Sweet Revenge: 200 Delicious Ways to Get Your Own Back

by Belinda

  The policeman ordered the man out of the car and asked him to blow into the bag. When he had finished the man handed the bag to the policeman, who smugly told him by how many units he was over the limit and asked him if he had anything to say. 'Yes,' he said indignantly. 'My wife hasn't had a drop. This is a left-hand-drive car and she is driving.'

  The owner of a successful lorry driving and mobile cement mixer business was concerned that his wife was having an affair. He slipped home during the day, only to have his worst fears confirmed: the curtains upstairs were drawn and there was a convertible red sports car on the road outside. Til soon fix that!' he thought as he tipped the entire contents of his cement mixture into the open car. Shortly afterwards his front door opened and the family doctor emerged and drove off in his blue Sierra. He had, quite simply, been making a house call. The red car belonged to a total stranger.

  The wealthy boss of the car wash was very particular about his 911 Porsche. It had to be gleaming when he arrived for work and someone had to be sure it had been put through the wash for him, irrespective of his time of arrival. One morning, the boss arrived earlier than usual for work and the car had not been cleaned, so the hapless lackey responsible was fired. The lackey was very miffed about this so, on his last day of employment, he went into the car wash and secretly fixed hidden wire coat hangers inside those oh-so-soft washing brushes that rub the car clean...

  The local GP finally had enough of the shoppers and trippers who would arrive in the charming village of Chipping Campden, open their car doors and let out their dogs who would immediately evacuate themselves, usually right outside his home or surgery. He quite simply scooped up the offending mess with a trowel and popped it back in the car.

  A man wanted to get back at the appliance repair firm which promised five times in a twelve-hour period that the repair man was on his way — he made thousands of phoney coupons offering a free microwave service and put them on the windshields of all the cars parked near the company.

  A woman in Chicago glued sand on to her detestable brother-in-law's windscreen wipers. It made lovely designs on the windscreen.

  Office Politics

  'If you are in the business of revenge

  - then you had better dig two graves.'

  Chinese proverb

  Office Politics

  The flamboyant head f a large London advertising agency always wore casual clothes to the office in a vain attempt to pass himself off as 'one of the lads'. However, he always kept an expensive designer suit hanging on the back of his office door, in case of an emergency meeting with important clients.

  He only made three wrong career moves in his life. The first was to have an indiscreet and long-running affair with his secretary. The second was to dump her publicly and unceremoniously in favour of an eighteen-year-old temp in the Accounts Department. And the third was to order the same long-suffering secretary to take his 'emergency' suit to the cleaners in readiness for an early morning presentation to the Ministry of Defence when the agency stood a good chance of being awarded the highly lucrative naval recruitment account.

  She duly obeyed his instructions, omitting to mention a refinement which he only discovered twenty minutes before the presentation was due to take place. She had arranged with the dry cleaners that the trousers were shortened by eight inches.

  When Mr Smith discovered his wife was having an affair with her boss he decided to exact spectacular revenge. In order to do so he carefully researched and collected data and information on the eminent

  international firm where she worked.

  First he sent tapes and letters to all the senior executives at his wife's office, informing them of his wife's affair with their chief executive. Not content with this, he then hacked into the firm's computer and wrote an embarrassingly frank memo in his wife's name, to be distributed around the company. Not only did it admit to the affair but also gave intimate details about key staff and company directors. Her private life 'she' said was a disaster and had been 'virtually sexless' for seven years. The memo went on to suggest that there were to be many redundancies and that 'several senior staff are not justifying their enormous salaries'.

  He then sent the tapes and letters to the executive's wife, who said that 'it came like a bolt out of the blue'. Having been confronted by his wife, the lover admitted the affair and was promptly asked to leave the family home. He is no longer chief executive and is now in an overseas office. Mrs Smith resigned the day after the letter was sent out.

  A now-eminent solicitor assures us that this was not his idea. He had just joined the firm as articled clerk and his senior assistant solicitors devised a gentle revenge to put a rather tedious man in his place.

  This fellow had never arrived late for work, neither had he been off sick in thirty years. He would arrive at the office at 9.26 a.m., remove his bowler hat and hang it on the rack. When he left at 5.31 p.m. it was on with the bowler and off into the night. The lads did some homework. They examined the hat, procured an identical one but a couple of sizes smaller and effected an exchange with that of their victim. He left that evening and was not seen the following day.

  The boys in the office did not find out until later but the man was greatly puzzled and went to his doctor

  who could not explain his incredible expanding head -perhaps it was the weather or maybe he needed a haircut? When he came back to the office he gave no clue of his trauma but was well teased about being off work.

  Stage two was put into play. The small hat was replaced with one a couple of sizes larger than the original. He did not appear for work the next day either as he had by then been referred to a consultant. The lads returned the original hat thereafter, but safe in the knowledge that they had the other two should they ever need them again.

