later on when I was tidying down around the coffee area I saw that one of the customer bins contained the coffee grounds contents dumped into it. She dumped these from the container through the small circular hole in the counter! She didn't think to open door from underneath. She presumably did this with the first one before bringing the other up to the till area. Anyway half of these ground contents had fallen down outside of the lining of the bin! I sorted it out of course. But when you tidy up someone else's mess you might want some recognition for it. I knew that the manager didn't care too much, and that if I mentioned it to him, that I'd look like a squealer or a whingebag. But I knew it had to have been her, as it wasn't me, and it couldn't have been the manager.
Anyway later on we were both in the stock area doing separate tasks. I went over to her to ask her (nicely) about it. She denied it though! Stupid ah! I still kindly told her where to dump it in future instead of doing so behind the tills. Just after I did this, she asked me the time! Asking me the time was kind of like a way of saying that she wasn't even listening to what I just said. Like a fool I took out my phone and answered. We weren't supposed to have phones on use while working! A few seconds later the manager walked out of the office and asked me to do some other job. I wondered if he'd seen me on the camera over talking to her and thought that I was't working. It annoyed me as it must have looked very different to what it was! Sometimes in a situation like this you just have to let it go. I only made things worse by asking her.
Take myself for example - if someone bangs their car door into mine when parked next to me (pet hate), or parks terribly at my expense, I may leave a nasty note on the car! Here's a few stories of my own pettiness. Tell me if if you think it's mean, or if it's fair game. And if you do not think such behaviour is mean, then tell if you think it's immature?
Tale one
I work as a security guard and the staff where I work are supposed to have their bags checked by me or a manager before they go home. Anyway one day as this staff member walked past me, he said to two other members of staff "I'm just gonna have Eoin (manager) check it because it's just so awkward doing it with him". I'm not saying he did this deliberately to annoy me, but he could've at least realised that I was going to hear it.
A few minutes later I could see that he hadn't found a manager, and that he was coming back to look for me to do the bag check. So I walked away. I went towards the back corner of the ground floor, and went up the fire exit stairs to the other section of the store. I knew that the girls in customer service (who he just made the remark to) would tell him which way I went. By the time he realised that I wasn't downstairs he went back towards the front of the store in order to use the escalator to go upstairs... the only other place he thought I could be. But I'd gone into the camera room! From there I watched him looking for me for about 3 minutes before he gave up and left without doing any bag check!
He definitely realised what I was up to by the time he left. But he couldn't have been sure. I could easily have deniability if he confronted me. Just as he would have deniability if I had confronted him about what he had said.
Tale two
On another occasion I was directing traffic for a drive-thru McDonalds that had just re-opened after the covid lockdown. So as you can expect, the line of cars (queue) was so big that it began from well outside the entrance to the property itself. Outside of the property there was a road that joined into the road (T-junction) that the queued cars were in. At this T-junction some cars would come along and chance their luck and try and nip in this way to safe themselves an extra 15 minutes of queuing time. My standing spot was at the property entrance, about 30 yards away from this T-junction (with me?). So to prevent people from skipping ahead I would make eye contact with the person trying to skip in (from my standing spot) and wave them on. Mostly they'd just drive on, but sometimes they'd play dumb or ignore me, so I'd walk over, and in which case they'd either try persuade me to lmake an exception, or try getting me to jump through their hoops having me explaining things to them... all in the hopes of skipping ahead.
So what I did eventually with the likes of such people (after I was sure they were being difficult), is I would walk over and let them think that I was going over to deal with their dumb explanation, but instead I would stop on the footpath right at the T-junction (opposite their car). Instead of making any eye contact with them, I would make eye contact with the car in the other lane (the one they're trying to skip in in front of) just to make sure they'd be awake. Then I would not do anything until the space began to open up, and only then, would I quickly signal that car forward to fill up the space. As the space was being filled I would quickly turn my back and walk back to my standing spot. Often both cars would move for the gap at the same time, only for person trying to skip to be blocked off... the car trying to skip would never be able to get in from the angle it was coming from.
That is how you give a response instead of a reaction. It would take some of them so long to figure out what I was actually doing! Lets just say some of the reactions I got were well worth a watch. They weren't annoyed that I wasted their time, but because I didn't entertain their argument and thus made them feel small. On one occasion, as the car that had to move on later passed by, the person shouted some nasty stuff out the window. But such abuse didn't bother me as it was only an acceptance of defeat.
Tale three
I know this one might sound a bit troll like, but when my sister and I used to share the main toilet in our house, she used to leave her skid marks on the porcelain. I used to always tidy my own marks after myself while they were fresh. But as regards her marks, I used to take the view of "why should I have to tidy her shit stains?". But by not doing so I just became more annoyed. One night she had been away for a few days and my father happened to go into the main bathroom. He gave out to me for not keeping it tidy after seeing the shit stains she'd left from a few days before! The only reason I didn't give out to her about it in the first place was because I didn't want to embarrass her! From then on I'd no sympathy for her, and she kept it clean after that for fear of embarrassment.
Tale four
After I'd been working in a filling station for about a month, there was a girl who had just been hired, who one day was given the task of emptying out the grounds contents from the two coffee machines. When I was busy serving customers I saw her bring one of these containers up from the shop floor and dump it into the bin behind the till. It should've seemed strange to her to dump this into a bin that contained only receipts.
Later on when I was tidying down around the coffee area I saw that one of the customer bins contained the coffee grounds contents dumped into it. She dumped these from the container through the small circular hole in the counter! She didn't think to open door from underneath. She presumably did this with the first one before bringing the other up to the till area. Anyway half of these ground contents had fallen down outside of the lining of the bin! I sorted it out of course. But when you tidy up someone else's mess you might want some recognition for it. I knew that the manager didn't care too much, and that if I mentioned it to him, that I'd look like a squealer or a whingebag. But I knew it had to have been her, as it wasn't me, and it couldn't have been the manager.
Anyway later on we were both in the stock area doing separate tasks. I went over to her to ask her (nicely) about it. She denied it though! Stupid ah! I still kindly told her where to dump it in future instead of doing so behind the tills. Just after I did this, she asked me the time! Asking me the time was kind of like a way of saying that she wasn't even listening to what I just said. Like a fool I took out my phone and answered. We weren't supposed to have phones on use while working! A few seconds later the manager walked out of the office and asked me to do some other job. I wondered if he'd seen me on the camera over talking to her and thought that I was't working. It annoyed me as it must have looked very different to what it was! Sometimes in a situation like this you just have to let it go. I only made things worse by asking her.
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