  A woman who heard herself described as 'the office tart' by a clerk, tried to avenge the insult by poisoning his drink with typing correcting fluid. She poured the white liquid into a carton of milk left on the desk of Michael Cavendish. He was taken to hospital after drinking the milk but was not seriously harmed. She was lucky - she had thought it would make him 'a bit ill'. The court was told that a teaspoonful of the fluid, containing trichloroethane, is enough to kill.

  'Some years ago - and in another life - I was features editor of the News of the World, when Derek Jameson was appointed editor. We did not get on. He, no doubt, found me insufferably arrogant. I found his Cockney yo-ho-ho bogus and irritating. After some weeks he called me in to review the workings of my department. It was not an easy discussion; he seemed to find many of my ideas inadequate for the great paper he intended to produce.

  'Finally, he leaned over his desk and said in his best Bow Bells accent: "You know Rod, don't you, that I'm Britain's first psychic editor?"

  ' "No Derek," I replied calmly. "I had no idea you were so blessed."

  ' “Oh yes," he said, warming to his theme. "My Ellen (his wife) and I, we're both psychic. I can tell when things are going to happen. I knew I was going to get this job, 'cos I'm psychic, see? 'Course I got the timing wrong

  - psychics do that -1 thought I was going to get it a year ago when it went to Asker. But I knew it was coming. What do you think of that?"

  ' "Very interesting," I said, as non-committally as possible. But all the time I was thinking: "Oh, no! I've just had a year working for a tricky editor. Now I've got a psychic one."

  'He interrupted my reverie: "And, you know, Rod," he said, "being psychic, like I am, I can see us not getting on."

  'I left the paper about a month later - and have not regretted it one bit since. Derek lasted a bit longer; but, in the end, the circulation continued to tumble and he, too, left suddenly.

  'The day he went, I sent him a postcard. It was addressed to Derek Jameson (Britain's First Psychic Editor) and it said: "Pity you didn't see it coming." '

  - with thanks to Rod Tyler.

  A major TV executive summoned a junior editing hack and insisted that a particular current af
fairs programme, which had been transmitted very late the previous night, must be 're-edited' for a showing at the board meeting the following day. The young-but-enthusiastic editor protested, but was advised that, unless the major exec's will was followed, his neck would be on the line.

  The programme had been broadcast 'live' and contained complicated errors involving high level corporate policy which were potentially explosive to the executive's career. The young editor discovered the major gaffe in the programme and realised that it was the responsibility of the major executive. The young blade decided to exact his revenge - he duly spent many hours editing the programme as requested and this was shown to the board at the appointed hour.

  After the event the major exec called in the junior to say well done. 'Would all the board like a copy as a keepsake?' the editor asked. The major exec thought this a wonderful idea and urged junior on. Which copy of the tape do you think the board received in their mail the following day?

  In Weston-Super-Mare a small but successful confectionery factory produced lettered rock which is familiar at all British seaside resorts. This particular factory, Farmiloe's, owned and run by Mrs Farmiloe herself many years ago, employed an unpopular foreman whose job it was to oversee the time-honoured procedure of putting the coloured rods around the outside of the huge fat, round block of rock and inserting the letter rods in the middle before they were stretched into the long, thin sticks that we know and love.

  The foreman finally earned himself the sack for one too many transgressions and, before he left, he decided to create a little souvenir of his time at the factory. He rearranged the letters to create around ten miles of rock bearing the message: 'Get Stuffed Mrs Farmiloe.'

  A junior medic was given punishment duties at the hospital and a senior spokesman said: 'We didn't think it was funny.' The medic's 'crime'? A woman spent ten days on the loo after he had laced her cup of tea with the world's most powerful laxative - the potent drug 'Picolax'. She was his nursing boss and had moaned about his work. Pauline Ainsworth lost pounds before the effects of the prescription-only drug wore off.

  A peer of the realm is now rather careful what he eats since he went stalking with, amongst others, a cordon bleu cook with a grudge. Lunch time saw the hungry peer settling down to a delicious venison stew which he finished with relish, much to the hilarity of the rest of the house party. Only when he had picked the plate clean did they reveal that his stew was made entirely from stags' balls.

  A man in New York needed to pay back a manager in his office who was always playing practical jokes on people. He took a styrofoam plate and filled it with cottage cheese and other perishable food. He then covered the whole thing with another styrofoam plate and taped it up under her desk so that she would be unlikely to find it. For months the smell bothered her and it was six months before she found the 'Blue Plate Special'. It caused pandemonium in the office when she opened it.

  C O Stanley was the notoriously tough chairman of Pye Radio and TV in the 1950s and all employees knew that anyone who put a foot out of line was out of a job.

  John Hodgeson was in the statistical department and answered the telephone one day. A voice asked him to run through some figures which took quite a time, during which the tea trolley arrived.

  'You'll have to wait; the tea trolley is here,' said Hodgeson.

  'Do you know who it is here?' boomed a voice.

  Suddenly realising who it was, Hodgeson replied: 'Do you know who you are talking to?'

  'No!' came the strangled reply.

  'That's all I wanted to know!' said Hodgeson, slamming the telephone down.

  After two weeks in his office a temp had had quite enough of her boss. She appreciated that there was a certain anonymity to being a temp but she felt he really didn't need to treat her like an automaton/workhorse. He was particularly keen on time-keeping and made it clear that she should not go to the loo in his time, nor waste one second of his time, ever.

  On her final day he went out to lunch, leaving her with a pile of work which 'must be finished before you leave'. OK, she thought, but before she got down to it she decided she would have a little fun with his diary. She cancelled some lunches, erased a few meetings and rearranged others.

  She subsequently heard from her replacement of the devastation she left in her wake, as he turned up in Huddersfield for a meeting with a man who wasn't there; he waited in restaurants in vain; and left his mornings clear for meetings which simply did not happen.

  - with thanks to the Hon. Dickon Kindersley.

  A senior government minister was an excellent orator, thanks entirely to a civil servant who wrote all his speeches. So reliable was the material that the minister was able to stand and deliver his words without ever rehearsing them. The civil servant, however, was more than a little disgruntled that the minister had never had the courtesy to thank him so he decided to get his own back.

  Came the day of an important keynote speech and the minister took his place on the podium. He was moving the audience to new heights with his winning words when he turned the page and, to his horror, saw the words: 'You're on your own, you bugger!'

  - with thanks to Michael Grade.

  During the late 1970s, the teetering Labour Government, while operating without an overall parliamentary majority, was ruled with a rod of iron by Deputy Chief Whip Walter Harrison, MP for Wakefield. At a time when every vote was crucial he cracked the whip to make members show up and vote - he never missed a transgression and he never forgot a kindness. An MP was once absent for a vote and Walter discovered that he was in Crete. 'Aye, and when the bastard gets back he'll be in bloody concrete,' exploded the Whip.

  On one occasion he encountered a new TV political correspondent in the palace of Westminster. With no warning Harrison's hand reached out and gave the unsuspecting chap a nasty tweak of the balls. The poor man turned to Harrison, ashen faced and doubled up in pain, to hear him say, by way of explanation: 'And that's for nothing. Just imagine what'll happen to you if you ever cross me!'

  When the Speaker announces a Division - the Ayes to the Right, the Noes to the Left - there is usually a mad rush and, inevitably, there are late-comers who struggle to get through at the last split second before the doors close. Three sturdy Tory MPs developed a ploy to keep talking in the entrance to the Ayes lobby so that late Labour members would have to dodge and weave and hurdle to get in. Joint consultation did not improve the situation so the Labour Deputy Chief Whip perfectly timed a rugby tackle which threw the three Tory MPs into the Labour Lobby just before the 'door-closing'. Their votes were, therefore, counted with the government and this was immediately reported to the press. The three did not repeat their blocking tactics again.

  Another time Harrison entered the Strangers' Bar at the House of Commons and friends told him they had left him a 'Thick 'Un' (a double whisky). Harrison raised it to his mouth only to discover it was a trick glass - just a vision in a double-sealed container. Sweet revenge came quickly: the nuts and crisps, which were provided free to customers, were replaced with polystyrene parcel stuffing looking exactly like crisps. He promoted them for consumption to the original jokers telling them they would taste a lot better with sugar on them.

  These were times when sick or dying MPs from both sides of the House were brought in by ambulance to vote; so tenuous was the government's hold on power. One evening in 1979 Walter Harrison insisted that one dying Labour MP should stay at home, despite rasping protestations to the contrary. That very night, in a motion of no-confidence, the Labour Government fell -by one single vote. But even today, having had a Conservative Government ever since, Harrison knows that he did the right thing.

  - with thanks to The Rt Hon Walter Harrison, JP.

  'A long time ago I wanted to get into marketing and applied to a huge international company for a job. The person I needed to speak to. kept fobbing me off; he refused my calls and never called back. So, I reported him missing to the Police. He called back within ten minutes! Need
less to say I didn't get the job; I just got a very angry policeman.

  'Years later I was with the chairman of this company. I asked him about this particular minion and whether he was still with the company. He did some research and found out that he had left "in upsetting circumstances". I told him of my encounter and that I could have ended up doing his job. "Oh," inquired the boss, "Would you like the job now?" '

  - with thanks to writer and TV presenter, Jeremy Beadle.

  Little Angels

  'Don't get mad: get even!'

  Little Angels

  The nice young ladies of St Leonard's College exacted their revenge on an unpopular teacher. They got hold of a shop dummy and dressed her in school uniform. The dummy was then suspended by a noose around her neck from an upper window outside this particular teacher's sitting room, during the night. When she opened the curtains the next morning, she had the most horrible shock and had to take the rest of the day off.

  The girls at Downe House school were finishing off a midnight feast and wondering what they could do next. They all agreed that the services in Chapel were too dull and that it was time to do something about it. Off they crept, and a couple of brave volunteers climbed up the tower to the bell and wound their dressing gown cords all around it to silence it. The following day the bell ringers pulled like mad to sound the bell that summons the whole school to chapel and... silence. Just the headmistress and the organist standing in the chapel, all alone. No chapel that day.